The Royal Conservatory has just announced its Koerner Hall line up for the 2017/18 season. There are 23 classical and 6 jazz concerts. This doesn’t include the Glenn Gould School or concerts in the RCM’s other halls. Highlights from a vocal point of view are as follows:
November 10th 2017 at 8pm: Barbara Hannigan with Reinbert de Leeuw in a mainly Second Vienna School programme. Not to be missed if that’s your thing and it’s certainly mine.
February 14th 2018 at 8pm: Ian Bostridge with Julius Drake in an all Schubert programme.
April 6th 2018 at 8pm: Bernstein@100; a tribute to Lenny featuring, among others, Wallis Giunta.
April 22nd 2018 at 3pm: Gerald Finley with Julius Drake in a varied program of art and folk songs.
April 27th 2018 at 8pm: The Amici Ensemble with Isabel Bayrakdarian and the winners of the GGS chamber music competition. The vocal part of the programme is all Bernstein.
May 10th 2018 at 8pm: Not typical Opera Ramblings fare but worth a mention; Jodi Sarvall, Hespèrion XXI and Galician pipes specialist Carlos Núñez in a program of pipe music from around the western fringes of Europe.
The PDF with the full line up is here
Well the holidays are over and the music scene is coming back to life from its seasonal diet of musical plum pudding. There’s not a lot on this week but there is the first vocal concert of the year in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. Mezzo-soprano Marion Newman will be joined by Kathleen Kajioka (violin) and Adam Sherkin (piano)in a programme of Canadian works exploring First Nations themes. It includes Dustin Peters’ song cycle, Echo|Sap’a, which explores the journey of The Echo (or Sap’a in Kwakwala), a para-natural entity that mimics the sounds and movements she encounters throughout the woods and waters, as well as Kinanu, a lullaby composed by Newman for her baby sister. Noon, of course, and free.
As things will soon slow down for the holidays I am going to do one listings post from now through to the New Year. There are of course still the 
Messiah season gets underway with 
It’s that time of year when one ponders the vexed question of how many Messiahs, and which ones, one is going to see this year. For Torontonians there seem to be four principal contenders; two fairly conventional and two less so. At the conventional end of things there’s the TSO of course. This year it’s back to the usual performing edition though fans of Sir Andrew’s “Big Fat Messiah” as heard last year can now acquire it on CD from the Chandos label. Baroque specialist Nicholas McGegan conducts so it’s probably as close to HIP as the TSO are ever going to get. Soloists are Yulia Van Doren, Abigail Levis, Isaiah Bell and Daniel Okulitch. I’m not familiar with either of the ladies but the guys are top notch. As ever the orchestra will be joined by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. There are five performances at Roy Thomson Hall on the 18th at 3pm and the 19th, 20th, 21st and 23rd at 8pm.
operaramblings 