There a couple more on-line events coming up.
- Tafelmusik have a moderated panel discussion on the mental, physical and spiritual benefits of choral singing. That’s on March 18th at 7pm. It’s a ticketed event ($5). Tickets are available from tafelmusik.org
- Toronto Operetta Theatre is doing Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers. It will be available from March 19th at 7pm until April 5th. This one is also ticketed ($20) plus there are dinner delivery packages available for March 19th and 20th. Full cast and other details at http://torontooperetta.com/shows.html
It’s Norcop Prize time. On March 11th at 1.10pm there will be a pre-recorded recital by mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington and pianist Dakota Scott-Digout, this year’s recipients of the Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song and Gwendolyn Williams Koldofsky Prize in Accompanying. Free on the UoT Music Youtube channel. I shall miss watching it with Jim N!
Gavin Bryars’ A Native Hill is a setting of sections from Wendell Berry’s 1968 essay of that title. It was written for, and recorded by, Philadelphia based choir The Crossing and their conductor Donald Nally. The essay was written by Berry shortly after moving back to Kentucky to farm. It deals mainly with how landscapes and the humans in them are shaped by each other in profound ways. It’s very local and specific and reminded me in a curious sort of way of WG Hoskins’ The Making of the English Landscape that came out a few years before the Berry essay.
Songs for Murdered Sisters is a new song cycle by Jake Heggie setting poems by Margaret Atwood. It came about as a result of an initiative by Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins ,whose own sister was murdered by her ex in 2015, to raise awareness about violence against women. It’s now been recorded by Heggie and Hopkins and will be released by Pentatone in digital format tomorrow. It’s also available as a free video stream on the Houston Grand Opera website until March 21st. (ETA March 18th – extended to April 30th)
operaramblings 