Jennifer Tung
About a year ago I attended the Women in Musical Leadership‘s conducting masterclass with the TSO and Gustavo Gimeno at Roy Thomson Hall. Last night I went back for this year’s version. Three of last year’s participants; Jennifer Tung, Juliane Gallant and Naomi Woo were back. Last year’s fourth participant, Maria Fuller, was off in Poland conducting Hänsel and Gretel which I think says a lot for the programme. There were two new conductors; Monica Chen and Kelly Lin. Continue reading
What I’m going to do here is use a review of a new CD by Toronto based musician/actor Ahmed Moneka as a means to explore some ideas about listening to music. But first the CD itself. It’s called Kanzafula and it contains nine tracks rooted in an unusual musical tradition; that of the Afro/Iraqi Sufis of Basra. These are descendants of people originally from the East coast of Africa who wound up in Basra in the 8th century CE and have maintained a rich musical tradition combining Arabic and African influences. 
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. 
operaramblings 