Coming up… music etc
Regular readers will be familiar with the Happenstancers. They are a shifting group of young musicians convened by Brad Cherwin who have been presenting innovative chamber music concerts in an assortment of venues for a few years now. Last year Brad was selected to curate a concert for Soundstreams at the Jane Mallett Theatre which was very like a Happenstancers concert in many ways with the advantage of exposing the approach to a wider audience. On Friday night they were back under their own flag at Temerty Theatre as part of the 21C festival. Which is a long winded way of saying this is a very happening and innovative group who are emerging as a significant player in the Toronto chamber music scene.
Friday’s concert, as you would expect, consisted mostly of 21st century music but in line withe theme of “exploring the space between two people” and in typical Happenstancers’ style there was music from the Renaissace plus Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. The ensemble consisted of sopranos Danika Lorèn and Reilly Nelson, Julia Mirzoev, Russell iceberg and Christopher Whitley on violin, Hezekkiah Leung and Hee-See Yoon on viola, Peter Eom on cello and Brad Cherwin on clarinets with constantly changing combos across the evening. Continue reading
Here’s some of what January has to offer…
Toronto Operetta Theatre is doing Imre Kalman’s The Czardas Princess over the New Year holiday. It’s st the Jane Mallett Theatre and there are shows on December 30th and January 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
The line up for 21C for 2026 has been announced. This is always one of the city’s best programmes of contemporary and related music. Details… Continue reading
Helène Berr was a student at the Sorbonne in the 1940s. She was musical, well read and kept a journal. One looks at her photograph and one sees exactly what one expects; regular features, not too much makeup, nicely cut hair. All in all a typical young middle class Parisienne of the period. But she was Jewish and, ultimately deported to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, where she was killed just days before British troops liberated the camp on 15th April 1945.
Always one of my favourite concerts, the annual late night one in Temerty Theatre which forms part of the 21C festival. As usual on Saturday night Brian Current was conducting the GGS New Music Ensemble. This time it was two new Canadian works plus a 1994 piece by Luca Francesconi. Continue reading
The opening concert of this year’s 21C festival was given by the Imani Winds (Brandon George Rule – flutes, Toyin Spellman-Diaz – oboe, Mark over – clarinet, Kevin Newton – horn and Monica Ellis – bassoon) and pianist Michelle Carr in Mazzoleni Hall on Saturday evening. It was a programme of 20th and 21st century works with a kind of French/jazz theme.
So what’s in store for Toronto early in the New Year?
The 2025 edition of the 21C festival of contemporary music at the Royal Conservatory of Music basically runs from January 18th to 25th next year with an outlier in May. As usual it’s heavy on premières; World, North American and Canadian and there’s an intriguing mix of genres.
This year’s 21C Festival opened last night at Koerner Hall with Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say performing some of his works with the help of a few friends. It was a pretty varied evening considering all the works were by one person. The opening pieces Gezi Park 2 and Gezi Park 3 are reflections on the Gezi Park protests of 2013. The first is for solo piano and is by turns dramatic and meditative. It uses a fair amount of extended piano technique and is highly virtuosic with great rhythmic complexity. In the second piece the composer was joined by a string quartet (Scott and Lara St. John – violins, Barry Scxhiffman – viola and Winona Zelenka – cello) and mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender. This work was both expressive and dramatic building on the musical language of the first piece with the additional textures of the strings (more extended technique) and a lot of rather beautiful vocalise from Beste. It’s an impressive piece.
operaramblings 