Moonlight Schooner, by Kanika Ambrose, is currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in a production directed by Sabryn Rock. It’s set on May Day 1958 and a group of Black sailors have been stranded on St. Kitt’s by a storm. It being a holiday they decide to have a night on the town.
Kanika Ambrose’s The Christmas Market opened on Wednesday in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Philip Akin. At one level it’s a much needed critique/exposé of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and at another it’s basically a very funny comedy of manners. The two are extremely well integrated so that the horror of the TFWP is a bit of a slow reveal.
The Canadian Art Song Project presented their latest commission in the RBA on Wednesday lunchtime. But first we got Jorelle Williams and Steven Philcox with four songs by iconic Canadian/American composer R. Nathaniel Dett. I confess that early 20th century American song is rarely to my taste and the first three Dett songs I found workmanlike but not especially interesting. The fourth though; The Winding Road to a text by Tertius Van Dyke I found much more interesting. It seemed that Dett had allowed himself to be more “American”. There were influences from both “Negro music” and marching band here with an overall effect not unlike some of Charles Ives’ songs. I can’t knock the performance though. It did full justice to the songs; especially the last.
Known to Dreamers: Black Voices in Canadian Art Song is a new CD from Centrediscs and the Canadian Art Song Project containing Canadian art songs composed by or setting lyrics by Black Canadians, sung by Black Canadians. The first set on the disk is Robert Fleming’s The Confession Stone (Songs of Mary) which sets texts by Owen Dodson’s texts about the life of Christ from his mother’s point of view. It’s a very beautiful piece and must be in the running for the most performed Canadian song cycle of all time! Curiously though it’s only been recorded commercially once before (by Caroline Gélinas on ATMA Classique). The singer here is Measha Brueggergosman-Lee. She wouldn’t be my first choice for this piece but she sings it pretty well. I find her style a bit mannered but she’s accurate and her diction is good. Steven Philcox accompanies with great skill (as he does on all the tracks).
My review of Ian Cusson and Kanika Ambrose’s new opera Of the Sea is now up at Opera Canada.
The current Tapestry Briefs is one of the most satisfying I have attended. Briefs is the performance edition of the LibLab; an intense where composers collaborate with librettists to create new opera scenes. Some of these disappear and some go on to be the starting point for new operas. The current crop is strong. There were eleven scenes in the show; sung by various combinations of Teiya Kasahara, Stephanie Tritchew, Keith Klassen and Peter McGillivray with Jennifer Tung at the piano and other keyboards. As a bonus, at intervals Keith appeared to sing a parody of a famous aria describing the tasty little tapas which were offered around.
operaramblings 