Larry Beckwith’s innovative new series of concerts, Confluence, has just announced an addition to the season.
The first is a salon concert; Music Has No Borders: In Memory Of Walter Unger on March 4, 2019 at 7:30 pm. It will take place at 7:30 pm on Monday March 4th in The Atrium at 21 Shaftesbury Avenue and will feature lectures and performances by Canadian composers John Beckwith and Alice Ping Hee Ho, pianist Gregory Oh, bassist Andrew Downing and clarinetist Majd Sekkar. Tickets are available at the door and at bemusednetwork.com for $25.
Last night’s Confluence concert in the intimate space of the Ernest Balmer Studio; Sovereignty Voiced, was a fascinating mix of material celebrating various aspects of Indigenous culture and its interplay with Western arts. Marion Newman and Ian Cusson performed excerpts from two of his song cycles; Five Orchestral Songs on Poems of Marilyn Dumont and A Breakfast for Barbarians. Marion also gave us a few of her own songs including the wicked Appropriation Aria and the Kinanu, which she wrote for her sister; given here with Marion on hand drum, Larry Beckwith on violin and Ian at the piano.
The demise of Toronto Masque Theatre was never likely to lead to the retirement of Larry Beckwith from the Toronto scene and it hasn’t. He’s back with a new concert series called Confluence that describes itself as a “a new interdisciplinary, cross-cultural multi-media (many-hyphened) project”. There’s a Pay What You Can kick off next Sunday, 16th September, at St. Thomas’ Church at 383 Huron Street at 2.30pm where there will be performances and readings featuring many of the season’s artists plus food and drink.
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
operaramblings 