Of all the groups I’ve seen explore the boundaries of “classical music” in Toronto, none goes further than Slow Rise Music and this was especially true of their concert Collide-o-Scope which played at the Tranzac on Saturday and Sunday.
Before looking forward to next month I want to mention a couple of things this weekend that I haven’t previously noticed. Saturday (Jan 25th) at 12.30pm there is a Met HD broadcast of new production of Aida with a pretty interesting looking cast. Later, at 6pm there’s a rather special concert at the Arts and letters Club to celebrate the 100th birthday of Morry Kernerman (former assistant concertmaster of both the TSO and OSM). The concert is presented by Canzona Chamber Players and wiull feature Trio Uchida-Crozman-Chiu. Continue reading
There can be few poets whose work resonates as widely as that of the Ayrshire ploughboy and philanderer Robert Burns. His influence has been felt from Bengal to Massachusetts and beyond. Celebrating that influence was the the point of Confluence Concerts’ Robert Burns – A Passion for Freedom curated by Alison Mackay which played at Heliconian Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings.
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. Continue reading
Dvořák’s Rusalka is pretty well served on video but the latest recording has a very strong cast and I was intrigued. It was recorded at the Royal Opera House in 2023 and features, among others, Asmik Grigorian in the title role and Sarah Connolly as Ježibaba.
Confluence Concerts opened their season yesterday at 918 Bathurst with a concert featuring a new work by Ian Cusson and André Alexis. We’ll come to that because before it there was about 45 minutes of music doing what Confluence does; the relatively unexpected. There were arrangements for various combinations of voices and instruments of songs by the likes of Kate Bush, Coldplay and Neil Young. There was an instrumental version of Bruce Cockburn’s Pacing the Cage (Larry Beckwith – violin, Andrew Downing – bass) and a Mozart violin sonata (Beckwith and Cusson) plus an intriguing percussion solo by Bevis Ng and more. It featured the usual suspects; Larry Beckwith, Andrew Downing, Suba Sankaran, Dylan Bell and Patricia O’Callaghan plus Messrs Cusson and Ng and it was fun.
Medusa’s Children is a location shot opera film recently released by Opera Q; a Toronto based collective “dedicated to amplifying queer and trans voices”. I think this is the company’s second production following the live staged Dido and Belinda in 2019. This new piece; music by Colin McMahon, text by Charlie Petch, is also on a classical theme. In fact it follows Ovid pretty closely (at least for the back story) and of course there’s a queer twist.
Confluence Concerts returned to live performance last night at Heliconian Hall. The concert, curated by Patricia O’Callaghan, was titled A Simple Twist of Fate and featured an eclectic mix of music either on the topic of Fate or that was entwined with the fates of the performers.
Mandala – the Beauty of Impermanence is the latest on-line offering from Confluence Concerts. It’s curated by Suba Sankaran and should have seen the light as a live show last May. The programme is as eclectic as one has come to expect from Confluence and lots of fun. In the spirit of impermanence it will be available on the Confluence channel on Youtube only until February 10th.
Tapestry Opera’s original 2019/20 season was to have included a remount of Gareth Williams’ and Anna Chatterton’s Rocking Horse Winner which premiered to positive reviews in May 2016. This is quite unusual as all too often, new Canadian operas, even the successful ones pretty much disappear after an initial run. Needless to say the staged show didn’t happen but, happily, Tapestry decided to make an audio recording instead.
Three of the four principals from 2016; Asitha Tennekoon, Keith Klassen and Peter McGillivray reprise their original roles while Lucia Cesaroni replaces Carla Huhtanen as Ava. This time around the house is represented by Midori Marsh, Alex Hetherington, Stephen Bell and Korin Thomas-Smith.
operaramblings 