Tag Archives: ben-horin

Telling Tales

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This year’s Wirth Vocal Prize winner, Kate Fogg, gave the now customary recital in the RBA on Thursday accompanied by Nate Ben-Horin.  The recital was titled Telling Tales and covered soprano rep across art song, musical theatre and opera (just); all in English.  Since the opera and art song pieces were by Ricky Ian Gordon, Ned Rorem and Stephen Sondhem as opposed to say brett Dean or George Benjamin it all had pretty much a musical theatre feel; so in many ways not really my music.

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Opera 5 gala

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Opera 5 opened the first Toronto Opera Festival last night at Factory Theatre with a gala featuring Greg Dahl and the singers from their intern programme; most of whom have McGill connections..  It was basically a concert of opera arias and scenes and musical theatre numbers in about equal shares.  It was quite varied ad theire was some excellent singing supported with versatility and flair by Nate Ben-Horin on a slightly battered looking piano (it sounded fine though!).

Nate Ben-Horin, piano; Gregory Dahl, baritone

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The Shoah Songbook

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January 27th marked the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by units of the red Army. The anniversary is commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yesterday it was recognised in Toronto by a performance by the Likht Ensemble at the Meridian Arts Centre in North York.

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The Shoah Songbook

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It being Holocaust Remembrance Week it was entirely appropriate that Tuesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was given by the Likht Ensemble of Jaclyn Grossman, soprano, and Nate Ben-Horin, piano. The material was mostly drawn from music written/collected at either Theresienstadt or in the ghettos of Lithuania.

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Shoah Songbook 3 – Poland

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The third instalment of the Likht Ensemble’s Shoah Songbook project features music from Poland; specifically from the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau.  It’s available now on the Harold Green Jewish Theatre channel on Youtube.  Here’s the link.  There’s about 12 minutes of useful introductory material and 25 minutes of music.

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Shoah Songbook II

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Appropriately timed for Holocaust Remembrance Day, soprano Jaclyn Grossman and pianist Nate Ben-Horin in conjunction with the Harold Green Jewish Theatre presented a concert of music (mainly) from the Vilna and Kovno ghettoes in Lithuania.  Their earlier concert, which I wasn’t aware of, featured fairly well known material from Terezin but most of this program was unfamiliar, having largely survived by chance.  Some of it only exists as a melody line and had to be recreated by Ben-Horin.

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