Way back in 2016 I attended a concert of Dean Burry’s music in Victoria College Chapel. The highlight of that evening was a performance by Krisztina Szabó and the Talisker Players with Bill Rowson conducting, of Dean’s setting of Alfred Noyes’ poem The Highwayman. It was performed more recently at Queen’s University, again with Krisztina, backed this time by an ensemble of Queens faculty members (flutist, Sarah Moon, clarinettist, Kornel Wolak, violinist, Gisèle Dalbec-Szczesniak, cellist, Wolf Tormann, pianist, Younggun Kim and conductor, Darrell Christi). This time it was also accompanied by some cool shadow puppetry. It was recorded for video and audio and will eventually be released on Centrediscs. This time it was preceded by chamber music by Debussy, Berg and Beethoven. The whole thing is available now on Youtube for free.
The COC had a decent year but two of their shows stood out for me. David McVicar’s production of 
The latest concert in the Confluence series featured Marion Newman and friends addressing the question “What is Indigenous classical music?” through a carefully curated programme of works; all of which featured words by Indigenous women. We began with Marion singing Barbara Kroall’s Zasakwaa (There is a Heavy Frost) with words in Odawa describing the earth going to sleep for the winter with flute accompaniment by Stephen Tam. It was followed by Rebecca Cuddy singing three of the Five Songs on Poems by Marilyn Dumont by Ian Cusson. These are really fine settings of interesting, pithy, angry texts that have a wicked humour to them. I particularly like Letter to Sir John A. Macdonald which I’ve written about before.
So May Day greetings and hello again. And here are some things you might care to see this month during your eight hours for “what you will”. It’s a bit belated for reasons previously announced but it’s here and I’m back.
operaramblings 