Tag Archives: chan

February

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nlightsHere are a few more February items of interest in addition to those mentioned here.  Tapestry’s new piece Hook Up opens on January 30th at Theatre Passe Muraille and runs for most of February.  Then on Sunday 3rd February at 2.30 pm VOICEBOX have a performance of Schubert’s rather rare opera Fierrebras.  Kevin Mallon conducts the Aradia Ensemble for this one.  Also there’s Opera Pub as usual on Thursday 7th February.

On February 16th at Gallery 345 at 8pm there will be an Against the Grain presentation of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine.  The “twist” here is that Elle becomes Lui and will be sung by tenor Jacques Arsenault.  Topher Mokrzewski at the piano.  Aria Umezawa directs the first in what is planned as a series of “twisted” concerts.

In free concert news there’s the Quilico Prize competition on February 11th at 5.30pm in the RBA.  Once again the members of theEnsemble Studio compete for cash.  At the nnon hour there’s Susan Bullock and Liz Upchurch on the 19th with a programme of Wagner, Strauss and Duparc and on the 20th there’s Samuel Chan and Stéphane Mayer with an all Schubert programme.  Then on the 21st there’s Lauren Eberwein and Rachel Kerr with a Messiaen and Ravel show.  Given that it’s the Jessye Norman Gala on the 20th as well I think I’ll just schlep my sleeping bag over to the Four Seasons Centre.

Also at the COC of course Elektra continues until February 22nd with Così fan tutte opening on February 5th and running until the 23rd.

Meet the Orchestra Academy

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Yesterday’s concert in the RBA, the first I’ve been to in a while, featured the five members of the Orchestra Academy; violinists Joella Pinto and Gloria Yip, violist Carolyn Farnand and cellists Erin Patterson and Alison Rich, with Joel Allison and Samuel Chan and Rachael Kerr on keyboards.  It was an interesting concert in many ways.  We don’t get to see the young instrumentalists much nor do we often see Ensemble members sing with a chamber ensemble.  It was also interesting to hear the contrast between Joel’s dark toned bass-baritone, often singing in a very low tessitura, with Sam’s much brighter, lighter baritone which sometimes was well up in tenor territory.

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The Monkiest King

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This year’s Canadian Children’s Opera Company main stage performance is The Monkiest  King.  It’s from the team of Marjorie Chan and Alice Ping Yee Ho who collaborated most successfully to create another highly successful Western/Chinese fusion piece; The Lesson Of Da Jee.  The inspiration for this one is the antics of Sun Wukong, the mischievous and arrogant Monkey King in the Chinese classic Journey to the West.

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Last night at the Four Seasons Centre

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For the last few years the COC has had a fairly glitzy evening at which the next season is announced and there are interviews, a few performances etc.  This year, for whatever reason, the two elements were divorced.  The season was announced in a press release in January with no fanfare; not even a press conference.  The glitzy bit happened last night with a cocktail reception and a stage event hosted by Brent Bambury.

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Russian Romance

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The full Ensemble Studio was on display yesterday for an all Russian lunchtime concert.  First up was Megan Quick with a couple of Rachmaninov songs.  Megan’s timbre is very dark and it seems to be a natural fit for those Russian vowels.  She was followed by Bruno Roy with a couple of Tchaikovsky numbers.  He’s come on a lot in his time in the Studio.  There’s some heft to the voice now and some quite impressive top notes.  Good stuff.

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All the Strauss

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Yesterday’s Amici Ensemble concert in Mazzoleni Hall was an all Richard Strauss program featuring an array of guests.  First up was the Duett Concertino where regulats Joaquin Valdepeñas (clarinet), David Hetherington (cello) and Serouj Kradjian (piano) were joined by violinists Timothy Ying and Jennifer Murphy, violist Keith Hamm, Theodore Chan on bass and Michael Sweeney on bassoon.  It’s a program piece in which the clarinet represents a princess and the bassoon, a bear, who eventually, of course, transforms into a handsome prince.  There are lots of dance rhythms from the strings and some sly quotations from Der Rosenkavalier along the way.  It’s fun and it was very well played.  I almost wonder if it was too smooth.  The bear certainly seemed very suave and his transformation was not terribly abrupt.  Still, bear!

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Don’t take that baritone with me!

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Probably not

To the Four Season’s Centre last night to check out one of the COC’s adult education events.  This time it was about the baritone voice in all its aspects and featured Liz Upchurch at the piano and, mostly, doing the talking with Ensemble Studio members Sam Chan and Bruno Roy plus ES graduate Neil Craighead back in Toronto to sing Ceprano (not soprano) in Rigoletto doing some singing.

Besides the singing, of which more later, I think there were two takeaways from the evening though it was not actually divided up that way.  One, fascinating, dealt with the development of the voice and the sheer number of years it takes for bigger voices to more or less grow up.  Also, how do you develop and stretch the voice while staying vocally healthy.  Neil is 34 and his voice is really just beginning to get where one can see it going, which is likely big to very big.  Sam and Bruno, much younger, are still going through the process of figuring out what Fach (see below) they really are.  This seems to happen to everyone except maybe genuine basses, high sopranos and the really obvious tenors.  It was pretty cool for instance to heat Bruno sing a tenor aria though not, of course, something like Pour mon âme.

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Toronto Operetta Theatre’s Candide

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I’ve been familiar with Voltaire’s satirical novella since I was a teenager and have reread it many times but I’d not seen the Bernstein operetta/musical version until last night when it opened at Toronto Operetta Theatre with, I think, the original Lillian Hellman 1956 book though a later reduced orchestration (I’m guessing on that).  I was very curious because it’s not obvious how one might turn Voltaire’s sequence of drily narrated, utterly absurd scenes into drama.  The answer turns out to be to insert the author as a spoken word narrator linking scenes and play it straight though the two mile high cliffs and sheep get lost in the wash.  Fair enough.  It works pretty well.  The whole thing is reasonably true to the spirit of the original though in places, especially in the musical number, it’s definitely tailored to a 1950s Broadway sensibility.

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Elizabeth Beeler with company and Tonatiuh Abrego as Candide

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Celebrating the Invictus Games

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Yesterday’s RBA concert was titled Celebrating the Invictus Games.  Now the Invictus Games is a sporting competition for athletes disabled on military service.  It has royal patronage and has clearly become part of the official pageantry of celebrating all things military, as witnessed by the presence of the Lieutenant Governors of Ontario and Alberta at yesterday’s concert.  For me it raises all kinds of questions about why we put the military on a pedestal and how we do it and that is very tied up with the choice of rep at a concert like yesterdays.  I’ll come back to that at the end of this piece, after reviewing what we actually heard.

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Meet the Ensemble Studio

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Yesterday at noon we had the traditional season opening performance by the COC Ensemble Studio in the RBA; the Meet the Young Artists concert.  There were two new singers and a new pianist joining six members returning from last year.  First up was Danika Lorèn with Deh vieni non tardar.  I think I’ve run out of new things to say about Danika.  It’s all there; a very easy upper register, interesting colours and a growing degree of artistic assurance.  I just want to see her on the big stage.  Stéphane Mayer was at the piano with his usual sympathetic elegance.  He really is rather good!

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