Coming up… music etc
The Confluence Concert series for next season was announced last night. There are eight concerts:
On Friday evening at Heliconian Hall Confluence Concerts presented a concert entitled Centuries of Souls II. It was built around two longish works; Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Missa Gaudeamus and Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata for solo violin op.27 no.2. The individual movements/sections of these two pieces were interleaved along with a couple of Indian mantras, some plainchant, some lute pieces and the Stravinsky Pater noster to make a pretty coherent programme with its roots in various traditions of chant. Continue reading
Confluence Concerts’ first show of the season was curated by Patricia O’Callaghan and aimed to explore the Divine in music from many angles. It played at Heliconian Hall on Saturday and Sunday evenings.
Things slow down just a little bit in June but with both Luminato and Opera 5’s Opera festival it’s not that quiet. Here’s what’s coming down:
Here are my top picks for May.
So what looks fun in March?
Friday evening at Heliconian Hall saw the second of two performances of Confluence Concerts’ Sighs Too Deep For Words: A Canadian Valentine. It was an all Canadian concert featuring songs and spoken word including two world premieres and a performance of Omar Daniel’s 2005 piece Neruda Canzones.
The spoken word pieces, read beautifully by Alison Beckwith, ranged from Lucy Maud Montgomery to Margaret Atwood. Some pieces straightforwardly celebrated romantic love and others came at it a bit sideways! Songs by Canadian composers were well represented With Derek Holman, Jeffrey Ryan and John Beckwith all represented. Anaïs Kelsey-Verdecchia performed (with Christopher Bagan) her own setting of “The Lark in the Clear Air” and Patricia O’Callaghan gave us her setting of “Some by Fire” with Chris again at the pianio, Andrew Downing on bass and a backing group. So many styles! No-one could say that Canadian music is samey or boring. Continue reading
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.
operaramblings 