Tapestry Opera and Nightwood Theatre’s new digs at 877 Yonge Street are now officially open. I was unable to attend Saturday nignt’s opening gig and party but I did get to attend the free concert for the local community in the afternoon and get a tour of the premises.
Last Wednesday’s noon hour concert in the RBA was a collaboration between the Canadian Art Song Project and the UoT Faculty of Music. It was an all Canadian programme; mostly living composers and mostly in a lighter vein; hence the title Songs of Whimsy and Humour.
Centrediscs have recently released a CD of music by Toronto composer Colin Eatock. It’s a mix of choral and orchestral works; most of the former for unaccompanied voices. There are ten works on the disc making a generous 67 minutes or so of music.
The first piece is Ashes of Soldiers for soprano, clarinet, harp and strings. It’s a Walt Whitman setting and almost certainly the first piece of Colin’s music I ever heard. It’s still I think my favourite. It’s both elegant and elegiac and has a really interesting clarinet part (played here by Kornel Wolak. The soprano part is nicely sung by Lynn Isnar and it’s lovely to hear her again.
My “to watch” pile now consists entirely of older productions of 19th century operas (pretty much the dregs of the Toronto Public Library collection) and the COC season doesn’t start for another six weeks or so. I have one other live performance booked before then; a rather peculiar Handel piece performed in various locations at a local hotel. I’ve been listening to some new CDs then at least partly as a form of procrastination.
The first two were part of an ENO “goody bag” that I scored on Twitter. Songs of Muriel Herbert is a most worthwhile project. Herbert, like so many women composers, has never had the recognition she deserves. Not as “romantic” as a drug addled loon like Peter Warlock I guess. The CD contains thirty six songs setting texts ranging from Peter Abelard to James Joyce. I’d say they stand up well against other early twentieth century English art songs and would be well worth mining by anyone looking for some less well known recital repertory. The works are most sympathetically performed by Ailish Tynan, James Gilchrist and David Owen Norris. Continue reading
operaramblings 