Tag Archives: ensemble studio

Competition news

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The line ups for both the COC’s Centre Stage competition and the IRCPA’s Ten Singing Stars: The Next Generation have been announced.  The former, besides cash prizes, is also the principal route into the COC’s Ensemble Studio program.  The latter gets the winner an IRCPA Career Blueprint which includes three days at the National Opera Center in New York, new photographs, video and audio recordings, website consultation and mentoring with professionals.

At Centre Stage at the Four Seasons Centre on November 1st you can see:

  • Tenor Matthew Cairns of St. Catharines, ON
  • Soprano Vanessa Croome of Nanaimo, BC
  • Bass-baritone Aaron Dimoff of Owen Sound, ON
  • Bass-baritone Vartan Gabrielian of Toronto, ON
  • Tenor Rocco Rupolo of Toronto, ON
  • Mezzo-soprano Jamie Groote of Oakville, ON
  • Soprano Andrea Lett of Humboldt, SK
  • Soprano Noelle Slaney of Gander, NL

This is a gala starting with a reception at 5.30 pm.  Tickets at coc.ca.

The IRCPA concert is on November 5th at 7.15pm at Zoomer Hall.  Tickets at http://ircpa.net.  The line up is:

Sopranos:  Tonia Cianciulli, Jocelyn Fralick, Beth Hagerman, Teiya Kasahara, Kathleen Promane, Sara Schabas, Gwenna Fairchild-Taylor

Mezzo-soprano:  Georgia Burashko

Tenors:  Zachary Rioux, John-Michael Scapin

 

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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Recruits for the Ensemble Studio

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UntitledThe COC has announced four additions to the COC Ensemble Studio for 2018/19.  I don’t think there any surprises.  The three prize winners from last season’s Centre Stage are joined by Lauren Margison, daughter of Richard and currently with the Atelier Lyrique in Montreal.  Just for fun I researched how long the four had been on the OR radar.  The most recent is Montreal based soprano Anna-Sophie Neher who was unknown to me until Centre Stage.  Next would be mezzo Simona Genga; UoT graduate and top prize winner at Centre Stage.  She first appeared in these pages in a review of a UoT concert in 2016.  Bass-baritone Joel Allison has been on the watch list for a while.  He first showed up in a review of a Talisker Players concert in March 2015 and I’ve followed him closely ever since, including his Norcop Prize winner recital.  But by far the longest history goes to soprano Lauren Margison who I first wrote about as a 19 year old singing with her dad in the RBA in 2011!  I wonder whether that record, seven years from first appearing in OR to joining the Ensemble Studio, will ever be broken.  For the record, graduating this summer are Samantha Pickett, Megan Quick, Bruno Roy and Toronto’s favourite naked soprano Danika Lorèn.

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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Looking ahead to February

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groundhog-day-usaFebruary is going to be really busy so I think I’ll take the previews in chunks.  First up though one event in January I haven’t yet had opportunity to mention.  This coming Sunday 21st Fawn Chamber Creative have a PWYC fundraiser for their in process  opera-ballet project.  It’s from 2-6pm at The Smiling Buddha.  It will be party, silent auction and some performance.  Previous ones have been fun but I’m booked Sunday.  Details at: http://www.fawnchambercreative.com/events/upcoming/. Also in January and missed off the radar, on the 28th at 3pm at Mazzoleni Hall,the Amici Ensemble have a Strauss inspired concert featuring the lovely but tiny Sasha Djihanian who is current holder of the loudness to weight record for a soprano.

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Journeys of the Soul

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Yesterday’s free concert in the RBA featured four members of the Ensemble Studio.  Megan Quick and Stéphane Mayer gave us Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen followed by Sam Pickett and Rachel Kerr with Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder.  The first set was interesting in that I was so engrossed by Stéphane’s playing that at times I almost drifted away from the singing.  He really is a bit remarkable.  Few collaborative pianists have that effect.  Megan continues to develop as a singer.  She has a big, dark mezzo that’s actually so operatic I’m not sure it’s heard to best advantage in lieder with piano accompaniment.  Still, she’s developing interpretive skills and her German diction has improved out of all recognition in the past eighteen months.  It’s now very good.  She took the first song, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit, really slowly but had the control to pull it off and there was some real lyricism in Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz.

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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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And off we go again

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Giulio_Cesare_di_AsterixAfter the usual summer hiatus the Toronto music scene starts to get back into gear in the coming week.  Tonight there’s the final concert of the Fall Baroque Academy at Trinity College Chapel.  It features excerpts from Handel’s Giulio Cesare.  It’s at 7.30pm and it’s free.

There are two Ensemble Studio lunchtime concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.  Tuesday is the traditional “Meet the Artists” gig where everyone gets to do an opera aria and Wednesday celebrates the Invictus Games.  It’s a predictably war themed program with the expected like Butterworth (good) and Ives (the appalling He is there) and the less expected with works by Somers and Argento among others.  Both concerts are at noon and free.

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Schön

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Today we said goodbye to Charles Sy and Hyejin Kwon as members of the Ensemble Studio.  They went out on a high note (indeed quite a few high notes….) with a very fine performance of Schubert’s epic cycle Die schöne Müllerin.  Charles was in fine voice for the whole 65 minutes or so.  He was delicate and floaty where he needed to be and fierce when warranted.  It was lovely and text sensitive and proof, if anyone still needed it, of what a fine singer he has become in the last couple of years.  Hyejin was equally accomplished.  The limpid delicacy of the intro to Wohin was just gorgeous but she also summoned up real power and volume when needed.  She was, as always, tremendous fun to watch.  We writers tend to focus on the singer and not give due weight to the pianist’s contribution.  Today we were reminded of how wrong that is.

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I hope both of them stick around the Toronto scene and I look forward to seeing them in future endeavours.  Thanks guys!

Photo credit: Tanner Davies