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.
What is Divine?
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Tag Archives: heliconian hall
Celebrating Kurt Weill
Saturday night Confluence presented a concert curated by Patricia O’Callaghan of a selection of works by Kurt Weill. Now I have.a bit of a love/hate relationship with Weill which will likely colour this review. Broadly speaking I love his earlier work, especially the collaborations with Brecht, but I’m just not into the Broadway stuff at all with a few exceptions such as Street Scene which has at least a bit of an edge. I also thoroughly dislike some of the American translations of the Brecht pieces that do all they can to take the edge off. Continue reading
Schmaltz and Pepper CD launch
It’s quite a story really. Schmaltz and Pepper started life in November 2023 and played their first gig exactly a year ago. They have become, dare I say it, a bit of a cult and their first CD is now on the street in CD and vinyl (really!?!) format with digital to come. My review of the CD is here.
Sighs Too Deep For Words
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
For a’ that
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.
Amor con Fortuna
Tuesday evening the Diapente Renaissance Vocal Quintet gave a concert at Heliconian Hall of 16th century music from Spain (so music in the reign of Philip II for any Braudel fans out there). It was surprisingly varied. This was the age of the Italian madrigal so tha’s a big influence but with a definite Spanish twist. Quite a few different composers and two principal genre; the villancico (which lives on in modern Christmas carols) and the ensalada; which is generally about catastrophe (brought about by sin of course) where everything turns out OK because the Virgin Mary shows up. A lot of the music was unaccompanied but some pieces were accompanied by either guitar or vihuela (a kind of lute). It was pretty varied with some pieces having significant solos for one or more singers, some having quite complex polyphony and others more strophic, almost folk song like, structures. Plenty enough variety to sustain about 80 minutes of music.
Sing to Me Again
Apocryphonia has been around for three years or so but Sunday evening at Heliconian Hall was the first time I managed to catch one of their concerts. I like that they don’t do mainstream repertory, rather seeking out much less well known works, and Sunday was no exception. It was actually a collaboration with Syrinx Concerts and the show was in two parts. The first part featured baritone John Holland and tenor Alexander Cappellazzo with pianist Ivan Estey Jovanovic performing 20th century songs mostly from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus while the second featured works from the same area arranged for oboe (Caitlin Broms-Jacob) and piano (Madeline Hildebrand). I say “mostly” because each half included a piece by Toronto’s Srul Irving Glick.
The Tortured Poets Department
Wednesday evening’s Shuffle Hour concert at Toronto Summer Music was given by mezzo Alex Hetherington and pianist Vlad Soloviev in Heliconian Hall and carried the curious moniker The Tortured Poets Department. It kicked off with the letter aria from Massenet’s Werther and let’s face it if anyone deserves torturing it’s some combination of Werther himself and Goethe for inventing him (and possibly Massenet for prolonging the life of a character who might otherwise have fallen into obscurity). Whatever, Alex gave a fine, impassioned reading of the aria which set the stage well for what was to follow. Continue reading
The Whole Gang and Then Some
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. Continue reading
Dichterliebe: Whose Love?
I caught the second performance of Teiya Kasahara and David Eliakis’ Dichterliebe: Whose Love at Heliconian Hall on Saturday evening. It was part of the Confluence Concerts series and not untypical of the eclectic nature of that series. Also it was a logical continuation of these two partnering on shows that question gender norms in the classical music industry.
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