Thursday night’s Conflunce Concerts show at Heliconian Hall was titled Songs from Toronto and consisted of songs by Toronto singer-songwriters arranged for a larger ensemble by Andrew Downing. And by larger ensemble I mean various combinations of string trio, double bass, guitars of sundry varieties, vibraphone and piano. To further spice things up some of the songs were sung by Teiya Kasahara who is a rather different Fach than the average singer in this genre.
I have very limited exposure to Toronto’s singer-songer writer community (I didn’t even know it was a “thing”) and so it’s hard to assess where last night departed from some sort of norm or not or to assess whether arranging for a larger ensemble enhanced the experience or detracted from the intimate nature of someone singing their own stuff in their own way. FWIW I do have a fair bit of experience with singer-song writer music from the British isles and Atlantic Canada and I know that can work pretty well with a band. Think Liza Carthy or Billy Bragg for example.
Tuesday night at Heliconian Hall was the time and place for a concert curated by, and largely performed by, Confluence Concerts’ young associate artists; the KöNG duo. KöNG consists of two Toronto-Hong Kong percussionists; Bevis Ng and Hoi Tong Keung, pursuing doctoral studies in Toronto. They were supported on some numbers by Ryan Davis (viola) and Ben Finley (double bass).
Wednesday evening’s early evening shuffle concert at Heliconian Hall featured Karine White and Hyejin Kwon in Love Letter to Toronto. It was a compilation of opera arias, art song and more popular fare; sometimes altered a bit, evoking those things we love and don’t about Toronto. Summer nights, love and loss, wildlife and, inevitably, traffic and the TTC featured prominently. oomposers featured ranged from Mozart to Heisler and Goldrich via Puccini, Bernstein, Menotti and more. All in all, a varied and nicely constructed programme.
Confluence Concerts’ show last night at Heliconian Hall was titled A Woman’s Voice. It was, after a fashion, a CD release concert in two halves. The first half featured music by Alice Ping Yee Ho from the album A Woman’s Voice and featuring the same performers; Vania Chan, Katy Clark, Alex Hetherington, Maeve Palmer and Jialiang Zhu. I’ve already 
operaramblings 