Tag Archives: loren

GentleFreak’s Slaying My Demon Lover

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I’ve been complaining fior ages that the sort of curated artsong concert by young singers disappeared with COVID.  Monday night gave me cause for hope.  The first concert in Tapestry Opera’s Free Underground Concert series was given on Monday evening by a new initiative called GentleFreak.  It’s led by Danika Lorèn who has form in this area.

Slaying My Demon Lover is a concept by Daevyd Pepper and consists of readings and music around the idea of loss or break up (romantic or otherwise).  Monday’s show was a cut down version of the whole thing which can be seen on the evening of the 15th at Arrayspace (tickets here).  It’s very varied with some very lyrical pieces like Hahn’s L’heure exquise (sung beautifully by Queen Hezumuryango) and much mor abrasive material like Weill’s Je ne t’aime pas (sung forcefully by Reilly Nelson).  There was musical theatre material on the same theme; for example Sondheim’s Losing My Mind (Danika) and some weirder or more playful numbers like George Aperghis Récitation 14 (Danika) and Vernon/Ivor’s 715 CRΣΣKS sung into the piano by Daevyd.  Accompaniment throughout was by Claire Harris on piano.  Bottom line it all worked and came together to make a most satisfying and very welcome show.

Tapestry’s Free Underground Concerts programme runs on selected Monday evenings from 6pm to 7pm at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre.  Next up on the 23rd is a preview concert of Kevin Wong’s new musical In Real Life.

The Happenstancers at 21C

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Regular readers will be familiar with the Happenstancers.  They are a shifting group of young musicians convened by Brad Cherwin who have been presenting innovative chamber music concerts in an assortment of venues for a few years now.  Last year Brad was selected to curate a concert for Soundstreams at the Jane Mallett Theatre which was very like a Happenstancers concert in many ways with the advantage of exposing the approach to a wider audience.  On Friday night they were back under their own flag at Temerty Theatre as part of the 21C festival.  Which is a long winded way of saying this is a very happening and innovative group who are emerging as a significant player in the Toronto chamber music scene.

Friday’s concert, as you would expect, consisted mostly of 21st century music but in line withe theme of “exploring the space between two people” and in typical Happenstancers’ style there was music from the Renaissace plus Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.  The ensemble consisted of sopranos Danika Lorèn and Reilly Nelson, Julia Mirzoev, Russell iceberg and Christopher Whitley on violin, Hezekkiah Leung and Hee-See Yoon on viola, Peter Eom on cello and Brad Cherwin on clarinets with constantly changing combos across the evening. Continue reading →

Broken from the Happenstancers

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The Happenstancers latest gig; Broken, played on Friday evening at Redeemer Lutheran. Getting back to their core mission, this concert explored the relationships between baroque music and contemporary repertoire and the plusses and minusses of combining music, instruments and techniques from both.  So, interspersed between sonatas by Johann Rosenmüller; originally scored for strings and continuo but played here by various combinations of oboe/cor anglais, regular and bass clarinet, strings and accordion, we got contemporary pieces.

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Micah Schroeder in recital at the Tranzac

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Baritone Micah Schroeder and pianist Stéphane Mayer gave a recital on Saturday night at the Tranzac called Everlastingness.  It was a carefully curated mix of song recital classics, works by contemporary Canadian composers and some Armenian influences.  The balance was such that a two hour plus recital seemed to fly by.  I rather like the Tranzac for this kind of event.  The acoustics are fine and the comparative intimacy of it gives a vibe somewhere between a concert hall and, say, Opera Pub.  It’s certainly difficult to imagine anyone (furries aside) wearing tails there.

And so to the music… Matters kicked off with Danika Lorèn’s setting of Edna St.Vincent Millais’ Recuerdo no. 7 – A Few Figs From The Thistle.  It’s a gentle setting of an appealing text and was a good atmosphere setter.  Next was a foray into Ich bin ein ernsthafter deutscher Bariton territory with Schumann’s Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister.  This was very nicely done with excellent diction, measured singing; balancing the dramatic and the sensitive aptly, and was beautifully accompanied.  Proper Lieder singing in fact. Continue reading →

The Two Deaths of Ophelia

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The latest Happenstancers gig, which took place at 918 Bathurst on Thursday evening, was an exploration of the death of Ophelia and related ideas with works for assorted chamber ensembles plus/minus voices.  Ten composers; all of whom could at a stretch be considered “contemporary”, were featured in a programme that, with interval, lasted two and three quarter hours.  That’s a feat of stamina for performers and audience alike as none of the music performed was “easy” and no notes or introductions were provided.

Each half of the programme started off with a piece by Linda Catlin Smith, who was in the audience.  Stare at the River for piano, string bass, trumpet, clarinet, violin and percussion was quite sparse and open textured while The River was more obviously lyrical with guitar, cello and Danika Lorèn replacing piano, trumpet and bass.

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Garden of Vanished Pleasures

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Tim Albery’s show; Garden of Vanished Pleasures, about Derek Jarman and his Kent coast garden was supposed to figure in Soundstreams 2020/21 season and we know what happened to that!  So, it was reengineered as a film and streamed in September of 2021.  I reviewed  it at some length for Opera Canada.  Now director Tim Albery has recreated it as a live show at the Berkeley Street Theatre.

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with you and without you

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Every year Soundstreams has a competition to find a young artist to curate a main stage concert.  This year’s lucky winner is Brad Cherwin, who will need little introduction to readers of this blog, and the concert took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday night.

It was, in many ways, a typical Cherwin programme.  Some works were played in their entirety while others had their individual movements spread through the programme.  The overall theme was “Love and Death” and the programme was divided into four cycles with somewhat enigmatic titles.  Twelve instrumentalists, plus soprano Danika Lorèn and conductor Gregory Oh were used in various combinations.

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I Saw a New Heaven

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wemmf-isawanewheavenThe second programme in this year’s West End Micro Music Festival had its first performance at Redeemer Lutheran on Friday night.  It was a mix of contemporary instrumental and vocal works with some unusual Hildegard von Bingen and some interesting lighting (Billy Wong) and staging.

First up was a set for Lenny Ranallo on electric guitar and soprano Danika Lorèn wrapped in a sheet.  It was certainly different, and surprisingly effective, to hear von Bingen on electric guitar.  This was followed by Danika singing Sofia Gubaidulina’s Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen with electronic backing.  This sets short fragments of german text and was presented with great precision.

Next was Cassandra Miller’s Perfect Offering.  This is scored for chamber ensemble (violins – Julia Mirzoev, David Baik; viola – Hezekiah Leung, cello – Peter Eom, flutes – Sara Constant, clarinets – Brad Cherwin, piano – Joonchung Cho with Simon Rivard conducting). It’s based on a peal of bells from a convent in France and is rather beautiful in a minimalist sort of way as you might expect fro something based on bells. Continue reading →

Ecstatic Voices

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ecstaticvoicesjpegThis year’s West End Micro Music Festival opened on Friday night at Redeemer Lutheran with a programme titled Ecstatic Voices.  It was a mix of works for eight part a cappella vocal ensemble and a couple of solo tuned percussion pieces.

There’s something a bit special about unaccompanied polyphony.that has fascinated composers ever since the (probably apocryphal) debate on the subject at the Council of Trent.  I think a good chunk of it is the sheer versatility of the human voice which can do so much more than sing a tone.  It can laugh, whistle, speak, grunt, chatter and all manner of other things and if the composers of the Renaissance were happy to stick to tonal singing more recent composers certainly haven’t been.  Both were in evidence n Friday.

The ensemble was made up of eight singers  (Sydney Baedke, Reilly Nelson, Danika Lorén, Whitney O’Hearn, Marcel d’Entremont, Elias Theocharidis, Bruno Roy and Graham Robinson with Simon Rivard conducting) all well capable of singing major solo roles.  This was no semi-pro SATB group!

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Being Pascal Dusapin

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dusapin1Saturday evening, at Redeemer Lutheran, the Happenstancers offered up a palindromic tribute to Pascal Dusapin.  As it was a palindrome I shall review it from the middle outwards.  Let us take the interval as t=0.  Then at t=+/-1 we heard Two Walkings from singers Danika Lorèn and Hilary Jean Young.  Two songs; “How Many Little Wings” and “Kiss My Lips She Did” came before the break and the rest; “May June”, “A Scene in Singing” and “It Seems To Be Turning Music” after.  And, of course the singers swapped positions at the break!  This is extremely interesting but fiendishly difficult music with the unaccompanied singers trading snatches of phrases and half thoughts in a complex atonal musical language.  I’m actually in awe that anybody can actually perform a work like this but they did, and very well.

At t=+/-2 we got works for clarinet (Brad Cherwin of course), cello (Peter Eom) and singer.  At t=-2 it was Danika with the evocative Canto and at t=+2 an equally effective account of Now the Fields from Hilary.  It’s always interesting to hear art song with something other than piano especially when the works are as complex and challenging as these. Continue reading →