The Happenstancers ended their 2023/24 season last night at 918 Bathurst with a concert called Babes in Toyland.  It consisted of mainly late 20th and 21st century chamber works with one unusual Mozart piece (K617 for glass harmonica (Kevin Ahfat), viola (Hee-Soo Yoon( ,cello (Peter Eom), oboe (Aleh Remezau) and flute (Tristan Durie) to spice things up.

The main interest for me was that there was plenty of vocal music featuring soprano Reilly Nelson who not only sang some highly technical music but played bells, scattered playing cards and carried a boom box.  The first substantial vocal work was Unsuk Chin’s acrostic-wordplay which is in seven movements with texts created from fragments from Michael Ende’s The Never Ending Story and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. (Chin seems to have a bit of an Alice fixation).  It’s a complex piece for soprano and a fairly large chamber ensemble with no clear musical structure.  The textures vary from spooky and ethereal to aggressively loud and dissonant.  Great work here from Reilly and the ensemble conducted by Simon Rivard. Continue reading →