Tag Archives: mcintosh

Batgirl!

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Today’s lunchtime recital in the RBA was really quite exceptional.  Simone McIntosh and Stéphane Mayer offered up a really well chosen program and executed it extremely well.  Grieg’s Sechs Lieder is a lovely and varied setting of six German texts.  Poulenc’s Banalités sets texts by Apollinaire in a way that reflects their essential weirdness.  Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder are as good examples as one can get of how the Second Vienna School, despite its scary reputation, is really all about lush and approachable and the closing set of Frank Bridge songs showed that he was a heck of a lot more than Britten’s composition teacher.

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Into December

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reindeer-musical-28149293After the madness of November, December is much quieter.  Messiahs aside there are only a handful of events of note.  On Saturday at 7.30pm at Runnymede United Church the Cantores Celestes Women’s Choir have a concert of seasonal music which includes Kim André Arnesen’s Magnificat with Adanya Dunn as soloist.  On Tuesday 5th the noon recital in the RBA features Simone McIntosh and Stéphane Mayer.  The program hasn’t been published yet but I’m told it includes the Berg Seven Early Songs and a number of songs by Frank Bridge.  On Thursday evening at 9pm it’s Opera Pub Night at the Amsterdam Bicycle Club.  The theme is Messiah Pariah.  You have been warned.  The operatic event of the month is Against the Grain Theatre’s Bound.  This uses a mash-up of Handel’s music to explore issues related to the current worldwide refugee crisis.  It plays December 14th, 15th and 16th at the COC’s Jackman Studio.  As of now, it’s sold out except for the final 9pm performance on the 16th.  Toronto Consort have a Spanish themed Christmas show Navidad, featuring motets by Victoria and Guerrero plus villancicos and dances from Latin America.  This one is on December 8th and 9th at 8pm and 10th at 3.30pm.  Trinity St. Paul’s of course.  Also this weekend, more performances of Tapestry Briefs: Winter Shorts (see last post).

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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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Participants for Centre Stage announced

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The seven finalists for the COC’s Centre Stage have been announced.  Centre Stage is a singing competition and gals that serves as a sort of final audition for the following year’s Ensemble Studio, a contest for cash prizes and a beano for the rich.  This year it’s being held on November 3rd when, unfortunately, I shall be overseas.  So, no report here.  The finalists are baritone Samuel Chan (Calgary); soprano Maria Lacey (St. John’s, N.L.); soprano Myriam Leblanc (Saint-Lazare, Que.); soprano Andrea Lett (Prince Albert, Sask.); mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh(Vancouver); soprano Andrea Núñez (Markham, Ont.); and baritone Geoffrey Schellenberg (Vancouver).

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Last year’s contestants with the Lieutenant Governor

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Where there’s a Will

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So the Toronto Summer Music Festival continued last night with a Shakespeare themed show called A Shakespeare Serenade.  Curated and directed by Patrick Hansen of McGill it fell into two parts.  Before the interval we got Shakespeare scenes acted out and then the equivalent scene from an operatic adaptation of the play.  After the interval it was a mix of Sonnets and song settings in an overall staging that was perhaps riffing off The Decameron.  Patrick Hansen and Michael Shannon alternated at the piano.

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Artsong reGENERATION

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The Academy Program is an important part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival.  It allows selected young artists; singers, collaborative pianists and chamber/orchestral musicians, to work with experienced professionals in an intensive series of coachings, masterclasses etc culminating in a concert series.  This year the mentors for the vocal/collaborative piano component were pianist Craig Rutenberg, who has worked everywhere and with everybody, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; a last minute replacement for an indisposed Anne Schwannewilms.  I didn’t make it to any of the masterclasses, though word on the street is that they were exceptional, but I did make it to yesterday’s lunchtime concert in Walter Hall.

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Much Ado

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11160680_986649388020560_2336906169017147576_nI really wasn’t at all familiar with Berlioz’ Béatrice at Bénédict before last night’s opening of a production by Metro Youth Opera at the Daniels Spectrum.  All I knew was that it had something to so with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and a reputation for being rather tedious.  For the record it’s basically the Shakespeare play shorn of all the darker elements; no Don John, no fake funeral, resulting in a RomCom in which the title characters, after much verbal sparring,  are finally brought to admit that they are in love and get married along with Claudio and Héro.  Further compressed a little (Somarone is axed) for this production it runs a pleasingly untedious two hours or so.

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Béatrice and Bénédict

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BetBHere’s another listing I missed in the chaos of moving back into the Kitten Kondo.  Metro Youth Opera have a run of three performances of Berlioz’s Béatrice and Bénédict at the Daniels Spectrum (Aki Studio).  The shows are on April 24th and 25th at 7.30pm and the 26th at 2.30pm.  Alison Wong directs with Natasha Fransblow as Music Director.  The cast includes Simone McIntosh as Béatrice and Asitha Tennekoon (Paris in the recent GGS La belle Hélène) as Bénédict.  Full details and tickets are available here.