So LIBLAB is back and the pick of the fruits of the latest version form Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? currently playing at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. There are eleven sketches involving four composers, three librettists, three singers plus Keith Klassen who does all three. Also two pianists and two directors.
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.
Tapestry Opera and Nightwood Theatre’s new digs at 877 Yonge Street are now officially open. I was unable to attend Saturday nignt’s opening gig and party but I did get to attend the free concert for the local community in the afternoon and get a tour of the premises.
The 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
This 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!
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
And so we come to the third in our historical sequence of recordings of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. We are talking about Andrew Parrott’s recording with the Taverner Players and Choir recorded at Rosslyn Hill Chapel in 1981. It’s a record that I bought when it first came out and has been a point of reference for me ever since.
It’s a consciously academic affair in some ways. It was produced in conjunction with an Open University course ; “Seventeenth Century England: A Changing Culture”. It’s also musicologically rooted in scholarship. The album booklet even lists the provenance of the instruments used; mostly modern copies of 17th century models and we are told that the work is performed at pitch A=403. The band and chorus are realistically sized; six violins, two violas, bass violin with bass viol, archlute and harpsichord continuo. A guitar is used in some of the dance numbers. The chorus is six sopranos; some of whom do double duty as witches, the Sailor and the Spirit, four tenors and two basses.
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera has been around since 1728 and is revived with some regularity but has never quite made into the opera canon. The latest incarnation is a version heavily rewritten by Robert Carsen and Ian Burton with a musical concept by William Christie. It first saw light at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in 2018 before touring extensively.
We were back at the COC last night for the first performance of Carmen by the alternative cast. (First cast review) As so often seems to be the case with these double cast shows it felt almost like a different production. The biggest differences are produced by the new Don José, David Pomeroy, and the new Carmen, Clémentine Margaine. Pomeroy is a very decent singer but he doesn’t have the ease, power and bloom of Russell Thomas. What he does have is vastly superior acting chops. His Don José is a believably complex human being. We can see his decline from rather boring and provincially stuck up into despair(1). It’s palpable. Margaine’s Carmen is a similar story. Her voice isn’t as big or dark as Anita Rashvelishvili(2) but she’s much more physical on stage. Further, Pomeroy and Margaine are much more credible as a couple. The net result is the drama that was rather missing in the first two acts on Sunday. The price is not hearing two absolutely incredibly beautiful voices.
Last night Dmitri Tcherniakov’s much anticipated production of Don Giovanni opened at the Four Seasons Centre. The production is basically a known quantity. This is its fourth run overall and it was recorded for TV and DVD in Aix-en-Provence; which is a lengthy way of saying that nobody should have been very surprised by what they saw last night. Inevitably some were. Rereading my review of the DVD I find I have nothing much to add to what I said there about the first act and the overall concept so I’m going to pretty much going to repeat it here.
operaramblings 