Tuesday evening in Temerty Theatre Brian Current and the GGS New Music Ensemble presented a three work programme that covered more or less the whole time span of composers writing “sounds rather than notes”; which is an interesting and useful way of thinking about this particular type of music. Continue reading
Always one of my favourite concerts, the annual late night one in Temerty Theatre which forms part of the 21C festival. As usual on Saturday night Brian Current was conducting the GGS New Music Ensemble. This time it was two new Canadian works plus a 1994 piece by Luca Francesconi. Continue reading
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Ukrainian Art Song Project and the sixth time a summer intensive for young singers has been held in Toronto. The final concert on Sunday afternoon in Temerty Theatre was run on similar lines to the previous year. There was a piano in the middle of the room with the audience “in the round” and singers singing from different places in the room.
Sunday afternoon in the Temerty Theatre the participants in this year’s Ukrainian art song intensive presented the results of their efforts during the week. There were eight singers (nine if one adds in mentor Benjamin Butterfield who came in for a couple of numbers). Steven Philcox and Leanne Regehr shared the piano parts.
The 21C Afterhours concert in Temerty Theatre last night featured a candle lit performance by a varied ensemble of conservatory students conducted by Brian Current. Brian did a great job of introducing the music; contextualizing it and suggesting what the audience might listen for. That could maybe be done more often with complex contemporary music.
The first piece was Bekah Simms’ Foreverdark. It’s a ten minute concertino for amplified cello, ensemble and electronics playing homage to heavy metal. It’s scored for a quite a large group including strings, brass, woodwinds and lots of percussion including a drum kit. It starts out very abrasively then becomes somewhat more lyrical and the then the texture lightens up but it’s still pretty complex. David Liam Roberts was the soloist and did an excellent job.
Saturday evening’s Cinq à Sept
concert in the 21C Festival at the Royal Conservatory was intriguing. The first half of the programme was a new song cycle, After the Fires, with words by Liza Balkan and music by Lembit Beecher. It set seven pieces about the 2020 fires on the central California coast and their aftermath based on interviews with local residents. It’s a really interesting piece scored for piano, clarinet, soprano, mezzo-soprano and baritone. It’s very “text first”. Although the accompaniment is often intricate it never overpowers the words and there’s a real harmony between words and music. The mood varies but, given it’s about really awful events, it’s more elegiac and lyrical and even funny than angry or sad. It got a fine, nuanced performance from Henry From (piano), Zachary Gassenheimer (clarinet), Xin Wang (soprano), Andrea Ludwig (mezzo-soprano) and Korin Thomas-Smith (baritone). Continue reading
January is looking quite promising on both the music and theatre front but there’s not a lot of opera… Here’s what’s in my agenda.
January 11th to 14th the TSO have four performances of a concert that includes Mozart’s Requiem with a good looking line up of soloists.
operaramblings 