Wednesday evening’s early evening shuffle concert at Heliconian Hall featured Karine White and Hyejin Kwon in Love Letter to Toronto.  It was a compilation of opera arias, art song and more popular fare; sometimes altered a bit, evoking those things we love and don’t about Toronto.  Summer nights, love and loss, wildlife and, inevitably, traffic and the TTC featured prominently.  oomposers featured ranged from Mozart to Heisler and Goldrich via Puccini, Bernstein, Menotti and more.  All in all, a varied and nicely constructed programme.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Karine White and I think when I last did it was in something classically operatic like Purcell.  What she revealed on Wednesday, besides some very fine singing, was a really engaging stage personality.  She’s just fun to watch and listen too and she has the knack of making everything sound personal.  Seductive or struck dumb by love; nervous or brash,  She can do it all convincingly.  Hyejin’s contribution was fun too.  It’s not just her top notch pianism but she played off well as Karine’s “straight woman” rather as David Eliakis did in Teiya Kasahara’s first iteration of The Queen in Me.  It was a fun way to spend an hour that could only have been improved by adding raccoons.