Thursday Noon at Met recital was given by baritone James Coole-Stevenson accompanied by Vlad Soloviev. The first part of the recital was all Canadian art song. Jocelyn Mortlock’s Involuntary Love Songs; which are varied in mood and quite lyrical, Ian Cusson’s “You Held Out the Light” from Breakfast for Barbarians which is short and very Ian Cusson., with a shimmering piano part and finally James Rolfe’s Moths. This is a very complex cycle about light and dreaming and very varied from the boomy “night is a river” to the delicate “The river of dreams” and much more. It was all sung with great attention to text backed up by impeccable diction and sharp characterisation. As is usually the case with contemporary song the pianist has a lot to do and Vlad did it really well. It’s good to see someone programme so much contemporary Canadian song.
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. 
operaramblings 