Soundstreams’ penultimate concert of the season at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Thursday evening featured “love songs” from a range of (more or less) contemporary Canadian composers under the overall direction of David Fallis.
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.
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!
Previous concerts from the Happenstancers have typically featured fairly conventional chamber music either arranged or combined in unusual ways; sometimes mixed with more modern/contemporary material. Saturday night’s concert at Redeemer Lutheran was a bit different. Titled Future Pastorale it was built around Claude Vivier’s 1968 work Ojikawa plus the text of Psalm 131 (also used, in French, by Vivier) and text from the “Introduction” to Blake’s Songs of Innocence; “Piping down the valleys wild. Piping songs of pleasant glee” etc with lambs, shepherds and clouds.
Performing were Brad Cherwin on clarinet, Louis Pino on percussion and soprano Hilary Jean Young. All three were also heavily involved with the plentiful electronics and the performance was significantly enhanced by Billy Wong’s imaginative lighting and there was some interesting stage business for some numbers.
Stacie Dunlop’s film of Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child, which I reviewed here, is now available on Youtube for free.
I sort of remember when I saw an early stage workshop of soprano Stacie Dunlop’s interpretation of Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child. I think it was back in 2019 and I remember it was in a grungy former industrial space on Sterling Road. There’s a video of/about that performance. Time has passed and the work has now been fully realised and it’s available as a 17 minute film which I’ve had a chance to watch the latter. There’s more work going on to make it the core of a longer live show.
Soundstreams opened their season on Wednesday night at Koerner Hall with a concert of modern music for string orchestra, electronics, percussion and chorus. The first, and most substantial work, was Paul Frehner’s LEX, being given its world premiere. It sets diverse texts; quotes from Einstein, Newton’s laws of motion in the original Latin[1}, fragments of the Old testament in Hebrew, extensive passages from Michael Symmons Roberts’ Corpus etc.
These two slipped through the cracks:
September 21st at 8pm Soundstreams have a choral concert at Koerner Hall. It’s called Choral Splendour and features Soundstreams’ Choir 21 with Meghan Lindsey, Rebecca Cuddy, Owen McCausland and Alain Coulombe in a programme of music by Frehner, Pärt and Vivier. Vivier’s Zipangu will be accompanied by a live dancer and a film created by Michael Greyeyes.
September 30th also at Koerner Hall at 8pm there’s a free concert to commemorate National Truth and Reconciliation Day. Sarain Fox MCs a mixture of the solemn (testimony from a residential school survivor) and the less solemn (Tomson Highway with excerpts from Songs in the Key of Cree), drumming, dancing and the piano quintet version of Ian Cusson’s Marilyn Dumont songs sung by Rebecca Cuddy with the New Orford Quartet and philip Chiu. If you haven’t heard these songs you should and if you have, but haven’t heard this arrangement, see them anyway because this is the best version! This show is free but ticketed and tickets are going superfast.
Soundstreams is the latest local organisation to make the return to live performance with an audience with a concert Thursday night at St. Andrew’s Church titled A Love Song to Toronto. Three of the works on the program; Vivier’s Hymnen an dir Nacht and Lovesongs plus Christopher Mayo’s Oceana Nox, appeared in a streamed concert in November and I described them in some detail in reviewing that show. The performers were the same as well bar one. Pianist Serouj Kradjian replaced Gregory Oh . I don’t think my impressions of the pieces have changed much but I really appreciated the greater immediacy of a genuinely live performance.
Soundstreams’ on-line concert, Lovesongs, recorded in Koerner Hall and streamed (access codes are PWYC, min $7) features three works; two by and one “in homage” to Claude Vivier with an intro by Lawrence Cherney and David Fallis who conducts on the first and third pieces.
operaramblings 