Tag Archives: wong

Being Pascal Dusapin

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dusapin1Saturday evening, at Redeemer Lutheran, the Happenstancers offered up a palindromic tribute to Pascal Dusapin.  As it was a palindrome I shall review it from the middle outwards.  Let us take the interval as t=0.  Then at t=+/-1 we heard Two Walkings from singers Danika Lorèn and Hilary Jean Young.  Two songs; “How Many Little Wings” and “Kiss My Lips She Did” came before the break and the rest; “May June”, “A Scene in Singing” and “It Seems To Be Turning Music” after.  And, of course the singers swapped positions at the break!  This is extremely interesting but fiendishly difficult music with the unaccompanied singers trading snatches of phrases and half thoughts in a complex atonal musical language.  I’m actually in awe that anybody can actually perform a work like this but they did, and very well.

At t=+/-2 we got works for clarinet (Brad Cherwin of course), cello (Peter Eom) and singer.  At t=-2 it was Danika with the evocative Canto and at t=+2 an equally effective account of Now the Fields from Hilary.  It’s always interesting to hear art song with something other than piano especially when the works are as complex and challenging as these. Continue reading →

Wot no Brahms?

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futurepastoralePrevious 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.

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O Fortuna

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I attended the second of two performances of their season opener by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at Roy Thomson Hall last night.  It was an enjoyable and well constructed programme.  It opened with two pieces by composer in residence Tracy Wong.  Patah – Tumbuh (Broken – Renewed), for choir and children’s choir (Toronto Children’s Chorus) riffs off Malaysian proverbs and gamelan.  It’s an upbeat, rhythmic piece that got a really nice performance, especially from the children.  Then they got their own place in the sun for a medley of Malaysian folksongs; which was also fun.  Was this the first time Malaysian music has been performed at Roy Thomson?

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The Butterfly Project

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Wednesday night’s main event in Toronto Summer Music was Teiya Kasahara’s The Butterfly Project performed at Walter Hall.  Teiya’s introduction was most interesting.  For them, the project is about exploring their Japanese-ness.  As the child of a Japanese father and a German mother growing up in Vancouver that’s inevitably a complex thing.  When it gets combined with opera and, specifically, Puccini’s “Japanese” travesty Madama Butterfly it gets really complicated.  So The Butterfly Project raises some really interesting questions; for Teiya ones related to being a to-some-extent-Japanese performer of works like MB, for me ones related to why this opera fascinates people like Teiya when, frankly, I’d be happy to bin it.

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ALTROCK

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Saturday night’s show in the West End Micro Music Festival continued the theme of combining chamber music with other influences.  This time it was rock; specifically NYC 80’s rock.  It was really varied, stimulating and, at times, bordering on sensory overload.  Brad Cherwin riffed with pre-recorded clarinet and electronics on a version of Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint to open the show.  Then came what might have been my favourite bit.  It was a version of Julia Wolfe’s East Broadway for electronics and toy piano.  Watching the usually soft spoken, even demure, Nahre Sol go completely manic and beat the crap out of a toy piano was a blast.

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There was more Julia Wolfe (Blue Dress for drums and cello?) and a David Lang arrangement of Lou Reed’s Heroin with Cormac Culkeen on vocals and a fairly large ensemble and more vocals with a version of Laurie Anderson’s Let X=X and It Tango.  The final number was a killer version of David Lang’s Killer with Hee-Soo Yoon playing mad distorted violin while kicking a bass drum.

So, again, WEMMF hit the spot with an intriguing and (over) stimulating blend of rock, classical technique, minimalism and, frankly, sheer lunacy of a kind surely not heard before at Redeemer Lutheran!  Great fun much enhanced by Billy Wong’s evocative lighting and Dave Grenon’s sound work.

The final concert is next Friday, also at Redeemer Lutheran, QUARTET PLUS PAPER V2 will feature, inter alia, a new multimedia work for pianist, clarinetist/visual artist, video projection and electronics composed and performed by Nahre Sol and Brad Cherwin.

TapEX:Augmented

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So finally to see a show I’ve been thinking about a lot; TapEX:Augmented.  It’s simultaneously a show about technology and about using technology in the opera house. The plot concerns the product launch of Elysium; a cloud based afterlife using machine learning to curate (and augment) the customer’s best memories and create their ideal eternity.

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Looking ahead to TapEX: Augmented Opera

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I sat down today with Michael Mori and Debi Wong; the co-directors of Tapestry’s upcoming show TapEX: Augmented Opera to talk about the show and issues around it.  The TapEX series is all about low cost, low risk experimentation.  Previous shows have combined opera with punk, turntables and Persian rapping.  This time it’s about exploring ways of using digital technology to enhance opera performance and enable the creation of new kinds of opera.  It’s also about how can technology be incorporated in an affordable way.  Conventional studio produced VR comes in around $30,000 per minute which might be OK for the Royal Shakespeare Company  but is way out of reach of an indie company.  And, of course, it can’t be about the technology itself.  It needs to be about how we create art with it.

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At the River

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It was the last concert of Confluence’s inaugural season last night.  The theme was “At the River” and the venue the rather splendid (if somewhat popish) St. Thomas’ Anglican on Huron Street.  It rather epitomized what I have come to expect, and love, from this series.  The musical styles on display were eclectic; classical, folk song, pop/rock, jazz with East and South Indian, Middle Eastern and Indigenous elements all well to the fore.  There was also some poetry including an unintentionally hilarious piece in praise of the idyllic Don River.  There was also a large and accomplished ensemble and a lot of joy and sheer fun.

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There must be more money

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Rocking Horse Winner; music by Gareth Williams and libretto by Anna Chatterton, opened last night at the Berkeley Street Theatre.  It’s based on the short story by DH Lawrence and is a co-commission of Tapestry Opera and Scottish Opera.  There are some changes from the original story.  Here Paul is a developmentally challenged adult (on the autism spectrum) rather than a child.  The gardener is replaced by his personal care worker who moonlights as a caller at the local racetrack.  This has a couple of advantages.  It provides something of a rationale for Paul hearing the “voice” of the house and for his apparently inexplicable intuition about race winners and it also means that Paul can be cast as a tenor rather than having to make an awkward choice between a boy soprano or a pants role.  As Paul is one of, perhaps the main, character, this simplifies casting considerably.  The work is also gently updated.  So gently in fact that it’s barely perceptible.

RHW-L to R, top to bottom Keith Klassen as Oscar, Peter McGillivray as Bassett, Asitha Tennekoon,, Stephane Mayer, Aaron Durand, Sean Clark, Elaina Moreau, Erica Iris

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Much Ado

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11160680_986649388020560_2336906169017147576_nI really wasn’t at all familiar with Berlioz’ Béatrice at Bénédict before last night’s opening of a production by Metro Youth Opera at the Daniels Spectrum.  All I knew was that it had something to so with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and a reputation for being rather tedious.  For the record it’s basically the Shakespeare play shorn of all the darker elements; no Don John, no fake funeral, resulting in a RomCom in which the title characters, after much verbal sparring,  are finally brought to admit that they are in love and get married along with Claudio and Héro.  Further compressed a little (Somarone is axed) for this production it runs a pleasingly untedious two hours or so.

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