Tag Archives: zhu

A Woman’s Voice

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A Woman's VoiceConfluence Concerts’ show last night at Heliconian Hall was titled A Woman’s Voice.  It was, after a fashion, a CD release concert in two halves.  The first half featured music by Alice Ping Yee Ho from the album A Woman’s Voice and featuring the same performers; Vania Chan, Katy Clark, Alex Hetherington, Maeve Palmer and Jialiang Zhu.  I’ve already reviewed the album and I don’t think last night changed my opinion much so I’ll not do a detailed rundown.  What I can say is that last night it was mostly opera excerpts; Lesson of Da Ji, Chinatown, The Imp of the Perverse, and a live concert gave an opportunity for a bit of staging which was definitely an enhancement, especially in The Imp of the Perverse scene.  “Café Chit Chat” and “Black” also benefitted from visual interaction between the singers.  I like the CD a lot.  Getting a chance to see some of the music live was great. Continue reading →

A Woman’s Voice

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A Woman's VoiceA Woman’s Voice is a record with 84 minutes of music for female voices and piano by Alice Ping Yee Ho.  It’s a mixture of songs and excerpts from operas and a plkay.  All but one track feature Toronto based artists who include no less than three Norcop prize winners.  Overall, I found the songs more fun to listen to than the opera excerpts though they were interesting in their own way too and I’m seriously intrigued by a couple of them that I haven’t seen but now want to.

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The Power of Words

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Yesterday’s RBA concert was an intriguing mix of music and poetry presented by soprano Zi Xin Emily Lapin (soprano), Jialiang Zhu (piano) and Kathryn Knowles (polymath with her poet on).  It was a carefully curated programme and it featured surtitles throughout (major bonus points for that).

COC 1.10.12 Finals-71

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reGENERATION week 1

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There were three reGENERATION concerts in Walter Hall yesterday at 1pm, 4pm and 7.30pm.  It made for a long but interesting day.  As last year, each concert was a mix of vocal and chamber music.  The vocal program was not announced in advance so I’m working from notes and there could be the odd error.  Pleasingly, there were surtitles for the songs.  This is a huge improvement on a sheet of tiny print to be read in the dark! Continue reading →

The Norcop prize recital

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It’s that time of year again at UoT when the respective winners of the Norcop song prize and the Williams Koldofsdky prize for accompanying collaborate in a lunchtime recital.  This year’s winners were mezzo Simona Genga and pianist Jialiang Zhu who gave us a program of songs by Schoenberg, Freedman, Berlioz and Santoliquido.  The Vier Lieder Op. 2 of Schoenberg are extremely lyrical though with a rather complex and involved piano part.  They played to the strengths of both musicians.  Taken at fairly slow tempi they allowed Simona to show off the beauty and ease of her voice all through the registers combined with terrific breath control and spot on German diction while Jialiang had something fairly virtuosic to display her skills.

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