Beat Columns (Live Music)

November may bring the colder weather but things are heating up in the clubs and concert halls this month and there are a couple of appearances I’d like to single out.

The Jazz Bistro will feature pianist Renee Rosnes for three nights, November 14 to 16; with her will be Peter Washington bass, Lewis Nash drums and Jimmy Greene saxophone.

Renee is Canadian-born but moved to New York in 1986 where she quickly established herself as a force to be reckoned with and at various times was the pianist of choice for such as Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, J.J. Johnson and James Moody.

She has four JUNOs to her name and her compositions have been recorded by Phil Woods, J.J. Johnson, the Danish Radio Big Band and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra. She is a very welcome addition to the Jazz Bistro’s line-up and the band, I’m sure, will be a tight unit given that their appearance here follows on a tour of India, the only change being the substitution of Jimmy Greene for Steve Wilson. If you enjoy contemporary jazz you should definitely mark your calendar.

Massey: On November 22 at Massey Hall it’s a pretty special evening with the Wayne Shorter 80th Birthday Celebration, (he turned 80 on August 25), with Wayne accompanied by pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and Brian Blade on drums. Ben Ratliff of the New York Times has described Shorter as “probably jazz’s greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser.” And if that isn’t enough there is also the trio of pianist Geri Allen, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and bassist Esperanza Spalding playing music from Shorter’s days with Weather Report.

In addition there is the usual vigorous local club and concert activity which is splendidly covered in the club listings section of this magazine. (See page 53).

Shaw wordfest: Last month I wrote a piece about an address given by Artie Shaw at the 1998 IAJRC Convention. This month I would like to follow it up with his answers to some of the questions put to him by members of the audience.

In one of responses he riffed on the theme that you can’t train human beings to listen to music intelligently. Any publisher of books will tell you the same thing Shaw said: most people would rather read Danielle Steel than Thomas Mann. Even although there is no comparison they would rather have Liberace than Beethoven. What sells is what’s dominating the marketplace — we’re in a greed-driven world. If we want something good to go on we have to support it. If we were at a concert by Kenny G there would be a very large audience. That doesn’t mean he’s better, it’s simply that more people like what he does and that’s the way it works.

By the way, do you know that Artie Shaw recorded with Jelly Roll Morton? He was asked how that came about and explained that he was on a record date with Wingy Manone, so named because he lost his right arm in a streetcar accident when he was ten years old. Jelly Roll happened to be the piano player on the date and that’s how he came to play with him. Shaw found him to be “a nice guy” but a real hustler and always talking about how he invented jazz!

Asked if there were any big bands that he listened to — bear in mind that this is 1998 — he said that he liked Bill Holman and Bob Florence although he felt that Bob sometimes took too many liberties with songs and that there is a limit to how much you should distort the music without losing your audience. The more liberty you take the less audience you’re going to have and the less money you’ll make. He wasn’t suggesting that money is the main goal, but you do have to face the reality of making enough of it to pay the bills.

He also had some interesting observations about Buddy Rich whom he described as an athletic phenomenon; when he played he did incredible things with his feet and hands and had exuberance and tremendous energy. When Shaw hired him in 1938 he could not read music so he set him in front of the band for three or four nights to listen, after which he said he could do it — and did!

And speaking of drummers ... Over the years in jazz there have been as many musicians’ jokes about drummers as there are in classical music about viola players; such as “We have a quintet — four musicians and a drummer”; or “A guitar player and a drummer were walking through a park one day. The guitar player said, ‘Hey look at that dog with one eye!’ The drummer covers one eye and says, ‘Where?’”; “Why are drummers always losing their watches? Everyone knows they have trouble keeping time”; “Why put drumsticks on the dash of your car? So you can park in the handicapped spot” ... and so on.

Well, according to Artie Shaw Buddy Rich was not a musician, he was a drummer — a different thing — the difference being that musicians play in terms of what the band is doing. So he and Buddy came to a parting of the ways. Shaw took him aside and asked him who he was playing for, the band or himself and Rich answered that he played for himself upon which Artie said, “I think you’ll be happier somewhere else, you’re not going to be happy here and I’m going to lean on you pretty hard. So Buddy Rich left and joined Tommy Dorsey, although from what I’ve heard about Dorsey I’m surprised it didn’t turn out to be going from the frying pan into the fire.

I’ve just realized that as I write this there might be a number of younger readers who may be familiar with the name Artie Shaw but don’t really know much about him. He was a clarinetist, composer, bandleader and author. Acknowledged as one of the finest clarinetists in jazz, he had one of the most successful big bands of the late 30s into the early 40s. He also was the first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated Southern U.S. but after recording “Any Old Time” she left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South, as well as from music company executives. He was also actively involved in third stream music blending jazz and classical music.

In 1954 he walked away from a successful career and spent the rest of the 50s living in Europe.

His personal life was, to say the least, stormy; he was married eight times and his wives included Lana Turner, Betty Kern, the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern, and Ava Gardner.

He died on December 30, 2004 at age 94. I leave you with two of his quotes:

“You have no idea of the people I didn’t marry.”

“Shoot for the moon — if you miss you’ll end up in the stars.”

Artie Shaw, a very different and talented human being.

Happy listening and please make some of it live jazz. 

Jim Galloway is a saxophonist, band leader and former artistic director of Toronto Downtown Jazz. He can be contacted at jazznotes@thewholenote.com.

Some months ago there was quite a fuss in the news over a decision by the Toronto District School Board to do away with the itinerant music teachers, as a cost-cutting measure. These itinerant teachers normally teach only music and travel between an assigned number of schools. The effect would have been to eliminate most music education at the elementary school level. Proponents of this action expressed the opinion that music education was a frill which could readily be eliminated in a time of budget constraint. Those on the pro-music side argued that music was an integral part of our lives, and that early music education had a positive role to play in the development of many skills in later life. After considerable debate, the board arrived at a compromise, and the itinerant teachers are back in their classrooms this year. Whether this decision is merely a stay of execution or a more permanent solution remains to be seen.

Personally I attended an excellent secondary school with very high academic standards, but with absolutely no formal music program. On the other hand, in my formative years I had the good fortune to have lived in a home filled with music. There were regular rehearsals in our living room and the radio always delivered symphony concerts and opera. I have lived a life filled with music. So this current debate on the merits of music education called out to me to try to get some factual information.

As luck would have it there was a recent article — “Is Music the Key to Success?” — by Joanne Lipman, which I read in the October 12, 2013 New York Times. In this article Lipman cites many prominent figures in diverse fields who were high achievers in music. Examples: Condoleezza Rice trained to be a concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player. The hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner is a pianist who took classes at Juilliard.

Lipman asked the question: “What is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?” It has been generally accepted in academic circles for some time that mathematical skills are considerably enhanced by proficiency in music. Parini goes further, however, stating that the music/success correlation extends beyond the math-music connection. Many high achievers told her that music opened up many pathways to creative thinking: qualities such as collaboration, the ability to listen, ways of thinking that weave together disparate ideas, and the power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously. Advertising executive Steve Hayden credits his background as a cellist for his famous work in producing commercials for Apple computers, stating that his cello performance background helps him work collaboratively and that ensemble playing trains you, quite literally, to play well with others, to know when to solo and when to follow.

These studies got me thinking of famous musicians who also made their mark in other fields. That took me back to my days in the navy when I appeared before my Officer Selection Board. The first question that I was asked by the officer in charge of the board: “You say that one of your major interests is music.” “Yes sir.” “Name a famous composer who was also a naval officer.” My immediate reply: “Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.” I passed; Rimsky-Korsakov had been an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy. Then there was the famous pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the first prime minister of Poland. Another Russian composer, Alexander Borodin, was a physician and professor of chemistry. Former British prime minister Edward Heath maintained an interest in orchestral music as an organist and conductor. Heath directed the London Symphony Orchestra, notably at a gala concert at the Royal Festival Hall in 1971. He also conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestra, as well as orchestras in Germany and the United States. He also wrote a book called The Joy of Christmas: A Collection of Carols, published in 1978 by Oxford University Press.

When I first started collecting LP records, some of my favourite recordings were by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the direction of its founding director Ernest Ansermet. Originally he was a mathematics professor, teaching at the University of Lausanne, but music took over most of his life. Ansermet was one of the first in the field of classical music to take jazz seriously, and in 1919 he wrote an article praising jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet.

Closer to home, former Canadian Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn was an accomplished bass clarinetist. Internationally renowned Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, noted as much for her stage presence as for her musicality, just happens to have an honours degree in Biomedical Engineering.

There certainly is considerable anecdotal evidence to support the belief that proficiency in music plays a role in the development of many other cognitive skills, but the evidence goes way beyond the anecdotal. I know of at least three ongoing university research efforts closely related to this subject. One researcher at McMaster University has been investigating a broad spectrum of society to investigate the role music plays in people’s lives. Another research project at Ryerson University is examining differences in people with musical expertise when it comes to auditory versus visual selective attention. The third, at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences is the most interesting to me in terms of making a case for the value of early musical training. Stefanie Hutka, a PhD student at the Rotman Institute (and a violinist) provided this information.

“Our NeuroEducation Across the Lifespan laboratory is directly targeting an increase in awareness and accessibility of music training. On the awareness side, we are heavily involved in public outreach such as the Brain Power conference, which presents accessible information about neuroscience findings on music to scientists, educators, and parents. On the accessibility side, we have studies supporting the benefits of music, including via short-term training on software, which have been published in top scientific journals. In one 2011 study, school-aged children used music training software called Smarter Kids, developed by our lead scientist, Dr. Sylvain Moreno. After only 20 days of training, improvements on measures of verbal intelligence were observed. We are currently extending this theme of accessibility, creating software using music to train the aging brain, with very positive preliminary data.”

Her summary of the project’s findings to date?: “Everyone can benefit from music training. A wealth of empirical, neuroscientific evidence supports the positive influence of music training on numerous non-musical brain functions, such as language, reading and attention. Such benefits are seen in children, and continue across the lifespan into older adulthood. Despite this evidence, music education is still often seen as a supplemental and expensive subject in schools, and often is the target of budget cuts. Increasing awareness of the real-world benefits associated with learning music, as well as making music training more accessible, are critical steps towards supporting the inclusion of this important subject in curricula.”

As formal Liberal Leader Bob Rae (who has himself been known to lead a rousing sing-song from the piano) is reported to have stated some months ago in a debate on financing culture: “Culture is not a luxury.” Couldn’t have said it better myself!

DEFINITION DEPARTMENT

This month’s lesser known musical term is basso continuo: When musicians are still fishing long after the legal season has ended.

We invite submissions from readers. Let’s hear your daffynitions. 

Jack MacQuarrie plays several brass instruments and has performed in many community ensembles. He can be contacted at bandstand@thewholenote.com.

It’s always good to practise what you preach, so after filing last month’s column, I scooted down to Bloom Restaurant to enjoy a fantastic prix-fix dinner paired with the musical adventures of Jane Bunnett, Hilario Duran and young Cuban vocalist Daymé. To experience such brilliant music in an intimate setting is delicious for the ears, requiring a recipe that’s simple yet challenging: Quiet!

Since most restaurant patrons are accustomed to chewing the fat while they eat, the only way such a series can work is if the music is preceded by an announcement, which in the case of Bloom, is delivered by owner Luis Mario Ochoa, a self-described “full-time musician, teacher, arranger, composer, lyricist, guitarist, leading 3 bands of my own, producer, you name it!” In addition to the monthly music series Ochoa books, his ensemble performs traditional Cuban music on the last Thursday of every month at Bloom, a 44-seat restaurant in Bloor West Village that is a true gem for foodies, especially those who fancy Latin American and Spanish dishes “made in a Nuevo Latino style which is a contemporary haute cuisine reinterpretation with a slight North American twist.”

“I got into the restaurant business by accident,” Ochoa explains. “In 2004 my brother in law opened Bloom to expand his restaurant business. He also owns Focaccia Restaurant on 17 Hayden Street, but was not able to handle two places at the same time, so my wife — his sister — who is a travel executive and I, went crazy and decided to take it over and keep it in July of 2010.”

He admits that it was no easy feat to learn the restaurant business from scratch. “But we are a stubborn couple that does not give up easily, so we gave it all we had and little by little we changed concept, got the right people in the kitchen, led by Chef Pedro Quintanilla and now we have a great front of the house team led by maître d’ Pedro Salvin. I started introducing music once a month with traditional Cuban music, and now we started expanding with a second date featuring some of the best Latin and jazz performers in town. Bloom is on a great track now, mostly because my wife is even more stubborn that I am, so she deserves most of the credit.»

For the music and a sensational three-course prix fixe menu, all you pay at Bloom is $35 and your undivided attention. This month catch acclaimed Latin songstress Eliana Cuevas on Thursday, November 14, who will perform with Jeremy Ledbetter on keys and Daniel Stone on percussion. Reservations are essential.

CD Release? Speaking of reservations, most venues do accept them, and they come in particularly handy for CD release events, of which there are quite a few this month. Over at the Paintbox Bistro, two vocalists celebrate new recordings early in November. Elegant and sincere, Allyson Morris possesses the sort of pure, powerful voice that quickly catches a listener’s ear. She releases her debut album, I Saw the Light on November 2, joined by Bernie Senensky on piano, Russ Boswell on bass, Nathan Hiltz on guitar and Ben Riley on drums. As of this writing the event is almost sold out, so if you miss it you can also find her at Morgans on the Danforth on a Sunday afternoon: November 3 with Michael Shand or November 17 with Mark Kieswetter, both shows between 2 and 5pm.

Also at the Paintbox, Sam Broverman celebrates a new recording on November 9 at 8pm: Leftover Dreams, a tribute to the music of Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, both born a century ago in 1913. A professor of actuarial science at the University of Toronto since 1980, he has been singing in the Mendelssohn Choir for the past 30 years. With an abundance of respect to the Great American Songbook and its creators, Broverman delivers these songs with ample passion and deep sensitivity. Joining him at the Paintbox will be Mark Kieswetter on piano, Jordan O’Connor on bass and Ernesto Cervini on drums. If you miss the release, catch Broverman at Gate 403 on November 15 at 5pm.

Jeff Jones:One of the neat things about writing this column — and about being a fan of jazz, in general — is that there is always exciting talent to discover, of any age. Recently I had the pleasure of hearing vocalist Jeff Jones for the first time, though he has been performing around town for decades. A proficient scat singer with his soul deeply drenched in the blues, Jones is a rare talent who, upon hearing, is easy to remember and so hard to forget. Putting his signature stamp on familiar songs such as “Every Day I Have the Blues,” “Danny Boy” and “Stella By Starlight,” he was reminiscent that night of Mark Murphy in his prime, treating every song like a shiny vehicle for the most daring improvisational flights. It was magical not only for those in the audience but also in the band, as they were kept on their toes and with a smile for the entire evening. Mr. Jones will be special guest when Tom Szczesniak hosts a Jazz Party at the Old Mill’s Home Smith Bar on Thursday, November 7.

Over at the Rex Hotel, there is a great cross-section of music one might describe as “jazz” — here are just a few special evenings of note. On Monday, November 11 at 9:30pm, the Toronto Jazz Orchestra, usually led by Josh Grossman, will be feature guest conductor — last year’s JUNO winner — Montreal’s Christine Jensen. The evening will feature music from Jensen’s recent release on Justin Time, Habitat. Don’t expect traditional “big band” — this harmonically sophisticated, symphonic music can be likened to an extravagant cup of coffee: intense, dark, bold and rousing.

Also at the Rex, on Wednesday November 13 at 9:30pm, a young quintet celebrates a sophomore recording of original music. Tesseract is a collective of players who met as students last decade at Humber College: Julian Anderson-Bowes on bass, Derek Gray on drums, Edwin Sheard on alto sax, Leland Whitty on tenor saxophone and Patrick O’Reilly on guitar. Tesseract is anything but square: playing with drive and drawing from a variety of influences, this group is definitely worth checking out.

Young Artists: Finally, over at Jazz Bistro — my new place of work — I’ve been given a great opportunity to book a series of up-and-coming talent, the Young Artist Series. From Tuesday to Saturday, between 6 and 8pm, you can enjoy blooming talents such as pianists Patrick Hewan, Ewen Farncombe and Sam Kogen, to name a few, on the club’s signature “Red Pops” Steinway. There is no cover charge for these performances, and your presence is, as always, priceless. See you in the clubs! 

Ori Dagan is a Toronto-based jazz vocalist, voice actor and entertainment journalist. He can be contacted at jazz@thewholenote.com.

On the surface, it is the sound of her voice — an instrument of astonishing depth — that might take your breath away. But her ability to bring an audience to its feet is rooted in so much more. Jackie Richardson is an acclaimed actress who has won Gemini and Dora awards, with a musical versatility that extends from her roots in gospel to musical theatre, jazz and everything she touches. Whether breathing life into a familiar ballad or wailing the blues like nobody’s business, there is an unflinching honesty behind Richardson’s every word, sung through big eyes that sparkle with passion. And beyond all this, a genuine humility that puts this lady in a league of her own.

This month promises to be memorable for Richardson: on October 19 she performs at Koerner Hall as part of the Royal Conservatory’s tribute to Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, with Joe Sealy on piano and fellow vocalists Arlene Duncan and Ranee Lee. Two days earlier she will have received a great honour: the Ken Page Memorial Trust lifetime achievement award for contribution to the arts in Canada, which will be presented on Thursday, October 17, at the Old Mill as part of the Ken Page Memorial Trust Gala. How does it feel to receive such an honour? She searches for the right words:

“It takes my breath away ... I know when I think of my idols, I want my idols to be recognized. I want people to never forget Peter Appleyard. And that people would honour me with an award that they might have given Peter Appleyard, it blows me away, it truly does,” she says. “I am such an admirer of other people in the field, and I am such a fan. There are people in the field that I consider myself their groupie. So that anybody else would feel that way about me ... it just doesn’t fit in my day! (laughs) To me, I’m on such a learning curve, there’s so much more I have to learn and do! I know in my head how I want to sound. I want my breath to be better. I want to be able to phrase more. I’ve got all these goals, and I hear a sound in my head that I want to use more, and all that stuff is yet to come.”

She grew up in a musical family (“I was always on the bottom”) and had many musical idols, but a few stand out.

“I loved Aretha — we all sang our share of Aretha, but as far as where I lived in Toronto and who I listened to and who I wanted to sound like, that was Dianne Brooks. She could sing everything — she could sing the R&B, she could sing the jazz, she could sing the country, she could knock you out with gospel, her voice was so unique and she was so soulful,” Richardson recalls, and reflects. “I don’t know why, but for whatever reason the universe decided that she wasn’t going to be known like Aretha Franklin or Nancy Wilson, but that was the calibre of Dianne Brooks. But all of us — in Toronto in that era — we all wanted to sound like Dianne Brooks. She ruled.”

On paying tribute to Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan at Koerner Hall:

“When you want to study, when you wanna go to masterclass, that’s who you put on. People like Sarah and Dinah and Ella and Carmen. That’s masterclass every single time you put it on. There are still those incredible times even if I played it 100 times, listening to Sarah do songs and the way she just in a blink jumps up two octaves and then hits that lower octave like it was twiddling her thumbs — the effect of it is so absolutely amazing. And what I love about all those singers, they did these incredible things with their voices, but they never lost the sense of what they were singing about. It wasn’t about the technical — the acrobatics of the voice — it was ‘This is my point of view, and me singing it like this, me picking these notes, I hope you understand where I am coming from.’ And it’s the same with Aretha — every note comes from such a true place — and what singers today don’t get that are trying to do Aretha is they don’t hear the story or they don’t put any value in the story, it’s all about the notes and the riffs and how high can I go — it can bore you to tears.”

That being said, there is one young singer that Richardson calls “a mesmerizing performer with musicality way beyond her years.” Cuban sensation Daymé (pronounced “Dimey”) made a memorable Canadian debut on May 30 at the Jane Mallett Theatre, as part of “Funny Girls and Dynamic Divas,” a fundraiser for the Sistering foundation. Jackie Richardson was in the audience that night to witness Daymé’s triumphant set of three original tunes and an arrangement of a traditional Cuban song; at the end of her set, the audience erupted into a rousing standing ovation.

Since graduating from Cuba’s prestigious music schools and studying piano, voice and percussion at the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, Daymé has been causing a stir on the Cuban jazz scene, melding together classic jazz, soul and Afro-Cuban sounds into a fresh new sound. Canadian jazz luminary Jane Bunnett and her husband Larry Cramer discovered Daymé a few years back while on a JAZZ.FM91 safari at the Havana Jazz Festival, and were so impressed that they have been mentoring her ever since.

“When Larry and I saw her, she was performing with her own group,” recalls Bunnett. “I had never seen anybody — a young female — in Cuba at that calibre — and with that kind of poise and musical strength! I realized that my jaw had dropped as I was listening to her. And then the next level was when I was playing the next night and I invited her to jump in with us — to see her capabilities of really improvising — not like she just has her thing and she does it — she’s got incredible skills hidden under her belt that are there to be uncovered! That’s pretty exciting to see how far she’s going to go. I’ve never met a singer in Cuba that loves Betty Carter and Sarah Vaughan and Nina Simone — she’s really drawn to that — she knows where she’s going and that’s really special ... also, she writes great music, at her young age. Very thoughtful, unique compositions ... her dedication at her early age — she’s so focused —
it’s really inspiring to me.”

There will be two opportunities to catch Daymé in Toronto with Jane Bunnett and Hilario Duran this month: on Saturday, October 5 at the Paintbox Bistro and Thursday, October 10 at Bloom Restaurant.

Toronto Jazz Central: Speaking of bloom, Toronto Jazz Central is a brand new organization which hopes to grow audiences for Toronto jazz locally, nationally and internationally. The idea for Toronto Jazz Central originated at the Imperial Pub several years ago, when members of the jazz community — musicians, presenters, venues, educators and fans — collectively brainstormed the need for such an organization. A group of volunteers from a range of disciplines has since worked to create a non-partisan way of showcasing the range and diversity of jazz in this city.

“The main component of Toronto Jazz Central is a website being launched in December 2013,” says Josh Grossman, musician, bandleader, artistic director of Toronto Downtown Jazz. “On the website, musicians and industry members can promote their activity by creating profiles, listing upcoming shows and other news items and uploading audio and video tracks for inclusion on an onsite playlist. With the website, music fans, whether from the area or visiting, will have a ‘one-stop shop’ for all things jazz in Toronto.”

The goal, Grossman says, is to make torontojazzcentral.com accessible; musicians and industry members will be able to create basic profiles for free, and the general public will be able to access the information on the site for free. However, musicians, members of the public and others in the industry are being encouraged to become members for a small fee — musician and general public membership is $25 per year; industry membership $100 per year.

More details about the benefits of TJC membership and how to join are coming soon — and The WholeNote will pass them along as they do. In the meanwhile, these club listings show the fertile soil TJC will have to work with. And if you are planning to see Jackie Richardson or young Daymé buy your tickets in advance! Your ears mean the world to musicians. 

Ori Dagan is a Toronto-based jazz vocalist, voice actor and entertainment journalist. He can be contacted at jazz@thewholenote.com.

This is the centenary year of the birth of Benjamin Britten and we have already had the opportunity of hearing a great deal of his music, notably in the mini-festival with which the Aldeburgh Connection ended its final season. This month we can see Peter Grimes, Britten’s breakthrough opera, in a production by the Canadian Opera Company (the first night is October 5). The opening concert of the Elmer Iseler Singers “Saint Cecilia Sings” will include music by Howells, Schubert, Vaughan Williams and Daley as well as Britten (October 20). The Toronto Symphony Orchestra will perform the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, with Nicholas Phan, tenor, and Neil Deland, horn (October 31 to November 2). The November 5 concert by the Orpheus Choir includes the 1938 pacifist cantata, World of the Spirit.

The free lunchtime performances in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre include five concerts in October with music by Britten. Of these several are vocal concerts: a selection of his songs and song cycles on October 9; an afternoon of English song on October 22; highlights of Albert Herring on October 23.

Gordon Bintner: Thebass-baritone Gordon Bintner will perform in the October 9 recital at the Four Seasons Centre. He will sing Tit for Tat, a cycle that Britten wrote as a teenager but did not put together until 1968. The texts are by Walter de la Mare and they explore the mental world of the child.

I only know of three earlier occasions in which Bintner sang in Toronto: in 2012 he was one of the Art of Song fellows in the Toronto Summer Music program; he sang Schubert with the Aldeburgh Connection last spring; he won both the jury prize and the audience prize at the competition for entrance to the COC Ensemble Studio last year. But he has a great deal of experience elsewhere. He studied at McGill and it is in Montreal that he gave many of his performances: he sang Lescaut in Massenet’s Manon for l’Opéra de Montreal. As a student he sang Don Giovanni as well as the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte and Argante in Handel’s Rinaldo for Opera McGill. In 2011 he performed Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro for Opera NUOVA (Edmonton). In 2012 he was a Merola fellow in San Francisco and performed the role of Nardo in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera there. He also sang Mozart and Donizetti with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra.

This year he has small parts in the COC productions of La Bohème and Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux. He will also be covering the roles of Swallow in Peter Grimes, Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Sancho in Massenet’s Don Quichotte. He will sing Don Alfonso in the COC Ensemble Studio performance of Così in February. And there are going to be other engagements: Messiah in Okanagan, a recital and a masterclass in Yellowknife and Mozart’s Coronation Mass with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. While it may be a bit early to talk about an international career, it is worth mentioning two events: Bintner has sung Colline in La Bohème in a production by Angers Nantes Opera in France and this November he will perform in Berlin in Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place with the Ensemble Modern under Kent Nagano.

Bintner is clearly at home in song, in opera and in oratorio. He says that he loves the three genres equally and that given the right opportunities he will sing all three!

OTHER EVENTS

October 6: The opening concert in the Recitals at Rosedale series, “The Seven Virtues,” features Leslie Ann Bradley, soprano, Allyson McHardy, mezzo, Peter Barrett, baritone, Rachel Andrist and John Greer, piano. They will perform works by Purcell, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss, Duparc, Vaughan Williams and others (Rosedale Presbyterian Church).

October 6: Bernie Lynch sings “Tenor songs through the ages.” (St. Anne’s Anglican Church).

October 11: A Wagner program will include scenes from Die Walküre, Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung; the singers are Susan Tsagkaris, soprano, Ramona Carmelly, mezzo, and Stuart Graham, baritone (First Unitarian Church).

October 11: Melody Moore and Rufus Wainwright sing works by Wainwright with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Roy Thomson Hall).

October 15: Robert Pomakov, bass, will sing a new work by Bohdana Frolyak based on a text by Taras Shevchenko (Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre).

October 24: Miriam Khalil, soprano, and Julien LeBlanc, piano, will perform a recital of French and Spanish art songs (Gallery 345).

October 25 to 27: Katherine Hill is the soprano soloist in a program based on Aubrey’s Brief Lives (Young Centre).

October 26: Stanislav Vitort, tenor, and Zhenya Yesmanovich, piano, perform a program presented by the Neapolitan Connection (Montgomery’s Inn).

October 26: Maryna Svitasheva, mezzo, and Brian Stevens, piano, perform works by Schumann, Moniuszko and others (Bloor Street United Church).

October 27: Lindsay Kesselman is the soprano soloist in a program of works for clarinet, piano and voice (Gallery 345).

October 31: Alexa Wing, soprano, and Peter Bishop, piano, perform (Metropolitan United Church).

November 1: Michele Bogdanowicz, mezzo, Ernesto Ramirez, tenor, and Rachel Andrist, piano, will perform works by Chopin, Viardot, Palej and Grever (Gallery 345).

November 2: Francesco Pellegrino is the tenor soloist in a program of traditional Italian music and Mediterranean jazz (Koerner Hall).

November 6: Adi Braun sings Kurt Weill (Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre).

AND BEYOND THE GTA

October 3: At the Colours of Music Festival in Barrie Jennifer Krabbe, soprano, and David Roth, baritone, will sing works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Britten, Barber and Duke (Burton Avenue United Church).

October 3: Also at the Colours of Music Festival, songs from wartime will be performed by Wendy Nielsen, soprano, and Patrick Raftery, tenor (Burton Avenue United Church).

October 9: MarionSamuel, soprano, and Anna Ronai, piano, perform “Sassy women – art songs” (Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo).

October 19: TheGrandPhilharmonicChoirwillperform Britten’s WarRequiem with soloists Leslie Ann Bradley, soprano, Thomas Cooley, tenor, and Russell Braun, baritone (Centre in the Square, Kitchener).

October 22: Richard Cunningham, countertenor, will give a recital accompanied by our own Benjamin Stein, theorbo (Convocation Hall, McMaster University).

October 25: A postmodern cabaret celebrating the legacy of Kurt Vonnegut. (Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo).

October 26: David Moore, tenor, and Katie Toksoy, horn, will perform Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, along with works by Elgar and Janáček (Trinity Anglican Church, Aurora).

October 26: Sara Laux Chappel, soprano, Luke Fillion, baritone, and Brian Turnbull, piano, perform songs by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms and others (Centenary United Church, Hamilton).

November 2: Meredith Hall, soprano, and Isaiah Bell, tenor, will be the soloists in Chorus Niagara’s performance of music by Handel (Calvary Church, St. Catharines).

November 3: A concert by Wellington Winds includes Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne; the soprano soloist is Caroline Déry (Grandview Baptist Church, Kitchener). 

Hans de Groot is a concert-goer and active listener who also sings and plays the recorder. He can be contacted at artofsong@thewholenote. com.

A quick glance at last month’s column could lead a person to conclude (erroneously) that there were only men making music on the “classical and beyond” scene. If, as the old adage goes, a picture — in this case more than one — is worth a thousand words, then, indeed, we (inadvertently) told a skewed story.

So, dear readers, I intend to rectify the picture with this, my last installment, after two years on the Classical & Beyond beat.

Of saints and season starters: And what better way to do so than to start things off with concerts featuring the Cecilia String Quartet (CSQ) — four formidably talented women whose namesake is none other than that patroness of musicians, herself, Saint Cecilia. Apparently it was the group’s coach at the time, Terry Helmer, who suggested “Cecilia” and the name stuck. While the quartet’s cellist, Rachel Desoer, “confesses” that the saint connection isn’t all that important to them, she does admit that “it is a fun bit of trivia.”

Asked about when the group gelled, founding violist, Caitlin Boyle, says that “at the very first rehearsal [in 2004, when the original CSQ members met as classmates in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music chamber music program] there was a sense that there was a very dynamic chemistry to our group, and it felt like we just ‘clicked.’ After that, many things just fell into place, and we were fortunate that the many opportunities that came our way led us down this magical quartet path.”

Currently ensemble-in-residence at U of T, the much-lauded CSQ launches Mooredale Concerts’ 25th season — Bravo, Mooredale! — on October 6, with two concerts at Walter Hall. The first, Mooredale’s always entertaining and educational series, Music & Truffles, offers an early afternoon interactive concert for young audiences ages 6 to 15. The second, starting two hours later at 3:15pm, is the extended concert Mooredale presents to its more adult patrons. These concerts will also mark the CSQ’s first Mooredale Concerts appearance, though violinist Min-Jeong Koh tells me that both she and fellow CSQ violinist, Sarah Nematallah, have played on the series several times over the years and that Koh also played in the Mooredale Youth Orchestra.

For the 3:15pm concert, the quartet will perform Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No.1 in D Major Op.11 and Haydn’s Quartet No.4 in D Major Op.20. And then sparks will fly with double the fun, when special guest, the Afiara String Quartet (ASQ) joins the CSQ in Mendelssohn’s splendid and iridescent Octet in E-Flat Major. (For the earlier Music & Truffles concert, the two will perform excerpts from the Octet.)

The two quartets appear to be connected by only two degrees of separation, if that. For starters, the CSQ’s Koh is married to the ASQ’s cellist, Adrian Fung, and the two groups have performed together a number of times. In 2010, the CSQ won first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, with the ASQ coming in second. Closer to home, the CSQ was the first recipient of the Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School Quartet Residency Fellowship in 2010, and the ASQ the second in 2012. They performed the Mendelssohn Octet at the Festival of the Sound this summer and, earlier in the spring, at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall during its inaugural season. Interestingly, both quartets were first introduced to the Stanford campus by the university’s resident ensemble, “our” St. Lawrence String Quartet, who, just last month, awarded the CSQ the 2013 John Lad Prize (now in its third year), named in honour of the SLSQ’s dear friend John Lad (Stanford ’74), a violist and ardent chamber music lover who died in 2007.

In presenting the prize, the SLSQ’s violist and co-founder, Lesley Robertson, stated: “This award recognizes the Cecilia Quartet not only for the extraordinary impact this young ensemble has made already on the world’s concert stages but perhaps more significantly for the impact off stage — for their dedication and generous contributions as chamber music ambassadors in the greater community.” Nicely done, CSQ! (I figure the ASQ’s got to be the shoo-in for next year.)

All speculation aside, you can be sure that Mooredale’s 25th anniversary season openers will be a winning combination with these two exceptional quartets!

From Saint to St. and ST: Continuing with this business of “saints” and season launches, powerhouse Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John has been invited by Sinfonia Toronto (ST) to open the ensemble’s 15th season, the evening of October 26, at the George Weston Recital Hall.

Some things never change, and sometimes that’s a good thing. St. John’s first (and only) concert with ST was four years ago, almost exactly to the day (October 23, 2009). John Terauds, former music critic for the Toronto Star and now Toronto’s best-known classical music blogger, interviewed St. John for the Star in 2009, reporting that the program allowed her to “show off her wide-ranging repertoire.” Well, ST music director, Nurhan Arman, has done it again, with a wonderfully varied program that we’re told “dances from Bach to the vivid melodies of Nino Rota,” affording the six-foot-tall St. John significant opportunity to strut her stuff.

A skilled, prolific and thoughtful interpreter of Bach, St. John will perform Bach’s exhilarating and beloved Violin Concerto in E Major and then skip a few centuries to play the North American premiere of Australian composer Matthew Hindson’s evocative Maralinga for violin and string orchestra, which St. John co-commissioned and premiered in 2011. St. John has high praise for Hindson and this work, which she calls an “about-to-be” classic piece: “It was pretty amazing to play a piece called Maralinga in South Australia, for sure ... Every part of the world with such a story [think secret, nasty, nuclear testing] should be so lucky as to have Matthew write a piece about it.”

The program also includes Grieg’s Holberg Suite for string orchestra and Rota’s Concerto for Strings. I asked if she might join the ST in the Rota and her answer was classic St. John: “I think I’ll be leaving the Rota to the fabulous Sinfonia, seeing as I wouldn’t be there for enough rehearsals. Also, I am a terrible sight reader (everyone thinks I am joking until they actually see/hear this, at which point they try to leave the room).”

Other examples of her refreshing candour, humour, energy, passion and intelligence: in July, 2010, St. John was interviewed for an NPR special series titled, “Hey Ladies: Being A Woman Musician Today,” during which a few of her earliest CD covers, deemed by some to be “sexually suggestive,” ended up being the main topic of discussion. Somewhere in the middle, she said, teasingly, “I suppose I could have had a picture of a babbling brook on the front, but what would have been the point?” And toward the end, she simply told it like it was, and is: “Music is all about life and passion and love and death ... And if it takes sexuality to exude that visually, then so be it. It makes more sense for us, as women musicians, to express ourselves any damn way we want.”

St. John also expresses herself, exuberantly, through the record company she founded in 1999, where she gets to call all the shots (any damn way she wants), including naming the company Ancalagon, which I learned (and she confirmed) was in memory of her pet iguana. “Ancalagon, who I named after a dragon from Tolkien’s Silmarillion, died right before I began my company, and I was devastated. So I decided to keep him alive in a way. Now, I have another iguana ... named Cain.”

The woman definitely has a thing for reptiles. Which brings us marching full circle, back to the saints. Turns out, St. John has maintained an online WordPress page for years, under the name “sauriansaint.” And guess what? Saurian, in case you missed that evolutionary biology class, is defined as being “any of a suborder (Sauria) of reptiles including the lizards.”

Here’s a wee taste of some of the titles to her entertaining blog entries: from January 19, 2013, “Variations on ‘Is That a Violin???’”; from October 17, 2011, “Tricks For Getting Your Violin On a Plane”; and from June 7, 2003, “The Grey Plastic Laundry Tubs at Airport Security.” All cheeky and hilarious! (sauriansaint.wordpress.com)

Who wouldn’t want to invite Lara St. John to their gala — with or without her pet iguana? It will be thrilling to see and hear her, as Sinfonia Toronto ushers in its 15th year with grand gusto!

I’d love to fill several more pages with stories of successful women musicians but, unlike St. John, I don’t get to call the shots. For one final time, though, I can leave you with these:

QUICK PICKS

More women (and a few good men) to watch for this month:

Women's Musical Club of Toronto

Oct 17, 1:30: Music in the Afternoon: Bax & Chung, piano duo.

Gallery 345

Oct 18, 8:00: The Art of the Piano: Beatriz Boizan.

Nov 2, 8:00: Leslie Ting, violin, and Sarah Hagen, piano.

University of Toronto Faculty of Music

Oct 26, 7:30: University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Bianca Chambul, bassoon.

Oct 31, 12:10: Thursdays at Noon: Debussy and Ravel. Shauna Rolston, cello; Erika Raum, violin; Lydia Wong, piano.

Royal Conservatory

Oct 27, 3:00: Yuja Wang, piano.

Nov 3, 2:00: András Schiff, piano.

Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society

Oct 18, 8:00: Triple Forte Trio. Jasper Wood, violin; David Jalbert, piano; Yegor Dyachkov, cello.

Oct 23, 8:00: Ang Li, piano.

Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Oct 10 and 12, 8:00: Masterworks: James Ehnes, Violin, Plays Britten.

Oct 19, 7:30: Light Classics: From Dvořák to Tchaikovsky. Vilde Frang, violin. Also Oct 20, 3:00.

University of Waterloo Department of Music

Oct 23, 12:30: Noon Hour Concerts: New Canadian Duos.
Stephanie Chua, piano; Véronique Mathieu, violin.

York Symphony Orchestra

Oct 19, 8:00: Heroic Exploits. Vivian Chon, violin. Also Oct 20 (Richmond Hill).

These last two years as Classical & Beyond columnist have been rich and rewarding. I don’t know that I’m any closer to answering that always-niggling question, “Beyond what?” and that’s okay. Above and beyond all else, the journey toward trying to figure it all out has been a true joy. To the music! 

Sharna Searle trained as a musician and lawyer, practised a lot more piano than law and has just wrapped up a three-year stint as listings editor at The WholeNote. Comments on and items of interest for the column should continue to be sent to classicalbeyond@thewholenote.com.

Those of you dropping in on this column for the first time will have missed the start of a discussion of modern music begun here last month, revolving around the question: why did composers start writing music that sounded so weird?

Short answer: It’s a complex subject that touches on global economics, cultural history, evolutions in class and ethnic mobility, the changing nature of music education and concert-going, religion in society, European nationalism, industrialization and technological progress in instrument building.

So let’s move on. In practical terms, 1) choral audiences sometimes want to hear music they haven’t heard before and 2) choral composers want to keep composing new repertoire. So how do we bring the two parties together to meet on the dance floor? Like any healthy relationship, it takes a leap of faith and a bit of compromise.

So, to the audience member who runs for the doors at the hint of an unfamiliar or apparently unpleasant sound: you have to be willing to give these new musical experiences not just a first, but a second and third chance. The first time you went up on a two-wheel bike you probably wobbled and fell. But you persevered, ’cause you had some sense that on the other side of the challenge were new vistas of excitement, freedom and enjoyment.

And to those composers who write in a way that ignores the two reasons why the vast majority of people listen to music — pleasure and solace: you will simply lose your audience — a principled but self-destructive path that many mid-20th-century composers chose.

The musician who wants to connect with listeners must be willing to meet them at least part of the way. This means being open to musical elements that have appeal to non-musicians — traditional tonal harmonic systems, melodic contour that has a comprehensible arc and graspable structure, rhythmic grooves that are anchored in movement and dance, and other elements of popular, folk and indigenous music.

If you think this is the kind of pandering to which no artiste should stoop, go back and listen to pretty much every composer of note from the last 500 years — they knew their dance numbers and their folk songs, their pub cheers and theatre numbers and children’s lullabies and they infused their compositions with these elements, even as they extended the boundaries of where music could go and what it could express. They knew that to both thrive and survive, they had to consider the needs of the people around them as much as their own.

The point I made in last month’s column is that many modern composers are already doing this. The mid-20th century experiments of atonality and serialism, Musique concrète, aleatoric music and spatialization — I know, I know, even the names are off-putting — have almost been entirely abandoned. Or, they are being combined with an aesthetic that does not insist on purging music of the elements the non-specialist listener identifies as music.

English composer Thomas Adès writes very much in this conciliatory mode. His Dances from Powder Her Face is being performed on October 31 and November 1 and 2 by the Toronto Symphony, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Toronto Children’s Chorus. The concert also includes Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and Carl Orff’s choral favourite Carmina Burana.

Carmina was a hit when it was first performed in Frankfurt in 1937, and has never waned in popularity. Orff wrote in a manner that wedded the varied and complex sonorities of the modern orchestra to music of deceptive simplicity. In some ways Orff’s music can be seen as the distant ancestor of the groove-based compositions of postmodernists Glass and Reich. Adès’ music also shares certain qualities with Orff’s, combining fun with edginess and possessing an earthy, sensual quality that seems to evoke bar fights and assignations rather than concert halls.

Dances from Powder Her Face, a Canadian premiere, is presumably a suite of music from Adès‘ chamber opera of the same name. The piece may or may not involve choir, but if not, and you want to hear some of his vocal music, take a chance and listen to the opera from which the Dances is derived. I think many listeners ought to be intrigued by some of the arresting vocal and instrumental writing that illustrates the scandal-ridden story of the Duchess of Argyll.

Britten’s Serenade is also a brilliant work. Many ensembles will be programming Britten’s works this year — 2013 being his birth centenary — and if you are willing to take a leap into unfamiliar 20th-century music, Britten is a very good place to begin.

Britten worked throughout his career almost entirely within the framework of “extended tonality.” What is this, exactly? Extended tonality is to traditional tonality as X-Man Wolverine is to pocket knives — that is, more dangerous but cooler.

On October 19 the Grand Philharmonic Choir performs Britten’s War Requiem, considered to be one of the 20th century’s masterworks. Premiered in 1962, it blends the traditional requiem mass text with poems by Wilfred Owen. Owen perished in the First World War, but not before writing poetry that ripped the veils of piety and patriotism away from the gruesome reality of WWI trench combat.

On October 20 the Elmer Iseler Singers will perform St. Cecilia Sings! A Tribute to Benjamin Britten, a concert that also includes music by Howells, Schubert, Vaughan Williams and Canadian Eleanor Daley, who has amassed a body of choral music that is becoming part of the standard repertoire of many Canadian choirs.

On November 6 at Grace Church on-the-Hill, and again on November 15 at Temple Sinai synagogue, the Temple Sinai Ensemble Choir, Toronto Jewish Folk Choir and Upper Canada Choristers join forces during Holocaust Education Week to perform music that addresses the same theme as the Britten requiem — war’s destruction.

The evening includes an original composition by cantor/composer Charles Osborne titled I Didn’t Speak Out, based on the famous indictment of apathy in the face of evil attributed to German theologian Martin Niemoeller. The concerts are free. More information can be found here.

Finally, modern composition reaches back to ancient tradition, as the Pax Christi Chorale hosts the Great Canadian Hymn Competition on October 6. PCC has fashioned itself the sponsor of new works in an area that is notoriously conservative — hymn singing. As with concert music, the continued vitality of the tradition depends on new works. Hosting the event is one of Canada’s greatest singers, Catherine Robbin. More information can be found here. 

Benjamin Stein is a Toronto tenor and theorbist. He can be contacted at choralscene@thewholenote.com. Visit his website at benjaminstein.ca.

I should probably just come out and say, before I describe the concerts I’m looking forward to hearing this month, that I’m starting to have high hopes for the future of culture in Toronto; and the classical musicians I meet are giving me good reason to be an optimist. There are a few artists performing in Toronto this month who are giving this city a flavour that’s a little more cosmopolitan and a little less conventional. We’re now an important enough destination that at least a few lesser-known artists are performing in the city hoping to make it big-time, while the musicians that currently call Toronto home are continually coming up with new ideas that are every bit as innovative — if not more so — than concerts I’ve heard on the best European and American stages.

One artist that Toronto audiences will be happy to welcome back is Hank Knox, one of the leading lights of Montreal’s music scene and one of the founding members of Montreal’s Arion Baroque Orchestra. Knox has only occasionally performed in Toronto, in joint concerts with Arion and Tafelmusik. Never content to be heard behind the orchestra, Knox has struck out on a cross-Canada tour that includes dates in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Flin Flon, The Pas and Balmoral, Manitoba, as well as a stop in Toronto. The whole trip will amount to some 3,600 kilometres by car, which is impressive enough as a road trip without even factoring in the concerts after each drive. This sounds like a truly punishing concert schedule, as Knox is making the trip halfway across Canada alone.

Apparently he doesn’t mind. “It’s good, every so often, to blast your mind out of the usual rut it’s been in,” Knox answers when I ask him how he copes with the hours of driving. “I actually enjoy the solitude of long drives, and it’s very peaceful to just sit back and focus on the road for hours without any distractions.”

Knox will be at the Canadian Opera Company for a free noon-hour concert on October 3, and will be playing a mixed program for, as he puts it, “people who don’t know anything about the harpsichord,” which one can safely claim is well above 90 percent of the Canadian population. Knox’s program includes the trance-like The Bells by William Byrd, Frescobaldi’s gloriously perverse Fantasy on the Cuckoo, transcriptions of Handel arias from Rinaldo, La Poule by Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. What makes this appealing to a curious-but-ignorant-of-harpsichords concert-goer who doesn’t know what to expect? “Let’s put it this way,” Knox says, “if you don’t like what you hear, wait five minutes and something completely different will come along for you to listen to.” Sounds like a concert with something for everyone, and maybe even a possible ride to Montreal in it for you if you offer to pay for gas.

One Toronto-based artist who’s ventured off the beaten path to pursue her musical passions is Katherine Hill, who moved to the Netherlands and eventually Sweden to study medieval music. Hill is mainly known as a singer and viola da gambist, and is the proud holder of a master’s degree in medieval studies from the University of Toronto. Together with Ben Grossman and Alison Melville, Hill is also a member of Ensemble Polaris, a group which specializes in the folk music of circumpolar countries —Arctic fusion they call it. Hill’s deep and abiding love for the traditional folk music of Sweden led her to spend a year studying Swedish folk music at the Eric Sahlström Institute in Tobo, Sweden, and she came back with a unique knowledge of a relic from the the medieval era — a keyed fiddle known as the nyckelharpa.

“The nyckelharpa was actually fairly common throughout Europe in the Middle Ages,” Hill says, “but it’s only been preserved in Sweden. It’s becoming more popular in Germany and France and there are makers producing instruments now, but because no instruments have survived from the 14th century and the instrument kept changing, there’s no real way to tell what the original instrument looked and sounded like.”

Hill will be playing the nyckelharpa together with the Toronto Consort in a program of music from Sweden from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but that doesn’t mean it will be all Swedish composers — 17th-century Sweden was still a very multicultural country. “There was a huge international influence in Sweden in the 16th and 17th centuries,” Hill explains. “The Swedish court heard and loved music from England, France, Italy and Poland, too, and wanted to import the best musicians from all over Europe.” So a cosmopolitan Swede could possibly have heard, besides music from his own country, the music of the English composer Tobias Hume (a soldier in the Swedish army), tunes from John Playford’s The Dancing Master (a hit in 17th-century Sweden), compositions by Heinrich Isaac, and traditional Lutheran chorales — and that’s exactly what the Toronto Consort will be playing at Trinity-St. Paul’s on October 18 and 19.

Incidentally, Hill will also be playing along in Toronto Masque Theatre’s production “Brief Lives: Songs and Stories of Old London,” based on the collected biographies by John Aubrey. Aubrey’s Brief Lives is a who’s who of famous Londoners from the 17th century, and includes William Shakespeare, Thomas Hobbes, John Dee, Ben Jonson and Sir Walter Raleigh as its subjects. Even more interesting than the history lesson is the gossip: Aubrey dished the kind of dirt on his subjects that would get a modern biographer sued for libel if he published that kind of information today. Toronto Masque Theatre’s production features William Webster of Soulpepper and includes ballads and popular music from Aubrey’s London of the 17th century. The show will be at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts from October 25 to 27.

If you’re looking for more conventional concert-going fare (or you’re just an opera fan or Italophile) be sure to welcome a group of young players who are making their Toronto debut for Mooredale Concerts on Sunday October 20. Il Giardino d’Amore will be performing a concert of Italian baroque music in Walter Hall at 3:15 pm. The founders, Polish violinist Stefan Plewniak and Italian harpsichordist Marco Vitale, met when they joined Le Concert des Nations, the orchestra led by gambist and early-music superstar Jordi Savall, and decided to form their own band — since only the best players in Europe get to play with Savall it’s a safe bet these are some top-notch players. Their concert features Italian cantatas sung by the Polish soprano Natalia Kawalek, and compositions by Scarlatti, Corelli, Locatelli, Geminiani and Vivaldi. Il Giardino d’Amore will also be performing an interactive concert aimed at children ages 6 to 15 at 1:15 at Walter Hall. It’s a pared-down version of the same concert meant to last only an hour; tickets for the early performance are only $13.

I’m glad to see that Toronto is becoming a destination for foreign artists like Il Giardino d’Amore, and I’m always grateful for a chance to hear something new from familiar artists on the Toronto music scene. Be sure to check The WholeNote blog to see what I have to say about the early music concerts I actually manage to get out to in the weeks ahead. 

David Podgorski is a Toronto-based harpsichordist, music teacher and a founding member of Rezonance. He can be contacted at earlymusic@thewholenote.com.

Let’s begin with Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a ballet score that premiered on May 29, 1913, in Paris. These days it’s become a well-loved work, but 100 years ago, its asymmetric rhythms and clashing dissonances caused such an uproar that the police were called in to calm the audience. But the rioting continued and got so intense that Stravinsky himself left before the performance was over. Wow ... passionate audiences who know what they do and don’t like! A century later in the city of Toronto, this work has already received one performance I can remember (by Esprit Orchestra in January) and will be featured in the Mariinsky Orchestra’s Roy Thomson Hall all-Stravinsky program on October 6.

But things will definitely take a different turn on October 11 at the X Avant Festival when the Montreal-based group Quartetski reinterprets this classic using unusual orchestration and free improvisation to bring out what they feel is implicit in the original. And that’s just what this exceptional group is dedicated to: a revisionist approach to classic works of the “great” composers achieved by mixing various traditions and techniques to discover new possibilities, ultimately creating a new type of chamber music. I suspect there won’t be a riot this time around, but rather enthusiastic ears welcoming the daring move into the somewhat sacrosanct territory of the musical masters.

Quartetski is a perfect example of what I’m sensing is becoming more and more standard — music that defies being pigeonholed into neat and tidy categories. And interestingly, the Canada Council for the Arts is getting in on the discussion. On October 13 there will be an interview and Q&A with one of their music officers (Jeff Morton) to discuss the new priorities and criteria for funding this music that is increasingly happening along the edges of traditional boundaries, a direction they describe as “genrelessness.”

But back to the second scandal-associated work that has been programmed. On October 12, Morton Feldman’s six-hour long String Quartet No.2 will be performed by New York’s incredible FLUX Quartet. So what’s the scandal? The piece was originally commissioned by New Music Concerts in 1983 and was broadcast live on CBC, performed by the then-unknown Kronos Quartet. But as the hours went by, CBC had to make a decision whether to cut it off to make way for the news broadcast. They decided to stick it out and no riots ensued. The piece ended just before the 1am blackout. The physical and mental rigours of performing such a long work demand extreme dedication by the performers.

FLUX, who take their name from the 1960s’ Fluxus movement, perform the work about once a year, making it into a bit of a speciality. No doubt they are so dedicated because of what they receive from performing it. Feldman’s music offers a truly intimate encounter with the substance of sound, unfolding subtly, calling out for your attention. It’s been said that you don’t really listen to the music, but rather you live through it, breathe with it. In other words, it is truly an immersive bodily experience. To create a sensitive listening environment, the Music Gallery will be transformed into two chill out rooms, with accompanying food vendors and installations in the nearby OCADU student gallery. Added to that, CIUT-FM will be broadcasting the entire performance as a nod to the original premiere. You can create your own unique listening environment if you live within radio signal range. It will be a “slow-motion rave.” Feldman himself called it “a fucking masterpiece.”

Other festival highlights include a rare appearance by the legendary minimalist Charlemagne Palestine on October 13, renowned for his high voltage piano-cluster music, and music by composers Rose Bolton (October 13) and Scott Good (October 20). Improv duo Not the Wind Not the Flag will partner with bassist William Parker on October 17; and the festival’s ensemble-in-residence — Ensemble SuperMusique from Montréal — will perform their revolutionary Musique Actuelle on October 18. The following night, A Tribe Called Red lets loose their version of urban abstract. Mixing Pow Wow sounds with pan-global influences, their beats have roared onto the scene and opened up new territories in the conversation around cultural exchange. Partnering with this concert is the ImagineNative Film Festival, which will be screening images from all aspects of First Nations life. Closing the festival on October 20 will be Hamilton-born tabla player Gurpreet Chana, whose influences stretch from DJ culture to classical South Asian. He will be transforming his tablas into a digital interface controlling an array of hardware and software to extend the sound of this much-loved instrument into unknown waters.

SEASON OPENERS

October is full of season openers for many of our local new music presenters. In Waterloo, NUMUS is offering two events in October quite different from each other. On October 4, the exceptional Gryphon Trio and guest clarinetist James Campbell will perform the epic Quartet for the End of Time, a 50-minute work by Olivier Messiaen, written while the composer was imprisoned during WWII. This will be partnered with Alexina Louie’s Echoes of Time which was inspired by Messiaen’s piece, along with music by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. All three pieces are on the Trio’s latest CD release For the End of Time. And on October 25, NUMUS contributes to the genrelessness orientation with a cabaret featuring the 13-piece Slaughterhouse Orchestra performing ten songs in a wide range of styles. Each song explores various novels written by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut.

Esprit Orchestra launches their “new era” on October 24 with Claude Vivier’s shimmering Zipangu, R. Murray Schafer’s tongue-in-cheek No Longer than Ten (10) Minutes, and two orchestral works by Montreal-born Samy Moussa, who now enjoys a career as both composer and conductor in Europe. The program rounds out with Russian composer Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto.

New Music Concerts’ season begins on October 6 with a concert that received extensive coverage in September’s WholeNote. On November 1, they will present an electric evening of interactive works, highlighting two by David Eagle and others by Canadians Jimmie Leblanc, Anthony Tan and Anna Pidgorna, and German composer Hans Tutschku. Interactive compositions are like a great sonic playground where the acoustic sounds of the live instruments are transformed in real time with the aid of the technology.

October also heralds the beginning of a new chamber ensemble with the delectable name of Dim Sum, a group dedicated to presenting new compositions for Chinese instruments. Their debut concert, “Xpressions,” on October 27 features several world premieres by local composers. Another recently founded ensemble, the Thin Edge New Music Collective, will be performing works by John Zorn, Allison Cameron and others on October 25, while the Toy Piano Composers celebrate the beginning of their fifth season on October 12 at Gallery 345.

The Canadian Music Centre continues its concerts of contemporary piano works on October 3 and 13, as well as hosting “A Touch of Light” with piano music and visuals during Toronto’s Nuit Blanche on October 5. And to finish off, this month sees a number of concerts celebrating Benjamin Britten’s 100thanniversary. The Canadian Opera Company will be presenting two noon-hour concerts of his vocal music on October 9 and 23. His Violin Concerto will receive a performance by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on October 10, while his War Requiem will be performed by several Kitchener-Waterloo area choirs in a concert presented by the Grand Philharmonic Choir on October 19.

The experimental pot is stirring and I encourage you to get out and support the blossoming of the new sounds of urban abstraction, wherever they may show up. Also, check out the WholeNote’s online blog for up-to-the-minute reports for some of these events. 

Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. She can be contacted at sounddreaming@gmail.com

Fall has already made is chilly presence known in Southern Ontario and not just in terms of the weather. Sad news greeted me on September 17. My friend, the composer and veteran radio music broadcaster Larry Lake, passed away; more on his career elsewhere in this issue. Larry had a hidden side. He was an “early adapter” of world music in a few of his compositions, a little-known engagement I may write about in a future column.

As is almost always the case I’ve had to omit, with regret, a number of concerts on my short list. This column could easily have been twice as long.

12th annual Small
World Music Festival continues

Last issue I wrote about the 12th annual Small World Music Festival which began September 26, and continued October 2 at Lula Lounge with what was billed as a “one-of-a-kind musical mashup,” featuring the award-winning jazz and hip-hop Toronto trumpeter Brownman, playing with the Cuban rappers Ogguere and Telmary best known for their ground-breaking Cuban genre fusions of mambo, son, cha cha cha and rumba, underscored by hip-hop and reggaeton.

October 4 the group Mashrou’ Leila, Arabic for “an overnight project,” plays Lee’s Palace in their Toronto debut. Acclaimed as “the voice of Arabic youth” and “one of the most significant young bands in the Arab world,” the six-musician Lebanese group use politically charged lyrics and absurdist videos to ride the wave of youthful optimism generated around the Arab spring. Hamed Sinno, the group’s leader and main lyricist, addresses the current social revolution with positive social messages and art-school ironic detachment. Their instrumentation of violin, bass, two guitars, keyboard and drum set doesn’t betray the ethnic Middle Eastern origins of the band but rather serves to connect their audiences to the familiar transnational popular culture they feel part of.

October 6 DakhaBrakha closes the Small World Music Festival with a concert at the Revival Bar. The Kyiv quartet has invented a kind of world music which infuses their theatrical interpretative reworking of Ukrainian village music — folk costumes and all — with a rock- and even at times a trance-like sensibility. Their core instrumentation of closely miked cello, floor tom, djembe, darabuka, harmonica and Jew’s harp, along with occasional keyboard synth lines, support the group’s soaring village-inflected vocal solos and powerful close harmony refrains. I attended their 2012 North American debut concert at Luminato. Their songs were in turn emotionally intense, chilled out, but then delightfully stylistically odd-ball. Moreover you don’t have to understand DakhaBrakha’s Ukrainian lyrics to appreciate the sheer quirky emotive force of their music making.

More Picks

October 5, at the First Baptist Church in Barrie, at 2:30pm, the Colours of Music Festival showcases the music of banjo virtuoso Jayme Stone and his band in “The Incredible Banjo.” I have written admiringly of Stone’s music before in this column. I suspect therefore that many readers — and of course his fans — have a good feel for the vast range his music projects encompass, including Bach, Appalachian covers, a banjo concerto and explorations of the banjo’s Malian connections. Sidemen trumpeter Kevin Turcotte, cellist Andrew Downing, Joe Phillips on bass and drummer Nick Fraser provide the deliciously dexterous musical backing.

October 8 at noon “Sketches of Istanbul” performed by the Anahtar Project graces the Canadian Opera Company’s World Music Series at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. For his Anahtar Project, award-winning composer and cellist Andrew Downing has booked percussionist Debashis Sinha and clarinettist Peter Lutek. The three Canadians are joined by the Turkish oud virtuoso and composer Güç Başar Gülle in a cross-cultural collaboration. Inspired by the mosaic of cultures and people of the ancient city of Istanbul, audiences can expect explorations fusing Turkish-Ottoman classical makam music with Western performance sensibilities and musical forms. Jazz procedures are also prominent. Here’s some tantalizing insider news: the group will be “playing challenging and beautiful compositions by Andrew Downing and Güç Başar Gülle.”

October 10 the COC’s World Music Series continues with “Hibiki! Echoes of Japan” performed by Toronto’s favourite daiko group Nagata Shachu at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. Celebrating its 15th season, Nagata Shachu is one of our city’s musical treasures, hailed by the Toronto Star as “... one of the world’s most interesting Japanese taiko drumming ensembles.” Its music includes not only a wide range of heartbeat-quickening Japanese drums but also various bamboo flutes, stringed instruments and voices. I’ve seen the group, led by Canadian-born taiko master Kiyoshi Nagata, several times over its history and its performances are invariably filled with a high level of ensemble musicianship coupled with mental and corporeal discipline.

Uma Nota Festival of Tropical Expressions

Running from October 17 to 20, the third annual Uma Nota Festival of Tropical Expressions is the biggest yet. The festival features Afro-Brazilian, Caribbean, Latin, funk and soul music performed by both live acts and DJs from Brazil, U.K. and New York in addition to the cream of the local scene. Out of four days chock full of events, I have space here only to dip into its engaging family-friendly “Community Cultural Fair.” For the rest of the concerts check The WholeNote listings, or the festival’s website which offers detailed information.

Sunday, October 20 the Uma Nota Festival offers an ambitious daylong Community Cultural Fair at the Lula Lounge. It begins with live music performed by Toronto’s Tio Chorinho, a choro ensemble led by mandolin player Eric Stein. Choro, a melodically and harmonically adventurous instrumental genre from Brazil which came of age in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s, has been described as “the New Orleans jazz of Brazil.” The highly regarded Brazilian “fingerstyle” guitar master Rick Udler, one of Brazil’s first-call guitarists, follows. If you had any doubt that the brass band form is making a comeback in jazz just listen to the Heavyweights Brass Band featuring five young Toronto musicians taking the stage next. This favourite among the Uma Nota and local jazz audiences plays New Orleans style jazz, but also funk, Latin, soul, and reggae favourites which are guaranteed to inspire impromptu dancing. The sets continue with Forrallstar, the Uma Nota Festival-produced “super band,” comprised of the city’s top Brazilian forró players led by singer/guitarist Carlos Cardoso. DJ Mogpaws closes the concert spinning recordings of Brazilian soul, funk, jazz, reggae and electronica from the studios, fairs and streets of Rio and São Paulo, plus the states of Bahia and Pernambuco.

At 2:30pm talks and workshops take the Lula floor. A few sessions of interest: son jarocho and other Mexican folk dances and music led by the Café Con Pan duo, and Coco de Roda, a Northeastern Brazilian dance/game led by Maracatu Mar Aberto and Professor Sapo of Capoeira Camara. BTW, while it may be a bit early in the day, I’m tempted to take in the Caipirinha-making workshop.

Two More Concerts

Back at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on November 5, the COC’s World Music Series presents “Meditations for Bass Veena” by the Toronto group Monsoon:Synthesis. The bass veena, a remarkable new instrument, was designed in 2010 by bassist Justin Gray along with Canadian luthier Les Godfrey. They adapted and extended the fretless electric bass making it into an instrument suitable not only for Hindustani classical but also for Indo-jazz music. Gray, the first musician to perform North Indian classical music on the electric and acoustic basses, leads Monsoon: Synthesis on bass veena. He is accompanied by Ed Hanley on tabla and Derek Gray on Tibetan bowls and percussion. The trio references both North Indian ragas and original compositions by Justin Gray, conjuring a sound world that promises to take the downtown audience on a sub-continental musical journey.

Wrapping up this issue, on November 7 the Ger Mandolin Orchestra, performs at the George Weston Recital Hall at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, produced by the Ashkenaz Foundation. It was a photograph of a pre-WWII Jewish mandolin orchestra in the Polish town of Gora Kalwaria (Ger in Yiddish) and the realization that most of its members perished in the Holocaust that originally inspired Israeli-American Avner Yonai to re-form just such an ensemble. The Ger Mandolin Orchestra, led by the Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist Mike Marshall, is the result of Yonai`s unique memorial to his own family and the original orchestra members. This is an all-star international group of ten mandolinists recreating a musical form that in the first half of the 20th century was among the most popular forms of Jewish community music making both in Eastern Europe and in immigrant communities of North America. The group’s repertoire embraces klezmer and Yiddish music along with Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Italian and classical selections. This concert would be one eminently fitting way to observe Remembrance Day (November 11) with music reborn. 

Andrew Timar is a Toronto musician and music writer. He can be contacted at worldmusic@thewholenote.com.