Beat Columns (Live Music)

While the wintry blasts of January have not abated much, there are signs, on several fronts, that community band activity has not been dormant and that behind-the-scenes efforts of winter rehearsals are due to spring into a variety of programs well before Mother Nature takes her own leap into spring. However, before talking about what lies ahead, it’s worth visiting a couple of recent events that I had the pleasure of attending which created a lasting impression.

Strings Attached: The first of these was a concert by the new Strings Attached Orchestra which I mentioned in a recent column. Billed as a “Friends and Family Concert,” it was for the most part the sort of program one might expect with an all-string orchestra. However, it had one unusual feature. Senator Nancy Ruth had been invited to play percussion in the concert. Apparently, she had always wanted to play in an orchestra, and here was her opportunity. When invited to participate in the concert, she had thought that she might get to ring the telephone in Pennsylvania 6-5000 and maybe play tambourine in some selections. What a surprise when she became an honourary member of the percussion section of the orchestra and was coached on all of the timing and nuances of her small part. After the concert she stated “I had a blast” Unfortunately no photos were available of this performance. We’re wondering what interesting wrinkles co-founder Ric Giorgi can come up with for their final concert of the season in June!

Hats off to Bethune: The second event, something I rarely attend anymore, was a school concert. With our special invitation in hand we arrived at Doctor Norman Bethune Collegiate in Scarborough. For such events I had been accustomed to a token audience of parents. Not here. We had seats reserved for us or we would have had to stand. No fewer than seven groups performed. The concert began with two selections by the 110-member Junior Band and concluded with the Senior Band. Having attended school concerts in the past, I was accustomed to hearing selections such as Harold Walters’ Instant Concert to demonstrate the musical prowess of the students. Not this time. The final selections by the Senior Band were Howard Cable’s Snake Fence Country and the Festive Overture by Shostakovitch. The future of school music is certainly in good hands here. Bethune’s music head Paul Sylvester certainly deserves special mention for having a band play at that level.

Seventh Horizon: It’s that time of year for the local New Horizons group to form yet another new band. By the time this is printed the seventh Toronto New Horizons Band will have begun rehearsals shortly after their Friday evening Instrument Exploration event. A year ago at this time there was a film crew there recording the attendees trying various instruments and making their selections. The film has now been completed with the title The Beat Goes On. Originally planned for broadcast on TV Ontario, the release has been delayed while the producers investigate its eligibility in the Canadian International Documentary Festival, better known as Hot Docs.

Wychwood: The Wychwood Clarinet Choir have announced that they will be having their second annual Clarinet Day on Sunday March 1 in Walter Hall of the Edward Johnson Building. There will be masterclasses with James Campbell, morning workshops with U of T faculty and a concert with both the Wychwood Clarinet Choir and the U of T Clarinet Ensemble. For information about registration go to their website: wychwoodclarinetchoir.com. They have also reminded us about their spring concert ”Swing into Spring” on May 24. It’s a safe bet that they will be performing at least one work written for them by “composer-in-residence” Howard Cable.

West End News: Some months ago I mentioned that a new concert band had been established in Toronto’s west end. That was in the fall of 2014; now that new band will soon be performing their very first concert. The Toronto Concert Band, as it is called,  has put down roots in the Etobicoke-Lakeshore district. Most members are from Etobicoke, but there are many members from all parts of Toronto. Weekly rehearsals at Lambton-Kingsway Junior Middle School have attracted more than 60 members from amateur to professional status. The band’s tag line is “We Love to Play!” and that has translated into an enthusiasm such that their premiere concert will feature works ranging from Percy Grainger and Vaughan Williams to Frankie Valli and the Beatles. Under the direction of founding conductors Ken Hazlett and Les Dobbin, they have opted to stage their inaugural concert in the CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio. In their words, selection of this venue “aptly reinforces the Toronto Concert Band’s mandate of serving not only Etobicoke but the entire City of Toronto.” I certainly intend to be there on Saturday, January 31 at 7:30. I would recommend readers attend, but I have heard that tickets are all sold. Congratulations. For information on this band, go to their website  torontoconcertband.com.

Wellington Winds: Many months ago I wrote briefly about a DVD titled Appassionato: The Wellington Winds Story released by that band. As described by producer Michael Purves-Smith, it is a collection of “performances, interviews and sectionals illustrating the life of a concert band.” In a recent email message Purves-Smith reports that they have done a lot with their project but still have a way to go. He expects to be in touch again in a couple of months. At that time we hope to publish a special detailed report of the results of their work on this project.

Briefly from Silverthorn: Silverthorn Symphonic Winds have announced that their next concert will be on Saturday, February 28 and that, intriguingly, the repertoire for this concert has been selected by band members. Many times in this column I have mounted my high horse to campaign for more member participation in repertoire selection. This was welcome news, and I hope to get more details soon.

Many years ago, a longtime friend of mine, Bob Plunkett, upon retiring as a high school music teacher as well as director of the naval reserve band of HMCS York in Toronto, moved to Orillia where he established the Orillia Wind Ensemble. Over 17 years ago, on Bob’s retirement from that band and subsequent passing, the directorship of the Orillia band was assumed by Roy Menagh. Now, Menagh has indicated that 2015-16 will be his “victory lap.” Band members have indicated that they would like to have a new person on board by this coming fall/winter season in order to plan a smooth transition to 2016-17 season. They will, of course, be setting up a search campaign to seek potential candidates. If any of our readers have any suggestions, they could contact the band’s president, Hugh Coleman at
colemanz@sympatico.ca.

Definition Department:

This month’s lesser known musical term is opera buffa: A musical stage production performed by nudists. 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.

Since 2008 the Batuki Music Society has been tirelessly promoting African music and art in Toronto, seeking out local artists and working with them to book venues. It does much more than typical presenters however, providing the valuable service of advising musicians on career development, recording and touring. Moreover, Batuki appears to have an even larger social mission. As expressed on the society’s website, it provides “visibility and necessary publicity to artists who hail from minority groups by placing them in concerts and festivals in mainstream venues to help them integrate.” Incorporated as a non-profit community-based organization in 2008 by artistic director Nadine McNulty, Batuki’s artistic vision encourages local African musicians to participate in enriching the diverse arts and cultural scene through live music concerts, visual arts exhibits, film, spoken word/poetry, dance and festivals.

Spiritual Songs of Sub-Saharan Africa

Batuki Music Society’s programming usually heats up during Black History Month and this February is no exception. On February 14 it is presenting “Spiritual Songs of Sub-Saharan Africa” at the theatre of the Alliance Française de Toronto. Reflecting spirituality in African music, the songs are rooted in multiple genres performed across the vast continent, from Guinean griot and Ghanaian highlife and gospel, to South Sudanese spirituals, Ethiopian soul, back to Congolese rumba and Zimbabwean spirit music. 

The concert’s curatorial aim is to present the evolving nature of African music from its rural roots to its contemporary urban and transnational mediations, with an emphasis on its spiritual content. The performers have been drawn from Toronto’s rich pool of sub-Saharan African musical talent. Confirmed are seven of the city’s finest African singers, Frederica Ackah, griot Cheka Katenen Dioubate, Ruth Mathiang, Blandine Mbiya, Evelyn Mukwedeya, Memory Makuri, and Netsanet Melesse. The seven singers are backed by an impressive band consisting of Donne Roberts (guitar), Tichaona Maredza (rhythm guitar), Quandoe Harrison (bass), Fantahun Shewankochew Mekonnen (acoustic krar), Kofi Ackah (drums, percussion), Ruben Esguerra (congas), and Amadou Kienou (djembe). 

I’d like to sample the rich program for you. Performing the songs of the Shona people of Zimbabwe will be Evelyn Mukwedeya and Memory Makuri accompaning themselves on the mbira (sometimes called thumb piano), as well as hand clapping, hosho and dancing. The playing of the mbira dzavadzimu, which used to be a deeply entrenched male preserve, is an important ingredient in conducting healing ceremonies among Shona communities. In the 1970s Stella Chiweshe, also a traditional healer, challenged that male exclusivity, becoming one of the first female mbira players. She is now a role model for younger women like Mukwedeya and Makuri.

Blandine Mbiya, a singer and songwriter from the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo performs songs in the gospel-inspired rumba genre as well as those in the so-called bazombo trance music. The latter – the Bazombo are members of the much larger Bakongo group whose communities lie near the Angola and DRC borders – is a music genre reputedly associated with witchcraft and other ceremonies, though solid evidence of this is hard to locate for outsiders. On the other hand, the popular DRC rumba (aka African rumba, which also overlaps with soukous), exhibits Cuban and older Franco-Belgian missionary choral strains. Rumba’s rise to prominence has been directly linked to the suppression of the Congo’s indigenous spiritual music practices during the colonial period.

Cheka Katenen Dioubate is a Guinean griot whose job description includes storyteller, historian, poet, musician and praise singer. Griots are central to the maintenance of Mande traditions in West Africa. Serving as a living archive, they are keepers and singers of the oral history and culture of the people, performing at marriages, funerals and other rites of passage. Dioubate brings to the stage a powerful voice and commanding presence, as befits the griot who must serve as intermediary between generations of her ancestors and her living audience.

Our last stop in this incomplete concert preview is Ethiopia, as represented by the songs of Netsanet Mellesse. This singer has an impressive recording back catalogue, having produced traditional Ethiopian, pop and gospel albums back home. One of Ethiopia’s finest krar players and composers Fantahun Shewankochew Mekonnen will accompany Mellesse at the Alliance Francaise.

Vusi Mahlasela and Hugh Masekela: This is not Batuki Music Society’s only big presentation this month. On February 28, in association with Koerner Hall, they co-present “Vusi Mahlasela and Hugh Masekela: 20 Years of Freedom.” This concert is billed as “freedom songs honouring 20 years of democracy in South Africa and the official end of apartheid” and headlines the trumpeter, singer and composer Masekela and singer/songwriter Mahlasela. 

The award-winning Mahlasela, known as The Voice in his home country, is celebrated for his distinct, powerful voice and his poetic lyrics. He has released seven studio albums on Sony and worked with numerous international recording stars. His songs of hope with themes of struggle for freedom, but also forgiveness and reconciliation with enemies, inspired many in the anti-apartheid movement.

In his eighth decade, Masekela, the world-renowned multifaceted musician and defiant political voice, is still going strong. Credited as one of the founders of world fusion music, his global career began in the South Africa of the 1950s with stylist roots which tapped into jazz (ragtime, jive, swing, doo-wop, bop), musicals and pop, as well as multiple African genres including mbaqanga, South African music with rural Zulu roots. His group, the Jazz Epistles, released the first African jazz LP in 1959, followed by 40 more albums over his career. His 1986 anti-apartheid anthem Bring Home Nelson Mandela (1986) was an inspiration and rallying cry around the world at the time. After decades in exile, following the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990, Masekela returned to live in South Africa. It may well be on the Koerner Hall program celebrating twenty years of South Africa’s democracy.

Other picks:

February 6 The Royal Conservatory’s World Music series presents Pavlo and his band at Koerner Hall. The Toronto native with two Juno Award nominations who goes by a single name, Pavlo may have coined the term “Mediterranean guitar sound” for his brand of music, but for his current tour Pavlo integrates “exotic instruments,” as the promotion notes. His fans can expect Pavlo’s signature sound with acoustic Spanish guitar upfront in the mix, but also infused with Chinese erhu, Portuguese guitarra, Arabic ney, Indian sitar and Greek bouzouki.

Also February 6 the Small World Music Centre’s still new intimate theatre is undertaking its first screening, rescheduled from last year. The Stirring of a Thousand Bells (2014) by emerging  American filmmaker Matthew Dunning is an experimental documentary consisting of two videos taking the audience on a kaleidoscopic visual and musical tour of life in Surakarta, a city in Java, Indonesia. It features footage of its centuries-old royal court gamelan music and dance culture, still vital today. A live music concert “Imaginary Soundtrack for Ambient Worlds: Indonesia meets Canada” by the Andrew Timar and Bill Parsons Duo, playing Indonesian kacapi and suling, will begin the program. (Yes I’m that Andrew Timar).

February 8, the Flato Markham Theatre audience will be in for a treat – a concert that showcases two generations of one family with a proud musical lineage, encompassing several strands of world music. Amjad Ali Khan, the renowned veteran maestro of the sarod (Hindustani plucked lute) is joined by his sarod-playing sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan for this rare three sarod concert. Billed as “The Sarod Project,” percussionists Issa Malluf (Arabic/Middle Eastern percussion) and ace Toronto tabla player Vineet Vyas join the soloists.

Hindustani music is certainly Khan’s forte but in the first set he will demonstrate his affinity for an even wider sweep of musical geography, ranging from various regions of India to the Middle East. His sons Amaan and Ayaan will then demonstrate their traditional Hindustani music cred by performing a raga to be announced at the hall, exemplifying the living tradition that has been passed down from father to son for several generations “Music is the greatest wealth in our family,” confirmed Amjad Ali Khan. 

February 13 and 14 the Aga Khan Museum in partnership with the Aga Khan Music Initiative presents “Wu Man and the Sanubar Tursun Ensemble” at the AKM auditorium. This multicultural meeting of the Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the celebrated Uyghur singer Sanubar Tursun, explore ancient cultural links between Chinese and Central Asian music traditions. Wu Man, who has multiple Grammy Award nominations as well as the 1999 City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize to her credit, is a cross-cultural collaboration veteran. She’s worked extensively with the Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, among several others. Sanubar Tursun, who has become an iconic Uyghur cultural figure, employs her delicate, sensuous yet also athletic vocals in renditions of classical muqam and folk songs. The soloists are accompanied by an ensemble of Uyghur musicians.

If these concerts are any indication, it promises to be a rich and musically eventful February.

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

Russian-born Vadim Repin may just be the best violinist you’ve never heard of. Unless you happened to catch his TSO appearance in 2007 playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 with guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard, his only exposure here has been through recordings (most recently with Deutsche Grammophon) and YouTube clips. The clips span almost 30 years of an acclaimed career that took international flight after he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1989 when he was only 17.

In a recent telephone conversation the warm and gracious violinist described how he felt at that time: “The competition itself was really tough, very difficult psychologically and [physically]. It goes forever [one month]. For the next four years it put me in the spotlight of the music world but then there was a new winner, so forget about it. You have to do other things to get noticed and get the spotlight.”

This virtuoso, for whom technique is always a means to a musical end, never an end in itself, began violin lessons at five by “pure chance.” His mother, who had been encouraging her son to play with musical toys since he was three, took him to school intending to sign him up for accordion studies. Only violin places were available so he took up the violin. By age seven, chance took him under its wing again; his teacher advised studying with Zakhar Bron (who later taught Maxim Vengerov and Daniel Hope), a relationship which would continue for 13 years.

Jim Galloway was The WholeNote's longest standing columnist, tenacious to the last. We greet the news of his passing, yesterday, December 30 2014, with sadness. We have lost a blithe spirit, a true champion of live music. Here are the last words he wrote for us, just four weeks ago.
David Perlman, publisher

This being the 15th or 16th December/January edition of these Jazz Notes for The WholeNote, I thought that rather than essaying something completely new, I’d dip back through my little stack of back issues for things that, still being appropriate, I might appropriate. Take this, for one example:

This month’s column is a departure from the familiar concert listings of previous issues, reason being that the above mentioned departure was mine - for a month-long trip to Europe! As a result this article is coming to you from the waltz capital of the world, Vienna.

First of all, for the record, the Danube is not blue, but an industrial brown which would not inspire Johann were he to see it today. Also the Viennese waltz does not make up 3/4 of the music heard in Vienna, even though it is in 3/4, and since being here I have not heard a single zither play the theme from The Third Man.

Is there jazz in this stronghold of Strauss? – this fatherland of Freud? – this Mecca of Mozart? – this city where you can have your Vienna Phil? Yes there is and quite a lot of it at that, although, as anywhere else it is music for a small minority – and a minority that is broken into at least two camps. There are the obvious ones traditional and modern, and it would seem that never – or very seldom – the twain shall meet. (No, not you, Mark!)

Seen and Heard: After each standing ovation that followed his performances of three Beethoven piano concertos with the TSO in November, 19-year-old budding superstar Jan Lisiecki would take a seat at the piano and confidently greet the RTH capacity crowd with the words “Good evening.” He added at the last of his six concerts, “As has become traditional, I will now play some Chopin.” The Nocturne No. 20 in C Sharp Minor, Op. Posth. followed, flowing as naturally as the encores in the first two programs, the Prelude Op.28 No.1 and the Etude Op.25 No.1. Like putting on a comfortable shirt.

Lisiecki’s playing of the first movement of the Fourth Piano Concerto on November 12 had an almost fortepiano quality; the melancholy second movement had a conversational tone until it time-travelled into the future before meeting up with the impetuous Rondo. At intermission TSO composer advisor Gary Kulesha asked Lisiecki to compare Beethoven to Mozart and Chopin, the latter two composers having supplied the contents of the pianist’s two Deutsche Grammophon CDs.

“In Mozart you’re completey exposed – elegant; in Chopin you can play the concerto without the orchestra; in Beethoven you’re a member of the orchestra,” he responded.

“My modus operandi is to make the piano sing,” Lisiecki said. Along with a wonderful tone, that’s his approach to every piece he plays.

Kulesha wondered how Lisiecki would characterize the three Beethovens. The Third “has a similar ferocity and darkness as the D minor Mozart K.466 which it parallels”; the Fourth “pushes the boundaries . . .  [it] begins from the soul of the piano”; the Fifth “broadens what can be done in a concerto.”

Three days later came a first-rate performance of the Third. It had great cohesion, its architecture proceeding organically from the propulsive Allegro con brio and delicacy of the Largo to the pure joy of the inverted theme after the Rondo’s cadenza. You could feel the composer’s notes straining against classical convention but revelling in it. In the Chopin etude, Lisiecki demonstrated the beauty of tone over technique.

Lisiecki’s playing of the “Emperor” the following Saturday was dynamically diverse yet always controlled, from the wondrously hushed non-cadenza of the Allegro and the magical Adagio which felt as though the piano’s notes were walking on air, to the radical contrasts of the Rondo.

In a conversation with William Littler during intermission, Lisiecki divulged that a teacher in pre-school had suggested that the five-year-old child be given piano lessons. It took most of that year and a generous gift of a 100-year-old upright from a family friend before his parents agreed. Curiously, the Third Piano Concerto was the first piece by Beethoven he can remember as a child. Lisiecki also revealed that if he doesn’t practise he doesn’t feel right: “You don’t want to be around me.”

Talking about his instrument and the fact that every pianist is at the mercy of the venue where he performs, he raved about the piano at Koerner Hall, declined to comment on those at RTH and gushed over the one he played in Hamburg. “Not knowing what to expect forces us to create art in the moment,” he said.

Lisiecki’s Beethoven coincided with a series of three symphonies by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen, all under the enthusiastic baton of Neilsen’s countryman Thomas Dausgaard. Judging by the orchestra’s generous applause and responsive playing, their connection to the guest conductor was genuine. For his part, Dausgaard exudes joy on the podium, which manifests itself occasionally as open-mouthed. And he often lowers his arms and lets the orchestra play on their own, trusting them for bars at a time. He turned away from the audience in his introduction to the final concert and spoke directly to the players: “Can I say to you Toronto Symphony – you own this music.”

Lisiecki too fell under his spell as the two musicians intently locked eyes at the beginning of the finale of the “Emperor,” the young Canadian drawing on the Dane’s energy.

Trifonov Trifecta: Daniil Trifonov, only 23, the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition multi-award-winner, having already proved his technical prowess at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition earlier that year, seemed intent on establishing his artistic reputation with three programs available to Toronto audiences this season. The first, a dazzling performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with the TSO took place in September. An ambitious solo recital December 9 at Carnegie Hall will be live streamed on medici.tv (and available free for 90 days thereafter). Consisting of Bach’s Fantasy and Fugue for Organ in G Minor, BWV 542 (transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt, S. 463), Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 and Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, it will likely add to his burgeoning reputation.

Then on January 20 at Koerner Hall, Trifonov turns to chamber music with the great Gidon Kremer. Mozart’s Violin Sonata No. 33 in E-flat Major, K. 481. Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, D. 760 and Rachmaninov’s Trio élégiaque No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 9 comprise a program that will certainly reveal yet another side of this talented Russian-born phenom.

A Trio of Quartets: Music Toronto presents the latest incarnation of the Juilliard String Quartet January 8 in a program headed by Webern’s shimmering Five Movements, Op.5. Three weeks later the mighty St. Lawrence String Quartet returns for its annual visit to its first home. The exuberant Geoff Nuttall will lead us in a “Haydn Discovery” followed by the father of the string quartet’s Op. 33, No.2 “The Joke.” A major new work by John Adams fills the concert’s second half. On January 6 the New Orford String Quartet treats us to Beethoven’s Op. 95 and Brahms’ Op. 51, No.1 before premiering a new work by Gary Kulesha. The New Orford then teams up with Amici February 1 for one of the most interesting programs of the new year, “Bohemian Contrasts.” They join cellist David Hetherington and violist Teng Li in a performance of Schulhoff’s String Sextet and Joaquin Valdepeñas in Brahms’ unforgettable Clarinet Quintet in B-minor, Op.115. Pianist Serouj Kradjian fills out the rest of the program with piano works by Liszt and Janáček.

KWCMS’s 40th: The Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society has designated the week of November 28 to December 7 to mark its considerable achievement. Over the years the cumulative volume of talented performers who have made their way to Jan and Jean Narveson’s home is astonishing enough, but it is the KWCMS’ penchant for programming complete cycle concerts that really makes one sit up and take notice. [For a glimpse into how they do it, see my October 2013 Classical and Beyond column.] Two cycles over the December-January period caught my eye: Trio Celeste’s complete traversal of Beethoven’s Piano Trios December 12, 14 and 16; and the scintillating Duo Concertante performing Schubert’s complete music for violin and piano January 29 and 31. It promises to be  an even more musically satisfying event than the Beethoven. Schubert’s music in this case is consistently of the highest order, charming and melodious; the opportunity to hear all of it should not be missed.

Quick Picks

Dec 6 the prodigious Stewart Goodyear performs Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker entirely on the piano joined by dancers from the National Ballet School of Canada and Ballet Creole, and singers from the Toronto Children’s Chorus.

Dec 7 two recent Glenn Gould School appointees, celebrated pianist John O’Conor and former first cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra, Desmond Hoebig, team up for Beethoven’s serene Cello Sonata No.3 in A Major, Op.69. O’Conor will play a selection of Nocturnes by his Irish countryman John Field and by Chopin; Yehonatan Berick, Cordelia Paw and Barry Shiffman join them for Schumann’s masterful Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op.44.

Dec 7 two admirable pianists make their Toronto debut in Mooredale Concerts’ “Piano Dialogue.” Wonny Song will play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and David Jalbert Poulenc’s Les soirées de Nazelles before coming together for duets by Ravel and Schubert and Rachmaninoff’s Suite No.2 in C Major, Op.17 for two pianos.

Dec 12 Anastasia Rizikov brings her already considerable 15-year-old experience to Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 accompanied by Sinfonia Toronto before performing a staggering KWCMS solo concert Jan 24. Bach, Chopin and Liszt lead in to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; then after intermission Chopin and Mozart precede Balakirev’s fiendishly difficult Islamey.

Jan 9 Angela Hewitt, the subject of this month’s cover story, is joined by mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter in a program rich in songs by Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Fauré, Debussy and Chaminade. Interspersed between them Hewitt will play piano music by Schubert, Brahms and Chabrier.

Jan 14, 15, 17 and 18 mark the beginning of the TSO’s Mozart@259 festival curated by Les Violons du Roy’s Bernard Labadie. The impressive young British conductor and keyboardist Matthew Halls leads the orchestra in three varied programs showing Mozart’s range as an instrumental composer.

Jan 22 to 25 will see the Montreal Symphony’s Kent Nagano make a rare foray into the forest of period instruments as he leads Tafelmusik in performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 in C Minor, Op. 67 and his Mass in C Major, Op.67. It will be fascinating to compare this performance of the symphony to that in Nagano’s recent recording [reviewed by Richard Haskell in this issue of The WholeNote].

Feb 7 Pinchas Zukerman makes his final Toronto appearance as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in an RTH program with two of Brahms’ most beloved concertos. Zukerman is joined by NAC principal cellist Amanda Forsyth for the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op.102; Yefim Bronfman is the soloist in the Piano Concerto No.2 in B-flat Major Op. 83, the epitome of 19th century romanticism.

Paul Ennis is managing editor of The WholeNote. He can be reached at editorial@thewholenote.com.

With the climate debate and pipeline protest actions heating up, along with the coming of winter with its potentially destructive storms, we can’t help but feel something is stirring of critical significance that can no longer be ignored. Our very survival as a species is under threat, as we are well aware. Not jolly holiday thoughts to ponder, I know. However, many movements are under way pointing towards a green revolution with a commons-oriented economy and clean energy sources. One of the major voices offering an alternate way comes from the indigenous community with a world view steeped in the traditions of honouring the wisdom of the land and the practices of how to live in a balanced relationship with all creatures and the elemental forces. Music and storytelling is just one of the ways these traditions and knowledge are passed on through the generations.

Manitoulin Island-born Odawa First Nations composer Barbara Croall has risen to the challenge of this cultural moment in her new work titled Manidoog, which translates into English as the spirit beings who dwell in the waters. In this epic work in ten movements, she weaves together ten traditional stories that speak to the importance of our right relationship with water. The work was commissioned by Trio d’Argento and will be premiered on December 11 as part of Music Toronto’s season. I spoke with one of the trio members, flutist Sibylle Marquardt about the work, the upcoming concert, and the trio’s relationship with Croall.

Manidoog opens with a story that summons the presence of the underwater panther. As the piece progresses stories of different creatures and beings weave their presence onto the stage: the spirit turtle emerging from the waters; the rising of the Venus morning star; the pregnant skywoman falling through a hole down onto earth; the winds and a swan catching her as birdcalls fill the air. Stories of the underworld play an important role as well: music brought forth by the guardian of the underworld, the mermaids and mermen luring people disrespectful of the waters down into the underworld; the trickster energies of the little people who live in the forest and along the river banks; the rising and falling of the giant underworld serpent; and, finally, the protective energy of the thunderbird who flies over the world and its waters. Overall, this combination creates something akin to a visionary narrative highlighting a fundamentally different way of living in relationship with the spirit of water and all relations.

The piece is fully staged with lighting design and the players moving from station to station to play out the different characters of the stories. Croall herself is one of the performers, playing traditional instruments and singing and speaking in the Ojibwe language. Trio member Peter Stoll performs on the full family of clarinet instruments, recorder and whistle, while Marquardt performs on the full range of flutes. Pianist Anna Romai performs on the keys while Croall joins her at times playing inside on the piano strings. There is also a recorded soundtrack with environmental sounds to add to the mix.

Marquardt has enjoyed a long relationship with Croall, at one time performing in Croall’s Ergo Ensemble. She is passionate about the importance of this work and the need for us to rethink our relationship with the earth and in particular, the waters. The rest of Trio d’Argento’s concert that evening blends together a work by Beethoven, a piece by French composer Jacques Ibert and a funky, jazz/world music-inspired piece by Minnesota-based composer Russell Peterson. The evening will also be a celebration of Trio d’Argento’s new CD just being released on the Opening Day label that includes the Ibert piece. To learn more about this rising virtuosic ensemble, I encourage you to check out their website (triodargento.ca).

Concerts in December

New Music Concerts: On the theme of new music talents named Barbara, the January 20 New Music Concerts joins with Music Toronto January 20 to present a program performed by Halifax-based pianist Barbara Pritchard. In 2009 Pritchard was awarded the Canadian Music Centre’s Music Ambassador title for her work in promoting and performing the music of Canadian composers. This concert includes 11 Canadian works by composers primarily from the Atlantic region, and an aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Prior to this event on December 11, New Music Concerts joins up with the Music Gallery to present two Canadian premieres of pieces by Italian-German guest composer Marco Stroppa, along with a new commissioned work from Paul Steenhuisen and a performance of Elliot Carter’s final work entitled Epigrams written in 2012. Stroppa worked for part of his career as a composer and researcher in Paris at IRCAM, an institution devoted to computer music. He will bring his electronic expertise to this concert, performing alongside trombonist Benny Sluchin and saxophonist Wallace Halladay.

More in December: In amongst all the traditional holiday music available in December, the Music Gallery is offering a unique way to tune into the holiday spirit with “Unsilent Night,” an outdoor walking event created by Phil Kline on December 19. Audience members are invited to bring their own portable sound system (boom box, etc) to play back one of four tracks of music, while being led on a guided walk through alleyways, crowded streets or empty spaces. You will experience your own unique mix of the tracks and the specific acoustics of each place visited. (And after the walk, at 9pm, you can return to the Music Gallery for a festive fundraiser with the O’Pears a female a cappella trio performing folk, R&B, celtic, and bluegrass music.)

Up on St. Joseph St., on December 13, the Canadian Music Centre presents festive Canadian music in its 21st century Virtuoso series with tenor Sean Clark. December is also CD celebration time at the CMC, with two concerts of new releases: on December 12, composer and turntablist Nicole Lizée with her Bookburners launch and on December16, composer and oboist Elizabeth Raum with her Myth, Legend, Romance CD.

And speaking of CD-related concerts, I’ll be presenting works in 5.1 surround sound from my Sounddreaming CD at Array Space on December 5. Another celebration, also at Array, salutes the iconic work of experimentalist Udo Kasemets spread over two days with screenings of Kasemets’ videos December 6 and a concert on December 7. These concerts are part of this season’s ArrayMusic’s concert series.

January

The University of Toronto’s New Music Festival: Moving into January/February, we have the U of T annual New Music festival running from January 30 to February 8. This year’s festival was inspired by a meeting between University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music composer Norbert Palej and China’s Hu Xiao-ou during the Beijing Modern Music Festival a few years ago. What began as a friendship has grown to a cultural exchange. This past October, Palej travelled with 11 colleagues from the Faculty of Music to China and Hong Kong presenting lectures, masterclasses and concerts of music from U of T faculty composers and students. Now, Palej is organizing this year’s New Music Festival to present the works of Hu and several of his students from the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, as well as a work by Wendy Lee, who currently teaches in Hong Kong. Both Hu and Lee will be in attendance in Toronto, and interestingly, both have Canadian connections. Hu is a part-time resident of Vancouver and Lee was a former student at U of T studying with Chan Ka Nin. The concerts on February 4 and 5 will feature chamber music by the guest Chinese composers, including the performance of a new work by Hu by the Cecilia Quartet.

The festival will finish off with a collaboration Palej developed with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. On February 6 and 7, the orchestra will perform concerts featuring the world premiere of Hu’s new pipa concerto with Lan Weiwei as soloist. Also on the program will be the premiere of Palej’s Shan Shui Miniatures based on Chinese folk themes, and the winning pieces of the Friendship Orchestral Composition Competition. Other festival events include concerts on January 30 and February 1 of student operas based on a libretto by Michael Albano and on February 2, works by international emerging composers performed by the Ecouter Ensemble. The festival will finish on a lighter note with a modern jazz concert on Sunday February 8. The full schedule of events will be on the Faculty of Music website early in December.

Esprit Orchestra: Esprit’s January 29 concert brings us the world premiere of English composer Philip Cashian’s the world’s turning inspired by the sculptures of Stephen Vince. The visual theme continues with Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason’s Over Light Earth which pays tribute to painters Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. The program is rounded out with works by New Music Concerts’ artistic director Robert Aitken, whose Berceuse explores the balance of Yin and Yang while commemorating those “who sleep before us” and an Esprit-commissioned new work by Canadian Samuel Andreyev titled The Flash of the Instant.

Overview: And finally to finish off 2014 and move into 2015, an overview of other noteworthy new music concert events for December and January.

Canadian Music Centre: December 18 with the Toronto Guitar Society. Premiere of works by Leggatt, Oickle, Sandquist and Tse. January 13 the CMC’s 21st Century Virtuoso series presents works from Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux and Gilles Tremblay’s Musique de l’eau performed by Ryan MacEvoy McCullough

Music Gallery Emergents Series: December 4 curated by Melody McKiver. Works by Clarinet Panic Deluxx and Cris Derksen, two cellist/composers. January 30 curated by Felicity Williams: Dan Fortin and Robin Dann/Claire Harvie.

Exultate Chamber Singers: December 5. Works by Canadian composers in their “A Canadian Noël” concert.

Spectrum Music: December 6. Concert titled “Journeys” with works for guitar and string quartet by Alex Goodman and Graham Campbell with the Ton Beau String Quartet.

Syrinx Concerts Toronto: December 7. Concert includes Stillness of the 7th Autumn by Brian Cherney

Toy Piano Composers: January 24. Concert titled “Grit” with works by Brophy, Labadie, Pearce, Puello, Tam and others. Performances by Chelsea Shanoff and Nadia Klein with the TPC Ensemble.

 group of 27: January 30. Concert includes Voyageur by Andrew Staniland.

Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com.

My last column, highlighting the music programming at the Aga Khan Museum, noted the concert appearance of Toronto’s award-winning group Autorickshaw at the AKM auditorium on November 15. I attended the show to get an overview of their current repertoire, the range of which is wide and the boundaries fluid.

In addition to arrangements of South Indian classical and folk songs, original songs and numbers based on tala principles (overlapping Carnatic solkattu and Hindustani tabla bols) alternated with good-humoured ironic takes on 1970s Bollywood hit film songs. “Autorickshawified” hybrid adaptations of songs by Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen – “Bird on a Wire” rendered in a relaxed 7/4 – and the jazz standard “Caravan” were among my personal favourites. While vivacious vocalist Suba Sankaran, the heart of the group, claimed front stage centre for most of the concert, the skilled band comprised of Dylan Bell (bass/keyboards/beatboxing), Ed Hanley (tabla), with Ben Riley (drum set) and John Gzowski (guitar) stepping in for the night, shone in solos. “Caravan” was a rollicking example.

Well into Autorickshaw’s second decade of genre-blending musicking, summing up its repertoire, which is very often multi-genre and transnational in reach, is not an effortless undertaking; especially so for a persnickety listener like me. Autorickshaw’s website nevertheless helpfully weighs in, situating its music “on the cultural cutting edge, as contemporary jazz, funk and folk easily rub shoulders with the classical and popular music of India.”

That statement makes such hybridization sound like an easy reach. It’s anything but. Anyone who has seriously attempted it, or listened to fusion experiments where genres from across the world “easily rub shoulders,” knows how easy it is to fail to satisfy musical expectations – and for many reasons. In fact it is one of the most difficult forms of musical alchemy to pull off effectively and gracefully. Having persevered as a group for a dozen years Autorickshaw is proof that diligent work in the transcultural song mines can pay off. In their case it’s been rewarded with two JUNO nominations for World Music Album of the Year and the 2005 Canadian Independent Music Award. In 2008 they were awarded the John Lennon Songwriting Competition Grand Prize in World Music, in addition to the CAPACOA Touring Artist of the Year.

Autorickshaw’s web statement also accurately geographically locates the overlapping bi-continental musical territories the group primarily explores: North America and the Indian subcontinent. Furthermore testing the effectiveness of such transculturalism in the fire of international audiences via touring seems an essential part of the group enterprise. Autorickshaw has done just that. It’s been on the road exporting its “Canadian-made Indo-fusion” not only across its Canadian home base, the U.S.A. and Europe, but also to India during a three-week tour in late 2006.

As I write this the Autorickshaw Trio consisting of Sankaran, Hanley and Bell is preparing for an unprecedented two-month subcontinent-wide tour of at least two dozen dates in ten projected cities in India and Nepal (in Pokhara and Kathmandu). Departing Toronto on November 28, “we are acting as our own agents, mainly cold-calling our way to India and Nepal” wrote Sankaran in an email interview, building on “contacts [made] the last time we toured India.” She further predicted that “once on the ground, we will likely be approached to do other performances in the various regions we are touring. This happened the last time around as well, so we’re trying to build some buffer time for that.”

I asked about the sort of venues they will be playing. Sankaran commented on their diversity. “We are doing a variety of shows, from soft-seaters to outdoor festivals, from clubs to hotel dates, house concerts, workshops in ashrams, and collaborating with string and choral departments in schools; the majority are performances, [but] we’re offering some workshops as well.”

The incentive for the tour initially came from the group’s desire to commemorate, on December 3, 2014 the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal “gas tragedy,” widely considered the world’s worst industrial disaster. Sankaran and Hanley have a personal commitment to the affected people of that city. In 2009 they co-wrote and recorded the song “The City of Lakes.” All proceeds from the song go to the Bhopal Medical Appeal which funds two local clinics offering free healthcare to thousands of survivors. While in Bhopal the Autorickshaw Trio will also appear as the opening act at the Indian premiere of the motion picture about the disaster, A Prayer for Rain, starring Martin Sheen. Another focal point of the tour is the promotion of songs from its strong new album Humours of Autorickshaw, in newly-minted trio arrangements.

In an email interview with Hanley I wondered how exporting Autorickshaw’s hybrid music to South Asia compared to performing and marketing it domestically. He replied with insight and humour: “There may be weight to the Canadian adage that you can’t ‘make it’ at home until you make it elsewhere. I’m not sure why that seems to be true, but anecdotally it does seem to be the case. We’re not trying to make it in India, but perhaps to lay foundations for future tours … The fact that we incorporate a lot of traditional Indian classical elements in our music seems to be a gateway for South Asian audiences. It’s [also] always nice to represent Canada and Canadian music,” on the international stage, therefore “we’re looking forward to playing some Autorickshawified Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Canadian folk songs (“J’entends le Moulin” with solkattu and tabla bols anyone?)”

I asked Hanley how he expected the various genres their repertoire explores to resonate with tour audiences. “We will definitely adapt our repertoire to the venue and audience. For example we’re doing some Christmas carols with local musicians in Darjeeling – at their request. That should be fun!” He added: “New audiences are always an adventure. There is a magic in performing for people who know, and perhaps like, your music, but there’s a very different kind of magic playing for an audience who has never heard you before, hearing the music … for the first time.”

As for South Asian sales of Autorickshaw music mediated via physical product vs downloads, Hanley noted that they “will take some CDs, and will ship a box ahead. We will carry a lot of download cards, which we can give away as a musical business card, or sell much cheaper than a physical CD. [Plus] all our music is online [and we’ve uploaded] lots of videos onto our YouTube channel.”

Hanley neatly summed up the music scene in India: “It’s really happening [with] clubs popping up. There are festivals galore, with lots of bands producing original music. What we do might come from a different place simply because we grew up in Canada and have a strong Western foundation in various forms such as pop, jazz etc. And why are Indian presenters eager to present us? I’m not sure. Could it be our [unique] Canadian perspective on our blend of styles?

On one hand Autorickshaw’s two-month tour sounds like a grand adventure in (re)encountering the roots of some of the musical streams it has been exploring throughout its collective career. It will also no doubt expand the awareness among South Asian audiences of a Canadian world music accent. I for one will enjoy reading the trio’s “reports from the road,” vicariously experiencing their musical travels which will take them on December 15 to the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory, Nepal, and on January 26 to SpringFest in Kharagpur, India.

Following are some of the stories I would likely have written about in depth had I not been sidetracked into talking about covert world music elements embedded in Canadian Christmas repertoire (Aaron Davis, page 14) and Canadian world musicians about to embed themselves in South Asia.

Small World Music Centre: December 5 Nazar-i Turkwaz (My Turquoise Gaze), four leading singers and instrumentalists on the Toronto world music scene, take the Centre’s stage. Brenna MacCrimmon, Maryem Tollar, Sophia Grigoriadis and Jayne Brown are the remarkable musicians whose appearance at the Aga Khan Museum I wrote about last month. Having collected, performed and recorded songs from Turkey, the Middle East, Greece and the Balkans for decades, you can expect masterful renditions of this repertoire, “cultivating a sweet sonic union” along the way.

December 6 may well mark a first in my column: a musical film screening. The Centre presents two films by American director Matthew Dunning collectively tilted The Stirring of a Thousand Bells (2014), released on DVD by the hipster Seattle, Washington label Sublime Frequencies. This fascinating niche publisher focuses exclusively on “acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers.” Its roster encompasses audio field recordings, repackaged folk and pop compilations, radio collages and DVDs, mostly from Southeast Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

Dunning’s films take viewers on a musical-visual journey of life in Central Java, Indonesia, focussing on gamelan music, a regional orchestral practice unbroken – though continuously shifted geographically, refreshed stylistically and hybridized – for some four centuries. In the city of Solo, where a Sultan still reigns, gamelan and its meditative palace dances remain a part of everyday life. I’ve been to Java five times studying and playing gamelan, and still feel like a beginner in the face of the complex interactive music’s inner workings and emotional life. The director will be present to contextualize his own gamelan practice and his films.

Ensemble Polaris: January 18, 2015 at 2pm the Gallery Players of Niagara present Ensemble Polaris in “Definitely Not the Nutcracker” at the Silver Spire United Church, St. Catharines. This fun concert celebrates Tchaikovsky’s popular music for the ballet but with a whimsical twist. Arrangements by the Ensemble alternate with songs and instrumentals from the Russian folk tradition. The instrumentation gives a hint of what they’re up to. Marco Cera (guitar, jarana barroca); Kirk Elliott (violin, Celtic harp, mandolin); Margaret Gay (cello, guiro); Katherine Hill (voice, nyckelharpa); Alison Melville (baroque flute, recorders); Colin Savage (clarinet, bass clarinet); Debashis Sinha (percussion, birimbao) and Jeff Wilson (percussion, musical saw). This new year why not stretch your musical legs, travel to St. Catharines and experience something other than customary?

Master Shajarian: January 31, 2015 [postponed to the fall of 2015] Persian master singer, composer, teacher and instrument innovator Mohammad Reza Shajarian takes centre stage at Roy Thomson Hall. Shajarian has been widely celebrated and decorated at home and internationally. UNESCO in France presented him in 1999 with the prestigious Picasso Award, one of Europe’s highest honours. In 2006 he was decorated with the UNESCO Mozart Medal and he has twice been nominated for the Grammy for Best World Music album. I had the privilege of hearing him sing about a decade ago and was impressed with his mastery of the difficult classical dastgah idiom. His vocal performances are justly savoured for their technical beauty, power and strong emotional presence. This concert is another good way to celebrate your good luck in reaching 2015 in good nick.

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

The term “Christmas carol” has become a kind of catchall for a multifarious group of songs from many parts the world and about 500 years of history. These songs emerge from hiding once a year, saturate our brains like an aural snowstorm and then retreat to their lairs for another ten months.

Christmas music, much of it beautiful, serene and profound, is commonly used by stores of all types to attempt to move product and it’s not surprising that people’s frustration with the hard sell becomes anger at the music itself. I’m not blaming the businesses, who have their own bills to pay, but carols really ought to be for singing, not for shopping. This is where choirs have a crucial role, because as I’ve written in the past, carol concerts are one of the few areas left in modern life where audiences of non-musicians are invited to participate in music making.

Christmas saturation brings with it musical anachronism, as carol singers hired for the holidays often find themselves wandering through 21st century malls, dressed up in garb that is meant to evoke late 19^th-century England, while warbling tunes written by an American composer from Pennsylvania in 1951. Here’s a quick guide to help you differentiate one Christmas song from another.

Carols. Rarer than you’d think, carols are thought to have originated from dances; the words were sometimes cadged from pre-Christian sources and retro-fitted to coincide with Christmas celebrations. There were carols for all seasonal and liturgical occasions of the year, and it is only in the last couple of centuries that carolling became solely associated with Christmas. Carols often tell stories, have lively rhythms and a directness of expression that has actually caused church authorities to ban them on occasion. “The Holly and the Ivy,” with its pagan imagery and dancelike tempo, might be considered a true carol.

Christmas Hymns. Often mistaken for carols, Christmas hymns tend to be grander, statelier, with more ornate and even stuffy language. The classic familiar ones were often written by professional priests and clerics, such as Wesley’s “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” At their best, such as in the work of John Goss (“See Amid the Winter’s Snow”), Christmas hymns combine brilliant lyrics with pellucid song composition.

Christmas Anthems. Compositions with a Christmas theme, often composed or arranged specifically for choral performance, and not meant for group singing. Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols and much of the work of John Rutter fall into this category.

Christmas Songs. This is almost an entirely American,20th-century phenomenon that exploded with the rise of recording technology. Like hymns, Christmas songs tend to tell us what we ought to be feeling, albeit from a secular perspective: excitement, anticipation, togetherness, as opposed to religious fervour. It’s hard to contest the sentiment, but after weeks of it, you start to feel like you’re being beaten on the head with a soft pillow; it doesn’t really hurt, but you wish it would stop. I wonder if the depressed feelings that many experience around Christmas time has to do in part with the gap between the Christmas song paradigm and the reality of credit bills and feuding relatives?  Nonetheless, at their best all four categories of Christmas song contain works of genius. As I pointed out in an earlier column, Christmas has become a big pan-cultural party that can reasonably be enjoyed by people of all backgrounds.

On to the concerts: I’m going to assume that the readers of this column need no urging from me to find a Messiah performance or a carol singalong this time of year, and so will instead focus on some concerts that take an unusual angle, as well as looking ahead at the post-Christmas concert scene in the new year.

Trinity Pageant: There are many pageants and Lessons and Carols services being held this year at churches and civic centres – please check the listings for events in your area. The Christmas pageant mounted by the downtown Church of the Holy Trinity (just behind Eaton Centre) is a cultural event that has proved so popular over the years that the pageant runs into repeat performances, taking place at various times between December 12 and 21.

Briggs’ Snowman: On December 7 the Bach Children’s Chorus joins Orchestra Toronto for a concert that features the animated film The Snowman , with live musical accompaniment by the orchestra and choir. The film is based on the celebrated book by English illustrator Raymond Briggs. Briggs’ trademark combination of gentle imagery and dark, disturbing themes is a welcome antidote to more sugary Christmas entertainments. The concert also features the premiere of Canadian Dean Burry’s A Hockey Cantata. Burry’s work for children is accessible without being pandering, and this concert is highly recommended.

Brother Heinrich: On a similar note, on Dec 20 the Toronto Children’s Chorus will perform A Chorus Christmas: Ceremonial Splendour. a concert that includes John Rutter’s enjoyable choral fable, Brother Heinrich’s Christmas, about the 14th-century Dominican mystic Heinrich Seuse, thought to be responsible for composing the famous macaronic carol In Dulci Jubilo. The piece is narrated by legendary actor/writer Gordon Pinsent.

Coro San Marco was founded in 1995 by Toronto residents who hail from Italy’s Veneto region (the area around Venice). On December 6 they perform their Advent/Christmas concert, with a selection of Christmas songs from around the world.

Victoria Scholars:  On December 19 and 21 this chamber choir of men’s voices, perform Yuletide on the Cool Canadian Side, a concert of carols arranged by Canadian composers.

Echo Women’s Choir: The ancient concept of the Divine Feminine came to the fore in the last century, as a spiritual conjunct to the struggles for women’s rights that were carried out under the banner of modern feminism. Male-centered aspects of monotheistic worship in Christian and other religions have been challenged and reassessed, and the spiritual insights and strengths of female religious leaders, thinkers, mystics and composers have become part of our modern discussion. On December 7 the Echo Women’s Choir perform The Divine Feminine, a concert that includes music by the12th-century German composer Hildegard von Bingen.

This concert is also notable for a rare appearance by the co-founders of Stringband, Marie-Lynn Hammondand Bob Bossin. Toronto audiences born before the Beatles first album came out may remember Stringband well from a series of celebrated albums from the 1970s, as well as their many club, concert and folk festival appearances.

Bossin and Hammond are two of the most skilled songwriters to come out of the first wave of the Canadian modern folk music movement. Bossin writes in a deliberately political and historical manner, taking politics and cultural issues as subjects for his clever and amusing songs. Hammond’s work is more introspective, mining her family history, in particular her mixed French and English background, for truths found amidst the conflicts and encounters that are part of the Canadian experience. Hammond is based in Toronto, but Bossin now lives on the West Coast, and any chance to see these two folk legends perform together is not to be missed.

A Grand “Midsummer”: Looking ahead to the new year, on January 16 and 17 the Grand Philharmonic Choir Female Chorus joins the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” a concert title which in January is going to seem either like wishful thinking or rubbing it in. But the music selection is excellent: Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music; Mendelssohn’s famous incidental music for the above play and selections from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Purcell never set Shakespeare’s poetry, but The Fairy Queen has great moments of humour, pathos and the composer’s peerless text settings.

Tafelmusik Orchestra and Chamber Choir present a Beethoven double bill from January 22 to 25. The orchestra plays Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and then are joined by the choir for his Mass in C. Guest conducting is the Montreal Symphony Orchestra’s Kent Nagano.

Both pieces were written in the first decade of the 19th century. The Mass in C was composed for the Austrian ruler Prince Nikolaus Esterházy  II in 1807, and has the classical structure of liturgical works composed by Mozart and Haydn under similar conditions and royal patronage. At the premiere there was a scene – the prince was not sufficiently appreciative of the piece, perhaps -- and Beethoven left the concert venue in a fury, a breach of royal protocol that would have been unthinkable, and professionally fatal, to the older composers mentioned above. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony captures unforgettably the spirit that led the composer to assert his humanity and freedom against the patronage system to which most European composers had been forced to submit for centuries. 

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

In deference to holiday tradition, I’ll mention the Messiahs first: Tafelmusik’s sing-along Messiah will be at Massey Hall at 2pm on December 21 this year, while Aradia’s Dublin Messiah will happen on the December 20 at 7:30 at St. Anne’s Anglican Church. These are the only two Messiahs in Toronto I think you need to see. If a Messiah was all you were planning on catching over the holidays, please turn the page!

Right. Now if you’re serious about music, and you want to find some first-rate medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music this holiday season, or if you’re just looking for an antidote to every saccharine Christmas carol you’ve been subjected to in every shopping mall you’ve been to since the beginning of November, keep reading. You certainly might find something new in the Toronto Consort’s Christmas concert, “The Little Barley-Corne,” a program of Yuletide hits from Renaissance Europe. This program is based on the Consort’s fifth album of the same name, which although, or indeed perhaps because, it included very few tunes that were immediately recognizable as traditional Christmas carols, was a breakthrough hit for the Consort, and quickly established them as a Toronto-based early music group that deserved to be taken seriously. It will certainly be a special treat to revisit this seminal album again after 15 years. The Toronto Consort performs The Little Barley-Corne December 12 to 14 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre.

Caprice: Another early music group that deserves our attention is Montreal’s Ensemble Caprice, a recorder-based baroque ensemble that quickly gained recognition on the Montreal scene for their free, and at times bizarre, interpretations of Telemann and Vivaldi. This group can typically be trusted to blow the roof off the concert hall. Caprice will be coming to Ontario to present their Christmas program “Baroque Christmas Around the World,” which features Arcangelo Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, some 17th-century South American songs, traditional carols and music by J. S. Bach and Handel. It also has the potential to be more subdued than a typical Caprice concert – a roof-raising Christmas concert being somewhat blasphemous in the eyes of the concertgoing public – but I can guarantee the group will perform with panache. This all takes place at the Port Hope United Church in Port Hope December 12 at 7:30pm and in Barrie December 14 at Grace United Church on December 14 at 2:30pm.

Poculi Ludique: If you’re looking for something completely out there as an alternative to Christmas carols and the Messiah, or if you’re just something of a medievalist, consider checking out this group of medieval-revival performers and musicians: the Poculi Ludique Societas (or the “Cup and Game Society”). This group will be performing selections from the York Mystery Plays on December 13 at 7:30pm at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church. The York Mystery plays were a series of performances based on bible stories ranging from the Genesis creation to the Passion of Jesus that were performed in the city of York around the 14th century; some were centred around the biblical story of Christmas. Each guild in town was responsible for a specific performance (based around a Christian divine miracle or mystery, hence the name). The mystery plays seem like a particularly insightful view into what life was like in the Middle Ages, given that the typical medieval European was a devout Christian and a member of a guild of some kind, but couldn’t read the bible (or even his own name) and depended on dramatizations like the York Mystery Plays to understand what he was supposed to be believing. In any case, the Poculi Ludique Societas are all medieval scholars from the University of Toronto and can probably explain all of this much better than I can. Plus, the music is under the supervision of Larry Beckwith of Toronto Masque Theatre, so the musical part of the production is in capable hands. As an unusual form of entertainment that nevertheless captures the original meaning of Christmas, this may be exactly what the Christmas season needs.

Tafel’s Quest: But if you’re looking for good live music, there’s no need to limit yourself to holiday-themed entertainment in the coming weeks. For example, Tafelmusik’s musical quest for a new artistic director, featuring the most outstanding violinists they can find, continues in the beginning of December. Amandine Beyer, a virtuoso violinist from France, will lead the ensemble in an all-French program at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre on December 4 to 7. It looks to be a killer program of French composers, including Rameau, Corrette, Campra and Rebel. Beyer herself will attempt to wow the crowd with a Leclair concerto, and we’ll see once and for all if the orchestra can put on a sublime performance of French baroque repertoire. It’s all very exciting, as you can probably guess.

Scaramella: Another Toronto group that’s keeping busy over the holiday season is Scaramella, led by Joëlle Morton. They’ll be playing a concert devoted to the English composer William Lawes on December 6 at Victoria College Chapel at 8pm. As a gamba-based ensemble, doing a concert devoted to Lawes just makes sense – he was great composer of music for everything viol, from duets to consorts of four, five and six gambas. As a figure from music history, he’s even more compelling, living as he did during the period of the English Renaissance and taking the laws of composition (sorry, couldn’t resist) to strange and unusual places. His music is both engaging and intelligent, but his approach to tonality is at times either extremely liberal or extremely strange. If you don’t manage to catch their Lawes concert, Scaramella is also doing a program of 17th-century German composers in Victoria College Chapel on January 31 at 8pm. This time the group will be joined by countertenor Daniel Cabena – this concert could be worth a look as well.

Out of the ordinary: If you’re looking for something to do over New Year’s Day, you might want to drop by Heliconian Hall at 2:30, where the Musicians in Ordinary will be playing their annual New Year’s Day concert. They’ll be joined by Christopher Verrette and Patricia Ahern of Tafelmusik as well as Boris Medicky on harpsichord for a mixed program including Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Corelli. The Musicians have put together a solid lineup of players to play some decent repertoire for this concert.

Finally, there are a couple of other concerts worth mentioning as we get into the coldest days of winter: Toronto Masque Theatre will be performing Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse on January 15, 16 and 17 at 8pm. And a group of six young Toronto-based violinists are taking an encyclopedic approach to concert programming and tackling all six of Bach’s unaccompanied solo violin partitas in one go. That concert will include Tafelmusik violinists Julia Wedman, Cristina Zacharias and Aisslinn Nosky, as well as Elyssa Lefurgey-Smith of Aradia. You can catch it all at Metropolitan United Church on January 9 at 7:30pm.

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

The two largest-scale opera productions for the period from December 1 to February 7 are those of the Canadian Opera Company’s winter season. Taken together they provide an example of the two models that the COC is currently following: partnering and production.

From January 24 to February 21, the company presents Mozart’s Don Giovanni, a co-production with Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Bolshoi Theatre and Teatro Real Madrid. This production is an example of what the COC calls partnering: the company contributes money toward the production, but there is little or no COC input in the design or direction.  So, much depends upon choosing one’s partners wisely.

Don Giovanni had its premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2010, directed by acclaimed Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov. The most controversial aspect of the production is that Tcherniakov has replaced Da Ponte’s original scenario with his own. He reimagines Mozart’s characters as the neurotic members of one present-day bourgeois family. Zerlina is now Donna Anna’s daughter from her first marriage, while Leporello is “a young relative of the Commendatore’s, living in his house.” Don Giovanni is presented as unhappily married to Donna Elvira. In the new plot Don Giovanni does not destroy himself, rather, his relatives combine to destroy him. The production has been around long enough that it is already available on DVD and in excerpts on YouTube for anyone who wishes to see whether Tcherniakov’s concept works or not.

For the COC, Russell Braun sings Don Giovanni, Kyle Ketelsen is Leporello, Jennifer Holloway is Donna Elvira, Jane Archibald is Donna Anna and Michael Schade is Don Ottavio. Michael Hofstetter conducts.

In terms of COC original productions, from January 31 to February 22 it presents Die Walküre, a production designed and directed by Canadians and owned solely by the COC. This COC production of Wagner’s Die Walküre had its premiere in 2004 and was revived in 2006 as the second opera of Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle. This will be the first time it has been revived on its own. Atom Egoyan directs, Michael Levine is the designer and Johannes Debus conducts.

Of particular note is that renowned German soprano Christine Goerke will be making her role debut in Toronto as Brünnhilde. Clifton Forbis, who sang Siegmund in this production in 2004 and 2006, returns to sing the role again. Sieglinde, Siegmund’s sister and lover will be sung by Heidi Melton; Wotan is Johan Reuter; Hunding, Sieglinde’s brutal husband is Dimitry Ivashchenko; and Fricka, Wotan’s implacable goddess-wife is Janina Baechle.

Crunching the numbers: At the end of October this year the COC held its Annual General Meeting covering the 2013/14 fiscal year and reported “an impressive average attendance of 94 percent (an increase of 4 percent over last season),” a figure that was duly disseminated in the media. By comparison in 2012/13 the COC had 90 percent attendance.

Digging deeper into the numbers is interesting though: in 2012/13 the company presented  61 performances totalling 114,133 tickets sold. In 2013/14 it had 94 percent attendance for 58 performances totalling 111,421 tickets sold. Thus the percentage “increase” of 4 percent at each show had as its corollary a 2.4 percent decline in overall attendance.Worrying is that the number of tickets sold has now declined for the fifth year in a row. Average attendance of 94 percent per show is indeed impressive, but not if the only way to achieve those numbers is by decreasing the number of productions, and the number of performances of those productions.

Other diversions: The COC winter season only begins at the end of January, but there are many operatic diversions in December. The starriest of these is a concert production with orchestra of Gioacchino Rossini’s last, and, many would say, greatest opera, Guillaume Tell (1829). It is based on Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell (1804) about Switzerland’s struggle for independence from the Habsburg Empire in the 14th century. The most famous episode is when the Habsburg tyrant Gessler demands proof of Tell’s skill as a marksman by having him shoot an apple off the head of Tell’s own son. Musically, the opera is best known for its overture, which despite the fame accruing to it from its use in The Lone Ranger and in countless cartoons, in fact provides a précis of the entire action of the opera.

The single performance on December 5 is part of a North American tour of the Teatro Regio Torino with its full orchestra and chorus. The opera-in-concert will be presented in its Italian version (from 1833) with English surtitles and will be conducted by the company’s famed music director Gianandrea Noseda. Featured among the all-Italian cast are baritone Luca Salsi as Guglielmo Tell, mezzo-soprano Anna Maria Chiuri as his wife Edwige, soprano Marina Bucciarelli as his son Jemmy and bass Gabriele Sagona as the villainous Austrian governor Gessler. The running time is approximately four hours.

Next in December is another reimagining of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, this time as #UncleJohn by Toronto’s small but feisty Against the Grain Theatre which produced a highly successful Pelléas et Mélisande outdoors earlier this year. Director Joel Ivany’s notion is to change the period to the present and to set the entire action at the reception for the marriage of Zerlina and Masetto. There is no stage. Instead, the singers mingle with and sing from the audience as invited members of the reception. Ivany has translated and updated Da Ponte’s libretto so that Leporello’s famous catalogue aria now counts up Uncle John’s social network followers. Ivany’s version was developed in conjunction with the COC at Banff and had its highly praised premiere there in August 2014.

Cameron McPhail sings Uncle John, Neil Craighead is Leporello, Miriam Khalil is Donna Elvira, Betty Waynne Allison is Donna Anna and Sean Clark is Don Ottavio. The design is by Patrick Du Wors and the accompaniment is by a piano quintet with conductor Miloš Repický at the piano. #UncleJohn plays at The Black Box Theatre, December 11, 13, 15, 17 and 19.

December and January also hold offerings for those seeking music theatre written before Mozart or after Rossini. Toronto Operetta Theatre presents Gilbert and Sullivan’s ever-popular The Mikado December 27, 28 and 31, 2014, and January 2, 3 and 4, 2015. The production features Joseph Angelo, Lucia Cesaroni, Adrian Kramer, David Ludwig and Giles Tomkins. Derek Bate conducts and Guillermo Silva-Marin directs.

From January 15 to 17 Toronto Masque Theatre presents a new production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea (1718) at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse. Lawrence Wiliford sings Acis, Teri Dunn is Galatea, Peter McGillivray is Polyphemus and Graham Thomson is Damon. Larry Beckwith conducts a seven-member period instrument band from the violin. Daniel Taylor’s Schola Cantorum will be the chorus.

Meanwhile Opera by Request is busy with Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (1893) on December 7, Moreno Torroba’s zarzuela Luisa Fernanda (1932) on December 10, the Canadian premiere of Danish composer August Enna’s The Princess and the Pea (1900) on January 11 and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail on January 24. All performances are in concert at the College Street United Church with William Shookhoff as pianist and music director.

 Finally, on February 1, Voicebox: Opera in Concert presents Kurt Weill’s Street Scene (1946) with Jennifer Taverner and Colin Ainsworth. Robert Cooper is the conductor and pianist.

Christopher Hoile is a Toronto-based writer on opera and theatre. He can be contacted at opera@thewholenote.com.