Beat Columns (Live Music)

I miss German composers. They are an unavoidable part of the musical topography for anyone playing music from Mozart to Schoenberg, but in early music, there are only a few chances to play anything German or Austrian. There’s Bach, of course, and the odd piece by Telemann, which I suppose is enough for most non-Germanophiles. Handel’s Messiah rolls around every December, too and a baroque violinist will occasionally program a Biber violin sonata, but that’s about it. There isn’t, alas, exactly a major movement in the city devoted to reviving Heinrich Schutz, nor is anyone particularly interested in programming anything by C.P.E. Bach anymore. Hasse? I never hear him in Toronto. Graun? Forget about it. So I’m particularly indebted to Opera Atelier for increasing diversity and enlivening the musical conversation in the city by adding a bit of Christoph Willibald Gluck to their regular repertoire. More specifically, I’d like to throw my support behind their decision to put on his best-known opera, Orfeo ed Eurydice, this month.

Never heard of Gluck? Don’t worry. Gluck is very much a conventional Classical (with a capital C) composer, so if you know Mozart, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Gluck wrote Orfeo when Mozart was just a child, and given that the opera got its first performance in Vienna, it’s very likely that it was a direct influence on the young composer. It’s reasonable to say that Gluck comes across as an old-fashioned version of Mozart, with perhaps more of a French influence (accompanied recits, dance movements, a lot for the chorus to do) but his Orfeo is much more hummable, than, let’s say, Monteverdi’s. Combine this music with Opera Atelier’s diverse and estimable talents, e.g. Marshall Pynkowski’s direction, and accompaniment furnished by Tafelmusik under David Fallis, and this show is a sure-fire hit. Opera Atelier performs Orfeo ed Eurydice at the Elgin theatre April 9 to 18.

Tafel in the Underworld: The story of Orpheus, the famed musician descending into hell to charm the denizens of the underworld and rescue his princess, has captivated musicians for centuries. As epic stories featuring heroic musicians go, though, the myth of Orpheus still pales, at least in contemporary relevance, to the ongoing saga of Who Will Lead Tafelmusik. Finding yourself under scrutiny as a potential artistic director for one of Canada’s top orchestras is not unlike having to face down Cerberus, a comparison which, I would venture, is not lost on potential candidates.

This month’s installment of the Tafelmusik audition process (a season with invited conductors/concertmasters) brings us violinist Aisslinn Nosky, who will be leading Tafelmusik in a program of music by Purcell, Charpentier and Telemann. Nosky’s got quite a few things going for her, as an up-and-coming musician with a following in Toronto (her chamber band I Furiosi has just about the youngest audience I’ve seen at a classical music concert) as well as having a long history with the group as both a student and full-time member. Is Aisslinn Nosky the next Jeanne Lamon? Does she have what it takes to beat the odds and win Canada’s most coveted music job? Well, we won’t know that until next year. You can, however check it out and decide for yourself from April 23 to 26 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre as well as April 28 at George Weston Recital Hall.

Ahearn at TEMC: There are a number of members of the Tafelmusik crew who are busy this month with a few smaller (and potentially less stressful) chamber music concerts. Tafelmusik violinist Patricia Ahearn will perform a solo concert under the Toronto Early Music Centre banner in a program at St. David’s Anglican Church that features a few of the Germanic stalwarts of the early music repertoire I mentioned earlier – Bach, Biber and Telemann. And what a solo program! It’s a concert of monstrous pieces – namely an unaccompanied Telemann fantasia, the Bach unaccompanied violin sonata in G minor, and the Biber passacaglia. None of these pieces is particularly easy by itself on a program, so all three together on the same bill is quite an ambitious array of difficult music. Watching Ahearn pull this off will be a thrilling experience – she’ll be performing on Sunday April 19, at 2:30pm.

Early at Eastminster: Tafelmusik’s artistic director Jeanne Lamon and principal cellist Christina Mahler are also highlighting a chamber concert at Eastminster United Church in a concert of Haydn and Boccherini on April 18 at 8pm. They’ll be joined by a couple of notable younger musicians – namely Edwin Huizinga and Kerri McGonigle, so this should be an enjoyable performance that brings together a couple of established artists with two of Toronto’s most talented up-and-comers.

Torture at Calvin: Aisslinn Nosky will also be performing earlier in the month with her regular band, I Furiosi at the group’s most regular venue, Calvin Presbyterian Church (26 Deslisle Ave., St. Clair subway). They’re calling it Instruments of Torture, which sounds either particularly unpromising or promising, depending on your bent. One thing it won’t be, though, is painful to the ear; I Furiosi is known for putting together amusing musical miscellanies that never take things too seriously. Given the title, it’s likely to include a few selections to appease your organological fetish, and the group will throw in a pop tease here and there. I Furiosi will be presenting Instruments of Torture along with lutenist Lucas Harris on Friday April 10 at 8pm.

17th-Century Avant Garde: There’s one more chamber concert featuring Tafelmusik violinists going on this month - the group Musicians in Ordinary, probably the hardest-working instrumental group in Toronto, will be presenting a concert featuring Chris Verrette and Patricia Ahearn along with their core duo of soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards. This particular concert, entitled In Stile Moderno, features the music of Renaissance Italy’s avant-gardists. Claudio Monteverdi broke more than a few conventions of traditional style and perceptions of good taste when he began publishing madrigals and instrumental music as a court composer in Mantua. The musical establishment of the day was outraged, but Monteverdi’s musical revolution eventually made him the most famous composer of his day. It’s also interesting to note that he didn’t do it alone - the master had a few followers in his circle who either tried to imitate his style or were just sick of the last two hundred years of tedious Renaissance polyphony. Salamone Rossi was one such disciple, and he didn’t do too badly either: although he never enjoyed Monteverdi’s level of fame, he’s still the most famous (and the most talented) Jewish  classical composer before Mendelssohn.

The Musicians will be dedicating a concert to the music of the aforementioned two audacious Italians along with some of their Mantuan “modern style” contemporaries. You can check them out at Heliconian Hall on May 2 at 8pm. 

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

I wonder if we’ll ever overcome our tendency to judge people by their musical taste? When I see social media memes that make lofty pronouncements about the Power of Music (common elements: sunset; a violin bow; Mozart; a rose on a grand piano), I know what I’m in for when I get to the comments section: predictable complaints about today’s lousy songs; the ignorant new generation; hip hop; Taylor Swift; heavy metal, etc.

I have no problem with honest snobbery, I just wish snobs would be consistent. If your musical preferences are elevated ones, you can’t stop there – Benjamin Britten and cheeseburgers don’t mix. Your tastes in literature, dance, film, visual art, clothes, food and architecture need to be on the same haute plateau. If you’ve achieved that, congratulations, your superb acumen is beautifully integrated into every aspect of your life. Unfortunately, you’re probably insufferable. More likely, you don’t actually exist.

Here’s the key – snobbery works best in opposition. It’s not enough to like something – what are you, eight? To be a true aesthete you have to hate something as well. Our love of Sondheim’s tart rhymes is made keener by our dismissal of Lloyd Webber’s sugary melodic hooks. Our veneration of Bach requires a good sneer at the burghers who preferred Telemann for the prestigious post at the Leipzig Thomaskirche. We hone our love of Hank Williams by sharpening our disdain for Clint Black. Louis Armstrong vs. Wynton Marsalis? I Can’t Even, as the status updates say.

Lovers of choral music yield to no one in their readiness to indulge in a good love it/hate it status fest. But there are elements of choral culture that mitigate this unfortunate tendency and may make us a little more tolerant than say, indie-rock fans or free improv obsessives.

For one thing, there is a strong amateur aspect to choral music, in both the modern and ancient sense. We usually love what makes us feel good, and the modernist asceticism that produced so much defiantly listener-unfriendly music in the last century made less headway in choral circles than, say, orchestral ones. For another, the kind of singing that takes place in liturgical settings, or even plain old group singalongs, has had its influence on choral composers. And finally, children’s choirs are a main entry point of apprenticeship both for musicians and choral music audiences, and composers who write for them know that their music must be visceral, energetic, and above all, fun.

Unfortunately, choral audiences also have a tendency to stick with what they know, and our preference for familiarity and adherence to the cult of the masterwork means that a good deal of interesting music goes unheard. We’re willing to listen to minutiae and fragments from our musical gods – our love of Mozart’s final musical sketchbook, the Requiem in D Minor, proves that. But coming up this month is an exciting revival of a work by a composer who is familiar to us for only a few pages of his entire musical oeuvre.

Parry’s Judith: Anyone who has attended a Last Night of the Proms concert knows Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry’s Jerusalem, and anyone who’s sung in a church choir knows his “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” Parry’s name alone situates him firmly in the 19th century, a time when British imperialism dominated politics and culture. But isn’t that the kind of facile dismissal I deplored above? If music of 18th-century Austria still speaks to us, what about British music from closer to our time, and from a culture that many of us still understand and share?

Parry (1848–1918) had a distinguished career as composer, essayist and teacher. Among other achievements, he wrote some of the first articles in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a resource that remains central to music research today. Unlike composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, whose music seems to have been able to bridge the gap between the Victorian/Edwardian eras and our own, Parry’s has been ignored or dismissed since his death, surfacing most often in the types of settings mentioned above.

On May 3 at Koerner Hall, Toronto conductor/composer Stephanie Martin and her ensemble, the Pax Christi Chorale, are undertaking the North American premiere of a neglected oratorio by Parry, Judith. First performed to great success in 1888, it tells the biblical story of the heroic Jewish heroine who saves her people by her daring assassination of the Assyrian general Holofernes.

Martin’s interest in the piece turned into something of a quest when she discovered that the orchestral parts for Judith were not available from the original publisher. Assembling a research team and enlisting the help of British Parry scholar Jeremy Dibble, Martin created a performing edition of the score on her own. You can read her thoughts about Judith and its recovery process on her blog, at this address: stephaniemartinmusic.com/judith-at-koerner-hall/. Martin and the Pax Christi Chorale have worked incredibly hard on this historic project – which will also include the first full recording of the work – and I truly hope that they get a strong audience turnout for the performance.

Tavener Explored: Another British composer is celebrated in Toronto this month – John Tavener, who died in 2013, almost a century after Parry. On April 16 Soundstreams presents “Song for Athene,” a concert devoted to Tavener’s works, that will also feature music of Jonathan Harvey and Canada’s own Christos Hatzis. David Fallis will lead Choir 21, and Elise Bradley will conduct the Toronto Children’s Chorus. The concert is notable both for the special participation of British soprano Patricia Rozario, a musician who is especially associated with Tavener, and for whom he wrote over 30 works, and for the North American premiere of Tavener’s setting of the Missa Brevis text. For more information see
soundstreams.ca/Song-for-Athene.

Like the Judith concert, I think this exploration of Tavener is an event not to be missed this month. Parry, once celebrated, may be re-emerging from the shadows. Tavener, recently deceased, is greatly popular in choral circles. What will be his fate in the century to come?

Once again, I’m uneasily aware of having neglected many excellent concerts while focusing on just two. Please have a look in the listings and stay informed about what’s taking place this month. In May I will take an in-depth look at the art of a cappella singing. 

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

In previous years April has been the month in the year with the single highest concentration of opera presentations. This year that is not the case. The change may be because Easter falls between April 3 and April 5 pushing some presentations into March and delaying others. Or it may simply be that opera companies have tried to spread their offerings out more evenly over March through May. Even so, the Canadian Opera Company, Opera Atelier and Toronto Operetta Theatre all have productions this month, with TOT offering a rare revival and Opera Atelier a 19th-century revision of an 18th-century masterpiece.

COC’s Barber: The first opera to arrive will be the COC’s new production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville playing 13 performances from April 17 through May 22. This is a co-production with Houston Grand Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux and Opera Australia directed by the group known as by its Catalan name of Els Comediants. If the name of the group sounds vaguely familiar it is because the group was responsible for the staging of Rossini’s La Cenerentola in 2012, a production most people remember for its inclusion of stylized mice as onlookers. This will be the 11th time the COC has presented Barber, the last time in 2008 directed by Michael Patrick Albano. The production by Els Comediants debuted in Houston in October 2011, later to be seen in Bordeaux in September 2012.

The opera is based on the first of three plays by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-99) featuring the barber Figaro as a central character. An eternal confusion for operagoers is that the most famous setting of Beaumarchais’ second Figaro play, Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), was set first by Mozart in 1786, while the most famous version of the first play in the series, Le Barbier de Séville (1775) was set second by Rossini in 1816. (The third Figaro play, La Mère coupable (1797) did not become an opera until Darius Milhaud set it in 1966 and John Corigliano used it as subplot in his The Ghosts of Versailles in 1991.)

Based in Barcelona, Els Comediants, made up of director Joan Font, set and costume designer Joan Guillén and lighting designer Albert Faura, have created a Cubist-inspired set, painted in Day-Glo colours, that plays with scale and proportion. Xevi Dorca, who worked with Els Comediants on La Cenerentola, also choreographs Barber. On the podium will be Scotsman Rory Macdonald, last seen here as the conductor of Carmen in 2010

Singing the title role is Canadian Joshua Hopkins, chosen by Opera News as one of 25 artists poised to become a major force in the next decade. For most performances, American tenor Alek Shrader is the young Count Almaviva, with Romanian tenor Bogdan Mihai taking over on May 9, 19 and 21. Almaviva’s beloved Rosina is sung in most performances by Italian soprano Serena Malfi with American Cecelia Hall taking over on May 7, 9, 19, 21 and 22. Bartolo, Rosina’s jealous guardian is sung by Renato Girolami for most performances with Russian bass Nikolay Didenko taking over on May 9, 19 and 21. Don Basilio, Rosina’s music teacher in league with Bartolo, is sung for most performances by Canadian Robert Gleadow with Turkish bass Burak Bilgili taking over May 9, 19 and 21.

May 15 will be the date of the Ensemble Studio performance of the opera with tickets priced at only $25 and $55.

Atelier’s Orfeo: The second major production of the month is Opera Atelier’s second ever foray into 19th-century opera after its highly successful production of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821) in 2012. This is the version by Hector Berlioz (1803-69) of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice (1762). Gluck himself wrote two versions of Orfeo. The original of 1762 was written to an Italian libretto and was the first of Gluck’s operas that proposed to simplify the opera seria, then in vogue, by stripping away the complexities of music and plot that had gradually accrued to it. Gluck’s goals were a return to clarity of music and of storytelling. Twelve years later, in 1774, Gluck revised the opera to a French libretto, now called Orphée et Eurydice, to suit the tastes of the French public. This involved changing the role of Orphée from a castrato in the Italian version to a high male tenor, or haute-contre, in the French version. It also necessitated expanding the ballet sequences.

Because of Opera Atelier, Toronto audiences have had the privilege of seeing both versions: the Italian version in 1997 and the French version in 2007. Now OA will put Torontonians in a very special class by giving us the Berlioz version of 1859. When the Paris Opera considered reviving Orphée et Eurydice in 1859 it was noted that the role of Orphée was too high for an haute-contre. What had happened, as period instrument enthusiasts will know, is that concert pitch had gradually risen over the previous 75 years.The reason for this “pitch inflation” was the rise of independent orchestral music (as opposed to accompanying orchestral music) where instrumentalists felt that a higher pitch gave works a more brilliant sound. 

When Giacomo Meyerbeer suggested that French contralto Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), a composer in her own right, should sing Orphée, Berlioz agreed to revise the score with Viardot’s voice in mind. He was France’s greatest expert in Gluck, whose works he had championed since 1825. In 1856 he wrote: “There are two supreme gods in the art of music: Beethoven and Gluck.” In his revision Berlioz used the key scheme of the Italian version but most of the music of the French version, returning to the Italian version only when he thought it superior in terms of music or drama. This new version proved to be a major success and became the principal version played in opera houses until the advent of the early music revival of the 1970s.

Although Berlioz’s Orphée is based on 18th-century music, his 1859 revision marks the furthest into the 19th century that Tafelmusik or Opera Atelier have travelled. The production will star Canadian mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel as Orphée and feature OA favourite Peggy Kriha Dye as Eurydice and Meghan Lindsay as Amour. David Fallis will conduct and Marshall Pynkoski direct. The opera plays April 9, 11, 12, 14, 17 and 18.

TOT’s Earnest: The third major production of the month is the revival by Toronto Operetta Theatre of Earnest, the Importance of Being by Victor Davies to a libretto by Eugene Benson. The operetta was a TOT commission and first performed in February 2008. Now TOT gives the work that rarity among new Canadian operas – a second production. Davies is perhaps most famous for his popular Mennonite Piano Concerto (1975) and his oratorio Revelation (1996). His best known opera is Transit of Venus (2007) based on the play by Maureen Hunter.  He is currently writing an opera The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, based on the play by George Ryga of the same name.

Benson, among his prodigious scholarly and creative work, has written, among others, the librettos to Héloise and Abélard (1973) by Charles Wilson, commissioned by the Canadian Opera Company to mark its 25th anniversary, and to The Summoning of Everyman (1973) revived by Toronto’s Opera in Concert in 2004. 2012 saw the premiere of The Auction: A Folk Opera, for which he wrote the libretto set to music by John Burge. Benson, who believes, as does operetta expert Richard Traubner, that the differences between various types of music theatre are overstated, sees no difficulty in writing an “operetta” for the 21st century. As he says, “After all, Shakespeare’s plays have inspired successful works in all genres. Why not Wilde’s?”

The work’s premiere received very positive notices. Writing in the Globe and Mail, Ken Winters called the piece “..first rate… It left its audience … both startled and delighted. ... It is good entertainment of considerable charm … quite a lively, exhilarating affair.” You can listen to excerpts of the operetta in the opera section of Davies’ own website victordavies.com.  

Renowned mezzo Jean Stilwell heads the cast as the indomitable Lady Bracknell. Michelle Garlough will sing her daughter Gwendolen, Cameron McPhail will be Jack Worthing, Thomas Macleay will be Algernon Moncreif and Charlotte Knight will be Cecily. Other cast members include Gregory Finney as Reverend Chasuble, Roz McArthur as Miss Prism and Sean Curran as Lane. Davies has written a new scene especially for Stilwell in a score filled with lively tangos, marches, waltzes and ballads. Larry Beckwith conducts and Guillermo Silva-Marin directs. Earnest, The Importance of Being runs April 29 and May 1, 2 and 3.

Small company diversity: Productions from smaller companies lend diversity to the month. On April 16 and 18 Opera Belcanto of York performs Puccini’s La Bohème at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. Stanislas Vitort is Rodolfo and Gayané Mangassarian is Mimi. David Varjabed conducts the OBC Orchestra and Chorus and Edward Franko directs.

On April 18, Opera by Request presents Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites (1957) in concert at the College St. United Church. Caroline Dery sings Blanche de la Force, Maude Paradis the Prioress and Lindsay McIntyre Sister Constance. William Shookhoff is the music director and pianist.

From April 24 to 26, Metro Youth Opera presents Berlioz’ Béatrice et Bénédict (1862) at Daniels Spectrum. Simone McIntosh and Asitha Tennekoon play the warring couple while Lindsay McIntyre and Janaka Welihinda sing their friends Héro and Claudio. Natasha Fransblow is the music director and Alison Wong the stage director.

This April may not be quite as superabundant in opera as Aprils past, but even with these six varied operas on offer Torontonians are spoiled for choice.

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

I am an admirer of the Dutch mezzo Christianne Stotijn but I only know her singing from recordings. I look forward to her Toronto debut, organized by the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto, on April 16 at Walter Hall, in which she will be accompanied by the fine pianist Julius Drake. She will sing Shostakovich’s settings of six poems by Tsvetayeva, four Shakespeare songs by Korngold, and songs by Tchaikovsky and Strauss.

The name Stotijn is well known in the Dutch musical world. The story begins with Johannes Louis Stotijn (1852-1915), who began adult life as a baker but who also played the harmonica as a hobby. Three of his four children became professional musicians. The most distinguished was Jacob, usually known as Jaap. He was the first oboist of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague from 1919 to 1956. We can still hear his playing in a recording of Mozart’s oboe quartet (K370) on the Globe label. In the 1930s he played with the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra that consisted largely of Jewish musicians who had fled Nazi Germany. The orchestra’s concerts were conducted by Arturo Toscanini, who was a great admirer of Stotijn’s playing. Stotijn was also a pioneer of period performance: he joined the Collegium Musicum Antiqua, which was founded in 1952. He died in 1970.

Another fine oboist was Jaap’s son Haakon. He became the first oboist of the Concertgebouw in 1940. In the early 1950s he was banned from the radio by two of the Dutch radio organizations because of his alleged Communist sympathies. In 1954 he, along with three other members of the Concertgebouw, was not allowed entry to the United States. He died at 49 in 1964.

And there are other musical Stotijns: a violist, a bassoonist and a double bass player. The son and pupil of that bass player, Christianne’s younger brother Rick, is also a bassist. Christianne herself began her musical career as a violinist. After she became a singer, she studied with Jard van Nes and Janet Baker. I can hear some of Baker’s qualities in her singing, although her sound is always individual. I am thrilled that half of her recital will consist of Russian music. My only regret is that she will not sing any Mahler, of whose music she is such a fine interpreter.

Other Events:

Bradshaw Amphitheatre: There are several free vocal events at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre in the Four Seasons Centre: a preview of Errol Gay’s Alice in Operaland will be given by the Canadian Children’s Opera Company April 1; Andrew Haji, tenor, will sing Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and Gordon Bintner, bass-baritone, will perform Schubert’s Schwanengesang April 4. Parts of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville will be sung by members of the COC Ensemble Studio April 28.

Walter Hall: On April 2 there will be a recital by the winners of the Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song and Gwendolyn Williams Koldofsky Prize in Accompanying in Walter Hall.

New Music Concerts: Ilana Zarankin, soprano, is the soloist in a program of contemporary Ukrainian music April 4 at the Betty Oliphant Theatre.

Two at the Royal Conservatory: Max Raabe and the Palast Orchestra will recreate the cabaret music and the popular songs of the Weimar years April 11 and 12 at Koerner Hall. Mireille Asselin, soprano, will sing with the Amici Ensemble in a concert that will include Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock as well as the Akhmatova Songs by Tavener April 12 at Mazzoleni Concert Hall.

Schubert: There will be another performance of The Shepherd on the Rock, part of an all Schubert concert April 17 at Heliconian Hall, in which the singer will be the soprano Barbara Fris. Another all-Schubert concert will be given at the Canadian Music Centre April 28 and will include Schwanengesang. The singers are Ryan Downey, tenor, and Bradley Christensen, baritone.

Two at Met at Noon: Cathy Daniel, mezzo, sings at noon in a free concert in Metropolitan United Church April 16. Also at noon at Metropolitan and also free: Olga Tylman, mezzo, and Michael Fitzgerald, baritone April 23.

Rozario: The soprano Patricia Rozario will be the soloist in a concert of music by John Tavener, presented by Soundstreams April 16 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre. Rozario was central figure in Tavener’s career; he wrote more than 30 works for her. The concert will also include works by Christos Hatzis, Jonathan Harvey and Vanraj Bhatia.

Bayrakdarian: The soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian will sing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in a concert of Armenian music April 22 at Roy Thomson Hall.

Oakham House: Wendy Dobson, soprano, and Michael Robert-Broder, baritone, will be the soloists in a concert April 25 at Calvin Presbyterian Church given by the Oakham House Choir of Ryerson University. The main works will be Handel’s Coronation Anthem My Heart is Inditing, the first movement of Elgar’s Coronation Ode and the Polovetsian Dances from Borodin’s Prince Igor.

The soprano Meredith Hall and the pianist Brahm Goldhamer will perform works by Mozart, Haydn and Rauzzini, April 26 at 8pm in Heliconian Hall. The program will include Haydn’s cantata Arianna a Naxos.

Also: The soprano Tessa Laengert will sing Handel, Dvorak and Puccini in a cocnert with the Oakville Chamber Orchestra May 2 and 3 at St. John’s United Church, Oakville. Andrew Haji, tenor, will be the soloist in a celebration of songs from opera, operetta and musical theatre with the VOCA Chorus of Toronto May 2 at Eastminster United Church. The Vesnivka Choir and the Toronto Ukrainian Male Chamber Choir will present a concert of folk songs celebrating rebirth, romance and love May 3 atHumberValleyUnited Church in Etobicoke. The solo singers are Natalya Matyusheva, soprano, and Justin Stolz, tenor.

The last concert in this year’s series for Recitals at Rosedale will be held on May 3 at Rosedale Presbyterian Church. The theme will be journeys, travels and returning home; the music will be by Schumann, Ravel and others. The singers are Lucia Cesaroni, soprano, Emily D’Angelo, mezzo, and Anthony Cleverton, baritone. And the famed singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie will perform at Koerner Hall May 7.

Beyond the GTA: the soloists in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion are Rufus Müller (tenor, as the Evangelist), Tyler Duncan (baritone, as Christus), Agnes Zsigovics (soprano), Laura Pudwell (mezzo), Isaiah Bell (tenor) and Justin Welsh (bass). The conductor is Mark Vuorinen April 3 attheCentre in the Square, Kitchener.

Looking back: in February I wrote that I was looking forward to the recital in which Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber were to perform Schubert’s Winterreise. I was not disappointed. Koerner Hall was full; the audience listened with rapt attention and saved their enthusiasm for the end. Who says that the song recital is dead?

On a couple of occasions I have written about the emerging tenor Charles Sy. I did not realize until I got to the Macmillan Theatre that he was singing in the Opera Division of the University of Toronto’s production of Postcard from Morocco by Dominick Argento. I was very impressed with his singing, particularly with the evenness of tone and the solidity of his lower register.

And looking ahead: Against the Grain Theatre has announced that Colin Ainsworth, tenor, and Krisztina Szabó, mezzo, will sing Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin and Messiaen’s Harawi in May. The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto has announced its 2015-16 season. It includes a recital by the fabulous American mezzo Isabel Leonard (we heard her in the COC production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito a few years ago). That will be on November 19. Stay tuned!

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

According to my calendar, spring has arrived, but the weatherman seems to disagree. However, I did see and hear two musical signals to indicate that spring should be along soon. My first was the song of a bright red cardinal high in the tree out front here. My other was Toronto’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade. I must admit that I did not observe this parade from curbside. Rather, I watched and heard it from a 12th-floor balcony a short block away. Even so, one group stood out. It was not a fife and drum band and the members were not dressed in green. It was a front row of drums followed by a large band in bright red uniforms.

From my vantage point it looked for all the world like a typical U.S. college band. The only band that I knew of in this part of the country that I thought it might be was the Burlington Teen Tour Band. After a bit of research, I learned that it was the Philippine Heritage Band from Vaughan just northwest of Toronto. From their website (phband.com) I learned that they have a program not often seen. Primarily a youth band, it has, over the years, developed an adult concert band. From my experience, when members of a youth band grow to adulthood they usually move on to another adult group with little or no connection to the youth group. I hope to learn more of this in the months to come.

NABBSS

In my September 2014 column I reported on the very first North American Brass Band Summer School (NABBSS). Based on well-established and successful models in the United Kingdom, last year’s summer school was to be a trial. If successful, consideration would be given to make it an annual event. Having attended that inaugural school, and having returned home after ten days of invigorating and challenging music making, I personally declared NABBSS 2014 a success. We have just learned that the organizers are of the same opinion. So, based on the success of the 2014 course, NABBSS will be running again this summer with additional tutorial staff, a new rehearsal base and an increased Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo cast. NABBSS 2015 will once again be led by Robert Childs, principal conductor and musical director of the famous Grimethorpe Colliery Band. This summer Childs will also be joined by no fewer than eight top notch instructors from Britain, Canada and the United States. I suspect that by now registrations will be filling rapidly. Anyone interested should contact Craig Roberts, administrative director, the North American Brass Band Summer School (nabbss.com).

While on the subject of all brass bands, there is more good news. Having just returned home from their very first rehearsal, I’m pleased to report on the beginnings of a new brass band in the Newmarket area. As yet nameless, the band will rehearse Wednesdays from 7 to 9pm. For those who may have, at times, considered trying their skills in that genre, here’s the chance. For information contact pnhussey@rogers.com.

Again on the brass band front, we have just learned that the Weston Silver Band would be returning in mid-March to compete at the North American Brass Band Association (NABBA) Championship in Fort Wayne Indiana. Now in its 33rd year the NABBA championship is the oldest brass band contest of its kind in North America. We haven’t heard yet how Weston Band did.

On the concert front

On Saturday April 18 at 7pm the Clarington Concert Band will present “A Salute to the British Isles” at the Harmony Creek Community Centre, 15 Harmony Road North, Oshawa. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Holland the band will feature a medley titled Songs That Won The War. For part of the program they will be joined by the Pipes and Drums of the Oshawa Legion performing such favourites as Highland Cathedral and Scotland the Brave. The poster for this concert mentions that their special guest will be “Conductor Emeritus” Bobby Herriot. I don’t know whether or not Herriot ever conducted the Clarington Band, but I do know that he will be displaying one or more of his many talents as conductor, composer, arranger and trumpet player. I’m sure though that we will be treated to his inimitable brand of humour during this evening of musical tributes to England, Scotland and Ireland.

On Sunday April 26 at 2pm the Pickering Community Concert Band presents their spring concert “Music from Around the World” at Forest Brook Community Church, 60 Kearney Dr., Ajax. They will be joined by the St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Choir from Ajax. The program will include such Caribbean, Asian, European and Latin American favourites as La Paloma, Jamaican Sail-Away, Lord of the Rings, Hot Hot Hot, Downton Abbey and Ride on the Cherry Blossom Express. Also featured on the progam will be Fanfare and Celebration by local composer and saxophonist Kristie Hunter.

On Friday May 1 at 7:30pm the Oxford Winds Community Concert Band nds Community Concert Band will present “Celebrating Heroes” at Knox Presbyterian Church, 59 Riddell Street, Woodstock. For more information go to oxfordwinds.ca.

CBA Community Band Weekend

The CBA’s Community Band Weekend this spring will be hosted by Cornwall’s Seaway Winds Band from May 22 to 24. Rehearsals and the concert will be held at the St. Lawrence College Aultsville Theatre in Cornwall. For details go to to cba-ontario.ca/cbaonew/community-band-weekend/.

New Horizons

On Saturday April 11 at 2pm the Toronto New Horizons group will present their “Chamber Suites” (which now appears to be an annual event) at 789 Dovercourt Road. In past years this has been where members of the various NH bands performed in small ensembles to an audience seated at tables. Previously, this was called “Chamber Sweets” because the audience had the pleasure of eating a wide variety of tempting delicacies while listening to the many small groups. With the name changed from sweets to suites, does that mean that the goodies have been discontinued? For a very nominal admission we can attend, enjoy the many musical offerings and perhaps enjoy Sweets. It’s always worth a visit and it is only a few steps from a subway station.

Fred Duligal

It is with deep sorrow that we report the recent passing of saxophonist Fred Duligal. While he often performed with the Canadian Jazz Quartet at Kama on King and many other local jazz groups, he was also known in the many “Rehearsal Big Bands” around Toronto. Over the years I often chatted with Fred when he appeared at one of my rehearsals. He will be missed.

Joan Watson

On page 64 you will find a remembrance of French horn player Joan Watson. Although I don’t recall ever playing in any formal musical group with her, I have fond memories of the many chats we had prior to and during the International Women’s Brass Conference at Humber College five years ago. In fact, I can say that I did play in a musical group with her at least once. We and many others played in an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records as having the World’s Largest Brass Band that Sunday afternoon in June 2010.

Definition Department

This month’s lesser known musical term is pesante: An effect distinctly non-upper-class.

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.

JAZZ.FM91 producer, host and Jazz Safari bwana, these days Jaymz Bee is one of the Toronto jazz scene’s most fervent supporters. His popular Jazz Safaris involve guiding groups of the not-for-profit radio station’s donors through five venues across town with the help of a magic bus. I asked Bee why he believes the clubs continue to struggle and his response illustrates what sets him apart: an infectious funness, a loyalty to the live music scene and above all a positive attitude:

“Actually my feeling is that we are on a bit of an upswing right now. The Jazz Bistro took about a year to get up to speed but now it’s truly a hot spot. The Rex and Gate 403 book so many bands a week it’s crazy, and places like Hugh’s Room and Lula Lounge are booking more jazz than they used to. I’m a big fan of the wee clubs in town as well – La Revolucion, Habits Gastropub, The Emmet Ray and Blackbird are places I like to talk up lately, but there are so many on Dundas, Ossington...I think Torontonians need to go out more and hit more live venues! It’s too cold out, it’s too hot out – doesn’t cut it with me.”

Of the Safaris, says Bee:

“There are few things I like more than hitting several jazz clubs in one night with a mini coach (and designated driver) to take a group of JAZZ.FM91 donors on the town. I do about 30 nights a year in Toronto (hitting four or five clubs) and spend about the same amount of time with donors in various jazz-friendly places like Havana, Panama City, New York, New Orleans, Chicago and other places.

There are not many challenges in Toronto. On any given night I have 12 to 20 venues to pick from and after eight years of Jazz Safaris I know the streets and we are almost never late; not even five minutes late! I’m so prompt, I’m almost Swiss! In other cities it can be trickier. I have to allow for extra time for traffic so we might hit a venue a bit too early, but that’s better than missing the music…My parents taught me to be fun and polite and to get wallflowers on the dance floor. I’m innately inclusive...nobody is too cool or square for me...so taking a large group of people (18 to 30 per safari) is sometimes challenging but always fun.”

I will return to Jaymz Bee later in this article, specifically to discuss his birthday celebrations mid-month. First though, I have some very exciting news: there’s a new jazz room in town, and I urge you to all support it, even if it means going to have a single drink there or better yet, enjoy some music while drinking and eating.

Stori Aperitivo (95 King Street East) located at King and Church, is embarking on a regular Tuesday, Wednesdsay, Thursday series over dinner. The priceless musicians come to you with no cover charge attached – a rare opportunity for all to enjoy some of this city’s jazz talents! The lineup at Stori is stellar:

Tuesday nights with Terra Hazelton and Her Easy Answers starring the two-time Canadian Screen Award nominee and blues singer extraordinaire; sidemen to be confirmed but Hazelton’s band tends to include Nathan Hiltz on guitar, Shawn Nykwist on tenor, Sly Juhas on drums and Jordan O’Connor on bass. Wednesdays will be made wild by longtime Reservoir Lounge staple Bradley and the Bouncers featuring Bradley Harder on vocals, Terry Wilkins on bass, Jeff Halischuk on drums, Adam Beer-Colacino on guitar and Pat Carey on the tenor. On Thursdays Stori welcomes The Vipers which features superlative vocalist Sophia Perlman in swinging company alongside Howard Moore on trumpet and vocals, Ross MacIntyre on bass, Jeff Halischuk on drums and Mitch Lewis on guitar and the occasional stellar vocal. This band kills everything from Dinah Washington to Tom Waits, and I’m willing to bet that The Vipers’ take on “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” is one Paul Simon himself would treasure.

And More Good News: by the time this magazine goes to print, a second brand new venue is opening its doors: Fat City Blues at 890 College Street. I asked one of the owners, Stephen McKeon, what inspired the creation of this club:

“To fully answer this question I have to give you a bit of background on Cameron, Simon and myself, “ he said. “We have been great friends for a decade, and have all worked in hospitality as long as we have known each other. Cameron and Simon worked the bar together at The Drake Hotel for eight years, while I cut my teeth at the Reservoir Lounge, then went on to manage Wrongbar for the past five years. When we started talking about opening a bar together we knew we wanted a place that focused on classic cocktails, simple food, and of course, live music. When the space came available we saw a great opportunity to marry all of those things, and Fat City Blues was born.

OD: Where does the name come from?

SM: Fat City was the nickname for Metairie, a part of New Orleans that was considered the entertainment district in the 70s and 80s. 

OD: What kinds of music will you be booking?

SM: We really want to focus on supporting the local scene and will be booking everything from delta blues to dirty jazz, solo pianists to five-piece brass bands. If it swings and sings, it has a home at Fat City Blues. (Still fine-tuning a music policy as this magazine goes to print, he was able to tell me that Tyler Yarema plays every Thursday, and other acts will include Patrick Tevlin, Bradley & The Bouncers, and Robert Davis among others.)

OD: What kinds of audiences are you looking to attract to this venue?

SM: We had a gentleman sitting at the bar last night who was from South Carolina, and kept telling us how much the place reminded him of home. We’ve had musicians come in looking for a place to play and to support their peers. We’ve even had someone email us about doing a birthday party here for her husband because they were married in New Orleans. All those people found something here they could relate to, and we can relate to them. That’s our audience.

OD:Tell me a bit about the menu

SM: The menu includes oysters, po’boys, crab legs, beignets...and in the summer, crawfish berl on the patio!

There is a considerable buzz about town with regards to #FatCityBlues: the BlogTo article has, as of this writing, been retweeted 84 times since March 18. Here’s wishing the venue much success all year round.

Each April Jaymz Bee celebrates his birthday in style and with beautiful music, and this year is no exception. However, for the first time, one of the concerts will take place not in a club but in a church. On Sunday April 12 at 4pm at St. Philip’s Anglican Church, Jaymz Bee Birthday Vespers will be the golden voices of Genevieve “Gigi” Marentette, Carolyn Credico, June Garber and others, to the stellar accompaniment of guitarist Eric St-Laurent. I asked how he got the idea to present “the devil’s music” in the house of God :

“Basically I wanted to see Bee’s Angels singing in this cozy church. Father Al is a donor to JAZZ.FM91 and we’ve become friends over the years. I love jazz in unique settings and this place is magical! Last year I sang there with Don Francks and Tony Quarrington but this year I thought I’d play emcee and just enjoy some of the most beautiful and talented women in Toronto singing sweet songs.”

Bee’s B-Day weeks also includes a celebration at the Old Mill on April 9 with Alex Pangman and her Alleycats, and continues on Monday April 13 – his actual birthday – with a cabaret night at Lula Lounge.

In closing, dear reader, I hope that you consider supporting these new ventures on our club scene. As always with such endeavours, they need your support! Call ahead. Make dinner reservations. Plan a party. Drop by for a drink or two. Live music needs you to stay alive!

Ori Dagan is a Toronto-based jazz musician, writer and educator who can be reached at oridagan.com.

Mark Eisenman’s name doesn’t show up in the listings that much. In February, he popped up twice, both times as a sideman, and both times at the Home Smith Bar. Then in March, his name didn’t show up at all. This month, in the clubs listed here, he will be  playing a whopping four gigs! One at Chalker’s Pub with his trio, in its original lineup – together for the last 27 years – with John Sumner on the drums and Steve Wallace on bass. One at the Home Smith Bar, led by Arlene Smith. And two back-to-back gigs at The Rex leading a quintet with John McLeod on trumpet and flügelhorn and Pat LaBarbera. And of course, the common thread between all these gigs will be Sumner and Wallace, bringing to the bandstand the irreplaceable chemistry of three musicians who have been playing together for nearly three decades.

I first heard Eisenman play in a YouTube video – which is still up – of Bonnie Brett (a name to keep your eyes peeled for!) singing “Comes Love,” along with Eisenman on piano, Sumner on drums, and Mike Downes on bass. From the video, you can, or at least I can, hear Eisenman thinking like an arranger as he plays: he exploits the wide range of the instrument exploring the various combinations of available textures, while tastefully inserting responses to Bonnie’s phrases which to my ear sound as though they are a permanent part of the song, inextricably linked to the written melody. In fact, I think that last phrase describes most of what you’ll hear at these four concerts. You’d better not miss them, because as I’ve said, Eisenman’s name doesn’t show up in the listings very much, so you might not get another chance for a long while.

When it comes to jazz, I think in general that singers are under-appreciated by instrumentalists. Their craft is brushed off as though it’s easy (it’s not), trivial, and frivolous, and I’m not too sure why. I’ve heard a lot of explanations for this: some people think a failure of music education has led to an overabundance of oblivious young singers; some people think it’s about sexism (jazz singers are women, more often than not); some people just think jazz voice is not a serious artistic pursuit. I don’t know the answer – but it’s definitely not the last one. All that said, I always try to make a point of promoting this underrated art form. So, keep an eye out for singers in the clubs this month; Coleman Tinsley, Alex Samaras, Alex Pangman, Jordana Talsky and more, will be gracing stages around Toronto throughout April, and you’d be a fool to miss them.

Within the deep pool of fantastic jazz singers who play regular gigs in Toronto, a personal favourite of mine is the theatrical and exciting performer, Whitney Ross-Barris, who will be playing an early-evening gig at Gate 403 on April 24. She will be joined by pianist Mark Kieswetter, whose ability to accompany with spontaneity, whimsy and sensitivity makes him a friend to singers everywhere (watch out for him this month in bands led by Coleman Tinsley, Rebecca Enkin and John MacMurchy, as well as at Chalkers Pub’s weekly jam). The duo has been playing this gig at this venue for five years now, and they still have not settled into the trap that is playing things the same way every time. “I love playing the Gate with him because we tend to do on-the-fly arrangements of standards that go to crazy places,” Ross-Barris says. “What results is a number of performances that both of us kick ourselves for never having recorded.”

The jazz scene in this city is teeming with talent and creativity. I can’t wait to get back out there and take in more of it, and I hope to see many of you In the Clubs, my southern-Ontarian friends.

Bob Ben is The WholeNote’s jazz listings editor. He can be reached at jazz@thewholenote.com

The Vienna Piano Trio’s previous Toronto appearances – with the Women’s Musical Club in November 2005 and three visits to Toronto Summer Music from 2010 to 2012 – were greeted with widespread acclaim. So it’s no surprise that they are highly anticipating their Mooredale Concerts recital March 8. That’s what the gregarious Stefan Mendl, the trio’s pianist and last remaining of its founding members, told me recently by phone from Vienna, the city where he has lived since his birth.

I asked him about the particular sensibility that typifies a chamber musician. “From scratch you must have the urge to find a special sound that is the group sound,” he answered. “You should not be so restrained that nobody can hear you but neither are you so predominant that you drown out the others. It must be your goal from the beginning that you find this sound; if you have a good ear and if you have the will to do this, then you are off to a good start.

“Then, of course there is experience, knowing when you can really play out and when you have to combine with the strings; when you have to give them more bass or less bass. You have to put aside your own ambitions and have the will to find a sound that blends.”

In his own case, right from his first experience on stage, chamber music felt better. “I discovered early on in my soloist days [born in 1966, he founded the trio in 1988] that I enjoyed playing concertos much more than recitals. I think that sometimes you get more ideas or better ideas when you have the chance to interact with others. At least for me that’s the case and I feel very, very comfortable with friends and with colleagues on stage. I don’t feel that comfortable when I’m on my own.

“And of course there is the wonderful music that is written for piano trio, piano quartet and piano quintet [he regularly performs with the Hagen Quartet]. Sometimes, all of our greatest composers put a lot of their inner feelings and emotions into their chamber music. I find it all very fascinating, still,” he said, with a laugh that underlined the hold the music still has on him.

The key thing to a trio’s success he believes is to have three people of equal musical and technical skill who have similar musical goals. “You need a rich palette of ideas and colour. Everybody needs their own opinion amidst the common goal.”

I wanted to know how he relates to the music the trio will be performing on the upcoming Sunday afternoon in Toronto. “Beethoven’s Kakadu Variations is really a fantastic piece of music,” he replied with palpable verve. “The very late opus number [Op.121a] is a bit misleading. No one hearing the very heavy introduction would expect it to turn into this funny theme, but there are hints, hidden in a minor key in a delicate, funny way. One slow variation before the finale is very deep and serious. Like all of Beethoven, the deepest and most serious is right next to the fun, almost grotesque or rude side. He was never shy, even in his greatest works to put little bits of his feelings right next to the really funny things. These variations are a really good way to experience that; in a very short amount of time he does all these turns and twists.”

This was a good opportunity to bring up the relationship between recording and live performance since the trio released the Kakadu variations along with Beethoven’s Trios Op.70, on their latest MDG Gold CD last year. “Recording something always affects your live playing because you get so close to it. You listen more to detail than you would otherwise ... sometimes you get things brought out that you probably wouldn’t have discovered before and then your performance is altered. Of course, your performance always changes over time,” he said.

Mendelssohn’s Trio No.1 Op.49 in D Minor, the concluding piece on the March 8 program, is the more famous of the composer’s two trios, but for Mendl, they are both on the same genius level. The trio plays them frequently and loves both of them. Mendl particularly enjoys the “gorgeous and brilliant and skillful piano writing which hardly any great composer has accomplished to that extent.

“It works so well for the medium of the piano trio because Mendelssohn had all these great melodies – mainly he wrote in the strings – and the texture for that is this incredibly bubbling piano part which makes a fantastic contrast. He does this in a very, very idiomatic way so that his piano trios will always be at the top of the list of the greatest trios both for performers and the audience. And a beautiful lyrical slow movement, a quicksilvery light scherzo – the type of scherzo so different from what anybody else wrote in those days ... The scherzo is perfect; there can’t be a more perfect scherzo imaginable.”

Mendl reminded me that Schumann had written a famous review raving about that D-Minor trio, calling it the role model of a piano trio. Very interesting in light of the preceding work on the Toronto recital, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op. 88. Despite its late opus number, it was written earlier than the composer’s piano trios but published later and less often performed. Schumann called them fantasy pieces because they didn’t conform to the trio form. The first and third pieces, the slow ones, are especially close to the pianist’s heart and “contain some of Schumann’s best piano trio writing ... they are in no way second rate.”

I was curious about the formidable list of mentors on the Vienna Piano Trio’s website, almost all of whom the trio met during a memorable two-week chamber music workshop in New York in 1993. “We’d never been to New York before so it was a double experience, really mind-blowing I would say, without exaggeration.” They got several lessons from Isaac Stern, the Guarneri Quartet (Arnold Steinhardt and Michael Tree), from Henry Meyer of the LaSalle Quartet and from the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Mendl still remembers the kindness of Jaime Laredo who brought them back to New York for a concert series.

Most important was the enormous impact the intense workshop had on the group’s musical goals. It brought a “kind of down-to-earth quality” to what had been the “very polished style of trio playing we had experienced with [earlier mentors] the Trio di Trieste.”

Finally, I wondered, did living in Vienna inspire him, since the City of Dreams had been a place where many composers lived and died.  “And died especially,” he laughed. “I personally live very, very close to where all these Beethoven memorial places are ... and although I don’t want to do this too consciously, sometimes I’m touched when I wander around in this area and I feel that Beethoven wrote so much music there and lived there for a great while.”

Seen and Heard:The RBC Piano Extravaganza – or “Ax-travaganza” as Mervon Mehta dubbed it – took the city by storm over an 11-day period attracting approximately 14,000 to events at RTH alone. In addition, 27 amateurs performed on the hall’s newly acquired New York Steinway during the Community Piano Showcase; including the Young People’s Concert programs, 20 pianists performed on the RTH stage during the festival; and 200 people played the five Steinways in the festival’s inaugural event, Pianos in the City, February 4 between 11am and 2pm.

My immersion in the Extravaganza began on its second day, Thursday February 5, with festival curator Emanuel Ax’s introduction of two young pianists at a COC free noontime concert. Siberian-born Pavel Kolesnikov, the 2012 Honens Competition winner now studying with Maria João Pires in Brussels, learned three Liszt transcriptions of Wagner operas, including the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser, especially for the event. Impressive. American pianist Orion Weiss, who left his native Cleveland for Juilliard, specifically to study with Ax for his integrity and revelatory playing, brought a singing touch to a pair of Granados Goyescas. Several hours later they played a dynamically well-matched Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances for two pianos that preceded a TSO concert that included the orchestral version of the same piece.

Ax began that program with an agreeable, self-effacing rendition of a Schubert impromptu followed by Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 14 K449. Round tones of limpid liquidity gave the impression that the pianist was opening a musical jewel box.

The four-hour and twenty-minute Pianopalooza Sunday afternoon included 16 disparate performers selected by the RCM in a musical cavalcade that came close to filling Koerner Hall and concluded with a show-stopping, two-piano-eight-hands version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture complete with recorded cannon shots. The event featured two bona fide highlights: Robi Botos’ jazz set was an uninterrupted 20-minute piece of spontaneous joy; Ax’s melodic, technically assured performance of Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 was piano playing at its best.

Three days later, Ax joined Jan Lisiecki for Mozart’s heavenly Concerto for Two Pianos K316a/365 and Saint-Saëns’ delightfully entertaining The Carnival of the Animals.

The next day in a pre-concert performance, Ax displayed his chamber music skill set in an immensely satisfying reading of Schumann’s Piano Quintet Op. 44. The string parts were taken by the first chair TSO players, concertmaster Jonathan Crow, principal second violinist Paul Mayer, prinicipal violist Teng Li and principal cellist Joseph Johnson. The players faced the choir loft, which overflowed into the adjacent sections of the hall. No one who heard them will forget the strings’ strength, the way Ax was able to emerge from the background to point out the melody and the assured playing of this propitious gathering.

Later that evening Ax demonstrated a deft curatorial touch in an adventurous program pairing a two-piano piece with its orchestral equivalent. Ax and Stewart Goodyear, more or less balanced in selected pieces of Carl Maria von Weber, returned for an exciting performance of Ravel’s La Valse. In between Anagnoson & Kinton proved to be very well-matched in an apparently seamless gambol through Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn. As in the previous week’s Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, the orchestral colour was more varied than the keyboards’ but the unique opportunity to hear the difference was welcome.

Ax spoke of his love of the word “metamorphosis” when he introduced that program. The next morning he became its agent at a master class for Glenn Gould School students. He was his usual combination of self-effacing and endearing as his analysis and advice transformed a student’s performance of Chopin’s Barcarolle, a piece he called “ecstatic” and which he linked forward to Wagner and back to Bach. He continued his delicate balance of dispensing compliments, ever careful that his suggestions would not be construed as outright criticism.

He recalled an encounter he had as a young man with Pablo Casals when the cellist was 96 and spending his last summer at Marlboro. “[When] the music goes up, [play] loud; music goes down, soft,” Casals instructed. “We all thought he was out to lunch,” Ax said. “But the older I get, the more I see how right he was.”

Quick Picks:

Mar 6 Siberian-born violinist Vadim Repin, the interview subject of my last month’s column, makes his eagerly awaited Toronto recital debut at Koerner Hall in a diverse program of Bartók, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky.

Mar 8 at Koerner Hall KahaneSwensonBey, who re-formed in 2012 after a 25-year hiatus, perform piano trios by Mozart, Schumann, Ravel and Schoenfield. In an unfortunate scheduling conflict their afternoon concert occurs at the same time as the Vienna Piano Trio’s Mooredale recital in Walter Hall just minutes away.

On the evening of Mar 8 violinist Moshe Hammer and pianist Angela Park perform works by Brahms, Franck and Sarasate at the Aurora Cultural Centre.

Mar 11, 12 and 14 Gianandrea Noseda conducts the TSO in a program featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, which is all you need to know to make plans to attend. The program also includes Adrianne Pieczonka performing Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and Richard Strauss’ divine Four Last Songs, which further certifies it as a must-see. Rising star Krzysztof Urbanski and the TSO are joined Mar 27 and 28 by the captivating Sol Gabetta in Dvořák’s masterpiece, his Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, a work they have played together many times. Then Urbanski leads the orchestra in Stravinsky’s rhythmic revelry, The Rite of Spring. Another must-see.

 TSO associate principal clarinetist Yao Guang Zhai is joined by pianist Jeanie Chung for Luigi Bassi’s Concert Fantasy on themes from Verdi’s Rigoletto in a free COC concert also featuring Gershwin, Brahms and three solo pieces by Stravinsky at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre Mar 12.

Mar 14 is crystal ball gazing time when students from the Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists give a free concert in Mazzoleni Hall. On Mar 31 another Mazzoleni Hall free concert (ticket required) features solo and chamber works performed by Rebanks Fellows from the Glenn Gould School. Apr 2 three of the Rebanks Fellows perform Brahms’ gorgeous Trio for horn, violin and piano in a free noontime COC concert.

Mar 15 Trio Arkel with guests, cellist Amanda Forsyth and violinist Aaron Schwebel, perform Schubert’s sublime String Quintet in C in the Church of the Holy Trinity.

Mar 16 group of 27 presents Payadora Tango Ensemble and g27 violinist Rebekah Wolkstein in a recital at Heliconian Hall.

Don’t miss your chance Mar 19 to hear the Elias String Quartet, the “excellent” (New York Times), “exuberant” (The Guardian) young British ensemble making their local debut presented by Music Toronto, in works by Haydn, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

Mar 22 Alliance Française presents Stravinsky’s tuneful fable The Soldier’s Tale featuring Jacques Israelievich, violin, with Uri Mayer conducting.

Mar 27 Violinist Lisa Batiashvili, Till Fellner’s trio partner (along with Alfred Brendel’s son Adrian) is joined by pianist Paul Lewis in his first Toronto appearance since his remarkable debut opening the Women’s Musical Club’s 115th season in the fall of 2012. Their program includes Schubert’s “Grand Duo” and “Rondeau brilliant,” Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No.10, Op.96, Telemann’s Fantasia No.4 for Solo Violin and Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s Chorale Prelude “Nun komm’ der Heiden Helland” for solo piano.

Mar 27 and 28 the incomparable Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society presents concerts 13, 14, 15 and 16 in the Attacca Quartet’s ongoing series performing all 68 of Haydn’s quartets. Each concert features quartets drawn from the early, middle and later period of the composer’s life.

YouTube star Valentina Lisitsa’s piano playing has struck quite a few chords based on upwards of 80 million views. Before her Royal Albert Hall recital in front of an audience of 8000 in June 2012 her fans had the chance to vote online for their preferred program – a form of audience participation that has become one of Lisitsa’s trademarks. Will the contents of her BravoNiagara! solo concert Apr 4 be similarly chosen?

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

As we sit here in late February waiting for spring to show its face, you could say that we’re waiting for a change to happen, a change that we know from past experience will eventually occur, although there are not many signs of it currently visible. Spring’s emergence is of a particular kind – from one known state to another, by a process of predictable transformation. But sometimes things that emerge come from an unknown place of obscurity into an unpredictable prominence.

In the world of contemporary music (as elsewhere in the arts) the idea of emergence is often bandied about – as in the phrase “emerging composer” or “emerging artist.” As such it is often used to help define funding structures and award guidelines. The distinction being drawn seems to be between those who are emerging and those who have been around for a while – the established ones. Often in our minds, the word becomes synonymous or interchangeable with being young and just starting to make one’s way in life.

Not necessarily so, according to two presenters/curators I spoke to recently: Ryan Scott, current artistic director of Continuum Music, and Christopher Willes, curator of the Music Gallery’s March concert in the Emergents Series.

Continuum: In the life of Continuum Music, this season is special; they are celebrating 30 years of existence, having formed in 1985. At the beginning, Continuum was a collective of composers and performers with associations to the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. As emerging musicians they were frustrated with the lack of opportunity to hear and present the new works they were composing or interested in performing. So, as an act of rebellion, they formed Continuum Music. The list of those initially involved in the first few years is an impressive one; many of them are still making waves in the new music world.

One of those early rebels was flutist Jennifer Waring, who went on to become Continuum’s artistic director for the next 29 years. Under her guidance, Continuum has become a major presenter and performing ensemble of new music, commissioning over 100 new works, engaging in touring and recording opportunities and developing interdisciplinary and educational projects. One of her signature contributions was establishing a strong connection with composers and performers in the Netherlands, resulting in a festival of Dutch and Canadian music, film, literature and visual arts in 2008/09 and an ongoing relationship with many Dutch composers. Another early member was Barbara Hannigan, who appeared on the cover of last month’s WholeNote. It’s clear that Hannigan’s continual commitment to being an ambassador for new and original repertoire was seeded in those early heady days of her involvement with Continuum.

Percussionist Ryan Scott has also had a long association with the organization – initially as a performer, and now taking over as artistic director. This year’s anniversary concert, “30 More!,” on March 8 is a program entirely curated by Scott and showcases the spirit that lies at the heart of Continuum’s mandate. Combining the works of UK-based seasoned composers Richard Ayres and Joe Cutler, the very young and unknown Turkish composer Mithatcan Öcal and two Torontonians,  Anna Höstman and Jason Doell, Scott has created a program that amplifies Continuum’s rebellious roots.

When asked about what is important for him in selecting works for programming, Scott told me that “as artistic director, I search out composers who are experimentalists by nature, who are committed to pushing boundaries and are searching for something different with each new piece rather than relying on a seasoned bag of tricks. You can find these types of composers at any level – emerging or established.”

 Interestingly, Doell and Höstman are both recent recipients of Toronto’s Emerging Composer Award (2013 and 2014 respectively). Scott points out that although they are both considered emerging, they are actually people who are not so young in life but entered into composition after engaging with other interests and commitments. That process results in a different kind of emergent creative voice, one already informed by life experience. Fittingly, the Toronto award is not defined by age, but open to anyone who takes up composing at whatever stage of life.

Doell was commissioned to write a new work for this concert after Scott heard him perform on his percussion installation during last year’s Emergents Series at the Music Gallery; the selection of Höstman’s piece was inspired by the brilliant performance given last season by ensemble pianist Laurent Philippe in Continuum’s presentation of Höstman’s Singing the Earth.

As for the other works on the March 8 program, Scott defines Richard Ayres’ music as zany, off the wall and creating unusual combinations of sounds. Joe Cutler’s music is intriguing for its continual surprises, taking the listener onto an unanticipated path. And as a twist on the “emerging” theme, the music of the 22-year-old Öcal has a maturity and hyper–complexity to it that Scott finds shockingly brilliant.

Another aspect of Continuum’s 30-year legacy is the commitment to educating the younger generation. Following closely on the heels of their anniversary celebration is a concert on March 31 that features the compositions of students from across the GTA. This project is a collaboration between Continuum, Toronto District School Board music education advocate Doug Friesen and composer Christopher Thornborrow. The student scores are initially created in a software designed for intuitive and creative decision-making. Thornborrow then takes these pieces and arranges them for the instrumentation of the Continuum ensemble. These professionals then become the principals in a larger ensemble made up of student performers which performs all the selected pieces at a public concert. This program has received strong support at multiple levels, and is pioneering a new way of introducing the creative process of music-making to the younger generation.

Emergents at the Gallery: One of the major opportunities for the emerging creative voice has been the Emergents Series at the Music Gallery. Each concert in the series is curated by someone whose own work was presented during the previous Music Gallery season. The March 19 concert has been programmed by Christopher Willes whose own work explores ideas of the spatialization of sound. His choice of artists – Geoff Mullen and Jonathan Adjemian – indicates that he too has a distinctive take on what constitutes an emerging artistic voice. Both Mullen and Adjemian are individuals who’ve actually been practising artists for some time now, but have recently changed direction and begun exploring new materials and approaches to working with sound. For Willes, this qualifies them as emergents.

Mullen’s work expands the idea of site-specific work while simultaneously challenging and re-evaluating the idea of composing to include new ways of hearing and listening. A week prior to the concert, Mullen will begin work in the Music Gallery space, setting it up somewhat like an audio installation and using old recordings from the Music Gallery label as sound sources. It will be an experimental process, placing sounds in the space and observing what happens to both. The installation however will not be static; Mullen himself will be animating the space through his own improvisations and interaction with the recordings. When the audience arrives, Mullen will be continuing his week-long process, with audience members witnessing what is occurring at that moment in time. Willes describes Mullen’s way of working as “site-responsive,” achieved in part by turning the microphone in on itself. The acoustics of the space itself play a significant role in what one hears, and by using the recorded sounds of the gallery’s history, the early spaces of the Music Gallery (St. Patrick Street and Queen/Dovercourt) are brought into the present. Everyone will be listening to the final results.

Adjemian’s interest with sonic materials focuses on text, language and perception in combination with live electronics. Coming from a theatre and philosophy background, he will use actors and dancers as speaking voices in his new piece created for this concert. The result will be a constant wash of text that will collide and rebound with the creation of sound waves and difference tones coming from the electronic instruments as well as being generated through software. His interest in difference tones, which are like phantom or ghost sounds that occur when two tones are sounded simultaneously, was inspired by U.S. composer Maryanne Amacher who loved to create novel acoustic events that could even make you lose your balance. We’ll have to wait until March 19 to experience the outcome of Adjemian’s sound experiments.

To wrap up this discussion of what constitutes an emerging artist, I’d like to give the last words to futurist author and visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard who spins the idea somewhat differently. Not only does the term refer to new turns on the life cycle or the taking up of a different direction, she states that “we are all emerging into what we are becoming.”

New Music Concerts: An inspiring co-presentation on March 14 between New Music Concerts and Organix, a local presenter of organ music, will bring together German percussionist Olaf Tzschoppe, who plays with the legendary Les Percussions de Strasbourg, and Hungarian organist Zsigmond Szathmáry. The concert comprises an evening of music composed by six different European composers including a piece by each of the two performers. It’s rare to hear the organ within a new music context, and in this concert, the organ from the Church of the Holy Trinity will be on display. The concert will repeat on March 15 at St. Cuthbert’s Anglican in Oakville.

Next up after that in the NMC season will be an April 4 concert exploring the Ukrainian-Canadian connection with works by three Ukrainian composers and two Canadians – Esprit’s Alex Pauk and Gary Kulesha. The Ukrainian composers include Karmella Tsepkolenko, a prolific composer and festival organizer in her native country, and a newly commissioned work from Anna Pidgorna, a Ukrainian-born, Canadian-raised composer and media artist. Featured soloist on the program is soprano Ilana Zarankin who will premiere a new oratorio by Tsepkolenko.

Esprit: The March 29th concert by Esprit Orchestra’s, with guest soloist Stephen Sitarski on violin, will be the last of their season. The prgram creates an intriguing dialogue between music and science-inspired ideas. For example, the world premiere of Andrew Staniland’s Vast Machine creates a sonic version of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, the largest single machine in the world, located in a tunnel beneath the Franco-Swiss border. Scott Good’s world premiere of Resonance Unfolding 2 digs into the realm of spectral composition, an aesthetic that focuses more on timbre than melody, and how sound evolves over time. This idea of continuous transformation is also the focus of Color by French composer Marc-André Dalbavie. The program is rounded out by a piece by Chinese composer Xiaogang Ye.

Quick Picks:
Canadian Music Centre Presentations:
Mar 13: Portrait of a Pioneer: The Vocal Music of Jean Coulthard.
Mar 14: JUNO Awards Classical Nominees’ Showcase. (in Hamilton)
Mar 27: “Baroque Meets Modern in The True North!” Works by Gougeon, Dawson, Arcuri, Manzon and others.
Others:
Mar 1 & 10: Audiopollination
Mar 4 & 7: New Creations Festival, Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Mar 6: TorQ: Music by Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen and Jamie Drake.
Mar 7-8: DaCapo Chamber Choir: Concert includes the 2014 NewWorks winning composition.
Mar 21: “Hands, Fists, Arms” – a program featuring solo piano works by Cowell, Lachenmann, Ristic, Saunders, and Ustvolskaya – performed by Stephanie Chua at 8pm at the Music Gallery [Not in the Listings]. For more information visit musicgallery.org..
Mar 27: Philip Thomas premieres piano works by Skempton, Wolff and Finnissy.
Mar 27: Maureen Batt. Crossing Borders: A Celebration of New Music from New Mexico to Nova Scotia.
Mar 29: Toronto Improvisers’ Orchestra

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

During the relentless winter choke-holding the eastern half of our continent we occasionally see signs of weather more benign. Not that I’m complaining about our crisp white-scaped great outdoors, mind, but I’m not complaining either about music’s special power to open the world’s window wide to another, less icy landscape.

A case in point is The Lanka Suite. In it the multi-talented emerging Toronto-born composer, vocalist and violist Tova Kardonne evokes Sri Lanka’s lush natural and human landscapes, expressing her outsider musical explorations in her distinctive jazz and chamber music-inflected music. The Ashkenaz Foundation and Koffler Centre for the Arts co-present the work performed by a choir, an instrumental ensemble, as well as a vocal and an instrumental soloist, in concert at The Music Gallery on March 14.

I called Kardonne on a frosty February afternoon to chat about her ambitious Lanka Suite, and how she got there. Even before pursuing a career in music, she told me, her passion for mathematics – in which she has a degree – initially took centre stage. “I developed a taste for aspects of beauty and emotion in mathematics, for its elegance as well as its ugliness. These are parallel to characteristics I also felt in music.” But she also pursued viola and piano studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music, as well as singing alto in a series of choirs. “Singing (and playing) the alto voice is a great place to be for a composer: right in the middle of the music!” It’s a practice she actively maintains with Andrea Kuzmich’s Broulala, Christine Duncan’s The Element Choir and with the GREX vocal ensemble directed by Alex Samaras. (The latter choir has a core role in the performance of The Lanka Suite on March 14. )

In addition to music, Kardonne explained that dance has been another key to her artistic expression. “I originally studied dance with Jeannette Zingg of Opera Atelier. Later, in ’99 I was introduced to the freedom and discipline of contact improvisation, attending downtown Toronto’s weekly Contact Dance Jams. Improvised movement reinforced my evolving understanding of creation and intention. Though I didn’t quite realize at the time, it would prove important in shaping my compositional process down the road.” In 2014 she remounted an evening titled “60×60 Dance,” continuing her ongoing engagement with the dance world. It featured 60 different combinations of Canadian choreographers and composers, a complex project she co-curated and produced.

Having completed a degree at Humber College concentrating on vocal jazz, composition and arranging in 2008, jazz certainly figures in Kardonne’s musical language. She has involved a number of Toronto’s jazz elite in The Thing Is, her current eight-member band. It has included Jim Vivian, Dave Restivo, Ted Quinlan, Peter Lutek, Rich Brown, Rob Clutton and several others since its inception. Currently she favours musicians with mixed resumés who are able to excel in what she calls “non-idiomatic improvisational contexts.” That’s why she notes “my band is called The Thing Is, because it reflects an open-ended process of becoming,” an ensemble musical work. She creates an evolutionary, boundary-crossing and collegial atmosphere in the ensemble: “As my music evolved, it has attracted different kinds of musicians. At least two of them have been around [the scene] for long enough that I don’t really know where they ‘come from’.”

Kardonne points out one more significant element informing The Lanka Suite: for the lack of a better term, its “world music” features. It goes back to the Klezmer bands she played in, starting in her teens, as well as her grandparents’ Eastern European Jewish roots. “My mixed family heritage directed me along the path of seeking connections through the differences.” Citing her studies of Cuban santería batá drumming, North and South Indian drumming patterns, and her participation in the Brazilian Samba Elégua group, she conludes that  “deep down, I’m driven by rhythm.” In The Lanka Suite this fascination is reflected in unusual time signatures and phrases, drawing from both South Asian and Eastern European folk idioms, though couched in the instrumentation of a jazz combo with its affiliated rich harmonic field.

I asked Kardonne for The Lanka Suite’s back story. The four-part composition was “inspired by a trip with my partner [the experimental electric guitarist] Nilan Perera to Sri Lanka in 2012. He wished to reconnect with family for the first time since the end of the conflict in 2009 and to talk to some of the generation of artists who had grown up in the midst of conflict, not as he had, in the diaspora.” While Kardonne was a complete stranger to the country, she recounts that “those things which were most new and strange nonetheless had parallels in my experience.” Her first-hand observations elicited contrasting emotions of joy as well as confusion. She also encountered a society in transition, rebuilding the fabric of families and institutions after a devastating 30-year civil war. One music seed was sown when Kardonne heard a girl sing to entertain fellow bus commuters on the A9 highway to Jaffna, the northernmost city on the South Asian island nation. She notated the girl’s song and it surfaced in the work’s first movement titled “A9 to Jaffna.”

On returning home, her life-altering experience compelled her to rethink her “own understanding of life back in Canada through the lens of what I learned from Sri Lanka.” The profound themes she explores in her lyrics for The Lanka Suite include Sri Lankans’ essential connection to the land and the importance of self-definition through politics, even though this trust seems inevitably doomed to be betrayed by the political class. The ravages borne by the abundant natural world and the shifting role of women are also examined.

When she first presented The Lanka Suiteat The Rex Hotel last year in its stripped down eight-musician version, the favourable audience reception centred on perceptions of cultural familiarity, despite the score’s vibrant mash-up of musical idioms. Various listeners “picked up on what in the music seemed familiar to them” reported the composer, “but I certainly felt vindicated when people told me ‘I hear you and that’s my music too.’” Infusing additional jazz sparkle to The Lanka Suite’s full airing at the Music Gallery, the multi-JUNO Award winningflute and soprano saxophonevirtuosa Jane Bunnett joins Kardonne, her seven-piece band The Thing Is, and the GREX choir.

Opening the evening is Khôra, the experimental music project of Toronto’s Matthew Ramolo. He performs his music on acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as field recordings and analogue/digital processing, summoning “the spirit of Eastern modes, contemporary classical, avant and sacred minimalism, experimental rock and various forms of electronic music.”

Other Picks:

March 6 and 7, Tuvan singer Radik Tyulyush and Inuk diva Tanya Tagaq, two masters of throat singing, split the bill at the Aga Khan Museum, presented with the support of Small World Music. Though drawing on musically distinct cultures over 6,000 kilometres apart, it’s a rare pleasure for Toronto audiences to witness these outstanding performers on a single stage. The abundantly talented Tyulyush, a member of perhaps Tuva’s most successful music group Huun Huur Tu, is not only a leading performer of the several types of indigenous throat and “regular” singing, but is a master of several Tuvan instruments including the igil, doshpuluur, shoor and khomu. He’s a Tuvan rock star to boot. His set opens the concert.

Tagaq follows. I covered her Polaris Prize performance and reviewed her brilliant album Animism which sealed the win last fall in The WholeNote. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s among the most musically, emotionally and politically compelling avant-garde vocalists working today. I’m not sure if I have ever deemed a performance a must-see in this column, but her live vocal confrontation, accompanied by her band, of a screening of the silent film Nanook of the North (1922) is such a show.

March 12 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Japan’s Kodo Drummers return to Toronto, after a four-year absence, with their “Kodo One Earth Tour: Mystery.” I’ve seen them before and this taiko (Japanese drum) group which has been setting the bar high for decades keeps improving, making theatrically engaging, powerful music. For those who have never seen them live, they also incorporate various flutes and other Japanese instruments in their precision shows. “Mystery” is the second Kodo program directed by the famous kabuki actor Tamasaburō Bandō, designated a National Living Treasure in Japan. He became Kodo’s artistic director in 2012, and during his tenure has aimed to deepen Kodo’s theatricality and to give more prominence to women performers. Of special interest, the pre-show discussion at 7pm features members of Toronto’s Nagata Shachu Japanese Taiko and Music Ensemble examining the history of taiko in Japan, the various drums used in performance, the costumes worn, how the music is taught and learned, as well as the development of the modern taiko movement led by groups such as Kodo.

March 26, the Mississauga- based singer and songwriter Vandana Vishwas presents a selection of her sugam sangeet songs at the Musideum. Songs in the ghazal, bhajan, geet, thumri, folk, Indo-jazz and light classical genres, often reflected on Indian film soundtracks, are collectively known as sugam sangeet. Vishwas, who performed for ten years as an All India Radio artist until she left India, is accompanied by George Koller, one of Toronto’s favourite bass and dilruba players, tabla maestro Ed Hanley and Vishwas Thoke on acoustic guitar.

 March 29 the Small World Music Society in association with Batuki Music Society presents the Toronto debut of Tal National, Niger’s most popular group, at the Drake Underground. Drawing on regional West African music genres like highlife, soukous, Afrobeat and desert blues, Tal National has evolved a joyous dance-centric music driven by drums, guitars and deep grooves. While at home they are known to play till daybreak, bets are off that will happen at the Drake. One sure thing however: the relentless cyclical energy of their music will propel dancers far longer than even they thought possible.

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