The company of Hamilton - National Tour. Photo credit: Joan Marcus, c/o Mirvish.

"I'm just like my country, I’m young scrappy and hungry, and I'm not throwing away my shot."

On February 12, I finally had the chance to see the musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's famously hip hop biography of America's lesser-known founding father, and first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. It has been a long five-year wait for Hamilton fans in Toronto since the show debuted at New York's Public Theater in February 2015 to immense popular and critical acclaim, moving to Broadway just months later and almost sweeping the Tony Awards, as well as being awarded that year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show has continued to be showered with accolades, nearly unanimous raves, and a Grammy Award for the already six-time platinum-selling original cast album – which many fans have learned by heart, but hasn’t been seen in Toronto until now.

How does a touring production making the show's Canadian debut live up to that sort of reputation?

My fingers were crossed as I took my seat, my expectations so high that I didn't think they could be met. By intermission, however, I was a full convert, dazzled by the immediacy and urgency of the storytelling, the layered detailed brilliance of the libretto, the perfectly matching music – a heady mix of hip hop and R&B ballads with bits of Brit pop and traditional Broadway mixed in – and the superb staging of Thomas Kail melded with the idiosyncratic choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler.

The opening is almost subversive in its subtlety. There is no overture, just a lone figure entering the stage to quietly ask, “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore/and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a/forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence/impoverished in squalor/grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” It almost slipped by without everyone being aware that something magical was beginning. Meanwhile, the golden, space-filling, multi-level set began to fill with figures in 18th-century dress, and we were swept into the thrilling, intoxicating ride of Alexander Hamilton's unlikely rise from his obscure birth on a Caribbean island to a life in New York, urgently wanting to make his mark, to play a leading role in the American Revolution and the creation of the new nation.

"I'm just like my country/I'm young scrappy and hungry/and I'm not throwing away my shot!"

Joseph Morales (who led the Chicago company) is a magnetic Hamilton with a clear, strong voice and a vibrant sympathetic presence, making us feel every emotion on his journey. Equally strong and a great foil as Hamilton's friend and later enemy Aaron Burr, is Jared Dixon. Part of the brilliance of the book is this pairing of opposites. Hamilton is fiercely passionate, his emotions on his sleeve, while Burr, much more opaque about his own motives, cautions him to “talk less, smile more,” to “wait and see” rather than jumping into revolution or innovation.

Part of the thrill of the show's storytelling is also that all these “dead white men” (and women) are played by Black, Latin, and Asian performers, even – and there has been some questioning of this – slave owners such as Washington and Jefferson. This isn't “blind casting” but, as Miranda has expressed it, this is “the story of America then told by Americans now.” The lone white actor (other than some members of the ensemble) is Neil Haskell, who has a lovely time portraying England's King George III, the one character who is mostly seen alone onstage, and who sings in a vaudevillian Brit Pop style, with clever tongue-in-cheek lyrics highlighting a disbelief in his “revolting” colonial subjects' actions.

This casting strategy works, along with the music and verbal style, to make the urgency of the story feel as if it were happening today. Ironically, of course, Hamilton debuted when Barack Obama was president of the United States, and it did feel as if that country was entering an optimistic new era, whereas now not only the US but other places around the world are facing new forces of oppression, and there are new – or should I say old? – battles to be fought.

Perhaps this change in our social context is partly why the second half of the show felt less inspiring. The headiness of the success of the revolution gives way to the building of the new nation. It isn't as easy to keep the urgency and energy high onstage as politics and factionalism get in the way of accomplishment, though the Cabinet debates – played as rap battles – are fun, and the dueling scenes pulse with tension.

Part of the issue with this particular production is that Warren Egypt Franklin as Thomas Jefferson, while full of energy, is rather over-the-top in his portrayal of the brilliant but eccentric statesman, and his diction is so unclear that it is hard to follow and become engaged with the details of the political situation. The personal side of Hamilton's story also bogs down a bit here, as Stephanie Jae Park as his wife Eliza is not a terribly nuanced actor, though Darilyn Castillo as his fatal love interest Maria Reynolds is very effective, and Ta'rea Campbell as Eliza's sister Angelica (Hamilton's “intellectual soulmate”) makes a welcome brief return after her strong presence in Act One.

It feels a bit as though Miranda is trying to cram too much into too short a time, and it would be nice if there was a more rousing, inspiring finish, to send us out still as full of hope in the future as at intermission. A flawed second act notwithstanding, this is a “must-see” production for its passion, ambition, and innovation. It plays in Toronto until May 17.

The Canadian premiere of Hamilton runs until May 17, 2020, at the Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto.

Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director, and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.

Eugene von Guerard’s oil painting Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges (1857), featuring two lyrebirds in the foreground.As a venue, Toronto’s Heliconian Club sets a charming tone for an afternoon concert. On February 2 at 3pm, the intimate space was dimly lit, with a screen projecting the images of three types of birds, in preparation for “Where Song Began,” a chamber music project by violinist Simone Slattery and cellist Anthony Albrecht based on the theme of Australia’s songbirds.

The program starts on a chilling tone, low and singular. Slattery is on one side of the stage, vocalising to the notes played by Albrecht, who is on the opposite side. Sounds of nature and birdsong swell, while projected on the screen is a quote: “…the majority of the world’s songbirds have ancestors from Australia” – Tim Low. This introduces the performance, which, as Slattery later explains, was inspired by Australian ornithologist Tim Low’s book Where Song Began on Australia’s history of songbirds and their global impact.

The audience is transfixed in absolute silence. The only thing that disturbs this silence is a thud of my neighbour’s phone as it hits the floor. We are briefly snapped out of our trance.

Slattery makes her way to the centre of the stage, standing in front of the screen which now exhibits a bare expanse of land. She begins Arvo Pärt’s Fratres for solo violin. It is eerie, yet enchanting. Though perhaps not intentional in their choice of pieces, the bariolage of her violin bow gives Slattery a bird-like quality. She is mesmerizing to watch, her arm flapping, akin to wings; at one point, the video projection displays a flock of birds, swooping across her body.

Before Slattery ends, Albrecht is ready to take over with the next piece. He mimics bird sounds by sliding his finger down the cello strings, blending perfectly with the chirping that continues in the background. The performance transitions are tastefully thought out, with recordings of birdsong, gorgeous visuals, and the sounds from the artists flawlessly combined.

Another projected quote by Tim Low: “Songbirds make up 47% of the world’s bird species. If the comparisons are valid they may tell of birdsong influencing the evolution of human acoustic perception, and in particular our sense of what sounds pleasing.” The selected quotes are very thought-provoking, especially in light of recent news coverage of devastating bushfires across Australia. While much of the news coverage of Australia’s bushfires has focused on mammals and devastation of trees, it has not typically covered the massive loss of birds that these fires have caused.

We are about 20 minutes into the program, and we see a new projection—a group of birds singing and soaring without inhibition. There is no depiction of tragedy in the videos and images presented. During the Question and Answer session following the performance, Slattery explains that this was in fact done on purpose. She reasons that we have seen the tragic images of birds and animals in distress, the extensive number of trees destroyed in Australia’s recent fires. Slattery and Albrecht, therefore, chose to show the birds in their natural state amid beautiful landscapes. The program takes a lighter tone with the next piece, Ross Edwards’ violin/cello duo Ecstatic Dance No.2.

The audience’s attention is brought to the cuckoo bird, as Slattery and Albrecht together play the Cucu Sonata by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. The playful quality of cuckoos is demonstrated beautifully with this piece, Slattery smiling throughout the performance. The literature onscreen informs us that the musicality of the cuckoo inspired works from composers such as Vivaldi, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Next onscreen is a quotation from Charles Hartshorne: “…bird song is recognisably musical by all basic human standards. It has nice bits of melody, charming rhythms, even bits of harmony (for birds, unlike us, can sing contrasting notes simultaneously)…”

The lyrebird, characterized as “…a Shakespeare among birds,” is the next focus. Albrecht begins Prelude from Cello Suite No.1 by J.S. Bach. There is a collective sigh from the audience, and smiles are exchanged as we hear the easily-recognizable work of Bach.

We are then introduced to the honeyeaters, a family of birds that, we learn, are “crucial to the Australian landscape and habitat” and are known for their harsh calls. Fittingly, the next piece, Anthochaera carunculata, by David Lang, was a bit uncomfortable to listen to, laden with firm accents and dissonant chords. Slattery straightens our backs with a powerful stroke of the bow. At moments, her bow ricochets on the fingerboard and she looks at all of us in an amused manner, gathering our reactions to it. I, for one, am confused.

The program ends as it started—on a sombre note, with Slattery singing an Indigenous hymn, Ngarra Burra Ferra. Slattery and Albrecht succeed in educating the audience on birdlife in Australia and keeping us captivated throughout the 50-minute benefit performance.

Simone Slattery and Anthony Albrecht presented their Toronto performance of When Song Began on February 2, 2020 at 3pm, at Heliconian Hall. For details, visit their website www.wheresongbegan.com. To learn more about birdlife in Australia or donate to efforts to support birdlife in light of Australia’s recent bushfires, one online resource is https://birdlife.org.au/.

Menaka Swaminathan is a writer and chorister, currently based in Toronto.

Laurie Anderson. Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz.Trying to capture in words my experience of Laurie Anderson’s performance at Koerner Hall on January 18 is almost an impossibility. There was music of course, along with Anderson’s distinctive approach to storytelling, but the entire evening flowed like a dream, from one scene or emotional tone to another. Hopefully some of that can be communicated through the printed page or screen, but I highly recommend listening to her most recent album release, entitled Songs from the Bardo, to fill in some of the sonic gaps. 

When I interviewed Anderson for the story that appeared in The WholeNote’s December/January edition, I asked her to tell me about her new work The Art of Falling that we would hear in her 21C Festival performance. Her response aroused my curiosity: “I don’t know to what extent it will be a brand-new work or to what extent it will be a collection of things.” She described her work as looking back and forward at the same time, and that “it might be something like that, or it might go another direction too.” She did know, however, that it would be a collaborative improvisation with cellist Rubin Kodheli in which she wanted to leave lots of room for things to evolve and “go off the track a little.” My interest was sparked and I couldn’t wait to hear what she would bring to the stage.

As soon as the pair walked onto the stage on January 18, they entered into a musical duo full of pulsating rhythms and repetitive musical gestures, opening up the space for what was to come. Anderson then walked over to the opposite side of the stage to begin telling the first story sequence of the evening, describing various scenes of environmental degradation: burning forests and melting ice. “Am I just dreaming or is this real?” she asked. Moving in a seamless progression, she began to talk about politics in the United States, describing how we end up voting for the person whose story we like the most or feel is the most true. She described the quiet on the streets of New York the night after Trump was elected, and Yoko Ono’s response: tweeting a 19-second long scream. From there she invited the audience to join together and create a collective scream. We were encouraged to imagine similar scenes of environmental destruction and then scream. “Give it your all,” she encouraged. And we did. It was a harrowing moment, but also finally a relief – that collectively we could hear ourselves expressing something that too often we keep below the surface. Later on in the performance, she pointed out that we are the first humans to have to tell the story of possible human extinction and that this is a story nobody wants to hear. The group scream was followed by an instrumental improvisation characterized by aggressive and dense textures created from her technical setup of loops and pre-recorded tracks.

During the storytelling sequences, Anderson alternated between accompanying herself at the keyboard, sometimes using her vocoder to transpose her voice into a low register, and delivering the text standing or sitting at a microphone in other stage locations. The stories were always told floating on top of a drone-like musical texture made up of repetitive sequences, often alongside musical commentary and interjections from Kodheli’s exquisite cello playing. This enabled the performance to move without interruption and created the sense that we were floating along deeper and deeper into a more timeless state of awareness, like birds flying in endless circles in the sky. It was a perfect environment that eventually brought us into Andrson’s presentation of an ancient Greek comedy entitled The Birds (written by the playwright Aristophanes). And in her characteristic humorous style, Anderson set it all up by referencing the dream of the building of a wall by a certain current American politician. In the Greek play, the character Pisthetaerus convinces the birds to create a city in the sky so that they could regain their original god-like status and keep out those they didn’t want to enter. The contemporary parallels were stunningly obvious. As the music shifted into a lament, Anderson began listing the loss of various species, ending with the potential loss of humanity. What would John Cage say? “Listen,” was her response.

She then took the audience into one of the more remarkable experiences I’ve had in a concert:  a guided hypnotic journey designed to create a deep inner state of consciousness. She used various devices, such as imagining the central core of our brain or feeling the similarity between the temperature in the room and our skin. We were to enter each new image on vocal instruction: “I say ONE”. The music grew in intensity and density during this experience, and I can’t quite recall when things shifted again and we were back into a different sea of images:  how Jackie Kennedy faked smiling, Anderson’s personal loss of valuable archives and artworks during Hurricane Sandy. She listed various things that we can lose: looks, reputation, Facebook friends, civility, democracy. Her biggest loss, she then told us, was the loss of husband Lou Reed, a person who understood energy more than anyone else she knew. As the music shifted here into a lush stringed orchestra sound that could have been sampled sounds of the Japanese koto or the Chinese Guzheng, Anderson moved to centre stage and performed a stunning sequence of Tai Chi movements.

As the work grew to a close, we were taken once again into readings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, no doubt drawn from her album Songs From The Bardo (as she hinted at during our earlier interview). The Bardo is that place after death where our consciousness travels to and where we experience a change in the state of our energy.  As the musical textures soared, all I can say is that I felt a glimmer of that place – the immensity, grandeur and power that resides there.

The following evening on January 19, there was a screening at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema of her film Heart of a Dog, which also referenced themes of death, loss and transition.  During the Q&A afterwards, Anderson was asked about these transitions we go through in the Bardo. She replied: “Everything is a transition. Music is always moving in a state of flux. We are in the Bardo now. We are the ones asleep. The dead are awake.”

Anderson’s more recent explorations into approaching performance as an improvisation – as we experienced it in The Art of Falling – have created a more expansive and visceral atmosphere in her work, a way of being “open and free rather than carving out what will happen,” as she expressed during the January 19 Q&A. She summarized her approach in this way – that she is attempting to “push things together and use the opportunity to bring teachings from my teacher.” From such a simple stance, holy elegance was the result.

Laurie Anderson presented The Art of Falling at the RCM’s 21C Festival, on January 18, 2020.

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

Photo credit: Claire Harvie.I first heard MELANCHOLIAC: The Music of Scott Walker, written and created by Adam Paolozza with music director Gregory Oh, at the Summerworks festival back in 2015. It was re-mounted at Niagara’s In the Soil arts festival the following year. Earlier this month on December 6 and 7, a new production (presented by Bad New Days and the Music Gallery) took the stage for a three-performance run at The Music Gallery.

MELANCHOLIAC draws on five decades of music recorded, and for the most part written by, a former member of the Walker Brothers, best known to my generation for the 60s hit The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore). No one in the group was actually named Walker, but it seems that the baritone “brother,” born Noel Scott Engel, adopted the name when he went out on his own. The music that followed was a far cry from the pop ballads that had brought the boy band fame which for a time rivaled that of The Beatles, but the darker side of this former teen idol has given him a cult following in recent decades.

Walker’s musical versatility was amply demonstrated during the two-hour Music Gallery production, which featured seven solo “Scott Walkers” plus chorus, as well as an orchestra of strings, winds, keyboards, guitar and a dynamic rhythm section.

The evening began with Nick DiGaetano performing Rod McKuen and Henry Mancini’s The Living End, a swinging rockabilly tune from the 1958 album Meet Scott Engel, who was 15 at the time. This upbeat bauble was quickly overtaken by tumultuous pounding from the much darker See You Don’t Bump His Head from the 2012 solo album Bish Bosh. Walker was profoundly influenced by the music of Jacques Brel, and one highlight of the show was Patricia O’Callaghan’s rendition of Mathilde as recorded on Walker’s first solo album Scott in 1967. Alex Samaras then gave us the mournful ballad It’s Raining Today (in Adam Scime’s arrangement), a Walker original from his 1969 album Scott 3.

Lest we think that the Walker Brothers had gone the way of the dinosaur by then, they actually continued to record together for another decade. The next selection, The Electrician from their last studio album Nite Flights recorded in 1979, is an experimental track foreshadowing some of Walker’s later concerns, sung here by Paolozza. We then jumped ahead nearly three decades with Matt Smith’s interpretation of Clara from 2006’s The Drift. The first set concluded with two more selections from Scott 3, including another Brel song, Funeral Tango, with Paolozza’s tongue firmly in cheek.

The highlights of the second set for me all involved John Millard, whose voice I found closest to Walker’s distressed baritone. Two recent compositions, Brando (Dwellers on the bluff) (2014) with its distinctive bull whips (leather belt snaps here) and the polytonal Epizootics (2012) pushed Millard’s skills to the utmost, with seemingly no harmonic support from the band, and were most impressive. Millard got to relax a bit in the Walker Brothers’ distinctive interpretation of Tom Rush’s No Regrets, a version for which Rush claims to have great respect because the royalties put both his kids through college. Two more tracks from Scott 3 rounded out the set, with Julianne Dransfield and the ensemble featured in 30 Century Man and Samaras leading the triumphant anthem We Came Through to cap the evening.

There were some balance issues between voices and ensemble, especially in See You Don’t Bump His Head, but the instrumentalists were all in fine form, with special mention for percussionists Dan Morphy and Spencer Cole, trumpeter Lina Allemano, saxophonist Shawn Mallinen, guitarist Paul Kolinski, cellist Amahl Arulanandam and, of course, keyboardist and conductor Gregory Oh, who was responsible for most of the arrangements.

Since that first production of MELANCHOLIAC in 2015 I have continued to explore the world of this troubled, solitary artist who died last March at 76. Although he did not perform live in his final years, Walker did allow cameras into the studio when recording the album The Drift. The resulting documentary Scott Walker 30 Century Man, produced by Stephen Kijak (with executive producer credits to David Bowie who professed to have been deeply influenced by Walker) was released in 2006 and is viewable on YouTube. I highly recommend it. And then skip ahead to his last album release from 2014 (there were two subsequent film soundtracks), Soused (4AD CAD 3428CD), which features five extended Scott Walker “songs” (including Brando) on which Walker’s now-familiar melancholy voice is accompanied by the Seattle drone metal band Sunn O))). Not for the faint of heart!

Bad New Days and the Music Gallery presented MELANCHOLIAC: The Music of Scott Walker on December 6 and 7 at the Music Gallery, Toronto.

David Olds is the recording reviews editor at The WholeNote, and can be reached at discoveries@thewholenote.com.

Human Body Expression’s Resonance. Photo credit: Francesca Chudnoff.Friday, September 27 was the day Canada rose to join the Global Climate Strike, with hundreds of thousands of people taking part in climate marches in cities across the country. Those marches, inspired in part by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were largely led by young people, though those of all ages participated.

This rise of the young in anger against the darker destructive forces of society was also captured by choreographer Hanna Kiel and her company Human Body Expression (HBE), in the recent world premiere of her dance work Resonance. Opening on Thursday, September 26—the day before the climate marches—Resonance was inspired by a recent South Korean political movement: the impeachment of now former president Park Geun-Hye in 2016.

Set to an excellent collaborative rock score with a strangely fitting 80s character by Dora-nominated composer Greg Harrison, Kiel’s choreography has an idiosyncratic yet completely contemporary feel to it, seeming to be tailored to, and inspired by, the varying body types, physical styles, and personalities of Kiel’s dynamic company of 12 young professional dancers.

The first part of Resonance begins with a tortured solo by a single male dancer. As other dancers emerge onstage, we see a society filled by individuals trapped in isolated torment, although in a crowd. They respond separately to stimuli, not working or thinking together, but seemingly kept impotent by some controlling power – perhaps symbolized by the guitarist at centre stage, his sounds sparking angular reactive movement from the dancers around him.

Out of this physical disharmony slips a girl dressed all in black. “Can we learn to forgive what we cannot forget?” she says. “My body has been infected, infected with future from unknown answer (...) it is hunting my present so we are looking back as moving forward (...) and then it starts. Knocking at your chest, there's a pulse, a desire ... A desire to be rid of the storm. A pulse craving to be free.”

Another dancer joins in and the words interweave in a doubly spoken articulation of a society at odds with itself, a young generation looking for a way to make sense of the world they live in and to find some agency within it. “Each disconnected fragment lends a hand to the greatest transformation…” 

Particularly powerful in the midst of this world of rock-fuelled movement, these spoken thoughts (written as well as spoken by the dancers performing them: Zsakira Del Coro and Roberto Soria) seem to lead to an evolution in the physical world we are watching. This in turn is echoed by a morphing of the music to acoustic from electric (a small foot-powered organ is walked out onstage and joined by an acoustic guitar on the dance floor). A further evolution is sparked by the eerie sound of a single whirly tube (those plastic corrugated tubes that children play with), creating a wave of soft, whistling sound, as more whirly tubes are wielded by musicians and dancers together. A magical shift follows: this sound morphs into a strange singing created by the company all playing on silver disks with violin bows, as the choreography equally softens and melds newly awakened individuals into a cohesive communicating group.

After a musical interval, the final section begins with a single male figure, dramatically back lit, playing a drum, literally calling his forces to battle. This, apart from the actual spoken text, was the most literal part of the piece, and welcome as a clear “call to arms” – not only onstage but shared with the audience as well. Swiftly the choreography builds to a powerful, hopeful finish, as this group of individuals find strength in shared purpose and find themselves ready to make a difference in their world.

I had not seen Hanna Kiel's choreography before, but was captivated by her idiosyncratic physical style, and her passionate commitment to her dancers and to creating dance that connects to our contemporary world.

Human Body Expression (HBE) presented Resonance, with choreography by Hanna Kiel and music by Greg Harrison, from September 26 to 28 at Sts Cyril & Methody Church, Toronto.

Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director, and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of musicals, Shakespeare, and new Canadian plays.

Jake Epstein. Photo credit: Jacob Cohl.On July 12, I went an hour and a half early to Kensington Market in the hope of being first on the waiting list to get tickets for the brand-new solo musical at the Toronto Fringe Festival: Boy Falls From The Sky: Jake Epstein at Supermarket. Others had beaten me to it and I was number 3 in line, but I took my chances and waited.

The run had sold out very quickly, perhaps because of how well known Jake Epstein is from his time starring on TV in Degrassi: The Next Generation, and more recently on Designated Survivor and Suits – or perhaps because he was so brilliant as Bruce Springsteen in The Musical Stage Company’s 2017 theatrical concert Uncovered: Dylan and Springsteen. In any case, the word of mouth from long before the start of the Fringe was that this was a “must-see” production.

Written and performed by Epstein and supported onstage by music director Daniel Abrahamson on  piano, the show was developed with director Robert McQueen (Fun Home, Life After) and is produced by Derrick Chua for Past Future Productions. 

This is Jake Epstein’s first solo show, and is based on his own experiences of both the highs and unexpected lows of following – and achieving – his dream to be a performer on Broadway. The stories, interwoven with songs throughout, start off with relatable memories such as family road trips to New York, Epstein and his sister singing along in the back seat to recordings of Broadway cast albums from Lion King to Les Mis, imitating the voices of their favourite performers. Inspired by the audience reaction to the child performers they see in the musical Big, he auditions back home for the Claude Watson School for the Arts, and soon is auditioning for professional productions in Toronto and landing the role of the Artful Dodger in the Mirvish production of Oliver. Later he wins a leading TV role on Degrassi: The Next Generation, but when he auditions for the Juilliard School in New York he doesn’t get in – just one of the many self-deprecating stories about unexpected setbacks that he shares with us along the way. However, meeting with two strangers on the street outside Juilliard, they ask to take a selfie with him because they love him in Degrassi and he is inspired to stay in New York  and soon lands leading roles in North American touring productions of cutting-edge musicals American Idiot and Spring Awakening.

When in 2012 he is cast as the alternate for the lead in the troubled Julie Taymour/U2 musical Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark, it’s a dream come true (complete with actually flying around the Broadway theatre), but he gets hurt and doesn’t want to tell anyone back home. A year later he has another iconic chance – to create a leading role in a new Broadway musical, Carole King’s husband and songwriting partner Gerry Goffin in Beautiful. Once again there are brighter and darker sides to the story, and as a result he spends more time back home in Toronto.

A recurring theme in Boy Falls From The Sky (yes, the title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to his role in Spiderman) is Epstein not wanting to seem ungrateful for his luck and the success he has achieved, marked by the repeated singing of snatches of “give them the old razzle dazzle.” Luckily for us in the audience, eventually he did tell the full stories of what his life on tour and on Broadway was really like, and friends and family encouraged him to turn those stories into this show.

This is excellent musical theatre storytelling by a performer with natural star power – including the ability to make everyone in the audience feel as though he is talking to them alone. Add to that the edgy energy of a BYOV “Bring Your Own” Fringe Venue in Kensington Market and the fact that the star and writer is a hometown boy made good, and the 70 minutes speed by too fast and are over too soon.

Jake Epstein's Boy Falls from The Sky is from the first moment engaging and fun, his presence electric and yet relaxed, his timing perfection and the laughs strongly rooted in self-deprecating honesty. I loved this show – as I had hoped I would.

Boy Falls From The Sky: Jake Epstein Live at Supermarket ran from July 4 to 13 at Supermarket, Toronto, as part of the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival.

Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.

The Dover Quartet in Koerner Hall. Photo credit: James Ireland.The afternoon before the Dover Quartet’s concert at Toronto Summer Music in Koerner Hall on July 17, second violinist Bryan Lee gave a public masterclass in Walter Hall that offered a preview of the Dover’s approach to performance. The masterclass presented three chamber music works by Debussy, Mozart and Dvořák played by fellows of the TSM Academy. Lee thought that the McGill-based Iceberg String Quartet’s playing of the fourth movement of Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor needed more of a sense of gesture – they were holding back, he said. Lee had followed the score without taking notes, giving detail-oriented comments with an authoritative sense of clarity: “Find different types of non-competing sounds so they come out in the texture,” he said. “And do something extremely uncomfortable – it felt really tame.”  It could be really exaggerated – by a factor of ten – he said.

After a second group of fellows played the first movement of Mozart’s String Quintet in D Major, No.5 K593, Lee said: “I think the larghettos need more rhetorical time and the allegro needs more joy and drama.” Later he said that some chords were “kind of crunchy,” provoking some smiles. He told the fellows who played the last movement of Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No.2 in E-flat Major, Op.87 that they needed to pick spots to really emphasize, and take more time to appreciate everything going on in the music so that it didn’t feel like a big run-on sentence.

All of which shed light on the masterful performance of the Dover Quartet the next day. They made each note count and every gesture meaningful. Britten’s String Quartet No.1 in D Major, Op.25’s nakedly quiet opening bars with Camden Shaw’s expressive cello pizzicatos broadened into a series of distinct voices by the entire quartet, contributing to an implacable sense of unity as the music rose to a level of urgent passion. They played the brief second movement with flair and authority and brought out the achingly romantic melody and profound sense of calm in the third movement, the work’s emotional centerpiece; the finale’s light-fingered passages were simply astounding. With their superb sense of Britten’s sonic architecture, the Dovers’ reading felt definitive.

Intense and propulsive, they held nothing back in Bartók’s String Quartet No.3, mining its igneous beauty. After intermission, they brought out the lyricism and sense of optimism inherent in Dvořák’s popular String Quartet No.12 in F Major, Op.96 “American,” and balanced its folk-infused amiability with a sense of restraint that flowed easily and organically. Typically crowd-pleasing was the second movement’s melt-in-your-mouth tune that seemed to dissolve into thin air. A spontaneous standing ovation brought the Dovers back for a sublime take on Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood.

Joel Link, violin; Charles Richard-Hamelin, piano; Camden Shaw, cello; Milena Pajaro-van Stadt, viola. Photo credit: James Ireland.Two days later on July 19 in a sold-out Walter Hall, three members of the Dover Quartet – first violinist Joel Link, violist Milena Pajaro-van Stadt and cellist Camden Shaw – joined pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin for what turned out to be my personal highlight of TSM 2019 thus far: an impassioned performance of Brahms’ Piano Quartet No.1 in G Minor, Op.25. Lush and warm, well-balanced – no one was hiding – with an intensity that conveyed the score’s riches (including hints of the composer’s Second Piano Concerto), the first movement set the stage for what was to follow. The grace of the second movement and the lyrical wonderland of the third led to the angular, animated, assertive finale with its wild abandon. No standing ovation was ever more deserved. 

The Dovers brought out the best in Richard-Hamelin, who began the evening with Rachmaninoff and Chopin. He has an agreeable tonal disposition for chamber music, his round tonal texture making each note meaningful, but always within the boundaries of the ensemble as a whole. His solo Rachmaninoff – the composer’s five Fantasy Pieces, Op.3, written when he was just 18 – was lyrical and warm, with a balanced rubato that enhanced the music’s melodic core. The famous second piece, Prelude in C-sharp Minor – a piece that audiences loved and Rachmaninoff grew to hate – was followed by three more, including the tuneful exoticism of the Serenade in B-flat Minor. Richard-Hamelin finished his solo selection with Chopin’s Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op.22, the dreamy Andante – with its second theme reminiscent of a Ballade – settling into the big footsteps of the Polonaise.

A key element of Toronto Summer Music’s Academy program is the opportunity for its fellows to perform with some of the world-class musicians who act as their mentors during their stay here. In a brief email exchange with Richard-Hamelin [published in the summer issue of The WholeNote], Richard-Hamelin told me that inspiration was the most important thing a mentor can do. “A great mentor, over a very brief period of time, can make you love the music you’re playing to a point where you don’t want to stop working until you’ve done justice to it.” The fruits of Richard-Hamelin’s own mentorship were on display last Saturday, July 20, in Chausson’s Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet Op.21. The instrumentation made for many possible pairings – violin and piano, violin and string quartet etc – and the music’s exuberance was contagious, leading to a spontaneous standing ovation. The fellows included the Iceberg Quartet and violinist Gregory Lewis, one of CBC’s “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30.” Richard-Hamelin’s sensitivity shone through and Lewis’ confidence was apparent in a work that ultimately favoured the violin. 

Before intermission, the Dover Quartet’s Camden Shaw and his heartfelt cello playing shepherded two fellows in Dvořák’s charming Piano Trio No.4 in E Minor, OP.90 “Dumky,” one of the most lovable pieces in the repertoire. 

Toronto Summer Music continues at various locations throughout Toronto until August 3.

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, pianist Steven Philcox and the New Orford String Quartet. Photo credit: Sean Howard.Toronto Summer Music’s 2019 season opened on July 11 in a festive mood before a full Koerner Hall audience, with a gala roster of performers emblematic of the talent this year’s edition promises.

Artistic director Jonathan Crow astutely chose the CBC’s Tom Allen to host the proceedings, introduce the artists and connect whatever dots needed connecting vis-à-vis this year’s TSM theme of “Beyond Borders.” This Allen did with his inimitable enthusiasm and an engaging and informative patter was – part ringmaster, part colour commentator. His backstory of the Turkish-Viennese linkage, anecdotes of violinist-composers Pablo de Sarasate and Fritz Kreisler, as well as how Ravel came to write Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, brought an extra sense of immediacy to the performances.

The evening began with Jon Kimura Parker’s unpretentious playing of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Major, K331 “Alla turca.” Parker’s unadorned simplicity suited the first movement’s theme, its variations elegantly shaped, the whole an expression of Mozart’s melodic heart. After a brisk Menuetto, the finale’s famous Turkish march put TSM’s celebration of the cross-cultural influences that have pervaded classical music on display, thanks in part to Parker’s fancy fingering and rhythmic integrity.

Adrianne Pieczonka, fresh from her celebrated turn in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at the Met in May and her recent assumption of the post of first vocal chair and head of the vocal department of the Glenn Gould School, soared in Ravel’s Five Popular Greek Songs. Reminiscent of Cantaloube’s Songs of the Auvergne in their wild abandon and evoking the purity of the outdoors, Pieczonka (with pianist Steven Philcox) gave us an experience rich in joy.

Kerson Leong, violin, and Rachael Kerr, piano. Photo credit: Sean Howard.Just before intermission, violinist Kerson Leong (and pianist Rachael Kerr) brought the audience to its feet with a dynamic, kinetic, authoritative performance of Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. Just 22, Leong, a protégé of Jonathan Crow, dazzled the crowd with his command of his instrument and stage presence. He returned after the break with a Kreisler set that began with a tasteful rendering of La Gitana, moved to Kreisler’s arrangements of Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land and Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No.17, and concluded with the well-judged pyrotechnics of Tambourin chinois.

After Parker came back to perform Chopin’s Ballade No.4 – presenting its evocative sonorities in a compact tonal palette – it was left to Pieczonka to conclude the evening with John Greer’s arrangement for string quartet and piano of Richard Strauss’ ineffable Four Last Songs. Pieczonka, Philcox and the New Orford String Quartet made it memorable. The power of the first song, the joyousness of the second suffused in beauty by its end, and the transformative journey into heavenly bliss by the fourth – this was the outlier to the Crossing Borders theme, unless you consider it the ultimate border crossing. Violinists Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan’s exquisite support of Pieczonka was palpable.

Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, pianist Steven Philcox and the New Orford String Quartet. Photo credit: Sean Howard.The following evening found the New Orford on the Walter Hall stage celebrating ten years together. Crow recalled before introducing the quartet’s encore, François Dompierre’s lovely, wistful Pavane solitaire, that their first-ever concert had begun with Haydn’s String Quartet Op.20, No.2, followed by a string quartet by Canadian composer Sir Ernest MacMillan and Beethoven’s Op.132. Their concert on July 12, ten years later, began with Haydn’s Op.20, No.4 followed by the world premiere of Canadian composer Christos Hatzis’ String Quartet No.5 “The Transforming” and Beethoven’s Op.59, No.3. Such is the cyclic nature of programming.

The New Orford’s playing of the Haydn’s first movement was buoyant and exacting, attentive and cohesive; the immaculate sense of ensemble that resulted typical of their professionalism. The affecting slow movement, filled with yearning, showed off the quartet’s precision and first violinist Andrew Wan’s deftness. After a jaunty Menuetto, the concluding Presto, with its scurrying orchestral quality, was sheer brilliance.

Commissioned by TSM for the New Orford String Quartet, Hatzis’ String Quartet No.5 “The Transforming” is “a deeper view of crucifixion and resurrection as metaphors for everyone’s life and the future of the world,” the composer said in a 30-minute lecture an hour before the concert. His initial reaction to the commission when he heard the name New Orford was that it would be a licence to be “difficult” – such was his admiration for the quartet’s remarkable music-making skills. Hatzis talked about how chamber music can create interpersonal relationships through putting everyone’s ego aside, because a quartet as a whole is a person in its own right; how Beethoven’s late quartets owe much of their power to that characteristic; and how this latest quartet is the culmination of a 25-year cycle that began with his first quartet in 1994.

The first movement, Pesach, came across as complex and mesmerizing, with intense silences and dramatic chords reduced to repetitive three-note phrases. The second, La Pieta (Jerusalem), was inspired by Renaissance paintings but is defined by Hatzis’ use of Hubert Parry’s anthem of the British Empire, Jerusalem, its beauty declaimed by pianissimo descending notes and the inscrutable hymn based on the text by William Blake. “Every time I hear that hymn I get chills,” Hatzis said in his lecture. Regeneration, the final movement, with its celestial arpeggios tuned in just intonation in C, begins with a quiet sul ponticello pizzicato that passes through an intensely calibrated build-up to a new order. The use of quarter tones introduces a new vocabulary. Kudos to the New Orford String Quartet and first violinist Jonathan Crow for their definitive performance.

After intermission, the third of Beethoven’s Razumovsky quartets brought the concert to more familiar terrain and produced the third spontaneous standing ovation of the opening two concerts. While the first movement was not as surefooted as we have come to expect of the New Orford, the rest of the composer’s middle-period masterwork was a model of elegance culminating in a flourish of a finale.

Toronto Summer Music continues at various locations throughout Toronto until August 3.

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

Njo Kong Kie, in I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron. Photo credit: Dahlia Katz.On the evening of May 17, I had the opportunity to experience the world premiere of Njo Kong Kie's new one-man show, I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron. I had been expecting a show of larger scale, as had been suggested by pre-season publicity last spring when Kong Kie's earlier work Picnic in the Cemetery made its Canadian premiere in the same space (Canadian Stage's Berkeley Street Upstairs Theatre). However, this is a good space for intimate shows, as the furthest away you can be as an audience member from the stage is 6 or 7 rows—and I Swallowed A Moon Made of Iron is an even more intimate and personal creation than the earlier piece.

The enigmatic title comes from the source material, which, perhaps counterintuitively, is not of a  whimsical fairy-tale nature but the opposite: a collection of almost 200 poems by factory worker Xu Lizhi, detailing the soul-destroying reality for many young workers on the assembly lines at the giant Foxconn manufacturing plant in southern China, where many of the world's cell phones and other personal electronics are made. 

Although he had started to gain some recognition for his literary gifts, Xu Lizhi jumped to his death on the last day of September 2014, when he had just turned 24. He was not the only worker to take this way out of a life he felt was destroying his humanity, and a group of his friends collected his poems and published them as widely as they could to not only celebrate their friend but to open the eyes of the world to the inhumane working conditions at the plant. 

Journalists around the world reported the story at the time. Apparently conditions at the plant have since improved somewhat—but the poems continue to circulate, and a growing number of theatre artists have been inspired by the simple poetic power of Xu Lizhi's words, creating new works of music, movement, and design to make more of us aware of the human cost of gadgets we take for granted.

This February 2019 at Toronto's Factory Theatre (in a co-presentation by fu-GEN Theatre and the Music Gallery), Remy Siu's Hong Kong Exiles presented Foxconn Frequency No. 3. Taking Xu Lizhi’s poems as a starting point, they created a futuristic theatrical event where three pianists competed in what has been described as a “kind of randomized real-time video game” involving three keyboards connected to computers and 3D printers, with webcams adding live footage of the performers' efforts as they compete. Each performance was different depending on the real-time results of the “game.”

While I didn't have the opportunity to see this show live, I have seen excerpts online and read many accounts of the disconcerting effect on the audience of the (thematically simulated) inhumane pressure placed on the three “worker/competitors” as they attempt to keep up with the demands of the “game.” The performance seems to have been a fascinating recreation of the factory life depicted in the poems, also functioning as a warning to the audience of the human pressures of our product-hungry modern world.

Njo Kong Kie, in I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron. Photo credit: Dahlia Katz.Kong Kie's creation is very different. In contrast, it could be seen as almost old-fashioned in its simplicity. Onstage is a grand piano on a highlighted square of floor, with a screen behind the piano on which the poems and various images are projected. A man (Kong Kie) enters and walks around the square marked on the stage, miming what seems to be a feeling of being constricted by his living and working space. After a while he sits down at the piano and begins to play.

There are several interludes in the 60 minutes of this theatrical concert, where Kong Kie performs other passages of mime, some seemingly-literal depictions of claustrophobia, others more symbolic, such as moving an anonymous cube from the floor to the piano, or raising it into the air with a pulley. These passages help to create a contextual world for the poems, feelingly spoken by Kong Kie in their original Chinese while English translations are projected on the screen behind. The performer's voice is rich and moving without being overly dramatic, and the impact of the poem's words is often enhanced by being spoken first before a blank screen, with a translation only being projected afterwards alongside the music.

The great richness of this theatrical concert is the power of the music, which varies from simple melodies to richly dramatic harmonies to clashing jangles, depending on the poem. Where it fell down for me was in the lack of a strong enough dramatic arc for the performance. The suicide to come at the end, I felt, was too clearly foreshadowed at the beginning, and the middle sequence was too often mired in shapeless melancholy.

In spite of this, the show is an intriguing introduction to the poems and world of Xu Lizhi, and a moving personal response to those poems by a musical artist of great experience and power. Kong Kie was for many years the music director for dance company La La La Human Steps, and many of his compositions here have a plasticity and dramatic tangibility that cry out to be interpreted by dancers. In many ways this felt like a first personal draft of something that may, in the future, grow into a larger work of music and theatre.

Njo Kong Kie’s I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron was presented from May 17 to 26 by Canadian Stage, at the Berkeley Street Upstairs Theatre, Toronto.

Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir, led by Masaaki Suzuki in their performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Photo credit: Jeff Higgins.It is the challenge of any conductor of early music: how to take works with innumerable minute sections and transitions, and smooth them into a cohesive performance. This challenge becomes particularly demanding when the individual sections themselves are complex and technically formidable, requiring an elevated level of focus from each performer and precise control from their leader. Within the corpus of such works, J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion reigns supreme: almost three hours in duration and scored for two choirs and orchestras, the immensity of every aspect of this piece makes it the apotheosis of Baroque religious music, the pious parallel to Handel’s great operas.

To the delight of Bach fans across the city, Tafelmusik presented the St. Matthew Passion, led by the renowned Japanese Bach specialist Masaaki Suzuki, on March 21 to 24 as part of their 40th anniversary season. Expectations were understandably high as Toronto’s premier early music ensemble joined forces with their legendary guest director – but this performance surpassed them all, providing an experience that made both a musical and spiritual impact. By neither losing the musical details in favour of dramatic effect nor neglecting the dramatic elements in favour of the musical, the Tafelmusik musicians reached a balance that resulted in a fulfilling, complete performance.

Central to this success was Suzuki’s incredible knowledge of the score and control of the ensemble, whom he guided with assuredness and precision. From beginning to end, each recitative was led with intention, looking ahead to what followed, providing innumerable transitions that felt logical and organic. The chorus was in top form throughout (their blend and tuning perhaps the best it’s ever been), and their agile maneuvering of Bach’s complex counterpoint conveyed both clarity and affect in perfect balance. The orchestra was magnificent as well, leading the chorus and soloists through their retelling of Christ’s passion with a wide range of expression, and following Suzuki’s leadership and interpretive ideas with precision.

The continuo team and strings deserve particular mention in this regard, as they had the task of accompanying a vast amount of recitative, from the secco narration of the Evangelist to the accompagnato words of Christ. Their unity and control lent a support that helped the audience to forget the technical difficulties and potential pitfalls of accompanying recitative and focus instead on the drama as it unfolded, guided through our journey by the stunning Evangelist, tenor James Gilchrist.

All of the soloists were in superb form, providing sublime reflections on the narrative unfolding within the Passion story. Of particular beauty was the final bass aria, ‘Mache dich, mein Herze’, which connected soloist and orchestra in such a way that they existed as one, an alchemic moment that set up the tranquil and introspective conclusion in which the choir is taken to ppp, the very bottom of their dynamic range, bringing the performance to rest.

If it is impossible to find a perfect live performance of this work, this one came incredibly close. Everything and everyone worked together in synchronicity to realize the musical vision of one of the world’s great Bach interpreters and, ultimately, what one hopes was the vision of the composer himself.

Signing his contract as Thomaskantor in 1723, Bach had to agree not to write in an excessively operatic style; despite this apparent stylistic restriction, Bach’s score is incredibly fertile, spanning the gamut of human emotions in three short hours, and reflecting his own theology in musical form. We are exceedingly fortunate to have such gifted interpreters in our midst, who provide their audiences the rare opportunity to hear such extraordinary music performed in an extraordinary way.

Tafelmusik presented Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, led by Masaaki Suzuki, March 21 to 24, 2019, at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, Toronto.

Matthew Whitfield is a Toronto-based harpsichordist and organist.

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