Such is the nature of usually writing about shows ahead of time that I don’t often enough get to go to the shows I write about. On August 3, however, I travelled to Stratford Summer Music to take in Gregory Oh’s performance of Lessons in Failure. I had interviewed him back in May for the summer issue of The WholeNote and was quite taken by his stories of making mistakes during key moments of his performance career.
Over dinner in one of Stratford’s fine dining restaurants before the concert, I found myself telling my companion my own stories of performance disasters, not always an easy thing to admit. And at the end of Oh’s concert/play/performance I found myself blurting out, again to my companion, “That was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to.”
While rating performances against each other may very well be part of the perfectionistic standards that Oh is trying to disengage from, on further reflection I realized that what had moved me so much was his inclusion of life stories, right in the midst of listening to music generally intended to be heard as isolated, uninterruptible objects in a concert repertoire. Somehow the music seemed more alive, more vital, more personal and connected when set in the context of life’s struggles. As for example when, to my great delight, he included a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Intermezzo Op.118, No.2, a piece I had learned in my late teens. Every note had meaning as I listened, recalling my own body memories.
A few other particularly memorable moments in the performance included Battle of Manassas by Thomas Wiggins and Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor. The Wiggins work was like a very early piece in soundscape composition for piano, written in 1861 before such ideas were thought about, and well before any recording technologies existed. It conjured the sounds and environs of the Civil War era battle, with piano clusters to replicate the marching feet of soldiers, interjections of spoken text to announce the action, and the sound of a train whistle, all of which Oh delivered seemingly with ease.
The Liszt performance was framed by his story of how he felt he had failed miserably with the piece during his graduation recital. Despite that difficult experience, he persevered with hours upon hours of practising, all of which is clearly evident in the depth of emotion he brought to every high and low in Liszt’s tumultuous work.
I’m eager for the day Oh brings the full performance to a theatre run in Toronto, as he hinted in our previous interview he was intending to do.
Classical & Beyond Roundup
Not every effort to recontextualize familiar works or reimagine the classical concert form is as adventurous as the approach Wendalyn Bartley describes in her report on Gregory Oh’s Lessons in Failure. But putting a concert together is always an opportunity to turn juxtaposition into an art, creating fresh perspectives, by congruity or incongruity, for the listener – taking that listener beyond their known expectations (the music they know they like and don’t like; the kinds of venues they like to listen in).
In turn, over a period of time, each listener creates their own crafty juxtapositions every time they decide what concert to go to.
Most of you know what you have already decided to go hear next. So here from the wide range of performances coming up in September and early October are some clusters of suggestions for what you might want to go hear after that. Fortune favours the brave. Details, as always, are in the daily listings.
CARILLON
Almost by definition, carillon music comes to find you whether you like it or not. Why not make your listening intentional? The U of T carillon in Soldiers Tower next to Hart House has been a fixture since 1927. Its 51 bells range in weight from 4 tons (low Bb, an octave below middle C) to 23 pounds (high D, three octaves above middle C). Yorkminster Park Baptist Church’s 37-bell carillon – the 12th in Canada – is the new kid on the block, installed in the summer of 2023.
Sep 02 2:00: University of Toronto. Labour Day Carillon Recital. Lachrimae Pavan, Haru no Umi, Day-O, and The Old Brigade. Naoko Tsujita, carillonneur.
Sep 22 12:20: Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. First Anniversary of the Carillon: Carillon Recital. Dr. Andrea McCrady, Dominion Carillonneur from the Peace Tower in Ottawa.
MUSIC TO STUMBLE ACROSS
Speaking of music that finds you, the Bloor/Borden Farmer’s Market – every Wednesday – has long been a fixture in the Green P parking lot south of Bloor and east of Bathurst. This year they’ve hit on the idea of adding live music to the mix. You might just find yourself standing listening to someone you never heard of but would go hear again. And it beats the musical dreck piped into the supermarket produce aisles. Sep through Oct 2-7pm: Bloor/Borden Farmers’ Market. Music in the Market. Rain or shine.
THE MORE IT STAYS THE SAME, THE MORE IT CHANGES?
Sep 5 8:30: Lula Lounge. The Patsy Cline Birthday Show. The fact that this is the 18th year that singer Heather Morgan has put this show together speaks volumes – to Morgan’s deep-seated conviction that Virginia-born Patsy Cline’s music transcended the “country music icon” pigeonhole that Cline herself managed to bust out of but that many listeners still consign her to. Proof is in the eclectic range of performers and styles Morgan always manages to muster for this annual event, which this year supports Artscan Circle helping youth in remote Indigenous communities, using the power of the arts.
NEW
Sep 12,13,14: Tiger Princess Dance Projects. All That Is Between is a contemporary dance piece by Yvonne Ng with music by Nick Storring “exploring the intricate dynamics of collective identity and the experience of isolation.” Ng describes herself as “one of the archetypes of a Canadian immigrant from South East Asia, fluent in English and conversant in four Chinese dialects, a little Malay and a little French [but] in my childhood, we were taught not to raise our heads or voices [and] schooled to emulate western culture and ways of behaviour. The central proposition of the work is the exploration of the tensions, strengths and paradoxes between disorder (wordless story in bodies) and connections (power of collective identity) … collective identity and collective isolation. – what lies under or within our container”.
Toronto-based composer/curator Nick Storring’s body of musical work ranges from chamber compositions to meticulously constructed recordings consisting solely of Storring’s own overdubbed instrumental performances. It’s an output that he describes as “reflecting my eclecticism as a listener – juxtaposing the familiar and the abstract to conjure moments of hallucinatory reminiscence.” Aki Studio, 585 Dundas St. E.
AT THE CMC
Two upcoming shows at the Canadian Music Centre on St. Joseph Street, reflect the broadening of musical reach that the creation of the Chalmers Performance Space has given the CMC, both for its core constituency – living Canadian composers – and for others seeking an intimate performing space in a conducive environment.
Oct 5, at 3pm, pianist Luke Welch holds an event to release his recording, Northern Magnolias – works by Robert Nathaniel Dett, Canadian-American composer, organist, pianist, choral director, and music professor, born and raised in Canada until the age of 11, and long celebrated in Toronto through the work of Brainerd Blyden-Taylor’s Nathaniel Dett Chorale.
And the week prior, September 25, in a concert titled From Sea to Sky violin/piano duo Gillian Smith/Jennifer King perform works by a coterie of composers (Amy Brandon, Derek Charke, Emily Doolittle, Adam V. Clarke, John Plant, and others) who share, perhaps among other characteristics, the distinction of being Nova Scotia-born and/or raised.
ORGAN
For people needing to get their fix of live music during the day, the city’s numerous regular organ concerts are a haven. Even more when there is a sense of continuity from one to the next – a regular day of the week, a particular venue, a favourite organist or instrument, or a sense of curated continuity from one concert to the next.
Starting September 14 and continuing October 5 and beyond, organist Aaron James dives into a project that could check off four of these five boxes! – the complete organ works of J.S. Bach. James is the Director of Music at the Toronto Oratory of St. Philip Neri, where the concerts will take place, and a Sessional Lecturer in organ at the University of Toronto. September 14’s concert is titled Bach the Young Virtuoso; October 5 is Bach goes to school. The fifth box? Daytime aficionados will have to bend their rules a little: concerts start at 7:30.
Elsewhere there’s no shortage of daytime organ music:
Sep 29 2:30, St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica (Toronto) presents An Organ Extravaganza featuring works by Saint-Saëns, Bach, Angela Kraft-Cross, ournemire, and Howells; and four organists: Philip J. Fillion, John Paul Farahat, Paul Jenkins and Christopher Ku.
Also, Sep 10 St. James Cathedral resumes its regular Tuesday Organ Recitals. First up, Joshua Duncan Lee, then Jan Noordzij, David Alexander Simon, and Andre Knevel.
SWEETWATER
Sweetwater Music Festival in Leith, Ontario is a reminder that summer isn’t over just because the interminable back-to-school ad campaigns have ended. And it remains true to the ethos of other summer festivals, building on the ensemble principle that you figure out who the musicians are going to be, then build concerts around the chemistry that can be generated within that assemblage of talent. This year, for example, the presence of vocalist Measha Brueggergosman-Lee is the catalyst for three or four of the festival’s regular 7pm concerts.
But it’s her late night show (9:30 is defined as late in Leith) that will, we predict, take Sweetwater’s regular audience to places they are not accustomed to going – Zombie Blizzard which sets poems by Margaret Atwood to remarkable music by composer Aaron Davis. Commissioned by Hannaford Street Silver Band for a full ten-horn brass ensemble, backed by Davis’s own jazz quartet, the road-show version boils the ten horns down to five, all still drawn from the core of the Hannaford ensemble.
ORCHESTRAS
Orchestras, like large choirs, are notorious late starters in the fall, but from mid-September through early October, the full spectrum of orchestral music-making will be on display.
Sep 15, Niagara Symphony Orchestra has a concert titled Parker Plays Grieg. Sep 20, the unquenchable Mandle Philharmonic brings Mahler No.4 & Beethoven No.5 to Koerner Hall. Sep 21, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra offers up Kahane Conducts Grieg & Sibelius. Starting Sep 25 Toronto Symphony Orchestra has Pictures at an Exhibition (but not the way you’re used to hearing it), followed Oct 04,5,6 by Spirited Overtures.
And finally, rounding things out, Sep 28 Stratford Symphony Orchestra titles their concert Beethoven’s 5th (that’ll get them through the door) but also offers Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and Weber’s Bassoon Concerto in F.
CHAMBER PLUS
Too much to do justice to in this perennially inventive niche, so just a few thoughts and highlights.
One, we’re delighted to see that Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society is back, even though the question of venue remains unsettled. They’ve announced concerts for Sep 7,15,29 and Oct 5 already.
Two, check out the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts proposed season on their website. Just a taste: Sep 8 has Deantha Edwards With The New Orford String Quartet with selections from Pillorikput Inuit: Inuktitut Arias for All Seasons, performed by Edwards, the Orfords and Sylvia Cloutier & Nancy Nike, throat singers. It doesn’t hurt that Kingston has the mid-sized concert hall with the best acoustic in Canada to offer visiting musicians.
Three, if chamber music is your “thing” please check out the following, chamber music stalwarts all, in the daily listings, either here or on our website where you can use the “Just Ask” tab to type in the presenters names to find out, and keep up with, what they are doing.
Sep 28 Sinfonia Toronto. Mozart & Masquerade/The Stars Align; Sep 22 The Jeffery Concerts (London). Timothy Chooi, Violin and Arthur Rowe, piano; and Oct 03: Women’s Musical Club of Toronto. Music in the Afternoon: Campbell Fagan Park Trio.
AND FINALLY...
Returning to the subject of artful juxtaposition, take a look at the program Emanuel Ax has put together for his Oct 6 recital at Koerner Hall. Enough said.
Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com
