One thread running through many of this fall’s new music events is the way artists are engaging with the larger social and historical realities around them. Questions of war and peace, cultural identity, gender, ancestry and whose voices are heard emerge in programs that also cross geographical and artistic boundaries, including the formats they are presented in.
Livestream is one such format – one we became accustomed to during the pandemic, and now becoming entrenched as a way of extending geographic boundaries far beyond the location where the actual production is taking place. A couple of examples of this caught my eye.
Essential Opera:. The first event is In Her Hands: The Tragedy of Lady Macbeth, being presented live by Essential Opera in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, from November 6 to 8, with the November 6 performance also being livestreamed. Composer/librettist Fiona M. Ryan has reworked Shakespeare’s classic, telling the story through the voices of Lady Macbeth, the Weird Sisters, and their goddess, Hecate and with characters who remain in the background of Shakespeare’s play being brought to the forefront to explore themes of gender, power, and inclusion and exclusion. A feature of all three performances in Dartmouth is the exploration of approaches designed to accommodate varying accessibility needs.
NAISA’s Soundplay: Another major livestream event offering widespread audience access takes place on December 5, courtesy of New Adventures in Sound Art, based in South River, Ontario. Part of NAISA’s Sept-Dec SOUNDplay series, it is also a hybrid event: in-person in South River with a meal included; and further afield via livestream. The event combines in-person and online presentation, in this instance featuring films that blend the genres of sound art, poetry, abstract film and documentary, with the films having in common the fact that they are rooted in personal stories.
The program begins with a series of poetry films featuring the work of Sundridge multidisciplinary artist Mary McDonald, each focusing on a different social theme. In the first, JOHN – 3550N, 2820E, McDonald collaborates with poet and filmmaker Sarah Tremlett to explore the futility of war and the power of water. The two collaborate again on Firewash, a conversation with an ancestor who mined in 12th-century Cornwall, inspired by Tremlett’s own experience of staying at the same location during a gale. In On the Margin of History, McDonald collaborates with Natasha Boskic and Mohamad Kebbewar, using fragmentary layers of sound and image to bear witness to the impacts and destruction of war, drawing on Buskin’s and Kebbewar’s own experiences in Serbia and Syria.
Also on the program is a performance of the cinematic tone poem Klavierklang, a three-way conversation between filmmaker Nettie Wild, pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, and composer Hildegard Westerkamp. Based on Westerkamp’s concert work of the same name, Wild’s visual language adds a poetic and sensual layer to a composition that explores how Westerkamp frees herself from the restrictions of the classical music world she experienced as a child. Her passion for the piano was silenced, only to be resurrected years later through her experiments on an abandoned piano in a ghost town in British Columbia. The film can also be viewed on Music on Main’s YouTube channel.
The theme of war pervades the work of Jewish Music at York, all the more so in a world increasingly marked by polarization, conflict and violence. Grounded in the belief that music can foster connection, understanding and cultural dialogue, this project was founded in 2022 by York University professor, jazz pianist and composer Noam Lemish and is now moving into its fifth year of contributing to Toronto’s musical life through concerts, new works and recordings. Its first recording, Pursue Peace, featuring music by living Canadian composers Sid Robinovitch, James Rolfe and Lemish, was released in September, with an album release event upcoming on November 22 that will celebrate the project and its ongoing commitment to music as a means of bridge-building, dialogue and peace. The event takes place at 3pm in the Tribute Communities Recital Hall (Accolade East Building at York University's Keele campus).
ICE at NMC: On October 5, New Music Concerts and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music present New York’s International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) at Walter Hall. One of the leading ensembles devoted to contemporary music, ICE has premiered more than 1,000 works since its founding in 2001, with a particular commitment to collaborating with living composers. Composing While Black, led by ICE Artistic Director, composer and scholar George E. Lewis, turns the focus to Afrodiasporic new music from around the world, with works by six Black composers, including two Canadians and two world premieres. Lewis will also lead a pre-concert discussion exploring Black creativity and contemporary musical practice.
Think FAST! (and BIG!, RICH! and BOLD!). Events of international scope continue with an Esprit Orchestra concert titled FAST! At Koerner Hall. on November 29.The concert launches the third edition of Esprit’s Edge of Your Seat International Festival (with Big!, Rich!, and Bold! following in the final weeks of January, February and March respectively). Canada’s only full-sized professional orchestra devoted exclusively to new orchestral music, Esprit brings together in Fast! works by composers from the United States, Poland, France and Sweden. The orchestral program ranges from John Adams’ exuberant Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Andrzej Panufnik’s delicate Lullaby to the North American premiere of Christophe Bertrand’s Scales, and principal violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Teng Li, joins Esprit for another North American premiere, Swedish composer Anders Hillborg’s Viola Concerto.
Soundstreams encounters, large and small. Following in the wake of Soundstreams’ major fall production, Celebrating Steve Reich at 90, which happens on October 6 at Koerner Hall, the fall will also see two TD Encounters events on offer by Soundstreams on November 2 and November 30 respectively. Both take place at Hugh’s Room, on Broadview Avenue. The first Encounter showcases Austrian violinist Judith Fliedl and Toronto’s Roan Ma in a program that includes the world premiere of a Soundstreams commission for violin duet by André Ristic, alongside works by other Canadian composers John Beckwith, Chris Paul Harman, Parisa Sabet and Ana Sokolović. The second, Orison (prayer), brings together musician Daniel Áñez and composer James O’Callaghan in a work connecting science fiction and spirituality, while exploring different meanings of “alien-ness.” Centred around the distinctive sound of the ondes Martenot, Orison combines the instrument with electronic soundscapes, field recordings, techno, poetic text and documentary-style spoken confessionals.
Arraymusic breaks new curatorial ground: Arraymusic’s curatorial model these days features a roster of Canadian composers, rather than a single artistic director. Composers Bekah Simms and Monica Pearce join forces to shape the program for Array Ensemble I: Construction on November 21. Taking John Cage’s Third Construction as a point of departure, the program explores rhythm, resonance and unconventional instruments, including conch, ocarina, prepared piano and percussion.
And just announced, later in the season, Palestinian-Canadian composer and keyboardist John Kameel Farah joins the curatorial roster with Sonic Archaeology, an ambitious three-year series beginning February 20 with Microtones, Counterpoint & Unconventional Paths, to be followed by a second instalment in June. Farah’s musical language brings together Baroque and early music, improvisation, Middle Eastern traditions and electronics.
Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. Sounddreaming@gmail.com.
