In my story on the Festival of Arabic Music and Art (FAMA) in my October 2018 column I explored the GTA’s Arabic music scene. That festival is still in full swing, so consult our concert listings for details or visit the festival website at CanadianArabicOrchestra.ca/FAMA.

This month we are taking a peek into the world of Chinese orchestras in our midst, a form of community music-making long hidden from audiences outside its various host communities. Then we join an early world-music adapter, the American composer, percussionist and conductor Adam Rudolph as he returns to the Music Gallery to explore the implications of dastgah (melodic-modal systems) with Toronto tar player and Persian classical music advocate Araz Salek.

The Chinese orchestra

While ensemble music has been practised on a sophisticated level in Chinese aristocratic courts for some three millennia, I am referring here to the modern Chinese orchestra, as currently performed in China and overseas Chinese communities, which began its development in the 1920s, modelled on both the instrumentation of the regional Chinese Jiangnan sizhu ensemble and the organization of the Western symphony orchestra. Such orchestras use Chinese instruments divided into four sections: winds, plucked strings, bowed strings and Chinese percussion. They typically play modernized traditional music often called guoyue (literally “national music”), or adaptations of Western works.

In terms of the dawn of Chinese instrumental music in Canada, the relevant Canadian Encyclopedia entry states that Chinese emigration to Canada – specifically to the Fraser River Gold Rush in British Columbia – began in 1858, mostly from Kwangtung (Canton) Province. Already by the 1870s there were three Cantonese opera clubs established in Victoria, BC.

The production of Cantonese opera required about six instrumentalists, and this led to the founding of music clubs apart from opera clubs. These music associations, as exemplified by the Ching Won Musical Society (founded in Vancouver in 1936), performed for many types of Chinese community activities.

Amely ZhouChinese orchestras in the GTA

The Chinese community in Toronto was established around 1877, with an initial population of two laundry owners. The community grew considerably during the 20th century when, again according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, professional troupes from Hong Kong were frequently invited to perform Cantonese opera until the 1980s, when the expansion of the Chinese community provided performers for locally produced Cantonese opera, often featuring artists from abroad. [As well], local companies such as the United Dramatic Society in Toronto, the Wah Shing Music Group in Ottawa, and the Yuet Sing Chinese Musical Club in Montreal provided training and experience for Canadian performers.”

As I am a newbie to this world, I phoned Amely Zhou, an erhu musician and Chinese orchestra insider. Trained in both Chinese and Western music, she began her music studies at an early age in the city of Shenzhen, in southeastern China. “After immigrating to Canada in 2007,” she told me, “I joined the Toronto Chinese Orchestra where I served for ten years as the bowed string section assistant principal, as well as conductor of the TYCO, its Youth Orchestra.”

She pointed out that beginning with the TCO, today there appear to be four Chinese orchestras active in the GTA: Toronto Chinese Orchestra (1993- ), Ontario Chinese Orchestra (2007- ), North America Chinese Orchestra (2011- ) and Canadian Chinese Orchestra (2017- ).

“I founded the Canadian Chinese Orchestra (CCO) last year and serve as the CCO’s artistic director and conductor. We actually have three groups under the CCO banner: the Canadian Philharmonic Chinese Orchestra made up of amateur adult musicians and the Canadian Youth Chinese Orchestra (CYCO). The third group is a cadre of professional musicians who serve as section leaders. These contract artists teach our CYCO and CPCO musicians, while also performing as soloists in our concerts.”

What about the other Chinese orchestras in our region? “In 2007 the Ontario Chinese Orchestra (OCO) was founded by graduates of top-ranking Chinese music conservatories,” replied Zhou. “Led by Peter Bok, they have produced a regular series of concerts ever since.”

“More recently another performing group, the North American Chinese Orchestra (NACO), was formed by several Mandarin-speaking musicians in 2011,” added Zhou.

The TCO: Despite ample evidence of a century and a half of Chinese music making in Canada, it wasn’t until 1993 that the Toronto Chinese Orchestra was established by a group of Chinese traditional music enthusiasts. According to its website, the “TCO is the largest Chinese orchestra in Ontario and the longest running in Canada. Members include professional and amateur musicians trained in Asia as well as Canada.”

The TCO presents its next concert, “Scenic Sojourn: A night of Chinese Music,” at Yorkminster Citadel on December 1. In addition to works by Chinese composers, the TCO performs works by the emerging Toronto composers Matthew van Driel (Whiteout) and Marko Koumoulas (Reincarnation Suite), indicating an active engagement with the non-Chinese music community.

The Canadian Chinese Orchestra: Chinese orchestras in the GTA appear to be affiliated along linguistic and cultural lines, reflecting Cantonese and Mandarin origins. How does the CCO fit into this context? “In establishing the CCO I was motivated by a desire to reach out to the various Canadian Chinese communities, as well as to the Canadian public in general” said Zhou. “I believe we are Canadians first, so I wanted to include musicians from various Chinese communities, from newcomers to musicians born here.”

The CYCO mounted its most ambitious project to date in the summer of 2018: a five-city tour of the Cantonese region of China. “It came about through an invitation from the president of the Overseas Nanhai International Students Association,” stated Zhou, “partly funded by the Cultural Department of the government of China.”

It’s part of a trend of the GTA’s Chinese orchestras performing in the motherland, made possible through the Chinese government’s sponsorship of cultural exchange between overseas and mainland Chinese communities. It reflects 150 years of region-of-origin (Cantonese in this case) affiliations, transnational business links, and a trend of Canadian cities “sistering” with Chinese cities of similar industry focus, all connected via cultural links. For instance, both cities of Nanhai and Jiangmen, located in the Cantonese region of China and on CYCO’s 2018 tour itinerary, have sistered with the City of Markham, reflecting the commercial interests of high tech companies.

CCO’s November 17 concert at the Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School Theatre is conducted by Amely Zhou and Wang Yi. The concert features repertoire reflecting various regional Chinese folk genres. Here are some highlights.

The CCO’s young prize-winning Canadian-born dizi (bamboo transverse flute) soloist Sophie Du is accompanied by the CCO in an orchestrated Taiwanese folk song inspired by a scene of tea pickers in the Lugu mountains.

Racing Horses, an erhu standard, was composed by Haihuai Huang. Depicting horses racing on the vast Mongolian grassland it is performed by the CCO erhu section together, evoking the sound of a large herd of galloping horses. The concert closes with Flower Festival (1960s). Composed by Xuran Ye as a pipa solo, it is based on a Sichuan folk song; it has been arranged by Zhou for the CCO for this concert.

Adam RudolphDastgah: Go: Organic Orchestra

Coincidentally, also on November 17 the Music Gallery and New Ambient Modes present “Dastgah: Go: Organic Orchestra.” The concert will be curated by Araz Salek, the Toronto tar (Persian long necked lute) player, and conducted by American world music pioneer Adam Rudolph.

Rudolph embarked on a career as a jazz percussionist in Chicago in the late 1960s. He was eager however to expand his musical world view. In 1977 he travelled to West Africa to live and study music, experiencing drumming, singing and dancing, as well as trance ceremonies.

He shares on his blog that in 1978 he “lived in [trumpeter, pioneer of world fusion jazz] Don Cherry’s house in the Swedish countryside.” Cherry inspired Rudolph to “start composing and showed him about [free-jazz pioneer] Ornette Coleman’s concepts and the connection of music to nature.” Back in the USA Rudolph and kora player Jali Foday Musa Suso co-founded The Mandingo Griot Society in 1978, combining aspects of African and American music. He explored Moroccan Gnawa music in the 1980s with sintir (three-stringed bass lute) player and singer Hassan Hakmoun. His music-making and composing has continued to grow over the decades, resulting in a large number of ensemble projects, reflected in over 90 album releases.

Rudolph often sets discussions of his approach to music in a philosophical frame. Case in point, in an April 2017 Downbeat interview by John Ephland, Rudolph evocatively talks about “shooting the arrow and then painting a bullseye around it” when describing his music creation process. He also reports undertaking a rigorous study of North Indian tabla for over 15 years with leading tabla virtuoso and teacher Taranath Rao (1915-1991), crediting Rao with imparting the notion of music as a “form of yoga – the unity of mind, body and spirit…”

Founded two decades ago, Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra is a culmination of a lifetime of musical and philosophical searches, embracing music forms and cosmologies from around the world. His compositional and operational modus operandi is built on a three-page score with graphic notation elements he calls matrices and cosmograms. It’s evidently been successful: over the last ten years Rudolph has conducted several dozen Go: Organic Orchestra residencies throughout Europe, North America and in Turkey.

Toronto’s Music Gallery first presented Go: Organic Orchestra in 2016, inviting 15 eclectic Toronto musicians to play under Rudolph’s direction. Araz Salek, the only musician in the ensemble whose primary background was outside of jazz or Western classical music, was particularly inspired by the experience.

Salek: Born in Iran in 1980, Araz Salek began his tar tutelage at a young age and continued studying classical radif (sets of Persian melodic figures preserved through oral tradition) with master tar musicians. He began an active performing career in Tehran.

Moving to Toronto in 2005 however blew open the doors of Salek’s strict Persian classical music training. While establishing himself in his new home, he quickly began to learn and perform with a wide variety of musicians practicing in numerous musical traditions. In addition to gigging nationally and internationally as a tar player, in 2017 he founded Labyrinth Ontario, dedicated to presenting music workshops and concerts focused on global modal music traditions.

I’ve been involved in a number of concert projects with Salek for over 12 years. I am however not personally involved in Dastgah: Go, so I called Salek late in October to get the skinny.

“Adam Rudolph’s 2016 Music Gallery concert,” he began “was a stunning experience for me. As you know I have an extensive background in Iranian classical music. When I arrived in Toronto I continued my tar practice, but also engaged with the local free improvisation scene. On occasion however, I felt lost in the midst of such freedom, particularly when compared with my own rigorous training and practice in Iranian music.

Working with Adam, on the other hand, he says, felt substantially different than playing free improv. “What really amazed me was how his use of graphic matrices defined not only tonal [and rhythmic] structures, but also freed individual musicians to make choices within them. It was the best of both worlds for me, combining the liberty of free improv with the kind of modal structures I’m most comfortable with. In that way, the 2016 concert was personally an inspiring moment. I wanted the opportunity to expand that musical experience. I made a proposal to Adam: to develop his score by including aspects of Iranian tonal systems. He agreed and our Dastgah: Go: Organic Orchestra project was born.

“The 15 Toronto musicians chosen for the November 17 concert are divided roughly into two instrumental categories: a Western group and an Iranian group. “I will be conducting a series of ear training sessions for the musicians to develop their perception of the microtonal intervals in some of the traditional Iranian modes,” Salek says. “An interesting cross-cultural instrument in our orchestra will be a retuned acoustic piano. This used to be done in 20th-century Iran, but was found to be too costly, and moreover could only accommodate a very limited number of tonal modes. We’ve revived this practice for this concert. It will prove, I think, that even an instrument with fixed tuning like the piano can be accommodated to perform with Iranian instruments.”

Rudolph’s improvisationally conducted spontaneous orchestrations will no doubt be substantially complicated – and enriched – by Salek’s Iranian contributions.

The multicultural dynamics of Dastgah: Go: Organic Orchestra aptly express Rudolph’s creative vision of our shared humanity. As he states on his website, “It is a realization of creative community in a world without boundaries; of culture as the vessel for understanding, empathy and sharing.” It’s a fitting legacy for an early adopter of a single-minded approach to world music. 

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

The Jazz Performance and Education Centre (JPEC) is now in its tenth year – my, that went fast – and is celebrating the milestone with a special concert on November 24 at the Aga Khan Museum called “The Music of Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.” It will feature Remi Bolduc on alto saxophone and arrangements; Bernie Senensky on piano; Reg Schwager on guitar; Terry Clarke on drums; and yours truly on bass. With well over 30 concerts under its belt to date, and many other presentations and initiatives, JPEC has become an integral part of the Toronto jazz scene. To mark the occasion I recently did an email interview with Ray Koskie, who, along with his wife Rochelle, is co-founder of JPEC.

I’ve known Ray (a retired founding partner of the law firm Koskie Minsky) and Rochelle (a retired schoolteacher) casually as dedicated jazz fans for close to 40 years now. As JPEC is clearly a labour of love for this jazz-loving couple, I decided to begin by asking Ray a little about how he and Rochelle became such avid fans.

(from left) Joe Sealey, Rochelle Koskie, Jackie Richardson and Ray Koskie at the Paintbox Bistro January 2013.WN: How did you and Rochelle catch the jazz bug?

RK: We both grew up in Forest Hill and met when we were in our late teens. Rochelle was a couple of years younger but way ahead of me; she was already musically educated, played piano and cello and had accumulated some jazz records. I mostly teethed on stuff my father listened to at home – Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and so on. Live jazz was kind of the soundtrack to our romance as some of our first dates were at the Town Tavern, where, thanks to part-owner and manager Sammy Berger, we were able to get in despite being underage. He took a shine to us for some reason and made a spot for us in the back room where we could nurse Cokes and split a club sandwich – about all we could afford in those days – while listening all night to incredible music by the likes of the Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, Art Blakey, Illinois Jacquet, Jackie and Roy, Ben Webster and many others. It became clear before too long that we were both hooked and we’ve never looked back.

I graduated from Law School around 1961 and we got married and eventually started a family. The late, great John Norris was a big part of us getting to know more about jazz in those years and during this time we became regulars at Bourbon Street where we heard the likes of Chet Baker, Barney Kessel, Dexter Gordon, Al and Zoot, Paul Desmond and so many of the great Toronto players – Ed Bickert, Don Thompson, Bernie Senensky and Terry Clarke, among many others. In fact, that’s where we first heard you play, Steve. The rhythm section for the upcoming Brubeck/Desmond concert with Bernie, Terry and you is a nod toward those days. After Bourbon Street closed we frequented both the Café des Copains and the Montreal Bistro where we enjoyed the hospitality of Brigitte and Lothar Lang while hearing great music from people like Johnny Guarnieri, Jim Galloway, Doc Cheatham, Rob McConnell, Jay McShann, Geoff Keezer, Dave McKenna, Oliver Jones, Joe Sealy and so many others.

How did JPEC get started?

After The Top O’ the Senator and the Montreal Bistro closed we were approached by some other well-known Toronto jazz people to help in obtaining alternative jazz venues and as result a working committee was formed. Part of this involved examining the concept of the successful Jazz At Lincoln Center (JALC), which we thought might be a new model for presenting jazz in Toronto. Following a tour of that beautiful facility and being supplied with certain pertinent documents, we recommended to the committee that this approach – i.e. becoming a not-for-profit charitable organization – might be the best way to go under the circumstances. Although this might prove more challenging than creating another jazz club, we felt it would likely have a longer shelf life. As a result, JPEC was incorporated in August 2008 as a not-for-profit charitable organization.

What were some of the early challenges?

Some members of the committee felt that the charitable organization route, while laudable, was too ambitious, which led to certain people leaving who were replaced by those who believed more in the JALC concept. Lack of funding was an early problem with respect to meeting some of our objectives, but various fundraising events were held and Toronto jazz fans really pitched in. When we began to make progress certain members of the TO jazz community mistakenly seemed to believe that we were in competition with their endeavours even though we were all supposedly working for the same cause, namely the furtherance of jazz. We went on to succeed despite such misguided thinking because there were many others who supported our efforts and believed in our objectives.

What are those objectives?

To provide performance opportunities for Toronto’s jazz musicians, including jazz students, and to properly compensate them. To promote jazz in this city and reach out to new audiences. An educational element, namely to present community-based workshops in underserved areas at schools having little, if any, music education. This is something Rochelle, as a former schoolteacher, feels very strongly about. And eventually to establish a fulltime jazz hub similar in concept to, but smaller than, JALC.

After the inevitable early struggles, what kind of support have you received over the years?

We’ve been lucky to have the benefit of corporate sponsors such as TD Bank, BPA, LiUNA and private donors such as Jack Long of Long & McQuade, who has supported jazz so generously over the years. My law firm Koskie Minsky absorbs our administrative costs, which leaves more money for fulfilling our mandate. JPEC has been blessed with a talented board of directors and many other dedicated volunteers who have worked tirelessly to help deliver our mission.

How does JPEC plan its concert programming and choose the venues?

We try to present both international jazz stars and Toronto-based talent and often to combine them in one concert or even one band, as for example with Americans Ernie Watts and Brad Goode recently being backed by a crack Toronto rhythm section of Adrean Farrugia, Neil Swainson and Terry Clarke, with Rich Brown’s band opening. We like to present performance opportunities for up-and-coming musicians – all of JPEC’s shows include pre-concert duos or trios consisting of students from the three GTA jazz institutions or Mohawk College. As with most things JPEC, the programming is designed by a committee, some of the members of which are musicians, marketing people and those involved with the technical aspects of staging. All committee decisions are subject to board approval. As to venues, we’ve preferred more intimate concert ones with seating ranging from 150 to 300 people, such as the Glenn Gould, the George, and for the first time with our upcoming concert, the concert hall in the Aga Khan Museum, which we’re very excited about.

There’s also a community-outreach aspect to JPEC which is tied to both programming and education. In addition to the 170 music workshops we’ve presented in underserved schools over the last decade, we’re proud to be supporting and participating in the initiative of the International Resource Centre for Performing Artists, an outgrowth of the old “Jazzmobile” model, using a mobile facility to present events in more isolated communities that will benefit the talent in those areas as well as the talent of Toronto’s musicians. In other words, if the people can’t get to the jazz, then take the jazz to the people – good jazz makes for a good society and vice versa.

Not that I think it’s an odd idea, but why a Brubeck/Desmond concert at this particular time?

In consideration of JPEC’s tenth anniversary, we wanted to reach out to a broader jazz audience by presenting a tribute to two such well-known and respected musicians who achieved enormous popularity not only internationally, but with Desmond in particular, on a local level. Desmond’s late-career appearances at Bourbon Street were unforgettable to those of us lucky enough to have heard them, and his ringing musical endorsement of Ed Bickert in particular – but also Don Thompson and Jerry Fuller – gave Toronto jazz a major shot in the arm. Hence the addition of Reg Schwager on guitar to reflect Desmond’s career after Brubeck. Unless Ed Bickert himself were to come out of retirement, it would be hard to imagine a guitarist more suited to the task.

What do you see for JPEC moving forward and do you think you’ve made a difference?

We’ll continue to present quality concerts such as this one and of course the outreach workshops will continue. And we’re still seeking to create a fulltime hub. As for making a difference, I like to think we have. In July of 2018 Rochelle and I received a special award and donation to JPEC from TD Bank for: “Giving back to the community by bringing jazz to public schools, educating students young and old, and providing Toronto with outstanding jazz concerts.” I think that sums it up nicely.

Me too. Thanks for your time, Ray, and for all you and Rochelle have done for jazz in Toronto over the years. 

JAZZ NOTES QUICK PICKS

NOV 8, 5:30PM: Old MillKen Page Memorial Trust Annual Fundraiser. The Lairds of SwingWarren Vaché, cornet and musical director; Guido Basso, flugelhorn; Russ Phillips, trombone; Ken Peplowski, reeds; Harry Allen, tenor saxophone; Rossano Sportiello, piano; Reg Schwager, guitar; Neil Swainson, bass; Terry Clarke, drums. I’ve written in greater detail about this star-studded event in the past – simply put, the finest in modern mainstream swing with both an international and local thrust.

NOV 16, 8PM: Toronto Centre for the Arts – Jazz at the George. Etienne Charles – Carnival. This concert by the brilliant young trumpeter/composer who explores his calypso/Caribbean roots in tandem with jazz, kicks off the five-concert Jazz at the George season.

Patricia Cano appears in the COC's Jazz Series on November 28.NOV 28, 12 NOON: Canadian Opera Company – Jazz Series “Songs In the Key of Cree.” Tomson Highway, piano and vocals; Patricia Cano, vocals; Marcus Ali, saxophone. Never mind whether it’s jazz or not, do not miss this rare chance to hear the musical – and I mean musical – side of one of our greatest playwrights. And Cano is a vocal powerhouse.

DEC 4, 8PM: Toronto Centre for the Arts – Jazz at the George. Dianne Reeves Christmas Time Is Here – For my money, the best jazz singer on the planet singing Christmas music can’t fail to put you in a festive spirit.

DEC 5, 5:30PM: Canadian Opera Company – Jazz Series. “Music From the Claudia Quintet Playbook – McGill Jazz Sextet, John Hollenbeck, director. This is highly recommended mostly for Hollenbeck, a highly original drummer/composer with an audacious taste for combining – and bending – musical genres.

Toronto bassist Steve Wallace writes a blog called “Steve Wallace jazz, baseball, life and other ephemera” which can be accessed at Wallace-bass.com. Aside from the topics mentioned, he sometimes writes about movies and food.

In last month’s column I made reference to the upcoming Rebel Heartland celebration at Fairy Lake Park in Newmarket. Ergo: now we can report on what took place. As a starter, the weather could not have been better with a moderate temperature and a bright blue sky. Fairy Lake Park’s three gazebos (one large with two smaller ones immediately adjacent) provided an ideal location for musical performances. On the large gazebo we had the current Newmarket Citizens Band, somewhat scaled down to fit within their venue. On the smaller gazebos, three different ensembles made up of members of the main band performed. One was a brass ensemble roughly representative of the early 1800s. The other two were a flute ensemble and a clarinet group, including alto and bass clarinets.

Unless the organizers had been prepared to spend enormous amounts of money to ensure absolute accuracy and authenticity of all costumes and displays, this event inevitably was going to have some items that could not qualify as characteristic of the period. There were interesting anomalies, some more apparent than others. First was the makeup of the band: well-dressed in a wide range of period costumes, almost half of the band members were women, something town bands in the 1830s would not have permitted. In general, women were not allowed to play in such bands until the mid-1940s. I remember well when the first girl was permitted to play in the University of Toronto Band in 1947. It was some years after that when the first female player appeared in a military reserve band in this country.

Other anomalies: some distance from the band there was an encampment of tents with all the occupants in period costumes. Immediately adjacent were all of their late model automobiles, with nary an 1837 model in sight! Also, whereas at such a concert in the park any time in the 1800s people would be sitting close enough to the band to hear well, that was not necessary here. A powerful sound system with speakers located throughout the park made it possible for the audience members to select a listening location of their choice.

Perhaps the most interesting anomaly for me was a gentleman dressed from head to toe in the greatest of sartorial splendour including an elegant top hat, an elegant impression that was a bit shattered when I noticed that he was speaking to someone on a 2018-model cell phone and had a modern plastic water bottle close at hand.

Anomalies or not, it was an excellent day to be reminded of some very important times in our history.

“Perhaps the most interesting anomaly for me was a gentleman dressed from head to toe in the greatest of sartorial splendour including an elegant top hat, an elegant impression that was a bit shattered when I noticed that he was speaking to someone on a 2018-model cell phone and had a modern plastic water bottle close at hand.” Old Instrument Donations Enrich Young Lives

In recent months I have been hearing of a number of varied programs to provide musical instruments for children in various parts of the world, including Canada. In a number of cases I am still waiting for responses to my requests for information, but here’s an interesting one.

Local bass clarinet and saxophone player Michael Holdsworth grew up in suburban London (England) in the austere 1950s, attending a secondary school with an extremely limited music program and a budget to match, and no band. In his words, when the music teacher proposed starting a small brass group, there was only enough money for one trumpet and one trombone.  As luck would have it, there was another high school nearby, which was not under the same monetary restraints, that was replacing all their old pre-war instruments, and were happy to give them to Mike’s school.

Their senior shop teacher took on the repair challenge and soon the euphonium, baritone and tuba were ready to play. Mike took the baritone. “It was the start of a lifetime of musical adventures,” he says. “The door had been opened, and I learned firsthand that those with the tenacity and desire to help others and share their love of music can indeed make a difference.”

After a move to Canada, and a 20-year hiatus from music, his musical interest was rekindled and he now plays in several musical organizations in the GTA, from concert bands to symphony orchestras and musical theatre. In his words: “Making music has been the most rewarding pastime I have had in my life, and all this started with a secondhand old B-flat baritone horn.”

Over the past few years, Mike has been able to spend a few weeks each winter in his favourite Mexican destination, Puerto Vallarta. A few years ago, he decided to take his clarinet with him. Somewhere, he reasoned, there would be a group of musicians who would welcome a stranger into their midst. In the centre of Puerto Vallarta is a small square with the rather grand name Plaza de Armas (Parade Ground). In the centre of that square there is a bandstand where the Municipal Band of Puerto Vallarta entertains the public two nights a week.

One evening, while listening to a concert, Mike noticed that there was a man in the band who looked like he was a bit of an outsider, not the least because he was not dressed in the all-white uniform everyone else was wearing. When Mike spoke with him, he discovered that this man, Bob, was from Ontario! Bob introduced Mike to the band leader Raul, and, just like that, Mike was invited to play with them. He soon discovered what an incredibly talented group they were; all are professional musicians and music school graduates. From them he also learned of the importance of music to the community. “The City of Puerto Vallarta, and, as far as I can gather, Mexico generally, is committed to encouraging all young people to take part and to put public money into these efforts.”

Next thing that caught Mike’s eye was a March 8, 2018 article by writer John Warren in the Vallarta Tribune, an English-language newspaper, about an upcoming performance of the Puerto Vallarta Orchestra School (OEPV), in which Warren wrote “Now in its fifth year, the OEPV has transformed the lives of many children in Puerto Vallarta. The aim of the cultural project is to reduce social problems, crime and addiction by providing free musical education and social development to children who would otherwise be unable to afford it.” The results have been impressive. “The International Friendship Club (IFC) has supported the OEPV since 2014 as part of the club’s emphasis on helping Mexican children reach their potential. Altogether, the OEPV is teaching almost 300 children the joy, teamwork, discipline, concentration and co-operation that come from learning music and, at the same time becoming good citizens.”

One of the major challenges facing the Puerto Vallarta Orchestral School is obtaining musical instruments, and this is where things came full circle for Mike. “The cost of labour in Mexico makes repairing things far more viable than in, say, Toronto” he says. “Many instruments that we might discard because of the cost of repair here in Canada can be repaired and reused in places like Mexico.”

Mike’s primary focus so far has been aimed at the more affluent schools in the Greater Toronto Area, and thanks to a generous donation of instruments by Upper Canada College, the process has begun. “Anyone with old instruments in the attic or garage that they know will never realize any real cash might wish to consider donating them to the children and young members of OEPV.” 

To this point Mike has received instrument donations including nine clarinets, six flutes, two bassoons, one alto sax, one tenor sax and one French horn (from Upper Canada College). An additional two flutes were received from individuals not associated with the school. Beyond donations of instruments, though, shipping costs are also a significant challenge. The total cost of shipping this first batch was $900 which was donated by a friend who also spends time in Puerto Vallarta in the winter. The initial shipment went directly using UPS and was $600. It arrived in three days. The other two shipments went using Chitchats Shipping and in total cost $300. It took four weeks but arrived intact.

For Mike it’s simple. “You can help improve a life through music!” he says. If you have any questions, comments, or, in particular, appropriate contacts in GTA schools, you may contact Mike at instrumentsforoepv6@gmail.com. For information regarding the OEPV, check their Facebook page – facebook.com/oepuertovallarta/ or website – oepv.org/web.

As mentioned earlier, I am still waiting for responses to my requests for information from a number organizations with similar projects. I know someone who is working on a similar project for South Africa, and have heard of another person collecting old instruments for children in Cuba. Stay tuned.

Prize for playful programming

November 21, 7:30pm. Henry Meredith of The Plumbing Factory Brass Band, sent the following: “In their 23 years of entertaining Southern Ontario audiences, the Plumbing Factory Brass Band has been noted for performing eclectic repertoire that exemplifies all kinds of brass music, ranging from A to Z,” he writes. “However, this concert will focus on a single letter of the alphabet – the letter B! That is ‘B is for BRASS.’” As an example of their diversity the band’s Basses, also known as the Tuba Mirum Trio, will be featured playing Leroy Anderson’s Bugler’s Holiday. I certainly don’t want to miss hearing three tubas perform that trumpet number. ... BEautiful, BEguiling and BEdazzling Music to BE presented by London’s Plumbing Factory Brass Band at Byron United Church , 420 Boler Road (@ Baseline), London.

BANDSTAND QUICK PICKS

NOV 4, 3PM: The Hannaford Street Silver Band presents “Cascades” with guest Carol Jantsch, tuba; Jean-Michel Malouf, conductor. Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts,

NOV 5, 7PM: The Toronto Artillery Foundation presents “Lest We Forget.” Toronto Artillery Foundation Band; John McDermott, tenor. Yorkminster Park Baptist Church.

NOV 24, 7:30PM: Silverthorn Symphonic Winds open their season with “Out of This World.” Their musical journey will include Astronaut’s Playlist, Superman and Moonscape. This takes place at Wilmar Heights Event Centre – Concert Hall, 963 Pharmacy Ave, Toronto.

NOV 25, 3:30PM: The Wychwood Clarinet Choir will celebrate their tenth season with “Clarinet Bells Ring.” Highlights will include Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock featuring Michele Jacot as clarinet soloist, Appalachian Folk Carol with guest soprano Christina Haldane and Holst’s St. Paul’s Suite.

NOV 30, 7:30PM: The Newmarket Citizens’ Band will combine with the York Harmony Chorus for the finale of their “Comfort and Joy” concert.” The theme for the evening will be “Christmas on Broadway.” Old Town Hall, Newmarket.

DEC 7, 8PM: The Etobicoke Community Concert Band presents “A Classic Christmas.” Etobicoke Collegiate Auditorium.

Jack MacQuarrie plays several brass instruments and has performed in many community ensembles. He can be contacted at bandstand@thewholenote.com.

We are fortunate in Southern Ontario to have access to a large number of live-music venues. In the listings below, you will find over 30 clubs and restaurants that regularly present jazz and creative music, including Grossman’s Tavern, which celebrated its 70th birthday in September; The Rex, which has been in operation for over 40 years; and Burdock, which, having opened in April of 2015, is a mere three-years old. Mixed in among many exciting one-off events in these listings are a number of recurring gigs, most commonly once a week or once a month. These residencies form a vital part of the Toronto gig ecosystem, playing an important role for musicians, venues, and audience members alike.

To begin, a working definition: to qualify as a recurring gig for the purposes of this article, a gig must happen at regular intervals and feature the same artist(s); a one-off, two-or three-night run at a club does not qualify. A residency is also functionally different than a series, in which a presenter (not necessarily the venue itself) books artists who may be representative of a certain genre or theme. A residency, as the name implies, is about the creation of a kind of home base for musicians, a (hopefully) comfortable space in which they build a show and grow over time. As guitarist and York University instructor Robb Cappelletto puts it, a residency provides an opportunity “to try out new music, new players, new gear, [and] new approaches in a real-world setting.” Cappelletto performs regularly at Poetry Jazz Café with his trio, as well as at 416 Snack Bar with the group re.verse (with bassist Damian Matthew and drummer Chino De Villa).

There are a number of different residencies that take place in Toronto on a regular basis. In addition to a full calendar of (typically) standalone shows that take place in the late slots throughout the week,

The Rex has a number of different residencies every month. If you visit on a Friday at 4pm, you’ll hear the Hogtown Syncopators; on Saturday at noon, the Sinners Choir; on Sunday at noon, the Excelsior Dixieland Jazz Band; on Mondays at 6:30, U of T Jazz Ensembles (at least throughout the school year); and, on the last Monday of every month, the John MacLeod Rex Hotel Orchestra, which features many of Toronto’s more established musicians. The Rex also features month-long weekly residencies in early evening slots; often dubbed “Rexidencies” on social media promotional material, these short-term weeklies are unique in the Toronto club scene. In November, watch out for the Brodie West Quintet on Tuesdays, JV’s Boogaloo Squad on Wednesdays, Kevin Quain on Thursdays, and the James Brown Trio on Fridays.

Dan McKinnon. Photo by Jen Squires.Beyond The Rex, many other local venues support residencies. At The Tranzac, the JUNO-nominated band Peripheral Vision (Don Scott, guitar, Michael Herring, bass, Trevor Hogg, saxophone, Nick Fraser, drums) hosts the first Tuesday of every month at 10pm. As Peripheral Vision typically books a band to play an opening set, this residency is also something of a series, as there is a curatorial component beyond the musical work that the band undertakes. Bassist Michael Herring plays regularly on Wednesdays with a guitar trio at the tequila bar Reposado, which also features its house band – the Reposadists – on Thursdays and Fridays. At Poetry Jazz Café, in Kensington Market, artists such as the guitarist Luan Phung, vocalist Joanna Majoko, vocalist/pianist Chelsey Bennett, guitarist Robb Cappelletto and singer/guitarist Dan McKinnon play monthly gigs. The structure provided by regular performances can give musicians the opportunity to focus on growth and development in a manner that isn’t always accessible in one-off gigs. Having a residency at Poetry, says McKinnon, “was pivotal to my development as a musician, bandleader and artist. Since that first gig over three years ago, my group won the 2017 Toronto Blues Society Talent Search, the Amy Louie Grossman’s Music Scholarship, and recently put out a well-received album this spring. None of this would have been possible if not for the residency I had at Poetry.”

The issues: There are many positive aspects to Toronto’s many fine residencies, but they are not without their issues. The first, and most obvious, is financial: for most of the aforementioned gigs, there is no financial guarantee. Musicians are typically compensated by passing the hat, through a percentage of bar sales, and occasionally through a percentage of a cover charge. This is not to say that it isn’t possible to make a fair fee playing in a residency – it can sometimes be the case, on a good night, that a group earns more than they may have if they were playing for an average preset guarantee – but it is certainly not always the case. There can also be other, unforeseen musical consequences of playing the same music with the same people in the same venue over an extended period of time. Nick Teehan, who held residencies at The Cameron House and The Rex for a number of years, makes the point that while playing consistently “really cemented the sound of [his] band,” providing “a regular audience who knew what to expect,” it also, unexpectedly, made the recording process harder. It “took a lot of effort to re-configure the songs” for the studio, Teehan says, as “some of the energy we felt was propelling our shows didn’t sound so great in a studio setting.”

Even with these issues, however, residencies are an important part of any healthy live-music scene, and, for most of the musicians who spoke to me about this column, participating in a residency is an overwhelmingly valuable, positive experience that fosters the growth both of individual musicianship and of the community at large. So, this month: check out a residency! As an audience member, it may become your regular gig, too. 

MAINLY CLUBS, MOSTLY JAZZ QUICK PICKS

NOV 1, 9:30PM: Saxophonist Jeff LaRochelle celebrates the release of his new album Lenses Extend at Burdock; with opening set from singer/guitarist Sabine Ndalamba.

NOV 6, 10PM: JUNO-nominated modern jazz quartet Peripheral Vision plays at The Tranzac in the November installment of their monthly residency.

NOV 7 AND 8, 9:30PM: Leading alto saxophonist Dave Binney returns to The Rex for two evenings with his new quartet.

NOV 30, 9PM: Guitarist Robb Cappelletto brings his electric trio to Poetry Jazz Café as part of his monthly residency.

Robb CappellettoColin Story is a jazz guitarist, writer and teacher based in Toronto. He can be reached at www.colinstory.com, on Instagram and on Twitter.

Gustavo Gimeno. credit Marco BorggreveThe Toronto Symphony Orchestra announced mid-September that Gustavo Gimeno will be its next music director, having signed a five-year contract beginning with the 2020/21 season.

Some of you may have heard the 42-year-old Valencia-born native of Spain make his début with the TSO last February, in a program that included the Dvořák Cello Concerto (with Johannes Moser), Ligeti’s Concert Românesc and Beethoven’s Symphony No.4. Reports from attendees were that his connection with the orchestra was palpable. Gimeno began his international conducting career while principal percussionist at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. As assistant to Mariss Jansons and protégé of the legendary Bernard Haitink and Claudio Abbado, he developed a musical foundation that led him to head the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and propelled his career onto the world stage.

“Maestro Gimeno has an ability to connect with people, onstage and off,” said TSO concertmaster Jonathan Crow. “He has a musical charisma and technical ability that is remarkable – he pulls you into the musical moment. Gustavo is absolutely the right match for the TSO, and we are looking forward to a truly unique partnership that will blend his musicianship with the amazing flexibility of our orchestra. Together, we will create something very special for music lovers in Toronto.”

Gimeno returns to conduct the TSO in the last pair of concerts of the current season, June 29 and 30, 2019. Mark your calendar.

And Meanwhile… Thirty-year-old Uzbekistan-born conductor Aziz Shokhakimov’s breakthrough was winning second prize in the 2010 Mahler International Conducting Competition. He makes his TSO debut October 13 and 14 in a program anchored by two pillars of the repertoire, Dvořák’s Symphony No.9 “From the New World” and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. George Li, winner of the Silver Medal at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, is the piano soloist. I was fortunate to hear Latvian-born violinist Baibe Skride’s electrifying performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto with the TSO in February 2016 and eagerly anticipated her return. On October 18 and 20, she will play Britten’s Violin Concerto, a masterful work from the composer’s mid-20s that has been coming into its own in recent years. Thomas Søndergård conducts a program that also features Debussy’s iconic La mer. Russian-born, UK-based 33-year-old violinist Alina Ibragimova continues the TSO’s lineup of classical greatness on October 24, 25, 27 and 28 with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, a work that never fails to astound. Conductor Andrey Boreyko also leads the orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Suite from The Sleeping Beauty.

Nocturnes in the City

Eighteen years ago, Nocturnes in the City started as a five-concert series at Prague Restaurant at Masaryktown in Scarborough. It was a great success from the beginning and five years later, the classical concerts were moved to downtown Toronto. Many Czech and Slovak artists have performed in last 17 years to mainly Czech-Canadian audiences: singers Eva Urbanová, Zdeněk Plech, Gustáv Beláček, Eva Blahová; pianists Antonín Kubálek, Karolina Kubálek, Jan Novotný, Boris Krajny and Martin Karlíček; violinists Ivan Ženatý and Bohuslav Matoušek; and famous quartets -- the Panocha, Zemlinsky, Pražák and Kocian.

This season, Nocturnes in the City marks the centenary of the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918 with a special concert on October 28 when the prize-winning Zemlinsky Quartet with pianist Slávka Vernerová-Pěchočová present two Dvořák string quartets and the ever-popular Piano Quintet No.2, Op.81. One week earlier on October 21, the same pianist will give a solo recital of works by three Czech composing giants – Dvořák, Smetana and Janáček.

The Zemlinsky Quartet also take advantage of their presence in Ontario to perform all 14 of Dvořák’s string quartets, as well as his Cypresses and Op.81 Piano Quintet (with Vernerová-Pěchočová), under the auspices of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society, October 18, 20, 22, 24, 25 and 27. Not to be missed. 

CLASSICAL & BEYOND QUICK PICKS

OCT 10, 12PM: The Rosebud String Quartet, led by COC principal violist Keith Hamm and COC associate concertmaster/National Ballet concertmaster Aaron Schwebel, gives a free noon-hour concert of music by Haydn and Beethoven at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.

OCT 10, 8PM: The Jeffrey Concerts (London) presents Canadian violinist supreme, James Ehnes, and his usual collaborative pianist, Andrew Armstrong in works by Beethoven, Brahms and Corigliano. The same program can be heard OCT 11 at 7:30PM in Kingston at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts and OCT 12 at 7:30PM in Niagara-on-the Lake presented by Bravo Niagara!

OCT 11, 12PM: Pianists Rosemarie Duval-Laplante and Jean-Michel Dube honour the artistic legacy of “the Quebecois Mozart,” Andre Mathieu, on the 50th anniversary of his death by performing a selection of works for two and four hands composed by Mathieu, his father Rodolphe and by some of the composers that inspired them in a free noon-hour concert at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.

OCT 18, 8PM: The St. Lawrence Quartet bring their infectious energy and consummate musicianship to the Jane Mallett Theatre in a wide-ranging program of Haydn, Golijov, Barber (Dover Beach with baritone Tyler Duncan) and Beethoven (Op.135). Music Toronto says it’s the only performance of this program anywhere!

OCT 28, 3:15PM: Mooredale Concerts present the legendary Dorian Wind Quintet in a program of works by Bach, Perle and Dvořák.

Danish Quartet. Photo by Caroline BittencourtNOV 3, 7:30PM: The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts presents the acclaimed Danish String Quartet playing Haydn, Abrahamsen and Beethoven (the indelible Op.59 No.1). The same program can be heard NOV 4 at 3PM, presented by the RCM in Koerner Hall.

Stephen HoughNOV 6, 7:30PM: A recital by Stephen Hough is always worthwhile. For this appearance at the Isabel Centre for the Performing Arts, the British polymath brings his intelligence and flawless technique to a program of Debussy, Liszt (The Mephisto Waltz) and Chopin’s Sonata No.2.

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

The most important operatic event of the current season happens right at its beginning. It is the Canadian Opera Company’s presentation of the world premiere of Hadrian composed by singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright to a libretto by multi-award-winning playwright Daniel MacIvor. Hadrian is important as the first COC commission for the main stage since The Golden Ass in 1999 composed by Randolph Peters to a libretto by Robertson Davies.

Hadrian librettist Daniel MacIvor. Credit Jim RyceHadrian stars renowned baritone Thomas Hampson making his COC debut in the title role, equally renowned soprano Karita Mattila as Plotina also making her COC debut and tenor Isaiah Bell as Hadrian’s lover Antinous, last seen in Toronto earlier this year as Eurimaco in Opera Atelier’s production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Hadrian opens October 13 and runs to October 27; it is directed by Peter Hinton and conducted by Johannes Debus. 

The plot involves the Roman Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-138 AD), whom historian Edward Gibbon counted among the “five good emperors” of Rome, despite Hadrian’s habit of having his opponents executed and despite his bloody suppression of the Third Jewish Revolt (132-136). Hadrian was married for political reasons to his predecessor Trajan’s grand-niece Sabina, likely at Trajan’s wife Plotina’s behest, and spent more than half of his reign travelling about the empire. 

In Bithynia he met the youth Antinous, who became the love of his life. Antinous accompanied Hadrian on the rest of his travels for the next six years until Antinous’ mysterious death by drowning in the Nile in 130 at the age of about 20. Hadrian’s grief was so great he spent the rest of his life memorializing Antinous. He had the city Antinopolis built near where the youth died; he deified him, inaugurated games to honour him and established a religious cult to worship him which spread and continued for centuries after Hadrian’s death. The cult was condemned by some pagans of Hadrian’s time and by the early Christian Fathers. Historians, especially in the 19th century, suppressed mention of Hadrian and Antinous’ amorous relationship and it was not brought fully to the general public’s attention until the publication of French author Marguerite Yourcenar’s celebrated novel Mémoires d’Hadrien in 1951.

(from left) Assistant conductor Derek Bate, composer Rufus Wainwright, and COC Music Director Johannes Debus at the first read-through of Hadrian’s score, May 2018. Courtesy COCIn September just as rehearsals for Hadrian were starting, I spoke to Daniel MacIvor about the genesis and development of writing the opera. (Wainwright, in fact, had begun working on an opera about Hadrian after reading Yourcenar’s novel long before he wrote his first produced opera, Prima Donna, that played in Toronto as part of the Luminato Festival in 2010.) 

When asked how he became involved with Hadrian, MacIvor replied, “They [at the COC] were looking for someone to come on board with this; Atom Egoyan is a friend of mine and he recommended me to Alexander [Neef] who got in touch with me. Initially, I said no because I didn’t know anything about Hadrian or Antinous, and I knew very little about opera. But Alexander suggested that I look at the material about Hadrian and Antinous and as soon as I started to read about them I was floored that I had never heard of them because it seemed so incredibly important. How could I, as a gay man, never have known about it? So I became extremely interested in it. The story deals with grief which is an important theme of mine, so then I took a meeting with Rufus and we determined that we could work together.”

Though Wainwright was inspired by Yourcenar’s novel, MacIvor felt the story needed a different perspective: “We did talk about Yourcenar’s book, but I rejected reading it because I prefer not to read fiction when I’m writing fiction. Besides that, from what I had read about the novel and from what Rufus said, it seemed that the novel positioned Antinous as more an object of love, whereas I was very interested at looking at what it was that kept the couple together for six years, a relationship ended only by Antinous’ untimely death. I felt the story needed to be about a relationship that was physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional – that they were equals in the relationship and that that equality was frowned upon by people of the time.”

(MacIvor is correct. Though sexual relationships between older men and younger men were accepted in Ancient Rome, it was expected that the older man would be dominant in all aspects of the relationship.)

As it turned out, the late playwright Linda Griffith made an important contribution: “So when I was debating doing the job I went to visit Linda Griffiths and when she learned of the topic she gave me her copy of Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (2009) by historian Anthony Everitt that she had just finished reading and that became my source book. One of the things Everitt talks about are the various theories of Antinous’ demise. Did he sacrifice himself in an effort to improve Hadrian’s health, was it an accident or was he murdered? Everitt offered a potential for drama there so I grabbed it. Treachery and duplicitousness are richly operatic. And then there’s also the question of Judea and Hadrian’s relationship to Jewry which is also historically known and I also created drama around that.”

(from left) Composer Rufus Wainwright and librettist Daniel MacIvor at the first read-through of Hadrian’s score, May 2018. Courtesy COCMacIvor knew from the start what style of opera Wainwright intended and that affected how he approached the libretto: “I knew from the beginning that we were writing opera in the grand tradition – that I would be writing recits and arias and duets and I just went for it. I wanted the language to be formal, not casual as in [Benjamin Britten’s] Peter Grimes or in [John Adams’s] The Death of Klinghoffer

“I think that one of the things that drew Alexander to me in the first place was that if you look at my plays there’s a lot of white space on the page, so I think that might have been an early indication that I might be able to write a scene by using a minimum of words. And I love the challenge of that. It takes longer to sing a line than speak it and then there is the option that those words can be repeated over and over again.”  

MacIvor discussed the negotiations involved in collaboration: “I think structurally we landed well on the first draft, and then shifted quite a lot after that about where an aria lands or where a trio appears. Rufus and I met many times and it was a question of throwing axes and hammers with both of us feeling very passionate about the story. Opera is probably Rufus’ first musical love so he is deeply invested in it. He would speak in references to other operas for what he wanted and I would reject going there because I didn’t want to be influenced by other works. So we ended up bringing in a dramaturge, Cori Ellison, who works at Juilliard, to help bridge the very different ways we work in and I think now we are both very pleased with where we’ve landed.

“If Rufus said ‘we really need to have an aria here in this scene,’ then I would move things around and adjust what I needed to adjust. And there are adjustments in tone where a character needs to show their weakness here or their strength there, and he’d ask me to do that. There was lots of music he had written before I came on – like how he wanted to begin Act 3 which is just after the intermission and I made space for that. There is also an aria that he adapted from a pop song of his that he elevated and wanted included, so the libretto I presented four years ago has changed considerably. Yet, the four-act structure, where the main arias occur and what the story basically is, have not really changed radically.”

When asked how much of the opera he considers his, MacIvor replied: “The idea that Hadrian has the chance to relive two nights again with Antinous was something that I brought to the story. But Rufus agreed with it and the fact that he did agree also makes it his don’t you think? If you look at my other work you see that I’m obsessed with certain kinds of structures and themes and looking at the libretto you will see it’s all there, like You Are Here (2001), A Beautiful View (2006), Here Lies Henry (1995). There so much of the work that I’ve done about a person being forced to perform their life again, I think an audience who knows my work will see that in the opera.”

MacIvor has been strongly inspired by how important the story is: “Peter Hinton talks about this story really beautifully in saying that this is one of a trio of great love affairs upon which empires rose and fell. He talks about Dido and Aeneas, Antony and Cleopatra and Hadrian and Antinous. It’s all about Rome but it seems to feel weirdly relevant somehow. I think that the story of Hadrian and Antinous is an important one and I think that in giving it attention that something is served. There was a kind of homophobia surrounding it in that prevented people being able to address their story. And that fuels my passion to get this story out.” 

ON OPERA QUICK PICKS

SEP 30 TO NOV 3, VARIOUS TIMES: Eugene Onegin, Four Seasons Centre. This the COC’s first production of Tchaikovsky’s great opera since 2008.  This time it will be staged in the acclaimed production Robert Carsen created for the Metropolitan Opera.  Gordon Bintner sings Onegin, Joyce El-Khoury is Tatyana, Joseph Kaiser is Lensky and Johannes Debus conducts.

OCT 13 TO 27, VARIOUS TIMES: Hadrian, Four Seasons Centre. This the COC’s first commission for the main stage since The Golden Ass in 1999. Composer Rufus Wainwright and librettist Daniel MacIvor bring to the stage one of history’s great gay love stories – that of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and the youth Antinous. The production stars the renowned Thomas Hampson as Hadrian and Karita Mattila, both making their COC debuts, with Isaiah Bell as Antinous. Peter Hinton directed and Johannes Debus conducts.

OCT 25 TO NOV 3, VARIOUS TIMES: Actéon & Pygmalion, Elgin Theatre. This is the first time Opera Atelier has presented Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon (1683) and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion (1748) as a double bill – two operas based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Colin Ainsworth stars as both title characters with Mireille Asselin and Allyson McHardy.  The production travels later to Chicago and Versailles.

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

Often described by performers and critics as “deliriously sensuous,” Messiaen’s Harawi is the veritable black pearl of song cycles. Is it really thematically a variation on Tristan und Isolde? How much Peruvian and Andean folklore is there in it, really? Are Messiaen’s invented words employed purely for sonorous effect? How many narrators are there in the text, how many persons, if any? Was Messiaen looking closely at the suffering of his spouse who was beginning to struggle with mental health problems at the time of its composition? Is this a rare Messiaenic creation that’s completely devoid of Catholicism? Or should we, as pianist Vanessa Wagner suggests, abandon any attempt at intellectual analysis of Harawi and meet its raw emotions with raw emotions of our own?

These are the questions which mezzo Simone McIntosh and pianist Rachel Kerr are already trying to grapple with in rehearsal for their own Harawi, to be presented on October 25 at the Canadian Opera Company’s noon-hour concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. While the piece will not be staged or even semi-staged, Harawi is not exactly amenable to a typical self-contained song recital either.

(from left) Simone McIntosh and Rachael Kerr. credit Ian G McIntosh Photography “When I started thinking how I want to interpret this piece,” says McIntosh when we meet in a café one bright late-summer evening, “I realized there’s no way for me to do it without there being some sort of breaking of boundaries when it comes to art song. When you’re studying art song as a singer, it’s important to understand that the beauty is to be found within the music and to portray something in art song means to portray it in a subtle, non-bodily way. I feel though that this piece lends itself to being explored in a bodily way.”

Her first encounter with Harawi was Against the Grain Theatre’s 2015 mashup of the Messiaen song cycle with Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, which Joel Ivany staged in a Parkdale gallery and Christopher Mokrzewski conducted from the piano. Krisztina Szabó gave voice to the Harawi woman, who is in a troubled relationship with baritone Stephen Hegedus’s Müllerin narrator. This marriage of two very different pieces worked extremely well. And made McIntosh determined to sing it ASAP: “I saw the AtG’s Harawi, and Krisztina Szabó doing it so brilliantly, and said to myself: I want to do this so bad. Since that night, it’s been on my wish list. When I got into the COC Ensemble, Liz Upchurch asked me what I’d like to sing while I’m here and I immediately said Harawi.”

It’s hard to describe Harawi to somebody who’s never heard it. McIntosh gives it a try: “I’d describe it as an eclectic piece that explores the musicality of both folk and contemporary music, and joins the tonality with the atonality. It’s a piece with an amazing range of emotion and musical expression.” Is she going to try to make sense of the words? “The poetry of it is so bizarre and surrealist and abstract. At first I thought, Hmm, what am I going to do with this? But I found some really wonderful sources that preserve Messiaen’s thoughts when he was writing the piece so I’ll be definitely incorporating what he had in mind while composing … I’ll be making sure that there’s a through storyline that makes sense to me, but also respects what he wanted.”

Does Messiaen’s ailing wife comes into the equation? “That’s an interesting aspect, and one of the ideas that I’m toying with as I’m rehearsing the piece. But the main aspect is – it’s a story of two lovers that are separated by death and at the end united in death.” It’s a decidedly non-Christian view of death, however. “Messiaen presents death as this chaotic nebula that is full of stars … It’s kind of atypical for him.”

Do we ever know who is narrating, and if it’s one specific person? “In one of the songs, there is the young woman narrator, and then the narration clearly switches to the young man. None of the other songs have that. Whenever the words are addressing Piroutcha, you could argue that I’m performing the young man. All in all, I think I’m playing two, if not three characters – as there’s an outside narrator. Maybe even four: where Messiaen used syllabic mutterings, a witch may speaking. Or a character with witchy features that’s based on Goya paintings.”

McIntosh has been passionate about 20th century and contemporary music since early university. She went to school alongside a group of composers and has been able to sing a lot of new works from the get-go. If there’s a red thread running through her undergraduate years at UBC, the years of working on a master’s at McGill, the Merola program in San Francisco and now the COC Ensemble Studio, it would probably be new music. “My goal is to be a voice for contemporary music, specifically Canadian composers. It’s really important to encourage young Canadian composers to write for the voice – and to advocate for those pieces. A lot of the time some amazing new music is not recognized because of the lack of performing opportunities. I hope to be changing that.” If she were to be an ambassador for any of the composers from the past? “Definitely Richard Strauss. Berg. I also love singing Schoenberg. Then of course Mozart: I love him and will be doing a lot of Mozart in the near future.” Starting with understudying Dorabella in the COC revival of Atom Egoyan’s production of Cosi fan tutte next year.

In another unusual project that came her way, McIntosh actually had the opportunity to combine Mozart and new music. Crush, a modern reconstruction of Don Giovanni composed by James Rolfe to a libretto by Anna Chatterton, turns the title character over to a mezzo – McIntosh, that is – in a production that was workshopped and performed at the Banff Centre. Or rather, off-off-Banff Centre, in a night club which doubled as a sex club for the occasion. Donna Giovanna was a “sex addicted sociopath,” as McIntosh puts it, chased by lovers of both sexes. “There were dildos on the walls, condoms on the floor…” she laughs. “It was pretty racy.” As in Da Ponte’s libretto, the protagonist takes advantage of people, but dies by the hand of the character named Lola, who is a modern approximation of Donna Elvira.

Upon finishing the Merola summer training program in San Francisco last month, McIntosh returned to her busy and sometimes unpredictable days as a COC Ensemble Studio member. Ensemble Studio is really good at taking the voices that they want, rather than the voices that they, for practical purposes need, she says. “A lot of similar programs have some kind of equal distribution, and take two sopranos, two mezzos, two tenors etc.” The COC Ensemble actually lets itself fall in love with a young voice, and works around that. “They choose the voices that they want, and then program.” And sometimes, fortunately, those young voices will insist on tackling the Mount Everests of art song like Messiaen’s Harawi

ART OF SONG QUICK PICKS

OCT 9, 12PM: Canadian Opera Company, Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre | “The Best of Rossini: Artists of the COC Ensemble Studio.” Arias and duos, comedic and dramatic. The dramatic Rossini is heard nowhere near enough in Toronto, so even the slightest chance of a Tancredi aria is worth the wait in that line around the block.

Lauren EberweinOCT 18, 12PM: Canadian Opera Company, Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre | “Mélodies et chansons.” Graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Lauren Eberwein joined the COC’s Ensemble Studio as a mezzo, but is now a soprano. How has the voice changed since she won the second prize in the COC Ensemble Competition in 2015 with the trouserissimo “Parto, parto” from Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito? A chance to find out, and meet the soprano Anna-Sophie Neher as well. The two will perform a selection of French art songs.

OCT 21, 3PM: Off Centre Music Salon: Trinity-St. Paul ‘s Centre. “The Mystery of History: 1889 in Paris and Vienna.”An intriguing chamber program indeed, including Brahms and Johann Strauss’ very different approaches to Hungarian and Roma/Gypsy cultures, and Massenet and Chausson amidst quite a bit of Debussy. Readings throughout from Arthur Schnitzler by actor William Webster; historical commentary by Stephen Cera. Shannon Mercer, soprano; Krisztina Szabó, mezzo; Inna Perkis and Boris Zarankin, piano; Mark Skazinetsky, violin.

OCT 27, 7:30PM & OCT 28, 3PM: Pax Christi Chorale: Grace Church on the Hill. “Slavic Devotion. “Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms; Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil and Vocalise with Natalya Gennadi, soprano. David Bowser conducts.

NOV 5, 7:30PM: “International Resource Centre for Performing Artists presents Singing Stars: The Next Generation.” Zoomer Hall. A program of opera and oratorio arias. Singers to be announced; Rachel Andrist at the piano.

Lydia Perović is an arts journalist in Toronto. Send her your art-of-song news to artofsong@thewholenote.com.

In this month’s column we have two arts organizations taking on Slavic traditions and history. Pax Christi Chorale presents “Slavic Devotion” and Vesnivka Choir leads a commemorative concert for the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor.

Members of Pax Christi ChoralePax Christi Chorale: Slavic Devotion

Inseparable from Slavic history is the relationship of Orthodox Christianity in the region. The traditions of Slavic Orthodoxy are distinct from those of Western Europe, with the sphere of influence having been Constantinople rather than Rome. In the deep ritual and spirituality of the Orthodoxy, we find many of the great Eastern European composers. Two are featured by artistic director David Bowser: Stravinsky’s A Symphony of Psalms; and Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise and All Night Vigil.

“Slavic Devotion’ refers to the spirited expression of sacred and secular Slavic music,” replies Bowser in response to a few of my questions. “We are presenting Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian music to demonstrate a rich variety and beauty in contrasting styles.”

This is not a religious concert in the typical spiritual sense. Bowser has assembled these works to display the rich musical history of Slavic music and the languages, which he describes as “beautifully fluid and melodic.”

“The Symphony of Psalms is the perfect musical pairing for Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil,” says Bowser. “They are both conventional works in some ways, but the bright spark of personality and unique genius shines through. Like Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky before him, Stravinsky rejected much of the Orthodox Church’s teachings and generally did not attend church in his adult life. But these composers found a unique musical voice to express their personal spiritual culture and artistic link to tradition.”

Many choral composers, while not overtly religious, have worked within the space of the spiritual. Of the grand choral works that one can name offhand, a good bunch of them are masses or requiems. “Just as there is no political statement in this program, there is no religious one either,” shares Bowser. “It’s about the impact of beautiful art and vocal vibration on the audience. We are performing sacred and secular works not to recreate their social function but to reveal their beauty in a new light.”

With a strong Ukrainian tradition in Toronto, there are many descendants and members of the diaspora who continue to shape and influence music. Pax Christi Chorale is joined by Natalya Gennadi, a popular presence in the Toronto opera scene. Gennadi and Bowser have collaborated before. He shares: “I have known Natalya for many years ever since she was a selected soloist in the Toronto Mozart Vocal Competition, now called the Toronto Mozart Master Class Series. She is a stunning singer with incredible technique and wonderfully expressive investment in the text.”

Gennadi made a name for herself as the lead in the Tapestry Opera production of the new opera Oksana G. in May 2017. A Russian language and literature specialist, Gennadi’s thorough comfort in the Russian and Ukrainian languages and tradition will be well-suited to this concert. For Bowser, this is a chance to work together again” “We have been looking for a project and her expertise in Russian and Ukrainian repertoire and language gave us an opportunity to highlight the great works from this part of the world,” he says.

Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise contains no actual words. The ethereal sounds on beautiful open vowels allow Gennadi to evoke, inspire and create a narrative of her own making through the music. Unlike instrumental music, which exists without consonants and vowels, the physical function of singing is usually a carefully articulated rhythmic roadmap of deftly shaped words. Allowing yourself the indulgence of experiencing gorgeous vocal lines free of the constraints of words has a universality of the effect that may surprise even the most experienced choral listener. Paired with the stunning All-Night Vigil, listeners will find themselves transfixed. “These are extraordinary works for the human voice,” says Bowser. “The synchronized vibration of 100 voices makes this experience all the more satisfying.

October 17 at 7:30pm and October 28 at 3pm. Pax Christi Chorale performs Slavic Devotion. With guest soprano Natalya Gennadi. Grace Church on-the-Hill.

Vesnivka ChoirVesnivka Commemorates the Holodomor

Under the iron fist of Stalin’s Soviet Russia, millions of Ukrainians died from government-sponsored famine, neglect and isolation during peacetime. Restricting people from escaping famine-stricken communities, imposing total government control of food production, confiscating food and restricting community access to it, the Soviet government created the conditions for famine and millions died.

Writing together, artistic director Halyna Kondracki and executive member Lesia Komorowsky responded to a few of my inquiries about the commemorative concert. Chorister Valentina Kuryliw also provided comments. Their knowledge and gracious sharing of history show a connection and thoughtfulness bridging the important acts of memory, religion and music.

In 2003 and 2008, the choir commemorated the 70th and 75th Holodomor anniversaries, respectively. As Kondracki and Komorowsky share: “It is important to keep the memory of this event alive so that future generations learn about it and understand what can happen under the rule of tyranny and media censorship.”

(Compare the frightening reality of our current world in the genocide of Yazidis, the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, and the targeting of women and children by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Many of the horrors we wish would stay in the past continue forward into our present and future.)

Of the Holodomor, Kuryliw notes that for Ukrainians who survived, “No one was allowed to mourn for these people. It was forbidden to mention the famine in Soviet Ukraine for generations. The memory of it was erased from history under the Communists.” As Kuryliw notes, Ukrainians are particularly sensitive to the annexation of Crimea, properly Ukrainian territory, by Russia. For those still in the Ukraine and for the diaspora, remembering events like the Holodomor is “a testimony of the resilience to survive despite starvation, deportations and executions – all attempts to destroy [us].”

Music has been a way to keep many of those traditions alive. “Music is an integral part of Ukrainian culture and, in particular, a strong choral tradition,” say Kondracki and Komorosky. “From the very beginning when Ukrainian pioneers came to Canada, they organized in order to keep their cultural traditions alive in the diaspora. In almost every Ukrainian-Canadian community throughout Canada you will find choirs, bands, orchestras and dance groups. The Ukrainian community in and around the GTA has long been a strong bastion of Ukrainian culture with its many community and church choirs.”

It is no accident that Vesnivka is celebrating its 53rd year of music making.

For this commemoration, Kondracki has programmed an entirely Ukrainian concert. Many Ukrainian composers have written works to commemorate the Holodomor. Evhen Stankovych’s Requiem will be performed as well as Hanna Havryletz’s My God, why have You abandoned me? The late Ukrainian-Canadian composer Zenoby Lawryshyn’s Tryptych: In Memoriam to the Victims of Holodomor will also be performed. Lawryshyn was a dear friend of the choir and created many works for Vesnivka over the years. And treasured local Ukrainian-Canadian composer Larysa Kuzmenko’s Voice of Hope will be performed with soprano solo by Antonina Ermolenko accompanied by the Gryphon Trio.

Recognizing the Slavic Orthodoxy is inseparable from the Ukrainian-Canadian experience. Sacred music composer Roman Hurko is of Ukrainian Canadian descent. Educated at the University of Toronto and Yale University, his speciality has been composing for the Byzantine Rite, still the major form used by Slavic Orthodoxy. The historical rootedness of his composing was brought forth in his major work Requiem/Panachyda, written to commemorate another Ukrainian historical moment – the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. The choirs will sing Eternal Memory, an excerpt from the Requiem.

This commemorative concert fits into the musical tradition of the community who have long marked important moments with music. “In addition to previous concerts commemorating Holodomor,” Kondracki and Komorosky write, “Vesnivka Choir has spearheaded or taken part in four concerts commemorating the Chernobyl disaster. Following the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, many Ukrainian musicians in Canada and abroad wrote music, including requiems, commemorating this event. Other commemorative concerts have included remembering the Ukrainian Army of WWI, the arrival of Ukrainian pioneers in Canada, the 100th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence in 1918, and several concerts in tribute to various Ukrainian composers and literary figures.”

The church continues to be an important part of the Ukrainian-Canadian tradition and Vesnivka continues that work. And never far form their work is the Orthodox Rite. At their religious home of St Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, Vesnivka bring forth all the history and memory of what it means to be Ukrainian and Canadian.

On October 21, 2018, Vesnivka will join other dignitaries and guests at the unveiling of the Toronto memorial to the victims of the Holodomor. Led by the Toronto Ukrainian Association, the new memorial will stand just north of the Princess Gates to Exhibition Place.

October 28, 5pm. Vesnivka and the Toronto Ukrainian Male Chamber Choir present “Commemorating Holodomor.” With special guests the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Gryphon Trio and soprano Antonina Ermolenko. Runnymede United Church, Toronto. 

CHORAL SCENE QUICK PICKS

OCT 10, 7:30PM: Chorus Niagara presents Brahms’ great work: Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem). With the Avanti Orchestra and soloists. Chorus Niagara, under Bob Cooper, is a fantastic ensemble bringing fine choral music to the Niagara region. FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, St Catharines.

OCT 27, 7:30PM: The Orpheus Choir of Toronto performs the music to the 1924 silent film Peter Pan. This is a new film undertaking for the choir and will prove to be an exciting addition to the oft-performed Phantom of the Opera. Eglinton St. Georges United Church.

NOV 4, 4PM: The Amadeus Choir presents “The Great War: A Commemoration.” Featuring Gabriel Faure’s Requiem and joined by guests, the Eglinton St. George’s Choir and soloists. This is an earlier option for those looking to catch commemorations for Remembrance Day. Eglinton St .George’s United Church.

Follow Brian on Twitter @bfchang Send info/media/tips to choralscene@thewholenote.com.

October is a fine month to go exploring for what’s happening on the global music scene. We listen to hybrid Persian-Western classical music expressing profound Sufi insights, then travel all the way down the QEW to listen to the joyful songs of emerging Indian singer Anandi Bhattacharya. We end up at a College Street “Bar” relaxing with three local groups helping to define today’s Toronto world music brand. Along the way we hear how music is passed on in families abroad – as well as in one downtown Toronto hood. Read on.

(from left) Hafez Nazeri and Shahram NazeriUntold – A New Chapter: Shahram Nazeri and Hafez Nazeri

Veteran Persian classical vocalist Shahram Nazeri and his son, the multi-instrumentalist and composer Hafez Nazeri, are celebrated in their native Iran and increasingly on the international scene. There are also strong Toronto connections to this story. Shahram Nazeri (b.1950), the widely celebrated Kurdish-Iranian tenor, was the first vocalist to set the mystical Sufi poetry of the 13th-century Persian Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (known worldwide as Rumi), to Persian music in the 1980s. Dubbed the “Persian Nightingale” by The New York Times, he has a career discography of over 40 albums that have sold over 70 million units. In 2007 he was honoured with the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal from the government of France for his achievements in Iranian traditional music; the same year he also received the Lifetime Cultural Heritage Award from the Asia Society of New York. Among connoisseurs of classical Persian music he’s considered a legend.

In his father’s footsteps, Hafez Nazeri (b.1979) has also sought to carry Rumi’s message to a global audience, mediated via his hybrid compositions. With formal training in both Persian and Western classical music, he aims to bridge musical divides between those cultures. Searching for common ground, he states: “I want to create a revolution with music, with love rather than hate, or chaos and bloodshed. At a time when all that we hear about Iran is filtered through headlines of intolerance, focusing around the development of nuclear weapons and facilities, it is important to also portray the 7,000-year-old cultural history, with its deeply poetic and artistic mystical tradition through music and art, to the world … The universal language of music can and should function as the common language of humanity, harmonized, refreshed and redefined.”

The Nazeris’ major work is the Rumi Symphony Project, composed by Hafez Nazeri as an evolving large-scale musical suite inspired by Rumi’s poetry, mixing elements of Persian, Hindustani and Western classical music including harmony, orchestration and choral singing, and enthusiastically received at its 2007 Los Angeles premiere.

Their 2014 album Rumi Symphony ProjectUntold, co-produced by Nazeri and Grammy-winning producer David Frost, reportedly took more than 5,000 studio hours to record. It featured the poetry of Rumi as transcribed by bestselling author Deepak Chopra, dozens of leading international musicians, and ecstatic vocals by Shahram Nazeri. Rumi Symphony ProjectUntold became the first album by Middle Eastern artists to top the Billboard Classical chart.

Toronto here they come!

In October 2018, the Toronto-based artist agency and concert producer, Link Music Lab, is taking the bold step of presenting the next chapter of the work, titled Untold – A New Chapter, in five Canadians cities. Rehearsals start in Toronto early in the month. The tour then launches on October 13 in Ottawa and October 14 in Montreal, moving to Calgary on October 27, and Vancouver on October 28.

October 21, right in the middle of the tour, Untold takes over the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, co-presented by Small World Music. “Small World was proud to present the extraordinary vocalist Shahram Nazeri 18 years ago,” says SWM’s Executive Director Alan Davis “It was one of the first classical Persian music concerts we presented. Now we’re continuing that tradition.”

In addition to the multi-instrumentalist Hafez Nazeri – primarily playing the hafez, his own adaptation of the Persian setar, a member of the lute family – the ensemble will include Hussein Zahawy, a versatile daf (Kurdish frame drum) specialist, plus Iranian percussionist Farhad Saffari. American cellist Felix Fan, violist Liuh-Wen Ting, and violinist Conrad Harris form the string section, while soprano Maria Sokolovsky and mezzo Anna Yelizarova provide a strong female vocal counterpart to Shahram Nazeri’s male voice.

Shahram’s vocal performance forms the core of Untold, featuring extensive use of the characteristic Persian tahrir vocal ornament consisting of very quick melismatic oscillations between notes, including tonal gradations finer than a quartertone when extended, forming what has been described as “sonic arabesques.” These tahrir passages, more than exhibitions of breathtaking virtuoso vocalism, express the underlying passion, yearning or even spiritual transcendence of the particular song’s lyrics.

On the Rumi Symphony Project CD’s liner notes Hafez Nazeri observes, “Traditional Middle Eastern music is essentially defined by the soloist and fluid improvisation. It serves the performer as a vehicle for a spiritual and deeply personal journey, even as the audience submits its will to the moment and journeys along where the soloist may lead. Classical Western music, on the other hand, has evolved as a formal composition characterized by orchestral forms built on a solid balance of harmony, rhythm and structure, and requiring a certain disciplined distance by the performers and the listeners to be properly interpreted and appreciated. One of my greatest challenges was to try and meld these two divergent frameworks into one integral structure.”

Hafez Nazeri’s ambitious goal in this project is nothing less than “to create a new sonic universe, a unified construct [… resulting] in a new school of music that would transcend the cultural divide rather than colour one musical system with another [… laying] the foundation of an inclusive and transformed musical language.”

Anandi BhattacharyaAnandi Bhattacharya: The Voice of Modern India

From the venerable mid-century Sony Centre located in Toronto’s core to the barely three-year-old FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in downtown Catharines is about a two-hour drive – not of course including traffic jams. On November 2, audiences can also travel musically from Iran to Northern India to catch the concert billed as “Anandi Bhattacharya: The Voice of Modern India.”

As in the case of Hafez Nazeri, Anandi Bhattacharya grew up in a deeply musical family, surrounded by professional musicians. The daughter of renowned Hindustani classical slide guitar innovator Debashish Bhattacharya, and niece of tabla master Subhasis Bhattacharya, very early rigorous musical training was to be expected.

Now 22, Anandi is pursuing her own singing career. She has recently released her album Joy Abounds, an exploration of her musical roots and influences. Accompanied by her father, uncle and Catalan clarinetist/guitarist/vocalist Carola Ortiz, her sweet, light and lithe voice covers light classical to folk songs in arrangements interspersed with bravura instrumental solos.

Although steeped in Hindustani musical culture from a very early age, Anandi says she was never forced to be a musical purist by her father and guru. This liberal aesthetic view made possible her high regard for musical fusion and several genres are represented and mashed up in her current repertoire. For example, as well as the pervasive impact of renowned 20th-century Hindustani music masters, she also cites Thom Yorke, Ella Fitzgerald and Joni Mitchell as leading influences.

Her current set list includes folk songs of Rajasthan and Bengal, a song by poet Rabindranath Tagore, original compositions by her father Debashish Bhattacharya and Carola Ortiz, as well as accompaniments and solos by Subhasis Bhattacharya, among the world’s foremost tabla players. Anandi notes that her music “is light-hearted but carries the true essence of ragas and their moods, and evokes a sense of familiarity amidst uncharted waters.”

Another factor in her current direction was touring with her father and uncle on the global stage, a profoundly formative experience. Its impact is summed up by Anandi: “I do not believe that I was meant to imbibe my own culture alone. I think for me, finding my sound [… including] all that I love to hear, and all that churns within me, is my path forward.”

So Long SevenWorld Music! Fun!

October 28, Toronto world music quartet So Long Seven throws a family-friendly Sunday 4pm world music party at Toronto event venue, Revival Bar, as a sendoff for their November European tour. Called “World Music! Fun!” the afternoon concert features performances, headlined by So Long Seven, opened by two bands with overlapping membership: Near East Trio and Zephyr.

Recently nominated by the Canadian Folk Music Awards for Best Instrumental Band for its album Kala Kalo, So Long Seven is comprised of Neil Hendry (guitars), Tim Posgate (banjo, bass guitar), William Lamoureux (violin, other strings) and Ravi Naimpally (tabla, other percussion). Individually they’re among Canada’s leading instrumentalists on their respective instruments and in their chosen music genres. Jointly, they share a common mission. “We often play and compose for each other with great mutual respect, trying to challenge, push and inspire each other,” says banjoist Posgate.

Another group performing at the Revival Bar gig, Near East Trio – with Ernie Tollar (sax, flutes), Demetrios Petsalakis (oud), Ravi Naimpali (tabla) – was nominated by the Canadian Folk Music Awards for Best World Music Group.

“These groups are part of a rich local scene,” notes Posgate. “In fact, most of the musicians involved in the show can walk to the gig! So Long Seven rehearses just west of Revival, Zephyr two blocks east and Near East Trio a few blocks north. It’s our home turf!”

These musicians all live in one particular downtown Toronto hood, yet their music has taken them far. Collectively they have logged thousands of touring miles, hundreds of recording credits, and multiple Juno nominations. So Long Seven and Near East Trio both released well-received albums this year, while Zephyr – Brenna MacCrimmon sings songs from Turkey and the Balkans, accompanied by Demetrios Petsalakis (oud) and Jaash Singh (darbuka) – are among the city’s most in-demand world musicians.

Listening to all three groups, perhaps we can hear a kind of downtown Toronto music taking form, rooted in multiple world music traditions. For example So Long Seven’s instrumentation combines jazz violin, Hindustani tabla, bluegrass banjo and acoustic guitar.

“All three groups are dynamic and fun to watch – and at Revival there is space for dancing if the mood hits!” adds Posgate. “Plus we really want to make it fun for the whole family: there will be face painting for the kids and cool door prizes.” 

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

"We are the Halluci Nation. We are the tribe they cannot see. Our DNA is of earth and sky. Our DNA is of past and future. We are the Halluci Nation.” These words written and spoken by Indigenous poet, author, musician and activist John Trudell on the first track of A Tribe Called Red’s album We Are The Halluci Nation (2016) reverberate with strength and conviction. Based in Ottawa, A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) currently consists of musicians Bear Witness from the Cayuga First Nation and 2oolman from the Six Nations of the Grand River. Their powerful blend of music mixes traditional pow wow dance music with electronic dance music, otherwise known as EDM. Their collaboration with Trudell on the Halluci Nation album has sparked a movement that continues to grow and expand.

The poem describes “an imagined nation made up of people living within the philosophy of remembering what it is to be human, and what it is to treat other people like humans,” Bear told me during our recent phone interview. Not only do the words that articulate this vision appear as the opening track, but the entire album itself is a model of the idea of that nation. Each track is a collaboration with other musicians who by their very participation are expanding the scope of the Halluci Nation and were invited to participate “because the work they are doing already makes them part of Halluci Nation,” Bear said. Tanya Tagaq, Lido Pimienta, Chippewa Travellers, Jennifer Kreisberg and Northern Voice are some of the participating musicians. They are coming together to advocate for change, particularly around the issues of reconciliation and reparation, and to resist the mainstream, exploitative “ALie Nation.”

As Bear states: “The Halluci Nation are a group of people that break off from society to return to natural ways of life. It’s not just for Indigenous people, although it is a movement led by Indigenous people. It’s open to anyone as a mind frame and rallying point for those who understand there is something wrong with the current system.”

Bear Witness CREDIT Matt BarnesX Avant

With this year’s X Avant festival at the Music Gallery, the Halluci Nation will grow and expand even further. Artistic director David Dacks has invited Bear to be the guest curator for the 13th edition of this annual festival. Bear, in turn, has taken this opportunity to bring together a Canada-wide lineup of artists to create this next iteration of the Halluci Nation. Musically, the overall sound of this festival will be a distinct contrast to earlier festivals, as many of the invited musicians come from backgrounds in the plethora of approaches that have grown out of electronic dance music since the first devices for performing electronic music were developed at the end of the 19th century.

With the manifesto of the Italian futurists in the early 20th century, various sounds not previously considered musical began to be heard in artistic settings. Electroacoustic music as a European art form was introduced mid-20th century, with Canadian pioneers Hugh Le Caine and Norman McLaren contributing to the development of unique electronic technologies. Before the introduction of digital synthesizers and the MIDI system in the 1980s, the production of electronic music was largely limited to radio and university-based studios as the equipment was not easily transportable. Eventually, large-scale studios became somewhat obsolete with the introduction of laptops and iPads and other portable gear, making it possible for live and interactive performances. Electronic Dance Music arose in the late 1980s as music created largely for nightclubs, raves and festivals, and was produced for playback by DJs seamlessly mixing tracks. This club-based artform has mushroomed over the years, and this year’s X Avant festival will be a perfect opportunity to hear the latest innovations in these genres.

The opening concert of the festival on October 11 promises to be a visual feast with sets by Tasman Richardson, See Monsters, and Creeasian & Bear Witness. Before becoming a musician, Bear had a visual arts career that was mainly video based. Working with images that depicted misrepresentations of Indigenous people in the media, he sampled and reworked this material to create installations and short experimental films, highlighting the empowering aspects of the images and discarding the negative ones. Once ATCR began to take up more of his time, he folded his video work into his DJ sets.

Toronto-based Richardson was a huge influence on Bear’s visual work. Richardson will present two new three-channel live A/V performances, the first of which will use glitches from an Atari game console, and the second will use satellite-based images. See Monsters are a duo that come the closest to what ATCR do, using video, sound and sampling of traditional music. Being based in Northwest Coast traditions however, they have a very different aesthetic than ATCR. Bear’s collaboration with dancer and musician Creeasian will give him an opportunity to use some of his video work outside of the Tribe context and is for him another extension of the Halluci Nation idea. Sound artist and DJ, Maria Chávez, who will open the October 12 concert, was a new discovery for Bear who was intrigued by one of her signature DJ processes – using broken LPs layered on the turnable to create her unique sonic language. Bear cites Geronimo Inutiq as one artist who started working in a similar way as ATCR over 20 years ago, working with throat singing as well as electronic music and video production. The October 12 concert will conclude with respectfulchild, a solo instrument project of Gan from Saskatoon on Treaty 6 Territory. These ambient soundscapes are created from nuanced improvisations on their violin, resulting in a sound that takes the listener on an introspective reflective journey.

Saturday night’s events on October 13 will feature an all-out beat fest with Los Poetas, Above Top Secret and Ziibiwan at the Music Gallery, then wrapping up the evening with a dance party at The Mod Club. Headlining the dance party will be the sounds of El Dusty’s Colombian cumbia music, an artist with whom ATCR is currently collaborating. Following this will be mixes by two of Toronto’s most highly regarded DJs Dre Ngozi & Nino Brown; finishing off the evening is a set by Bear and his ATCR colleague 2oolman.

Narcy. credit TAMARA ABDUL HADIClosing out the festival on October 14 will be the music of veteran performers and innovators Narcy, Jennifer Kreisberg and Lillian Allen. Narcy is a pioneer of the Arab hip-hop movement working in Montreal, while Kreisberg innovates using multilayers of stunning vocal harmonies. Allen, of course, is well known in Toronto for her groundbreaking work in dub.

The festival also offers two occasions for audience members to engage with some of the festival artists. There will be a panel discussion at 6pm on October 14 about the concept of the Halluci Nation and a Sampler Café at 1pm on October 13 hosted by Creeasian where participants will have a chance to try out and play with different digital equipment. This is open to people of all ages and abilities.

Currently, Bear is developing material for the next album, and is reaching out to various artists that come across his path in Los Angeles. This album will be a contrast to We Are The Halluci Nation, although the very creating of it will be another extension of the Halluci Nation concept by bringing in other artists to collaborate. “This time the focus will be on celebration rather than dealing with the dystopian sci-fi vision of what the Halluci Nation could be,” Bear told me. When I asked the reason for this change, he replied that he feels that “people are getting stuck in the ideas of fighting and struggle. We need to start envisioning what it would be like beyond struggle.”

We concluded our interview by discussing how he would sum up the current issues facing Indigenous people, or whether that was even possible to do. “It’s a hard question to answer as there are hundreds of nations across one of the largest land masses in the world. One important thing for people to realize is that the things we talk about as Indigenous issues aren’t just that; they are human issues. Water rights, clean water, oil pipelines – we all need clean water, we all need to live on this planet. This is one of the most important things for people to realize at this point in time.”

The Halluci Nation vision is an invitation and call out for all those who find themselves seeking a more just world for all peoples and are committed to helping that come into being. 

IN WITH THE NEW QUICK PICKS

OCT 12, 8PM: Soundstreams, “Six Pianos,” Koerner Hall. Steve Reich’s music returns to Toronto with a performance of Six Pianos (1973), a work that the composer originally wrote for all the pianos in a piano store and subsequently pared down to six pianos. This concert will feature the veteran Reich performer Russell Hartenberger who will be joined by five other local pianists. Other works on the program include music by Ristic, Cage, Lutosławski, Louie and Palmer.

OCT 15, 8PM: The Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert, Maison symphonique de Montréal. Although a bit of a drive away, this concert will feature Ottawa-based Kelly-Marie Murphy’s composition En el escuro es todo uno (In the Darkness All is One). Murphy wrote this piece after winning the 2018 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, one of the biggest prizes for composers in the country. An interview with Murphy about her vision for this composition can be read in the October 2017 edition of The WholeNote.

Esprit Orchestras Alex Pauk studies a score (2015)OCT 24, 8PM: Esprit Orchestra. “For Orbiting Spheres,” Koerner Hall. Esprit Orchestra opens their current season with four orchestral works inspired by the various phenomena of the cosmos. Two Canadian premieres of works by Missy Mazzoli (USA) who composed Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres) and Unsuk Chin (Korea) are paired with Netherlands composer Tristan Keuris’s Sinfonia and Charles Ives’ tour de force An Unanswered Question. A heavenly night of music.

OCT 26 TO 28, 8PM: Arraymusic/Exquisite Beat Theatre, Rat-drifting 2: SlowPitchSound presents: Alternate Forest, Array Space. Rat-drifting is a concept developed by Martin Arnold to bring together free improvisation, noise, psychedelic process music and DIY para-punk composition. This month’s version features SlowPitchSound’s multidisciplinary adventure into a mystical forest space combining sound, dance and video.

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

Throughout the Renaissance and Baroque eras, Italy dominated the European cultural scene. The Renaissance movement began in Florence, on Italian soil, its humanist philosophy leading artists to seek greater realism and emotion in their work, and spread throughout Europe to influence entire generations of musicians, architects and painters. Their names are familiar and renowned for their groundbreaking music: Palestrina, Gabrieli and the infamous Gesualdo. Each of these composers laid a path for musicians across the continent. Still celebrated as luminaries today, their works are firmly ensconced in the early music canon.

The Baroque era has Italian roots as well, conceived in Rome in the 17th century. As with the Renaissance, Italian composers’ striking originality influenced all of Europe lead to the invention of new musical structures. Opera originated in Italy at the start of the 16th century and grew into an independent dramatic form. The toccata and the sonata were Italian inventions as well: the former developed by Frescobaldi into a virtuosic freestanding work later taken to even greater heights by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach; the latter brought to prominence by Domenico Scarlatti whose 555 sonatas provided models for Haydn and Mozart.

It is, therefore, impossible to imagine early music without Italy and its tremendous innovations and influences. This October, the Toronto classical music scene celebrates a few of these historical Italian composers and their creations through a number of comprehensive concerts of their vocal and instrumental works. The names may be very old but the sounds, brought to life by some of the city’s most esteemed performers, are as lively and inspiring as when they were first put to paper.

Antonio VivaldiVivaldi con Amore

Antonio Vivaldi, perhaps the most renowned of the Italian Baroque composers, needs little introduction. A composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and priest, his concerti were of such high quality that the young J.S. Bach transcribed a number of them for solo organ as a way of studying Vivaldi’s contrapuntal and harmonic dexterity and skill. Wednesday October 10 to Sunday October 14,Tafelmusik celebrates “the red priest” in an all-Vivaldi concert featuring a sinfonia and seven concerti, some instantly recognizable and others undoubtedly new to many listeners. Featuring a variety of soloists playing violin, oboe, bassoon and lute, this exciting program showcases Vivaldi at his best, and is a preview of the music that will be featured on music director Elisa Citterio’s first recording with the Tafelmusik orchestra, to be released early in 2019.

Girolamo FrescobaldiThe Glories of Rome

On October 19 and 20 the Toronto Consort presents “Frescobaldi & the Glories of Rome,” with music by Palestrina, Frescobaldi, Landi and Caroso. Besides being the birthplace of the Baroque, Rome has a rich and complex history within early music, closely entwined with both Frescobaldi and Palestrina. Housing both Vatican City and the Vatican itself, the Catholic Church held a powerful influence over musicians of the 16th and 17th Centuries. In addition to being a strikingly gifted composer, Frescobaldi was organist of St. Peter’s Basilica and much of his instrumental and choral music was written for, or inspired by, the Catholic liturgy.

Palestrina’s involvement in the Catholic Church is the stuff of legends; as the story goes, he single-handedly saved polyphonic church music from obliteration, composing his Missa Papae Marcelli to persuade the Council of Trent that a draconian ban on the polyphonic treatment of text in sacred music (as opposed to a more directly intelligible homophonic treatment) was unnecessary. This dramatic tale of art triumphing over adversity was so inspiring that the 19th-century composer Hans Pfitzner composed an opera about it, suitably titled Palestrina. (It is actually a wonderful piece of music and well worth a listen.)

Apocryphal legends aside, Palestrina was extremely famous in his day, and his reputation and influence have steadily increased since his death. As he did with Vivaldi, J.S. Bach studied and hand-copied Palestrina’s first book of Masses, and in 1742 wrote his own adaption of the Kyrie and Gloria of the Missa sine nomine. Almost five centuries after his birth, modern scholarship retains the view that Palestrina’s music represents a summit of technical perfection, the pinnacle of the Renaissance choral art.

By pairing the renowned Frescobaldi and Palestrina with the rather less-known Landi and Caroso, the Toronto Consort’s Glories of Rome will undoubtedly have something for everyone, a don’t-miss exploration of Renaissance music and the brilliant people who composed it.

Elinor FreyAnd Now for Something…

...Completely different! Superimposing the new on the old, or vice versa, is a challenging task. How do we maintain the integrity of the old while creating something decidedly modern and new? This is the question to be answered on October 3, when Montreal-based virtuoso Elinor Frey presents a program of new music at the Canadian Music Centre. The concert features works for solo cello by Linda Catlin Smith, Isaiah Ceccarelli, Ken Ueno, Scott Godin, Lisa Streich, and David Jaeger.

But wait, why is this concert in the early music section? Each piece performed in this concert is composed for the Baroque-style cello, designed after models dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. This is far from the first time composers have written new music for an old instrument! Ligeti wrote fascinating pieces for the harpsichord, as did Hugo Distler, introducing contemporary techniques and challenging conventional methods of playing these historical keyboards.

A number of the works on this program contain historical ties, including Linda Catlin Smith’s Ricercar, Isaiah Ceccarelli’s With concord of sweet sounds, and Lisa Streich’s Minerva. The ricercar in particular is an ancient musical form, a type of late Renaissance and early Baroque instrumental composition. In the 16th century, the word ricercar could refer to several types of compositions: whether a composer called an instrumental piece a toccata, a canzona, a fantasia, or a ricercar was a rather arbitrary decision. But Frescobaldi began to give the ricercar a formal structure through his compositions in his fiori musicali. In its most common contemporary understanding, ricercar refers to a kind of fugue, particularly one of a serious character in which the subject uses long note values. Bach wrote two extremely elaborate ricercars as part of his Musical Offering, including a monumental six-voice fugue.

It is not often that we see such modern music appearing in the Early Music column, and this fascinating combination of new works for the Baroque cello make this a rare and exciting listening opportunity. (Besides, each featured composer is still alive, another rarity in this column!) What better way for an early music aficionado to explore the world of new music than through this creative, unexpected and worthwhile event?

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, take advantage of a fall evening and take in some of the wonderful music on offer in our city. Not only will you be able to walk around in something other than 40-degree heat, you will also have the opportunity to hear marvellous music from all eras performed by some of the city’s most talented artists. There are many other fantastic concerts happening in the early music world this month, too many to mention here, and I hope that you’ll do some exploring, both in this column and in the entire issue of The WholeNote.

I hope to see you at some of this month’s musical events. As always, feel free to get in touch at earlymusic@thewholenote.com. 

EARLY MUSIC QUICK PICKS

Five countertenors to perform at Kingston Road Village Concert Series: (from left) César Aguilar, Ryan McDonald, Ian Sabourin, Benjamin Shaw, Daniel Taylor and Miguel Brito (pianist). Photo credit KAREN E. REEVESOCT 5, 7:30PM: Kingston Road Village Concert Series. “Countertenor Madness!” Kingston Road United Church. Two words are enough to describe this concert: Five Countertenors! Hear Daniel Taylor and four others perform arias and songs by Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and more.

OCT 6, 8PM: I Furiosi Baroque Ensemble.Brown Paper Packages Tied up with Strings.” Church of the Redeemer. I Furiosi kicks off their 20th anniversary season with some of their favourite music by Purcell, Handel, and Rosenmüller. Wish them a happy birthday and receive the gift of fantastic music!

OCT 13, 7:30PM: York Chamber Ensemble. “The Age of the Concerto.” Bradford Arts Centre, 66 Barrie St., Bradford. Take the drive to Bradford to hear some beautiful Bach and Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances. Respighi’s music is based on Renaissance pieces for lute written by Italian composers, including Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo!

Matthew Whitfield is a Toronto-based harpsichordist and organist.

Back to top