One of Stratford Summer Music's venues, Revival House, features concerts July 22, 29, August 5 and 12.Live music, it seems, is finally, reliably, and consistently back. Barring some unexpected, novel calamity (imminent asteroid impact? Lake Ontario bursting into flames?), this will likely be the last time that I begin my column with the obligatory nod to the pandemic that seemed so necessary throughout the last 28 months. To those who continue to read my pieces: thank you. There was a point, early in the pandemic, when I thought I was going to have to do something truly depraved, like going to law school and getting a real job; thankfully, that grim reality has not come to pass. 

So, to the music.

Revival House

On July 22, keyboardist Aaron Davis plays at Revival House in Stratford, as part of the Stratford Summer Music Festival. For those who may be unfamiliar, Davis has been a longtime fixture on the Canadian music scene, as a performer (with the likes of the Holly Cole Trio, Measha Brueggergosman and the band Manteca), an arranger (for the likes of Alison Krauss, Natalie McMaster and Eliana Cuevas), and a film composer with over 100 titles to his name. A newish resident of Stratford, Davis has assembled a compelling roster of musicians, including Ben Wittman on drums, Dylan Bell on bass, John Johnson on woodwinds, Lori Cullen on voice, Suba Sankaran on voice and keyboards, and Maryem Hassan Tollar on voice and shakers. With Davis’ deft touch on the piano and his penchant for nuanced, interesting orchestration, expect a compelling evening of music that evokes the best from his highly capable collaborators.

Read more: Musical Revival

Artscape Wychwood Barns, in the event space

Music in the Barns

Creating musical events in unusual spaces is one of the signature features of Music in the Barns, an organization founded in 2008 by violist Carol Gimbel. At the time, Gimbel had an artist studio in the Artscape Wychwood Barns building which was renovated from several large early 20th-century TTC streetcar garages to create a multi-use facility that contains individual artist studios, a farmers market, a greenhouse, an event space and arts organization offices. On June 2, Music in the Barns is staging a celebratory post-Covid return with different events happening in the various Barns’ spaces to create a multi-sensory experience for the audience. 

Anchoring the evening will be a concert to finally celebrate their 2019 album – Music in the Barns: Bolton, Godin & Oesterle (newfocusrecordings.com). As Gimbel explained to me during a recent phone conversation, they had previously championed the music on the album during their concerts at the Barns, and after recording it and spending many hours editing it, they never had a chance to do the album-launch concert properly before the lockdowns began. This concert will therefore be the chance for an extended evening of celebration with all those who worked on the album. 

Read more: Creating Musical Spaces Indoor and Out | Two Visions

New Orford String Quartet, left to right: Brian Manker, Sharon Wei, Andrew Wan and Jonathan Crow. Photo by Dahlia KatzToronto Summer Music (TSM) is back, bigger than ever – July 7 to July 30 – with “Inspirations” as its theme. Toronto’s go-to summer classical music event will present an ambitious program of 26 mainstage concerts. Eight of them will showcase the TSM Academy Fellows and Mentors, highlighting one crucial aspect of the festival’s mandate – to offer high-level training to emerging musicians. The details of those eight Regeneration concerts will be announced in June; the contents of the other 18 were made public in late April.

I took the opportunity in early May to discuss the “Inspirations” theme with TSO concertmaster Jonathan Crow, now in his sixth year as TSM’s artistic director. (This interview has been edited for length.)

WN: In the festival release, you describe inspiration as “deeply motivating moments that connect us to one another.” Given that the backbone of Toronto Summer Music is the TSM Academy with its Mentors and Fellows, there is clearly a wealth of inspiration to be had, in any TSM season, in terms of teachable/performing moments. But how did you make the leap from that to basing the whole festival on that theme?

JC: I don’t think the leap came about because of one specific moment, but rather from thinking about how we’ve put together themes these last five years at TSM. There are so many things that come into play when tying music together – the specific reasons for the composition, the actual inspiration of the composer, the meaning of music to the artists… I thought it might be interesting to explore more explicitly the reasons behind how we program great music.

Read more: Inspired by Inspiration at TSM

Dixon Road – in conversation with Fatuma AdarIt seems that the resurgence of music theatre is for real this time. After so many short-lived restarts and sudden heartbreaking lockdowns, it is invigorating to finally have almost too many shows to see! Music theatre and dance are now back live in theatres and in the parks for a summer season packed with a wide variety of shows for audiences to choose from.

Dixon Road

Starting off the season with a city-wide bang is The Musical Stage Company’s Marquee Festival encompassing a number of initiatives all built around the central idea of “turning points” in people’s lives. The biggest project, and one that has been in development for several years, is the world premiere of the musical Dixon Road by Fatuma Adar, which will take its first bows in the  High Park Amphitheatre (in association with Canadian Stage) June 1-19. Originally commissioned by The Musical Stage Company with funding from The Aubrey & Marla Dan Fund for New Musicals and developed as part of Obsidian Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, Dixon Road is a deeply personal story for its creator and one that many other children of immigrant parents will identify with. 

Fatuma Adar and director, Ray Hogg. Photo ELIJAH NICHOLSDixon Road tells the story of a Somali family who fled the civil war in their homeland in the 1990s to find a new home in Canada, specifically in the neighbourhood around Pearson Airport near Dixon Road and Kipling Avenue now known as Little Mogadishu. Central to the musical is the dynamic between the father learning to navigate his new world and create a new identity for himself while his daughter – now growing up in Canada – starts to have dreams of finding new opportunities of her own. Adar based the book on her own experiences living on Dixon Road. She has also written the score (both music and lyrics) drawing on music that was popular in her community growing up, including R & B, hip-hop, contemporary musical theatre and traditional Somali melodies. I am excited to see Dixon Road and hope that this is just the beginning of an outpouring of new shows by new storytellers. 

Read more: Almost Too Many Shows to See

Estonia’s Collegium Musicale, with conductor and singer Endrik Üksvärav at right. Photo by Kaupo Kikkas For what feels like the first time in a long time, Toronto’s musical community is once again a busy and bustling place. Even a quick glance through this issue of The WholeNote will reveal a plethora of exciting and vibrant performances in a wide range of styles and genres, a welcome return after a stark, unpredictable and unsettling couple of years.

Although the broader world is not yet entirely back to normal, one has the sense that this spring’s increase in concerts is setting the stage for an even larger and more comprehensive reopening next season, planting seeds that, should the conditions be accommodating enough, will grow into an unprecedented artistic flourishing not seen since the early 20th century, with composers and performers creating a new Golden Age for both music and the Arts in general.

Utopian idealism? It is worth remembering that the greatest periods of artistic creativity and genius are often preceded by times of great social and political unrest, whether the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century or the two World Wars in the 20th. Given these precedents, it is not unreasonable to consider that the years following the COVID-19 pandemic will be times of profound artistic reflection and expression. It is with optimism and gladness, therefore, that this column looks at upcoming performances that have me enthused, across a wider range of genres than I usually do. It’s a personal and by no means comprehensive list of all that is taking place this month and next, but personal and somewhat more eclectic than usual is a good place to begin for anyone looking to jump back into the musical swim of things.

Read more: The Seeds of a New Golden Age?

Vol 7 No 8, May 2022I recently bumped into violinist Larry Beckwith, Artistic Producer of Confluence Concerts, who told me he had an idea for a choral story. We were at New Music Concerts’ tribute evening, at Longboat Hall, honouring NMC’s founding artistic director, flutist Robert Aitken who has just stepped aside after 50 extraordinary years. Beckwith’s story idea was, however, for someone else who put in 50 years service to our musical scene, transforming it as he went! 

This May, Beckwith reminded me, is the 20th anniversary of Nicholas (Niki) Goldschmidt’s third, and most triumphant, Toronto International Choral Festival, titled “The Joy of Singing (in the Noise of the World).” As Dawn Lyons described it in our May 2002 cover story, the festival was designed, with typical Goldschmidtian understatement, “to fill May 31 to June 22 with choral music from across Canada and around the world.” (“Fill” is no exaggeration: audiences aside, there would end up being over 1,000 active participants in the event! By 2002, the 94-year-old Goldschmidt (born in Austro-Hungary in 1908) was without equal in the art of organizing a really festive festival!

He had arrived in Toronto in 1946, invited to head up the University of Toronto’s new opera school, the first in the country. He was astounded by the talent he found waiting for him on the first day he walked into the Conservatory. “Soon he needed a marketplace to display his fine crop of young Canadian singers,” Dawn Lyons wrote, “a place for them to see, hear, work with and take their measure against singers from around the world.” The Goldschmidt solution? Found the Canadian Opera Company! “It was the beginning of 50 years of creating what we would now call cultural infrastructure…” Lyons wrote: “If the word festival is in the title, and the program bulges with acknowledgment of partnerships, look for Niki in the credits.” 

Read more: The Joy of Singing in the Noise of the World

Naomi McCarroll-Butler. Photo by Bea LabikovaAfter two years of postponements, cancellations, and all of the attendant uncertainty of the pandemic, the TD Toronto Jazz Festival is back for 2022, from June 24 to July 3. 

In some ways, it never left; though live shows have been few, Jazz Fest – like many of its festival counterparts – presented a variety of livestreamed events, and kept busy with community-oriented projects to support musicians and to deliver live performances to its audience. This year, however, Jazz Fest is back in full, with new artists, new stages and ten days of free outdoor shows throughout Yorkville, Victoria College at the University of Toronto, and Queen’s Park (in addition to a number of ticketed shows at venues such as Meridian Hall, Koerner Hall and Longboat Hall).

Read more: TD Toronto Jazz: New artists, new stages

Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason. Photo by JAMES HOLE

The fearlessness it takes

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s meteoric rise began when his passionate playing won him the 2016 BBC Young Musician Competition. Then he upped his fame quotient when he performed three short pieces at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for an audience of more than two billion viewers. Now, he and his older sister, pianist Isata (b. 1996), both of whom are acclaimed Decca recording stars, will be making their much-anticipated Toronto debut on May 6 at Koerner Hall.

The young cellist (b. 1999) told The Violin Channel in November, 2016 that he has been very lucky to be surrounded by his family. “My six siblings, all of whom are also classical musicians, have been there to support me, give me advice, perform with me and generally keep me concentrating on the music. Coming from such a supportive musical family has been a great strength and has always made my approach to music a collaborative one. Although I love solo playing, I feel that it is in the interaction between soloist and accompanist, or within a chamber group, orchestra and concerto soloist that music comes alive.”

Read more: A house full of richness: Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason

Johann Sebastian Bachnew

Why Bach?

Over 270 years after his death, Bach’s music continues to inspire and attract both new and familiar audience members to concerts in numbers that are perhaps unmatched by any other Western composer. Why, all these centuries, later, is Bach still so appealing? 

“There are several possible strands here,” John Butt contends. “One is that Bach was so influential on later composers, even if you don’t immediately hear that influence.” He describes Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin as successive inheritors of Bach’s innovations, incorporating and expanding on Bach’s musical developments. “The other side of the coin,” Butt continues, “is that Bach’s attitude as a composer was to try and absorb everything he knew about music from before him [and] intuit what we now call tonality. He is there at the point at which that system, which so many musical traditions are still using, was invented.”

Read more: “As If The Music Knows What It Is Doing” THE TORONTO BACH FESTIVAL 2022

Women from Space founder/ organizers Bea Labikova (left) and Kayla MilmineWomen from Space is a very special festival, highlighting creativity across a diverse range of music and mixed-media work, often improvisatory, sometimes electronic, scheduled each year to coincide with International Women’s Day weekend.

First launched in 2019 just a week before the COVID-19 lockdown, the event highlights many of the ways in which women are expanding and redefining the sonic landscape, shifting any remaining boundaries between genres and fusing them into new forms. Last year, in full lockdown, founder/organizers Kayla Milmine and Bea Labikova made available an innovative three-dimensional projection box that allowed home viewers to watch the festival in a unique miniature environment. For the fourth edition, the festival is back on stage, this time in the Tranzac’s main hall for three nights and then at 918 Bathurst for the finale. As with past editions there are events that will be better experienced than described. Pre-show panels and chats, presented by Musicworks, run from 7:00 to 7:30 with four to five performances per evening beginning at 8PM.

Thursday April 28

Montreal voice-and-movement artist Susanna Hood’s past works have included explorations of sometimes subtle, sometimes visceral poets, including P.K. Page (The Muted Note) and the 15th-century Zen master Ikkyū (Impossibly Happy). Here Hood explores the saxophonist-composer Steve Lacy’s Packet settings of poems by Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theatre. Hood matches Lacy’s original instrumentation with two stellar Toronto improvisers, soprano saxophonist Kayla Milmine and pianist Tanya Gill. That spirit of improvisation is matched by trumpeter Nicole Rampersaud’s solo performance, while the same integration of the arts is evident in vibraphonist/pianist Racha Moukalled’s compositions, inspired by works of the pioneering abstract painter Hilma af Klint. Moukalled’s quartet includes violinist Aline Homzy, oboist/flautist Elizabeth Brown and interdisciplinary artist Ilyse Krivel. 

Read more: Women from Space: Redefining the sonic landscape

Orphan Song at the Tarragon Theatre. Photo by CYLLA VON TIEDEMANNI believe that theatre is at its most exciting when it is taking chances and pushing at the walls that define genre. Even if the risks taken don’t pay off 100%. The world premiere of Orphan Song by Canadian playwright Sean Dixon at Tarragon Theatre is a case in point. Orphan Song sits in an imagined prehistory (40, 027 BCE) where a Homo sapiens couple, Mo and Gorse, take in a Neanderthal child and embark on a journey filled with danger, unexpected mayhem, and discovery.  

Stories set in prehistoric times are notoriously difficult to pull off without invoking nervous laughter. On opening night there was an initial hesitation from the audience in accepting the simplified, stilted, language of these early human characters, and yet this hesitation dissipated in the face of the absolute conviction of the actors who give themselves wholeheartedly to the simplicity of diction and wide brush strokes of communication necessary. Sophie Goulet’s performance as Mo was superbly grounded, as was the magical work of puppet master Kaitlin Morrow, not only as the Neanderthal child Chicky, but as the creator of the stunning puppets and master teacher of the puppetry technique in the show: the excellent team of puppeteers brings compellingly to life not only the beguiling Neanderthals, but a wide range of wildlife from the small and unthreatening hedgehog to the terrifying hyenas and more.

Read more: Language as Music as language – Orphan Song at Tarragon Theatre
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