Opera-goers heading out of the current COC production of Wozzeck wondering what makes the show’s director/designer William Kentridge tick should make their way to the online Kentridge Studio – a website that is yet another layer to his art. If you do, check out the 1988 essay by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in the Reading Room titled William Kentridge’s Ubu Projects.
Single tickets of Opera Atelier’s 40th anniversary season production of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan went on sale January 13, 2025 and within minutes of the announcement, OA’s Marshall Pynkoski was there in our editorial inbox as well – his enthusiasm even more contagious than usual.
Back in the dark days of the pandemic, when concerts were little more than memories, I spoke with composer Cecilia Livingston for the December 2020-January 2021 issue of The WholeNote about Garden of Vanished Pleasures, a project she was involved with at the time. Originally presented as a livestream production by Soundstreams in early 2021, the piece went on to become a finalist in Opera America’s Awards for Excellence in Digital Opera. Now, it is set to receive a fully staged live performance by Soundstreams.
The other day, there was a detailed message on The WholeNote's voicemail. It was from a long-time Toronto resident who explained that she was wanting to join a choir for the first time in many years, wanting to reconnect with the sense of community she’d felt singing with others in her youth, especially now because she was confident being in a choir would help her recovery from a recent stroke.
I first met Ron almost 45 years ago when we were both studying with Robert Bick at York University. Bick had recently returned to Toronto from Brattleboro, Vermont where he had been studying with the great French flautist and teacher, Marcel Moyse, who, before the Second World War, had been the flute teacher at the Paris Conservatoire.
While researching this piece, I stumbled across this comment by John Terauds (founder and first editor of the blog Musical Toronto, now Ludwig van Toronto). “Earlier this year, we needed to pity Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov as he was attacked for quoting other composers’ music in his own,[but] if we only look back two to three centuries, we find composers borrowing, quoting and parodying themselves and each other — proving that imitation once was the sincerest form of flattery.”
The comment came in a 2012 review of a just-released recording of six concertos composed by University of Montreal Early Music specialist Bruce Haynes, who had died the previous year. Although “composed” is not exactly the right word.
Haynes, in Terauds’ words, “had scoured 13 of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas, the Mass in G Minor and the Concerto for 3 Harpsichords in D Minor for material he could adapt into a set of six concertos in the style of the six original Brandenburgs. … [and] Eric Milnes and the period-instrument Bande Montréal Baroque … including Haynes’ widow, gamba master Susie Napper turned it into glorious sound only a couple of weeks after his death.”
The recording was released by ATMA Classique under the title Nouveaux “Brandebourgeous” Reconstitution/Reconstruction.
This April, acclaimed Canadian composer, writer, and lyricist Britta Johnson’s Life After returns to the city where it began, in a new production at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre. I saw the first professional production back in 2017 at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre and remember being captivated by the fluidity of the staging, the deeply felt yet often funny writing, and the way the songs carried the audience into the heart of the characters’ emotions.
A feminist before the term existed, an intellectual and art connoisseur, a friend of René Descartes, a modern woman demanding freedom to live her life as she pleases, most likely a lesbian? The Montreal Opera - Canadian Opera Company co-production La Reine-garçon, libretto by Michel-Marc Bouchard based on his eponymous play, would suggest so. How historically accurate is it, though? I consulted Veronica Buckley’s Christina Queen of Sweden: The Life of a European Eccentric (2004) to start finding out.
Tafelmusik Baroque Ensemble is making good use of its emerging hybrid artistic leadership model: a three-player artistic co-directorship (Brandon Chui, Dominic Teresi, and Cristina Zacharias), mentored by Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger. Together they are in the process of putting together a storied season. February and March alone will bring 11 performances of four different programs.
The comforting smell of coffee lingered in the air as conductor Jean-Sébastian Vallée listened to the fading notes of the morning’s final song. More than a hundred people had gathered in red-carpeted Yorkminister Park Baptist Church on a Saturday this past September for a special Mendelssohn Choir Singsation workshop celebrating the choir’s 130th anniversary. TMChoir, as Toronto’s largest and oldest choral organization is now known, has offered Singsations since 1999.
One of my favourite things at Soulpepper is their concert series. Under the leadership originally of creator and music director Mike Ross and now under Frank Cox-O’Connell, each concert explores a new theme, artist or group of artists, interweaving words and music in a uniquely satisfying way particular to the story or stories that emerge.
