Beat Columns (Live Music)

The Toronto Consort performs Monteverdi’s Vespers: there is a strong case to be made that Monteverdi’s Vespers and Bach’s B-Minor Mass constitute the finest baroque choral and liturgical works. They are, of course, very different, but one thing they have in common is that we know next to nothing about their early performance history.

Bach’s work dates from the end of his life and it seems unlikely that he himself ever heard it in its entirety. Monteverdi’s Vespers was published in 1610, at a time when he was still employed at the ducal court in Mantua. Dismissed two years later, in 1613 he received an appointment as conductor at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, so there have been attempts to link the Vespers either with Mantua or with Venice. One musicologist has even proposed that there was an earlier version of the Vespers, written for Mantua and dedicated not to the Virgin Mary, but to St. Barbara. This remains unproven, as are attempts to link the work with St. Mark’s in Venice, although John Eliot Gardiner recorded a visually spectacular performance there.

This is not the first time the Toronto Consort has performed the work; for these performances, May 6 to 8, the tenor Charles Daniels will direct, while there is also a guest performance by another tenor, Kevin Skelton. Instrumental accompaniment will be provided by the Montreal cornetto and sackbut ensemble, La Rose des Vents. With its intricate interweaving of sections for choir and soloists (six, eight and ten-voice choir, solo tenor, tenor duet, tenor plus two three-voice choirs, etc) it is a work of remarkable interest for lovers of vocal music.

Louis de Nil and César Aguilar: I first became aware of Louis de Nil when he performed the leading male role in The Nutcracker for the Pia Bouman Dance Studio. I also heard him play the oboe. After that he went to study at McGill and he has just completed an M.A. program at the University of Western Ontario. Accomplishments as a dancer and an oboist notwithstanding, he is now primarily a tenor. His recitals over the last two years include a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise, no less, in April 2015. May 1 he will sing in a joint recital with the countertenor, César Aguilar, who grew up in Mexico, came to Canada in 2006, largely to improve his English, and later became a music student at the University of Lethbridge. The program for their Gallery 345 recital includes arias from Handel’s Tamerlano, Canticle II (Abraham and Isaac) by Britten and songs by Vuillemin, Rachmaninoff and Schubert. The pianist is Helen Becqué.

The Talisker Players present “Cross’d by the Stars,” May 3 and 4, in which readings from letters, diaries and memoirs are coupled with performances of works by Purcell (When I Am Laid in Earth), Gluck (Che farò senz’ Euridice), Mahler (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen), Burry (The Highwayman) and Bernstein (West Side Story). The singers are Krisztina Szabó, mezzo, and Aaron Durand, baritone.

Lunchtime recitals at the Four Seasons Centre: There are several vocal recitals in the Richard Bradshaw Auditorium this month. On May 3, the mezzo, Anita Rachvelishvili, will sing Rachmaninoff, Falla, Ravel, Fauré and Taktakishvili. On May 10, Aviva Fortunata will sing Strauss’ Four Last Songs and the bass-baritone, Ian MacNeil, will perform the Songs of Travel by Vaughan Williams. On May 17, Karine Boucher, soprano, sings Shéhérazade by Ravel and Andrew Haji, tenor, performs Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

Toronto Bach Festival: Oboist John Abberger is the artistic director of First Annual Toronto Bach Festival which will present its inaugural concert May 27. The focus will be on Bach’s Weimar cantatas and the program will include the cantatas Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen BWV 12 and Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben BWV 147a. The soloists are Ellen McAteer, soprano, Daniel Taylor, alto, and Lawrence Wiliford, tenor.

Toronto Masque Theatre presents Purcell’s Fairy Queen: Henry Purcell wrote only one opera, Dido and Aeneas, but several so-called semi-operas combining spoken texts with songs. One could indulge in regret that none of these became fully operatic works but it seems better to accept them as they are. One of them, The Fairy Queen, is based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Shakespeare’s text replaced by that of an anonymous versifier. Toronto Masque Theatre gives us a new production of the work, May 27 to 29, in which the singers are Juliet Beckwith, Vania Chan, Charlotte Knight and Janelle Lapalme, sopranos, Simon Honeyman, alto, Cory Knight and Jonathan MacArthur, tenors, and Alexander Dobson and Graham Robinson, baritones.

Underground Railroad: A Spiritual Journey: soprano Kathleen Battle returns to Toronto after a long absence for a concert of Negro spirituals backed up by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale. The concert, at Roy Thomson Hall, May 29, will also include readings of major Abolitionist writers like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

Mamele: The Mother’s Eyes: Show One presents Tamara Gverdtsiteli, with the soloists of the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella and symphony orchestra, performing Yiddish, Georgian, Russian, French and Italian songs at Roy Thomson Hall, June 3.

Aradia performs Handel and Peter Maxwell Davies: The centre of the repertoire of period orchestras tends to be the baroque era but ensembles have begun to juxtapose earlier works with contemporary material. Such is the case with the Aradia Baroque Ensemble, which in its next concert, June 4, will give us arias by Handel but also Peter Maxwell Davies’ 1969 monodrama Songs for a Mad King. Stacie Dunlop, soprano, and Vincent Ranallo, baritone, will sing.

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May 7: Charlene Pauls, soprano, Christina Stelmacovich, mezzo, Chris Fischer, tenor, and Daniel Hambly, bass will be the soloists in Mendelssohn’s Elijah, with the Univox Choir.

May 10: Jennifer Taverner, soprano, Lyndsay Promane, mezzo, and Daevyd Pepper, tenor, are the soloists in a concert of English and Italian art songs at Islington United Church.

May 13: Emma Hannan, soprano, Emily D’Angelo, mezzo, Cian Horrobin, tenor, and Nicholas Borg, bass are the soloists in Mozart’s Requiem, with the North Toronto Choral Ensemble and the North Toronto Symphony Orchestra at North Toronto Collegiate Institute.

May 13: Hawksley Workman will present songs by Bruce Cockburn, with the Art of Time Ensemble.

May 13 and 15: The Toronto Symphony Orchestra concerts on May 13 and 15 will include Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 “Babi Yar” with the Russian bass Petr Migunov as soloist.

May 15: A performance of Mozart’s Requiem at the Westben Arts Festival will feature soloists Virginia Hatfield, soprano, Kimberly Dafoe, mezzo, Tom Sharpe, tenor, and Joel Allison, baritone.

May 19: Janet Obermeyer, soprano, will perform a free noontime concert at Metropolitan United Church.

May 20: Jenni Cook, soprano, will perform a free noontime recital at St. Andrew’s Church.

And beyond the GTA: The soprano Shannon Mercer will sing Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok by Shostakovich at the First Unitarian Church of Hamilton, May 21.

Hans de Groot is a concertgoer and active listener who also sings and plays the recorder. He can be contacted at artofsong@thewholenote.com.

I sing in the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (TMC) as a tenor and have for the last three seasons. It’s my primary musical outlet. What is surprising to some people is that we have to audition every year. Every year we have to audition to get back into the choir. When I mention this to non-TMC choristers, they shudder. It is uncommon and stressful to do this year after year. Most people audition once for their choirs.

The result, though, is a rather rigorous process that allows an artistic director of an ensemble to choose and build the sound they are looking for. I’m happy to say that I’ve been part of that “sound” for the last few years and I hope to for many more. So yes, I am auditioning this year yet again, and this time I’ve chosen an Aaron Copland ditty. A sweet little folk song, 90 seconds long. Perfect for an audition.

Auditions can be a scary process unique to the arts. Most other professions will interview once for a job and that’s it – they’re set. Performing artists must repeatedly subject themselves to scrutiny and criticism. Ultimately, I believe this leads us to be stronger artists, but auditions can also be demoralizing and disempowering. However, none of us choristers feel the pressure of auditions the way a dancer or actor does – their very livelihood depends on successful auditions. So my once-a-year audition for the Mendelssohn Choir is just fine with me. I encourage you all to go out and audition for an ensemble – great things could lie ahead for you!

(There are 116 choirs, some auditioned, some not, for you to choose from in this issue’s WholeNote Canary Pages, so no excuses!)

(May)Days of Performances

Sing! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festival runs from May 7 to 15 with events throughout the city. A few to highlight: The Ruach Singers present their unique contemporary a cappella take on the traditional Shabbat morning service on May 7 at 9:45am, Beth Sholom Synagogue, Toronto. Festival headliners, Naturally 7, blend their stunning voices into a mind-blowing instrumental collage in their always-fun take on a cappella music on May 13 at 7:30pm at Jane Mallett Theatre, St Lawrence Centre for the Arts. And after 39 years, Toronto-based group The Nylons are heading towards retirement (although it will take them a year to get there!)with a Farewell Toronto Concert May 14 at 8pm also at Jane Mallett Theatre.

Oakville Children’s Choir presents “Raise Your Voice!” featuring the mass power of 200 kids from all six program choirs that make up the organization. Repertoire includes an arrangement of Phillip Phillips’ Home, Indodana a traditional Xhosa arranged by Michael Barrett and Ralf Schmitt, and The Little Road by Moira Smiley. The OCC Senior Choir will be working with Smiley as guests of the Pacific International Choral Festival in Oregon in July. Catch them on Saturday, May 7, at 3pm at the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts.

Toronto Children’s Chorus presents “Music of the Spheres” featuring mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó. Features include Franz Schubert’s Ständchen and John Greer’s Beginning of the World. Saturday May 7 at 3pm, Toronto Centre for the Arts.

WomEnchant Chorus and Drummers and guests, the Rainbow Chorus, offer a presentation titled “Sing and Drum for Peace, Justice, and Our Planet,” featuring works by Jeff Hale, Eric Whitacre, and much more. Saturday May 7 at 7pm, Trinity United Church, Grimsby.

Mississauga Festival Chamber Choir presents “Choralia Canadiana” this month. At their Spring Serenade concert last month of Ola Gjeilo’s Sunrise Mass, artistic director David Ambrose encouraged audiences to check out this rambunctious show. Featuring Mary Lou Fallis, of Primadonna fame, and piano sidekick Peter Tieffenbach, the show will be a hilarious musical history of choral singing from cavemen to the modern day. The more ordinary works featured will include Canadian Imant Raminsh’s In the Night We Shall Go In, Stan Roger’s arrangement of Fogarty’s Cove, and Scott MacMillan’s Celtic Mass for the Sea. Saturday May 7, at 8pm, Hammerson Hall, Living Arts Centre, Mississauga.

Tri-City area jewel – the Grand Philharmonic Chamber Choir presents “The Spirit Sings,” with excerpts from Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, Christos Hatzis’ De Angelis, and John Tavener’s Syvati. Saturday May 7, at 7:30pm, St Matthew’s Lutheran Church.

Elmer Iseler Singers present “Musical Friends,” including Jason Jestadt, the winner of the 2015 Ruth Watson Henderson Choral Composition Competition. The Bach Chamber Youth Choir will join the Singers. Sunday May 8 at 4pm, Eglinton St George’s United Church.

Upper Canada Choristers present “Our Home and Native Lands” featuring an interesting mix of diverse music. Highlights include Stephen Hatfield’s Cantando flores, Laurie Evan Fraser’s Who Can Sail, and songs from Japan, Korea, France, and Ecuador. The Choristers will be joined by the Junior Choir of Montrose Public School and Cantemos. Friday May 13 at 8pm, Grace Church on-the-Hill, Toronto.

The Music Department of North Toronto Collegiate Institute presents Mozart’s Requiem featuring the North Toronto Choral Ensemble and the North Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Two performances: May 13, 7:30pm and May 14, 6pm at North Toronto C.I.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presents Shostakovich’s Symphony 13 “Babi Yar.” Last month, WholeNote publisher David Perlman featured a conversation with York University music professor emeritus, Sterling Beckwith, on the work. A monumental piece of art that emerged from the Soviet Union, Babi Yar is a political statement that responds to the Nazi massacre of over 100,000 people in World War II. The Russian text is difficult and hard to sing and the task falls to the basses of the Amadeus Choir and Elmer Iseler Singers, augmented by many others, recruited by Iseler/Amadeus conductor Lydia Adams. Holding the baton is Andrey Boreyko, a Russian conductor trained at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Saint Petersburg and formerly music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for six years. The TSO presents this “Civic Oratorio” on May 13 at 7:30pm and May 15 at 3pm.

Tallis Choir of Toronto: Shakespeare’s myriad works have long inspired great music, much of it choral. In “Our Good Wills: The World of Shakespeare & Byrd,” the robust and talented Tallis Choir of Toronto under Peter Mahon will present several of these inspirations from works such as All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Tempest. Several pieces by Shakespeare’s contemporary, William Byrd, will be featured as well, including his popular Te Deum. Saturday May 14, at 7:30pm, St. Patrick’s Church, Toronto.

The Yellowknife Youth Choir visits Toronto and joins the Bach Children’s Chorus and the Bach Chamber Youth Choir in “Songs of the Wanderer: A Spring Celebration.” Both Bach Choirs visited Yellowknife and Western Canada in late March 2016, so this is a reciprocal visit. They combine again to feature works by Mendelssohn and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Saturday May 14, 7:30pm, Toronto Centre for the Arts.

ChoralWorks Chamber Choir presents “A ChoralWorks Tapestry,” featuring Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem and music from Les Misérables, May 14, Trinity United Church, Collingwood.

City Choir, a super-accessible and welcoming ensemble, performs “Freedom is a Voice.” The family-oriented set list features arrangements of popular songs such as MLK by U2, Blackbird by Sarah McLaughlin and Freedom is a Voice by Bobby McFerrin. Tuesday May 31, 7:30pm, St Peter’s Anglican Church.

And speaking of super-accessible, the VIVA! Youth Singers of Toronto have a fun, new, world premiere of  The Sword in the Schoolyard, a children’s opera by Dean Burry, with music and libretto by Burry, music direction by VIVA! artistic director, Carol Woodward Ratzlaff, and direction by David Ambrose; June 3 and 4 at 7pm, June 5 at 2:30pm, Daniels Spectrum.

The Amadeus Choir performs “Serenade to Music,” featuring Ralph Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, Schubert’s To Music, Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia and more; June 5 at 7pm, Eglinton St Georges United Church.

21C: the Royal Conservatory’s new works festival has a host of very interesting pieces to check out. The festival runs from May 25 to May 29 with all performances at the RC’s Telus Centre for Performance and Learning. A couple of highlights:

In my columns I frequently mention Tanya Tagaq and her unique, powerful interpretation of throat singing. She will be performing with one of the most prolific new music ensembles in North America – The Kronos Quartet. They open the festival with a host of premieres including Sivunittinni (The future children) by Tagaq herself, May 25  at 8pm, Koerner Hall.

“21C After Hours: Blackout,” brainchild of composer John Oswald, will take place entirely in complete darkness. Presales for it were so successful a second performance was added to meet demand. As we go to press, there are still tickets available for the 8pm show (the 10:30pm is officially sold out). There will be four world premieres featuring the Element Choir under artistic director Christine Duncan. A master of improvisation and a pioneer of choral improvisation, Duncan is also known for her frequent and fruitful collaborations with fellow 21C performer Tanya Tagaq. The Element Choir will be joined by the Radiant Brass Ensemble and we’ve also been promised special surprise guests; May 27 at 8pm and 10:30pm, Conservatory Theatre.

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

It’s just my luck, isn’t it? It’s just my luck that two weeks after I plug Organic’s weekly engagement at Joe Mama’s in The WholeNote, that that gig shuts down permanently. I don’t know yet what will happen on future Sundays at Joe Mama’s. But hopefully they stick with the theme of high-level musicianship and unmistakable chemistry.

The final Organic session on April 17 was fuller than I’ve seen it in a long time, and I think there’s a lot of irony in that. I think it very loudly says a lot about our responsibility as lovers of live music. But if it wasn’t loud enough, I’ll say it louder: if we, lovers of live music, don’t go out and support the bands we claim to love, then who will? Casual listeners with fat wallets? Fat chance! Jazz concerts are tragically sparsely attended and the only remedy for that is for us to attend.

And I say “us” very deliberately here; I am not innocent in this. I do not attend every show I can, not even all the ones about which I loudly rave. And I don’t always have a good excuse. I know all the good excuses though. I know that life gets in the way, and sometimes it seems like bus fare two ways plus cover charge plus one drink is breaking the bank. I get it. I’m not trying to sit on a high horse, to lecture you, the reader, or to make it sound like not attending concerts is some egregious sin, or to imply that we are personally responsible for every gig that stops (no gig lasts forever, obviously). All I’m trying to say is that if we want to support live music, we should stop taking it for granted and go support live music. We all should. Let’s make it a new season’s resolution.

With that in mind, Justin Bacchus’ weekly engagement is still happening at The Rex for the foreseeable future, and for each Saturday in May the explosive and virtuosic R&B outfit will be joined by the marvellous Stu Harrison. I’ve only heard Stu Harrison three times – once when he sat in for one song at a Sophia Perlman gig, and twice when he subbed in the house band at Lisa Particelli’s Girls’ Night Out. He does not gig or record much, which is baffling to me – though he probably is awfully busy with his work for Merriam Music. When I heard he’d be at The Rex weekly in May, I made my plans immediately. Let’s hope I don’t break them, and let’s hope the whole city gets out to this gig – or some other gig, any gig! – at least once a week this month.

Alex Samaras was introduced to me in the summer of 2012 by a friend who hails from the States and was acquainted with Samaras through their mutual association with a music camp in upstate New York. Samaras, too, was previously written about in The WholeNote, by Ori Dagan, and by myself this past autumn, when I plugged his gig with Bobby Hsu’s A Sondheim Jazz Project, which you can read about in the September issue. Samaras has a voice of clarity, precision, finesse, power and control. He clearly knows a lot about his instrument. It shouldn’t be a surprise, therefore, that he’s also an educator, who teaches voice at the University of Toronto. You can sample A Sondheim Jazz Project’s album, City of Strangers, on YouTube, and you can buy it on iTunes. I have only sampled it (I prefer to buy albums from artists in person), but I can already confidently recommend it.

I was only introduced to John Alcorn’s voice recently: this winter. I had asked Mark Eisenman about recordings he had played on aside from his coffee-themed albums recorded with Chase Sanborne (which are also wonderful), and he told me about Flying Without Wings, an album which was reviewed in The WholeNote by Lesley Mitchell-Clarke earlier this year – so I won’t go on about it for too long. The singer and trumpeter on the album are, respectively, Alcorn and Warren Vache. Eisenman had, and I say this affectionately, pestered me about these two musicians before. Each time they’ve had gigs in Toronto in recent years, Eisenman had told me to go, and I had failed to every time. After hearing the album, I will not make that mistake again.

One of my favourite moments on the album comes on the first track, Just One of Those Things, on the final chorus, when Vache and Eisenman are sort of trading response lines in the cracks between Alcorn’s phrases, and Alcorn opens one phrase with a second – literally, one second – of what sounds like the beginning of a scat solo, before diving back into the words. It sounds so spontaneous and unhinged. There is such palpable excitement on the part of all the players, particularly the three responsible for the quasi-counterpoint of the moment.

This seems like a small thing, but something else I really respect about the album is the fact that songs with verses are done with the verse. Songs with beautiful verses which supply the rest of the song with extra clarity, or just emphasis – such as Autumn in New York, A Sleepin’ Bee, and But Not For Me, the latter of which is on Flying Without Wings – are too often performed with the verses omitted. Such recordings are valid and often great, of course, but the kind of fidelity to the song as it was originally conceived, shown by Alcorn, commands a lot of respect, especially when executed, as it is here, with such passion and faculty.

I was thrilled to come across Alcorn and Samaras listed together for the evening of May 22 at Jazz Bistro. They will be accompanied by Mike Downes on bass and Dave Restivo on the Bistro’s Red Pops Steinway piano. This will be the third time the illustrious quartet has appeared together in Toronto, but it will be a first for me. It’ll be a lot of firsts for me, actually. It’ll be the first time I see this particular quartet. It’ll be the first time I see John Alcorn live. If they’re selling CDs, it’ll be the first time I buy an album featuring Alex Samaras.

I’m going to, as I always do when I go to shows at Jazz Bistro, call for reservations the day of the concert, and I’m hoping they’ll tell me the place is almost full and my choice of seating is limited. Can this city collectively make that happen? I’m tired of empty jazz clubs. Let’s make ours unbearably crowded.

Happy spring, Toronto. See you in one club, or another. Or both. Or more.

Bob Ben is The WholeNote’s jazz listings editor. He can be reached at jazz@thewholenote.com.

Count Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula Graf Colloredo von Wallsee und Melz, by the grace of God both spiritual and temporal ruler of the city of Salzburg, had ambitious plans for his new city. Although an unpopular choice with other church officials, as his election on the 13th ballot would indicate, Colloredo had no intention of currying favour with the common people either. His intentions were loftier. He wanted reform.

Reform, in any age, means not worrying over the popularity of your policies, and a certain optimism that you’ll be appreciated for them later. For the archbishop, a well-educated eighteenth-century modernizer and would-be statesman, this also meant embracing the ideals of the new Enlightenment. The religious superstition that still clung to Catholicism after a millenium was to be officially suppressed. No more pilgrimages, and worshipping relics was frowned upon. There were to be no more religious processions through the streets, no kitschy decorations hung in churches and no lengthy orchestral musical interludes during the Mass. Colloredo’s new modern church was to shed medieval superstition for the new ideals of reason and science – and if this meant he could save himself a bit of work, and a bit of money, along the way, then so much the better.

For the 16-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Colloredo’s reform, especially the part that involved budget cuts, was an unmitigated disaster. As the prince-archbishop’s new concertmaster, less music in church (call it cuts to arts funding) meant fewer commissions, and therefore less money, for composers like him. Furthermore, as what we might today refer to as an emerging artist, there was less opportunity for the young Mozart to distinguish himself by writing large-scale works that could get him a better appointment in the future. So faced with fewer opportunities Mozart did what artists typically do – he left to find work elsewhere. In this case, Mozart left for Milan to write an opera.

The result of Mozart’s journey to Milan was Lucio Silla, an opera seria based on the story of Julius Caesar’s predecessor (and Rome’s first dictator) Lucius Sulla. As a career move, the idea of putting on an opera in Milan circa 1772 seemed like a bit of a sure thing. This was the third opera the teenage wunderkind would be writing for the Milanese stage and he would be working with a capable librettist, the Teatro Ducale’s new appointment, Giovanni di Gamerra. Mozart also had a few months to devote to the project, more than enough time for a hyper-prolific composer who had already written some 25 symphonies, seven operas, and four piano concertos. Success, it would seem, was guaranteed.

Sadly, Lucio Silla didn’t go over quite as Mozart planned, and it wasn’t his fault, either. The lead tenor fell ill and his replacement couldn’t handle the part, so many of the best arias in the opera had to be rewritten or cut out entirely. The other singers were late arriving in the city and had to begin rehearsing behind schedule. Not only did they bomb in the premiere, but the opera was considerably longer in performance than during rehearsal – imagine, if you will, a poorly sung opera that seems to never end, and you’ll probably have some idea of how the premiere went. Lucio Silla would be the last opera written by Mozart for an Italian audience, and after a catastrophic run the chastened young composer crawled back to Salzburg and the archbishop, a failure at 16.

I think it’s safe to say that Opera Atelier’s Canadian premiere of Lucio Silla will raise the admittedly low bar set by its initial premiere. But they will likely do a lot better than that! Atelier’s artistic directors, Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg played a significant role in the show’s triumphant return to Milan at La Scala last year, under the baton of Marc Minkowski, and an even more extensive role in the triumphant production of the opera in Salzburg two years prior to that (including the participation of the Atelier Ballet in the Salzburg run). Now they get to bring the opera, in their very own production, to Toronto audiences from April 7 to 16 at the Elgin Theatre, including the stars of of the Salzburg and La Scala runs (Kresimir Spicer and Inga Kalna). Unlike Mozart’s Milanese collaborators, Opera Atelier never fails to put on a great show, and this is a Canadian premiere that is long overdue! If you see one concert this month, make it this one.

The Orlando Consort, with over 25 recordings to their name, doesn’t come to town very often (although as a soloist their tenor, Charles Daniels, is well known to Tafelmusik audiences, and a welcome guest), but any chance to hear them live is certainly welcome. The medieval-themed a cappella vocal group is known for their imaginative concert programming as well as some exceptional singing. Their latest project is certainly as imaginative as choral concerts get; they’ve devised a program of music known to have been extant in France during the lifetime of Joan of Arc and used it to score a compilation soundtrack to the 1928 silent film classic La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

As either a work of scholarship or of film scoring, this would have been a formidable workload. The fact that the Consort has accomplished both demonstrates incredible artistic vision and dedication, and I have no doubt the veteran singers will be able to pull it off splendidly. You can catch this at Koerner Hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music, April 3 at 3pm.

Zelenka at Tafelmusik: One composer who’s been getting some well-deserved attention in recent years is the Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka. Since his rediscovery by fellow Czech composer Bedřich Smetana in the mid-19th century and the publication of a catalogue running to nearly 200 works, early music audiences have had more and more chances to hear him over the last few decades. Indeed, Tafelmusik audiences should already be familiar with the composer – the group performed his concert overture, Hippocondrie, earlier this concert season, and an excerpt from one of his sonatas made it on to their fantastic Galileo Project.

A double bassist, kapellmeister and avid contrapuntalist, Zelenka had the good fortune to work in the epic Dresden court of Augustus the Strong, where he wrote sacred works for choir and orchestra. Zelenka was also well-connected. Besides working with the great violinist, Johann Georg Pisendel, he was also a personal friend of Bach and was much admired by both composers. This month, Tafelmusik honors both Bach and Zelenka as composers of sacred music with a concert of Zelenka’s Missa Omnium Sanctorum and Bach’s cantata Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten at their home base at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, April 28 through 30 and May 1.

Bland by name only! A good trumpet player is hard to find, and an excellent one harder still. It’s again still rarer to find a great player of the baroque trumpet, since the instrument is considerably harder to play than its modern counterpart (smaller embouchure, no valves) and this may explain why Justin Bland is so darn busy and why he plays with, well, basically everyone. The Copenhagen-based musician will be visiting Toronto to play with Scaramella in a concert dedicated to music for baroque trumpet, and featuring the music of Bach, Melani, Merula and Purcell at Victoria College Chapel on April 16. The up-and-coming virtuoso will be playing with Scaramella artistic director Joëlle Morton on violone, the talented young soprano Dawn Bailey and local hotshot violinists Michelle Odorico and Rezan Onen-Lapointe, which means that this concert will feature a considerable amount of talent as well as youthful exuberance. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should  also say that the concert also features this columnist on harpsichord, whose talent and/or exuberance you will have to judge for yourselves.)

David Podgorski is a Toronto-based harpsichordist, music teacher and a founding member of Rezonance. He can be contacted at earlymusic@thewholenote.com.

Dream Barriers: David Braid’s artistry continues to find new directions, moving steadily forward towards the unexpected, fuelled by tremendous musical gifts. Fresh off a media appearance to discuss his role as composer for the Ethan-Hawke-starring Chet Baker biopic, Born to Be Blue, the two-time JUNO winner sat down for a one-on-one interview to discuss his latest project.

The project revolves around his 12th recording, Flow, which is on the Steinway & Sons label. Later this year he will perform in Russia, Norway, Scotland and Australia to support the album; this month he tours across Canada including a stop in Kingston on April 1 at St. Mark’s Church, April 4 at London’s Aeolian Hall and April 5 at Jazz Bistro in Toronto.

The new recording is a collaboration with Prague’s Epoque String Quartet. “We have a world tour coming up this year, and I really wanted to bring the Epoque Quartet to Canada, so we’re doing a cross-country tour.” But in keeping with the project’s genesis, it’s a tour that will feature three different quartets. “The first ten days are with [Epoque]; our last concert before they go home is at Jazz Bistro. Then I fly to Calgary on the sixth and pick up the Borealis Quartet, then central Canada with the Penderecki String Quartet. So I’m having a great time working with these amazing musicians and learning a lot about their world, and intermingling their music with my world.”

Flow is a unique departure from Braid’s previous efforts, and not only because of the instrumentation. Courageously conceived, the bold recording blends Western classical, folk, ancient and world music forms. Jazz, Braid’s musical home turf, is perhaps more evident in the spirit of the risk-taking than the sound. So will this effort net another JUNO nomination and if so, in what category? Braid does not seem to care, and that’s precisely the point.

“I found it very liberating to cut myself off from thinking in practical terms – to lose my identity as a ‘jazz pianist’ and just think about making a program of music that feels like it’s fresh and alive and not influenced by any practical decision, i.e. not being jazz, or classical. Not limited by the performance practices of a particular style. I just wanted to build something that was beautiful, that was artistic, that people could connect to.”

So why now for this change of direction? “Probably…with me growing increasingly frustrated playing in jazz venues where the sound is so ridiculously loud. I feel like I’m not performing at my best because I’m fighting to create energy. I found that collaborating more with classical musicians opened up the sonic playing field fully for me. I’m really interested in playing my instrument and making a good sound at the piano and using the full range of dynamics, which could be very expressive. I wanted to go back to acoustic fundamental vibrations: strings resonating in a room, piano hammers hitting strings in a room, and nothing that’s modified by technology. Revitalizing the beauty of natural sound.”

The actual catalyst though, he says, was Werner Herzog’s acclaimed documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010. The film recounts the experience of French backpackers, who in 1994 discovered ancient caves containing paintings covered by mineral deposits, which took thousands of years to grow.

Braid’s wonderment at the film is still evident as he speaks. “It turns out these paintings are 32,000 years old, the oldest art work in the world – twice as old as what was previously considered the oldest. And if you see these images, we’re not talking about stick figures or primitive ideas – these are sophisticated three-dimensional drawings with very contemporary ideas. There’s a painting of a bison with eight legs – one set of legs extended, the other closed– where else do you see a single image with multiple movements? It’s a cinematic idea– and they had the same type of thinking 30,000 years ago – they were explaining in the film that when you hold torchlight up to the images on the rocks, the flickering of the torch makes it seem alive and moving. It’s mindboggling…I had never even seen a film twice before, but I saw this film nine times! One thing that really came through for me was that art has the potential to be transformative. This film made me remember that art can have a much deeper, more fundamental, ancient purpose.”

In keeping with the theme of visual inspiration, Flow, which will be released on vinyl as well as compact disc, features a stunningly vibrant painting on its cover, courtesy of Beijing artist, Sophia Gao. Currently hanging in Braid’s living room, the work is fittingly titled Qi and will be on display with several other original works by Gao at Jazz Bistro when Braid and the Epoque String Quartet play on April 5.

Why did Braid choose the Epoque String Quartet to record with?

“The last couple of years, I played with a lot of string quartets in a lot of different countries, and although they are all great, with the Czech quartet, early on in our collaboration, we talked about recording. We had done a couple of demo recordings, and a pile of concerts in Prague. They weren’t sure if it was going to connect with audiences – we were playing in this jazz club in Prague, the Jazz Dock, and it’s a real jazz club – here we are with a string quartet and piano, and they were like – ‘I don’t know if people are going to like it, let’s see what happens’ – and people went nuts! I felt as though with them, I broke through my dream barrier in terms of making that special type of connection with completely fresh new music. We did two more concerts that tour and we had a similar, deeply emotional response from the audience which was kind of unexpected. With new music this is unusual and so it meant a lot.

“At one of the concerts, the Canadian culture attaché was in attendance and he said ‘I hadn’t seen a reaction like this before – Czech audiences are usually very critical, especially of new music.’ So that audience in Prague, which is the first place I put the program out for public consumption. These guys – all they do is play music. Three out of the four play in the state orchestra, really well taken care of, their families are musical royalty. When I wanted to do the recording, they just said, ‘We’ll just do it at the best recording studio at the Czech television station with the best engineer, we work there all the time,’ and boom, there it happened! So for many reasons, it just felt very natural to do it with these guys.”

Czech mates part two: Jazz singer, educator and impresario, Lynn McDonald, is no stranger to Prague herself; next month will mark her nineteenth visit to the Czech capital, where she has sung countless tunes and absorbed bountiful inspiration. On April 19 at 6pm, she will be sharing the stage with Prague’s star guitarist Roman Pokorny at 120 Diner (where in the interest of full disclosure I should state that I have a significant hand in the programming).

Lynn McDonald's Czech Connection continued from page 19

I asked McDonald about her connection to Prague and how she became such a loyal tourist. She was happy to share her memories:

“When a dear friend from Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, died suddenly, I made it my mission to visit his homeland,” she recalls. “In Prague I felt more at home than I do in my own province! I never get lost. My biggest thrill is packing my music charts and going somewhere I do not speak the language. I smile at the band, I count the tune in, and then we communicate.”

The Czechs are not “touristic," as she puts it. “They make no effort to be phony or charming. Having suffered both Nazi dictatorship, ghettoization, and then Communist occupation, they are quite serious. However, Czechs form very deep and lasting friendships. I was sincerely welcomed in the 90s. It was rare to get a visitor’s visa and took weeks. They called me ‘Canada,’ saying ‘You must be Canada,’ when we met over the years. Back in my early visits to Bohemia, we would practise by candle light in small flats heated by coal, electricity being an ‘option.’ I swear all the musicians lived on nicotine and caffeine then. Oh, and Pilsen on a good day.”

“They often asked if I was a diplomat, a jazz ambassador. The jazz musicians at that time had all learned their craft in secret, behind closed doors, mostly from contraband recordings, which they still value. The Communists were pulling out and all kinds of Czech art was coming out of the alleyways and shadows into the bright light of day. Classical musicians were changing to jazz and playing, literally on the bridge all night. I was so exhilarated by the value put on freedom. The Czechs restored their beloved Prague to its former sixteenth-century glory, with new velvet and gold, recobbled streets and fresh paint and frescoes. Sadly in 2002, the Vlata River flooded its banks and destroyed much of their hard work. They started over. The Czechs are in a constant process of reinventing themselves; tirelessly healing, fixing, repairing.”

Over the past few decades, McDonald has become intimately familiar with the city’s jazz club scene, as well as the Praguers’ way of life:

“In Prague, there is a cover charge. People value art and come out seven nights a week to hear music, cuddle in the corner and relax. They are smoking less in the clubs today, if at all. Their homes are small flats so Praguers socialize in coffee shops and clubs.

“Czechs love the standards. They listen with their eyes shut, experiencing what they had only heard on recordings. I enjoy walking home at 1am, hearing my solitary footsteps on the cobblestones, feeling safe in the medieval narrow streets and the archaic gas lamplights. Sheer bliss for me. There is no physical crime that I have heard of. The odd beggar, but I always carry provisions for them.”

When she isn’t in Prague, McDonald proudly presents live jazz for people who want to listen; she currently books a series at the Jester’s Court in Port Perry:

“There is a no-talking policy. I was raised in George’s Spaghetti House, the Imperial Room, Café des Copains and Montreal Bistro, where there was attentive silence during the performances. That is why players like to come to Port Perry to be in my music series in the Listening Room at Jester’s Court. I pay them, feed them and guarantee an appreciative audience. People drive from Barrie, Peterborough, Oshawa, Bowmanville, Newmarket and Toronto to sit in a quiet reverie. Similar to the vibe in Prague, if you can believe it!”

McDonald met guitarist Roman Pokorny in the early 1990s; he put together a band for her and booked gigs.

“When I first heard Roman (romanpokorny.com) he was cranking out one blues after another at the Ungelt in Prague. His band, Blues Box Heroes, cleans up all the awards. The next night he was in a Latin band, Brazilian Mood, with Yvonne Sanchez. The third time I saw him he was playing like Grant Green in a fabulous jazz venue. Roman is a force of Nature on the guitar. Powerful and aggressive or tasty and delicate. A child in Europe is handed an instrument at four years of age and expected to practise daily for hours, for years. He did and it shows. During the height of Communist oppression he would ride his bicycle to the forest and practise alone or jam with friends, willing to chance getting caught, learning forbidden American jazz songs. Czech folk know that nothing is free and nothing comes easy. 

“Roman is recording with a New York rhythm section and visiting me for a few days. Tuesday April 19 at 6pm as you know, we are at 120 Diner. But Jester’s Court (Sunday, April 17, 7pm) is in the works and also Blues and Brews at the Old Flame Brewery with Howard Ross and Dave Restivo. (Wednesday, April 20, 8pm).”

Ori Dagan is a Toronto-based jazz musician, writer and educator who can be reached at oridagan.com.

With more companies scheduling operas in March and May, April does not quite overflow with opera performances as it used to. Nevertheless, an astonishing variety of works are on offer from warhorses to rarities and from the eighteenth century to the present.

The month begins with the world premiere of the Canadian opera Isis and Osiris, Gods of Egypt composed by Peter Anthony Togni to a libretto by poet Sharon Singer. The opera, presented by Voicebox: Opera in Concert, concerns the central figures of ancient Egyptian myth.

Via email Singer explained the importance of the myth and the genesis of the opera: “I have been working on this project since before Peter became involved. My fascination with ancient Egypt goes back many decades. The myth of Isis and Osiris is the overarching myth of ancient Egypt since it explains and describes the creation of the world and how evil came into the world and the afterlife. The spine of the myth is the concept of ma’at which is the Egyptian word for law, order, truth and justice.

“The opera, Isis and Osiris, Gods of Egypt is inspired by this strange and compelling myth that centres on one of the world’s great love stories. Four siblings, children of the gods – Isis, Osiris, Seth and Nepthys – come to earth to live as human beings. The idealistic King Osiris and his sister-wife, Queen Isis, bring their people the gifts of civilization: agriculture, weaving, a code of laws, the arts, and worship of the gods. Their brother Seth, however, is jealous of their power, their wisdom and their devotion to each other. He murders Osiris and usurps the throne, provoking a conflagration that Isis with all her strength, love, and magic, must try to extinguish.

“This story cried out to be created as an opera, which had never been done before. It’s a larger-than-life tale filled with sibling rivalry, jealousy, fratricide, brutal murders, magic and resurrection. In spite of this bedrock of a story from prehistory, the opera is very contemporary in the issues that it explores such as the eternal battle between good and evil, the selfish and power-mad Seth, versus the idealistic Osiris, who seeks to create a peaceful kingdom founded on justice, fairness and compassion.”

“I had written the first draft of the libretto for the opera and I was looking for a composer. Peter and I were introduced by a mutual friend, mezzo-soprano Andrea Ludwig, who was enthusiastic about my libretto and recommended it to Peter. When he read it, he emailed me these words, ‘I read the libretto and I love it! Very dramatic, very singable…I would love to make this happen!!!’ Four years later, it is having its world premiere.”

Though the story deals with gods, Singer sees them as very human: “Since Isis and Osiris are incarnated as human beings, they had to have human as well as divine qualities.”

For his part, Togni explained his approach to composing the opera: “I have tried to be true to Sharon Singer’s wonderful libretto. In my musical response I am going for the humanity – a bright and rich sound rather than an approximation of what the music might have sounded like or a tip of the hat to Verdi! Much of music is already influenced by mystical and exotic sounds such as medieval chant and eastern scales. You will find this in my choral music for example – music that is ancient and modern at the same time. I am telling the story in my own harmonic language. I really wanted the opera to dance and as result I use many Arabic rhythms and scales.

“There is a slightly baroque influence mixed with that and the influence of some of the Russian romantic composers. Like a film score, the sound changes from scene to scene and the range is wide, everything from ancient sounding chords to shrieking jagged, blood-on-the-floor orchestral screams! The Egyptians were very forward thinking and I hint at this with my use of the electric organ and harmonies not unlike Pink Floyd and Coldplay. If anything, my music depicts them as a futuristic people.

“I have scored it for a chamber orchestra – two violins, viola, cello, double bass, oboe, clarinet, harpsichord, harp, organ and percussion – lots of percussion! Rather like a baroque band, it has to be tight and crisp sounding.”

Isis and Osiris stars soprano Lucia Cesaroni as Isis, tenor Michael Barrett as Osiris, mezzo Julie Nesrallah as Nepthys and Michael Nyby as Seth. With Robert Cooper conducting the chamber orchestra and the OIC Chorus, the opera runs April 1 and 3.

A Mozart Premiere! Next up is the rarity, Lucio Silla (1772), by the 16-year-old Mozart presented by Opera Atelier, April 7 to 16. This is the opera that director Marshall Pynkoski and choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg staged to great acclaim first at the Mozartwoche Salzburg and the Salzburg Festival in 2013 and later at La Scala in Milan in 2015. Two stars of the La Scala production will sing in Toronto – Kresimir Spicer as the Roman dictator Silla (i.e. Lucius Sulla, 138-78 BC) and Inge Kalna in the trousers role of Cinna. Joining them will be Peggy Kriha Dye in the second trousers role as the senator Cecilio. Mireille Asselin is Celia, Silla’s sister. And Meghan Lindsay is Giunia, Cecilio’s beloved, who is desired by Silla. David Fallis conducts the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.

The COC's Cuban Carmen: Playing from April 12 to May 15 is Bizet’s Carmen presented by the Canadian Opera Company. Because of the long run there is a double cast. Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili and French mezzo Clémentine Margaine alternate in the title role. American tenor Russell Thomas and Canadian David Pomeroy sing Carmen’s lover Don José. American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn and American baritone Zachary Nelson sing the toreador Escamillo. And Canadians Simone Osbourne and Karine Boucher sing Micaëla. Paolo Carignani conducts.

The COC last presented Carmen in 2010 and premiered the current production designed by Michael Yeargan and François St-Aubin in 2005. The most exciting aspect of this revival is that it will be directed by Joel Ivany, the artistic director for the Toronto alternative opera company Against the Grain Theatre, which has presented such innovative productions as La Bohème staged in a real pub and recently a fully staged and choreographed Messiah.

I spoke with Ivany about what challenges there are in directing a pre-existing physical production where others have made the design choice to move the location to Cuba and the time to the 1940s.

Ivany says, “I’ve had to try and get inside the mind of the original artistic team to see what they were after. Thankfully the COC had all their reference material, including the original sketches, to find out why it was important for them to set Carmen in this time period.

Ivany tells me that he noticed “that some elements of those original sketches weren’t implemented into the production. I had a design person [Camellia Koo] look at it with me to see if we actually could add anything anywhere or change some elements from how this production had been done before.” The result will be that “the first three acts therefore are going to look a little bit different from what Toronto audiences have seen before.”

The area where Ivany can most exercise his creativity is in directing the acting, especially since the company is doing the original version with dialogue instead of recitatives. Ivany says, “For me so much happens in those dialogues. The storytelling is so incredibly crucial.”

Ivany states his goal: “What I’m going for is a good, character-driven spectacle event of what this piece is, within this set and within this company. The best approach is to celebrate what is best about this production and this piece and use its visual strengths and the chorus to the best advantage.”

About the contrast between working with his own company and with the COC, Ivany says, “It’s great to be able to do the big, but also to be doing experimental work with Against the Grain and seeing where that can lead. I think that’s what’s unique and great about Canada, and Toronto as well, and I think there are some good days ahead with leaders who are taking chances on those ideas to make sure that this art form keeps evolving and moving forward. It’s variety that spurs the creativity.”

Silva-Marin’s Zarzuela Love Affair: From April 27 to May 1 Toronto Operetta Theatre presents the Canadian premiere of the 1923 zarzuela Los Gavilanes (The Sparrow Hawks) by Jacinto Guerrero (1895-1951). TOT artistic director Guillermo Silva-Marin introduced the zarzuela, the Spanish version of operetta, to Toronto audiences, starting in 2003, immeasurably broadening the palette of music theatre in Toronto.

The action is set near a Provençal fishing village in 1845. Juan, now aged 50 and known as the “Indian,” has returned to the village after having made his fortune in Peru. He left hoping to make enough money to marry his beloved Adriana, but he finds that in his absence she married, had a daughter, Rosaura, and is now a widow. Because Rosaura so much resembles the Adriana he left behind, Juan vows to marry her, much to the anger of the village and of Rosaura’s boyfriend Gustavo.

Los Gavilanes will be the sixth full zarzuela that Silva-Marin has programmed, but this one has a special meaning for him. As he wrote via email, “Los Gavilanes was the first zarzuela I attended when it was performed in San Juan while I studied at Universidad de Puerto Rico. Actually, it was my first encounter with the lyric theatre during a time when I had little thought that I would someday become a singer.”

Silva-Marin notes that Guerrero’s music may remind TOT fans of another great operetta composer. As he says, “Years later, I found myself thinking about Los Gavilanes in Toronto. By this time I had researched and presented Imre Kálmán’s works Countess Maritza, The Gypsy Princess and Der Zigeunerprimas. On revisiting Los Gavilanes years ago, I was struck by Guerrero’s similarity to Kálmán in sonority, orchestration and predilection for melodic invention, and smiled at recognizing that Madrid and Budapest were not truly too far apart. Being 1923, verismo in operetta was not at all an anomaly. Los Gavilanes cannot avoid a Spanish musical sensitivity, but it is not committed to a folkloric palette, rather a more universal sound evolving from the purely comical and satirical in operetta of previous decades.”

The dialogue will be in English and the songs sung in Spanish. Miriam Khalil will sing Adriana, Sarah Forestieri will be Rosaura and Ernesto Ramirez will be Gustavo. Guillermo Silva-Marin himself will sing the role of Juan. Larry Beckwith conducts the TOT Orchestra and Silva-Marin directs, assisted by Virginia Reh.

COC’s Seventh Rossini: The month closes with the COC’s company premiere of Rossini’s Maometto II from April 29 to May 14. Acclaimed Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni makes his COC debut in the title role in this production created for Santa Fe Opera in 2012, directed by David Alden and conducted by early music expert Harry Bicket. This will be the seventh Rossini opera the COC has staged and only its second Rossini opera seria, after Tancredi in 2005. Many people will know the opera better under the title Le Siège de Corinthe, the name Rossini gave it when he rewrote the work for Paris in 1826.

Loosely based on history, the central character of Maometto II is the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (1432-81) who conquered Constantinople in 1453 and later, in 1470, the Venetian colony Negroponte on the Greek island of Euboea where the opera is set. In Maometto II, the Venetian debate how to deal with the Turkish threat. Calbo counsels the governor, Paolo Erisso, to continue to fight while General Condulmiero counsels surrender. Yet, as with most opere serie, the focus is more on love than politics. Erisso wishes his daughter Anna to marry Calbo but she confesses that she is in love with a man known to her only as “Uberto.” As one might expect Uberto turns out to be none other than Maometto II.

Joining Pisaroni is tenor Bruce Sledge as Erisso, soprano Leah Crocetto as Anna, mezzo Elizabeth DeShong in the trousers role of Calbo, tenor Andrew Haji as Condulmiero and tenor Aaron Sheppard as the Muslim noble Selimo.

These five operas are only the largest scale works on offer in April, yet one could hardly hope for more varied and unusual fare.

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

Born at the height of the Cold War in 1958, the International Tchaikovsky competition (held every four years, most recently in 2015) has a checkered history, beginning with its first winner, the American Van Cliburn. Conceived by the Soviet regime to celebrate the pre-eminence of its own musicians in a contest that welcomed contenders from around the world, Cliburn’s first-place finish (the jury included Shostakovich, Richter and Gilels) was acclaimed by music lovers in Moscow and the West. Last year’s competition likely produced the biggest surprise since 1958, although it wasn’t the winner, Dmitry Masleev, a by-the-book Russian.

Lucas Debargue: The surprise was an unheralded Frenchman, Lucas Debargue, who swept through the first two rounds captivating audiences and critics with his playing. Seymour Bernstein (Seymour: An Introduction) was so moved, he sent an email to his list of followers celebrating Debargue’s artistry: “First, the Medtner is unbelievable! But I doubt that anyone will ever hear Ravel’s Gaspard performed like this. The French pianist Lucas Debargue must be in another world. Simply the most miraculous playing. Perhaps because of this alone he may win the competition.”

 Reportedly, though, Debargue faltered in the final round concerto performances (he had limited experience in playing with an orchestra) and was awarded Fourth Prize. More importantly, the Moscow Music Critics Association bestowed their top honours on him, and SONY signed the 25-year-old pianist to a record contract.

And now Show One impresario, Svetlana Dvoretsky, has had the acumen to bring him to Toronto! In what promises to be one of the most exciting events of the season, Debargue and fellow Tchaikovsky winner, Lukas Geniušas, will give a unique, joint recital at Koerner Hall, April 30.

(Debargue’s first CD – which he chose to record live in Paris’ Salle Cortot to preserve a sense of risk and spontaneity – with works by Scarlatti, Chopin, Liszt, Ravel (Gaspard de la nuit), Grieg, Schubert and his own variation on a Scarlatti sonata has just been released. In a brief sampling, I was struck by the ethereal quality in his playing of Scarlatti’s K208/L238 Sonata and the breathtaking articulation of K24/L495. He made K132/L457 his own, ruminative, other-worldly. K141/L422 was Horowitz-like but with fresh emphases. He also found the melancholic quality of Grieg’s Melody from Lyric Pieces Book III and brought an exquisite elegance to Schubert’s familiar Moment Musical Op.94.)

If Debargue’s backstory weren’t true, few would believe it as fiction. He heard the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21 K467 when he was ten, fell under its spell and into the world of music. He played a friend’s upright piano by ear before beginning lessons at 11 with his first teacher, Madame Meunier, in the northern French town of Compiègne. He credits her with helping him to find his way as an artist, but when he moved to Paris to study literature at Diderot University – yes, he learned English by reading Joyce’s Ulysses – he stopped playing piano (“I had no great guide, no one to share great music with,” he told the BBC), using the bass guitar as a musical outlet. After being away from the piano for years, he accepted an invitation to a competition in his home province. He won and began an intense pupil-teacher relationship with Rena Sherevskaya in Paris at 21.

In a recent interview Debargue gave the German magazine Crescendo right after he recorded his second solo album in Berlin, he was asked if he is living differently now, after the competition: “Externally everything’s changed but internally not. I’m looking for the clarity in my interpretation and I always feel that I need to progress. I’ve always had it that way. It is far more difficult for me to put up with many people around me than to concentrate on the music. Music gives me a new strength.”

Just a few days before his March 24 Paris recital, Debargue graciously took the time to answer a few of my questions via email. His answers were brief, to the point and illuminating:

What is your goal as an interpreter of music?

To find out and then keep as much as possible the spirit of the music I play. Let it live and reach the listener by being clear and expressive.

Which pianists from the past or the present do you especially admire? And why?

Horowitz: for his boldness and freedom. Sofronitsky: for his boldness and freedom. Gould: for his boldness and freedom. I strongly think that no other pianist reached the dimension of Rachmaninov’s playing though. Sokolov and Pletnev are my favorite living pianists. But how can one forget Art Tatum, Monk, Powell and Erroll Garner? Speaking strictly about piano playing they’re the best so far. [Debargue is also a jazzer who’s played clubs in Paris; his Ravinia Festival appearance in August will see him give one classical and one jazz recital on the same day.]

(I asked about two pieces on his Toronto program.) What is your approach to playing Gaspard de la nuit?  

Live it from the inside after having found the right tempo and sound for each note.

And Scriabin’s Sonata No.4?

It’s music of fantasy and terror but one has to be very precise in choosing the right pictures and dynamics for each episode.

Lukas Geniušas: Coming from a musical family, headed by his grandmother, Vera Gornostaeva, a well-known Russian pedagogue, Lukas Geniušas took a more conventional path to his second-place Tchaikovsky finish, which followed second place in the 2010 Chopin Competition. Geniušas, like Debargue, is just 25 years old and also took time to answer my email questions. He told me that his grandmother’s importance in his musical life “both early and current is impossible to overrate.” It went beyond the bounds of music in building a foundation for the overall comprehension of art.

Geniušas told me that he has three goals as an interpreter of music: to create his own personal interpretations without harming the composer’s intentions; to seek moments of spiritual presence in a concert; and to pass on traditions that were passed on to him by his teachers.

He told me that he grew up admiring Richter and Michelangeli. “Somehow, intuitively, I have chosen them to be my favourites among many others whom I listened to on CD and DVD (yes, before YouTube!),” he said. “Their playing still appears to me the most complex, multi-layered and profound. Out of contemporary pianists, I would point to Radu Lupu, Zoltan Kocsis and Boris Berezovsky, who mostly capture my attention.”

When I asked him about his approach to Prokofiev’s Sonata No.7 and the seven Chopin mazurkas he will play in Toronto he told me that he first played Chopin mazurkas under his grandmother’s supervision when he was 11 or 12. He spoke of them as “little jewels” that were like a diary, about how a traditional Polish dance reveals “some of the most intimate shades of feelings” as embodied by Chopin, and how this music was a “particular side” of the teaching experience of his grandmother’s teacher, Henry [Heinrich] Neuhaus, who taught Richter, Gilels and Lupu, among many others from 1922 to 1964.

He called the Prokofiev Sonata No.7 one of the central pieces of 20th-century piano music: flawless in form, matchless in its violent brutality inspired by the outrage of WWII. Instead of taking a stormy virtuosic approach that may mislead the listener with flashy tricks, Geniušas prefers an articulated rendering that conveys its depth of meaning.

With eight CDs to his credit already, Geniušas’ path to an international career is well on its way. The Guardian wrote of his recent Southbank recital that he “plays with a prizewinner’s brilliance, yet with a mature ability to recreate a work’s architecture, and an expressiveness that doesn’t overtly draw attention to itself.” I can’t wait to hear him play the two-piano version of Ravel’s La valse with Debargue, the final piece of their Koerner Hall concert.

Geniušas has been in Toronto before: he came last December (and will return in April) to play for Dmitry Kanovich’s Looking at the Stars project that brings professional musicians to unusual venues. “This experience sweeps beyond words,” he said. “I never expected that performing in hospitals, shelters and jails could be so emotional and inspiring.”

Leonid Nediak: A student of Michael Berkovsky, Leonid Nediak (b. 2003) already has extensive concert experience. (He made his debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano in February 2014.)  The grand prize winner of the 2013 and 2014 Canadian Music Competition, both times receiving the highest marks ever awarded in this event, Nediak makes his TSO debut next January playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.27 K595 under the baton of Peter Oundjian. At the recent announcement of the TSO’s 2016/17 season, Nediak played Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G Minor, a performance that touched all who were there. If you want to get a sense of this wunderkind before next January, there are two contrasting opportunities in the next few weeks. On Apr 16, Nediak joins with Norman Reintamm and the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony in Beethoven’s kinetic Piano Concerto No.3 Op.37. On May 7, he is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s romantic masterpiece, his Piano Concerto No.2 Op.18, with the Kindred Spirits Orchestra, conducted by Kristian Alexander, the second time Nediak has appeared with this Markham-based ensemble. (In 2014, they performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 Op.11 together.) In an email exchange, Alexander told me that Nediak played the first movement of the Rachmaninov concerto at a Kindred Spirits audition in 2014. “Leonid played very well, with the right balance of musicality, expression and technique. His performance was convincing and offered qualities that resonated with my interpretational concept about the piece,” he said, explaining the origin of the May 7 concert. Their Chopin collaboration came about just after that audition – Nediak already had it in his repertoire -- and “Leonid’s approach to Chopin’s melodic line was free-spirited and fresh and required a much higher level of elasticity and flexibility from the orchestra than usual.”

Describing Nediak’s qualities as a pianist, Alexander said: “Leonid is a great communicator, able to unlock the emotional content of the piece and unfold the storyline of the composition. He also has a reach and versatile palette of colours, natural sense of phrasing and flawless energy flow.”

QUICK PICKS

Royal Conservatory: Young organ virtuoso Cameron Carpenter brings his contemporary sensibility to Koerner Hall Apr 1. (Two days later, Apr 3, he moves his new custom-designed organ to the Isabel in Kingston, where, four days later, on  Apr 7, the Korean-born Minsoo Sohn, will give a live version of his acclaimed recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations). Continuing with the Royal Conservatory, legendary pianist/conductor/teacher/mentor, Leon Fleisher, conducts the Royal Conservatory Orchestra, Apr 8. On Apr 12, the current crop of Rebanks Family Fellows performs a free concert (tickets required) in Mazzoleni Hall; on Apr 19, another free concert there is an opportunity to gauge the future as the Glenn Gould School presents its Chamber Music Competition Finals.   

Syrinx presents Ensemble Made in Canada Apr 3 playing piano quartets by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Omar Daniel at the Heliconian Club. The following week Ensemble Made in Canada travels to Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society for a double dose, Apr 8 and 9, including more Beethoven, Schumann and John Burge as well as the three pieces the group are doing in Toronto. The group’s cellist Rachel Mercer returns to KWCMS Apr 24 as part of Ménage á six, in a program of string trios by Dohnányi and Schubert along with Brahms’ Sextet No.1. And May 3 Till Fellner (whom I profiled in the March 2015 issue of The WholeNote) also returns to the Narvesons’ house in Waterloo – that “amazing place” – for a recital of works by Schumann, Berio and Beethoven.  

The Cecilia String Quartet is joined by James Campbell at U of T’s Walter Hall for a performance of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, a cornerstone of the clarinet repertoire, Apr 4. Sunday, May 1 at 11am, the Cecilia invites children on the autism spectrum and their families to the next in its series of free Xenia Concerts. The one-hour performance, “Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms by the Numbers,” takes place in the Sony Centre’s lower lobby performance space.

The COC orchestra’s top two violinists, Marie Bérard and Aaron Schwebel, give a free noontime concert featuring music by Ysaÿe and Leclair, in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, Apr 5.

Music Toronto: Apr 5, Duo Turgeon, husband-and-wife duo pianists, perform a heavyweight program that includes a new arrangement of Ravel’s Second Suite from Daphnis and Chloe by Vyacheslav Gryaznov, Lutoslawski’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini and Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Music Toronto is well-known as the hub of string quartet concerts in this city, for bringing the world’s finest ensembles to the intimacy and congeniality of the Jane Mallett Theatre. On Apr 14, Music Toronto’s current season closes with the Berlin-based Artemis Quartet’s highly anticipated Toronto debut.

The TSO: Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård and Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi make their TSO debuts, Apr 6 and 8, with Sibelius’ cyclic, texturally rich Symphony No.1 Op.39 and Beethoven’s poetic Piano Concerto No.4 Op.58. Associates of the TSO present the Halcyon String Quartet (TSO principal and associate principal second violins, Paul Meyer and Wendy Rose, and TSO violist Kent Teeple and cellist Marie Gélinas) playing Schoenberg and Mendelssohn, Apr 11. Angela Hewitt remounts her Bach hobbyhorse to perform two keyboard concertos, BMV1052 and 1056 on Apr 13 and 14. (On Apr 16, only BMV1052 will be played.) Peter Oundjian accompanies Ms. Hewitt on all three days and leads the orchestra in Shostakovich’s Symphony No.8 Op.65, written in the shadow of  the horror of  WWII. The exciting composer/conductor Matthias Pintscher follows a performance of his own work, towards Osiris, with Mahler’s perpetually positive Symphony No.1 “The Titan” on Apr 28 and 30. Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan is the soloist in Mozart’s dark-hued Piano Concerto No.24 K491.

WMCT:  The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto showcases the eminent violist Steven Dann, his family and friends, Joel Quarrington and Jamie Parker, in an eclectic recital dubbed  “Dannthology,” on Apr 7. Their 118th season concludes on May 5 with a crowd-pleasing program by Honens Laureate, Pavel Kolesnikov.

The Blythwood Winds’ program on Apr 7 “explores the musical geography of continental Europe, contrasting old-school German romanticism with the French school of the early 20th century.”

In an intriguing concert at Alliance Française Toronto on Apr 8, Belgian pianist Olivier de Spiegeleir, plays works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert that the movies made even more famous.

In the third concert of a Beethoven String Quartet Cycle that concludes next season, Jeffery Concerts presents the Pacifica Quartet, quartet-in-residence at Indiana University, performing the master’s youthful Op.18 Nos.4 and 6 and the incomparable Op.59 No.1 (“Razumovsky”) on Apr 8.

Apr 9, one day after the Conservatory Orchestra’s concert, the U of T Symphony Orchestra (led by Uri Mayer) performs two masterpieces of the orchestral canon, Brahms’ Symphony No.3 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No.5.

Gallery 345 presents the indefatigable cellist, Rachel Mercer, in a solo concert, Apr 13. On Apr 15, the versatile violinist, Andréa Tyniec, joins forces with the sensitive collaborative pianist, Todd Yaniw, in a wide-ranging program of works by Sokolović, Ysaÿe, Piazzolla, Franck and Brahms.    

The dynamic Eric Paetkau leads the Hamilton Philharmonic in Elgar’s ineffable Serenade for Strings and Tchaikovsky’s eternal Symphony No.4 on Apr 16.

Mooredale Concerts presents the infectious Afiara String Quartet in works by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Dvořák (where they will be joined by the redoubtable bassist Joel Quarrington) on Apr 17.

Finally, don’t let this under-the-radar concert presented by Music at St. Andrew’s/Austrian Embassy/Austrian Cultural Forum slip by. Austrian cellist, Friedrich Kleinhapl, and German pianist, Andreas Woyke, bring their romantic European sensibility to Mendelssohn, Franck, Beethoven, Piazzolla and Gade, Apr 22. Steve Smith wrote this about their September 2009 NYC recital: “Mr. Kleinhapl and Mr. Woyke supported their idiosyncratic vision of Beethoven with unimpeachable virtuosity and a thrilling unanimity of spirit. The intensity with which they listened and responded to each other’s impetuous gestures was its own reward, but they also shed new light on these familiar pieces.”

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

This month’s column takes a behind-the-scenes look at two quite different upcoming events in April – the Curiosity Festival presented by the Toy Piano Composers and an upcoming concert by the independent pianist/improviser/composer Marilyn Lerner which while different in nature from the TPC event was also surprisingly similar to it, in some very interesting ways. There was the piano connection of course; but also the artists’ interest in combining different elements, influences and genres to create their own unique creative statements. This is certainly a theme that comes up regularly in this column, but I wasn’t necessarily expecting to find this commonality when I set out to interview both parties.

Monica Pearce: Beginning early in April, the TPC’s first festival, the Curiosity Festival, aims – in the words of co-founder Monica Pearce – to “bring together three unique musical explorations that go beyond what the collective already does.” Known primarily for their chamber concerts highlighting music written by their composer members, this festival has three strikingly different components: a series of operas performed in collaboration with the Bicycle Opera Project on April 1 and 2; a sound installation at the Canadian Music Centre created by TPC member Nancy Tam on April 6 and 7; and a chamber concert on April 9 that highlights all things metal, including the presence of metal music, that genre of rock that developed in the late 60s and 70s with the rise of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

The TPC, now in their eighth season, began from a desire by co-founders Pearce and Chris Thornborrow to create opportunities for their music to be performed once they had completed their music studies. At the same time, Pearce acquired a used toy piano and started writing pieces for the instrument. They both agreed that calling their new collective Toy Piano Composers would be a playful and imaginative name. Although the toy piano does not always appear in all their concerts (a risk, Pearce admits, in terms of managing audiences’ expectations), they have decided to stick with a name that reflects so clearly the group’s spirit of playful adventure.

The first concert of the festival, “Travelogue,” celebrates TPC’s ongoing vigorous collaboration with the Bicycle Opera Project. Bicycle Opera cycles from concert to concert as a way to make the operatic art form more relevant, intimate and accessible. Their environmentally friendly approach to travel merged with their vision of showcasing emerging talent has won them enthusiastic crowds wherever they happen to go. At the Curiosity Festival, they will be performing four operas – three composed by TPC members Pearce, Elisha Denburg and August Murphy-King, and the fourth composed by Tobin Stokes on recommendation from the Bicycle Opera directors. All four pieces include aspects of travel – from the bicycle to the space shuttle – with each work tapping into the terrain of human struggle with life’s circumstances.

Playback, the sound installation by Nancy Tam at the Canadian Music Centre’s Chalmers House home, features her expertise and interest in sound art and theatre. It’s a site-specific work for ten participants at a time who will be guided around the CMC space listening over headphones hooked up to individual portable audio players. Tam’s audio walk will contain excerpts from interviews she conducted with composers across Canada, as well as recordings of Tam’s music and soundscape elements. For the interviews, composers were asked such questions as “What is Canadian music, what is your relationship to composition and to the CMC?” as well as being asked to try to remember what the Chalmers House used to look like before the renovations.

The “Metal” concert includes works by TPC members Fiona Ryan, Chris Thornborrow, Bekah Simms, Daniel Brophy, Ruth Guechtal and Alex Eddington. Both Brophy and Guechtal have incorporated the metal genre influence into their overall compositional style, and this concert will give them an opportunity to let this influence become an integral part of a chamber concert. Other thematic approaches to the idea of metal include Thornborrow’s exploration of the metals of industry, Ryan’s interest in metal at a chemical level, and of course the use of metallic instruments. And, in keeping with their name, music for the toy piano will also appear on this concert.

The inaugural Curiosity Festival takes its place among the other new music festivals in the city, and although not as big and well-funded as New Creations or 21C, it is the first festival coming from the younger generation of presenters, Pearce told me. As for its future, TPC will assess the impact of the festival to see if it has made a positive contribution and if so, how often to repeat it. Other future visions include recording, touring and collaborating with ensembles such as Chamber Cartel from Atlanta who also present music for the toy piano. And even though they now have a core ensemble made up of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, piano, double bass and conductor, they are committed to remaining composer-focused, despite the various challenges such as lack of sustainable funding opportunities that this presents.

Marilyn Lerner: No stranger to collaboration with a wide variety of ensembles and individual artists, pianist/composer and improviser Marilyn Lerner decided to take a leap into solo performance for her upcoming concert at Gallery 345 on April 16. For those not familiar with Lerner’s music, she has created her own unique and dynamic blend from a variety of influences, the most central ones being jazz, free improvisation, contemporary classical and klezmer. Within her current ensemble, The Ugly Beauties, with cellist Matt Brubeck and drummer Nick Fraser, she is able to navigate these various genres and bring a compositional style that combines the notated with the improvised. This way of working is in fact, she says, a genre unto itself, with the main question being “How do we get from one composed section to another?” That’s where the improvisation kicks in. The art of lieder combined with Yiddish poetry is another love of hers and has been behind her collaborations with singers such as Toronto’s David Wall and New Yorker Adrienne Cooper.

So what to expect on April 16? I suspect it will be a fine blended soup of all of it. In our interview, Lerner told me her plan is to pull out many pieces she has previously written but which haven’t yet been performed. “I love harmony, and even though I play a lot of improvised and free music, this side of me doesn’t get to come out of the closet. I’ve written a lot of beautiful songs, and would like a chance to play them, as this seems truer to my own sensibilities.” She used the phrase “abstract lyricism” to define her approach, with an interest in an unfolding, restless harmony much like that which you find in the music of Wagner and Strauss. Influences from French impressionists Ravel and Debussy also find their way in there, as well as her love of playing Bach.

And even though these pieces have a composed element to them, she will bring her improviser self into the mix. In her preparation for the concert, she will practise various improvising approaches, but in the moment of the performance it will be a spontaneous treatment. “I strive to play the piano as a horizontal multi-voiced instrument, no matter what I’m playing. Interesting, considering that I love harmony,” she comments. No matter what style or genre she embarks upon however, ultimately, “my heart is in writing pieces that express how I’m feeling.”

Ensemble Goings-on:

New Music Concerts concludes its busy season on Apr 24 with “Flutes Galore,” a concert featuring 24 flute players performing several works and premieres by Canadian composers. NMC artistic director and flutist, Robert Aitken, has three works on the program, including the world premiere of his latest work Caracas. Other world premieres include Impulse, a NMC commission by Alex Pauk and Two Fancies by Robert W. Stevenson. Works by Bruce Mather and Christopher Butterfield complete the extravaganza concert in what promises to be a unique sound event with the presence of multiple flutes on stage.

Kitchener-Waterloo: This year marks the 40th anniversary of the music faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo and the new music organization NUMUS is celebrating this milestone with orchestral concerts on Apr 2 and 3 featuring world premieres by Stephanie Martin and Glenn Buhr. In their Apr 23 concert, SlowPitchSound presents his hypnotic rhythms and unconventional uses of the turntable as an instrument in conjunction with cinematic images and the movements of modern dancer Lybido. Also in the area, Ensemble Made in Canada performs works by Canadians Omar Daniel, Apr 8, and John Burge, Apr 9, for the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society.

The Music Gallery presents “Emergents III” on Apr 8 in a show curated by Alex Samaras. The program begins with a set by the duo The Science of What? with Jessica Chen and Justin Orok performing improvisations and deconstructions of popular song. The second set presents the music of Jeremy Bellaviti, an emerging composer whose style merges contemporary classical with the rhythmical influences of folk music. The concert will also feature the premiere of his new work for violinist Sarah Fraser-Raff.

Arraymusic’s Apr 5 concert, “Four New Works,” presents world premieres by Anna Höstman, Gregory Newsome, Adam Scime and Scott Wilson, with guest soprano Carla Huhtanen. Continuum is heading west in April for a tour of British Columbia in collaboration with Ballet Kelowna and four choregraphers. Reimagined Renaissance Music is the theme that will be explored musically in works by Rodney Sharman, Jocelyn Morlock and Michael Oesterle. Toronto audiences will have the chance to see and hear this show in the fall.

Additional Listings

Apr 7: Women’s Musical Club of Toronto. Commissioned premiere by Zosha di Castri.

Apr 8: Essential Opera. Several contemporary operas, each focused on a different facet of women’s lives featuring composers Leslie Uyeda, Anna Pidgorna, Anna Höstman, Fiona Ryan, Elizabeth Raum, John Estacio and Jake Heggie.

Apr 23: mmmm Composers In Concert. New works by Michel Allard, Marco Burak, Michael Dobinson and Michelle Wells. Stratford.

Apr 27: Canadian Music Centre. Three commissions of Canadian works by Katarina Curcin, Nicole Lizée and Kati Agócs performed by the Cecilia String Quartet.

April 28 and 30: Toronto Symphony. towards Osiris (2005) by German composer Matthias Pintscher.

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

Lyrical, lush, evocative, and stirring – all words that help describe Sunrise Mass by Ola Gjeilo (pronounced Yay-lo). He is a new composer to me and one that I have been mesmerized by as I delve into his repertoire. First premiered in Oslo, Norway, in 2008, Sunrise Mass has captured the imagination of choirs across the world. It had its Toronto premiere in the final concert of the Orpheus Choir’s 2014/2015 season. But I have the Mississauga Festival Chamber Choir and artistic director David Ambrose to thank for my introduction to Gjeilo’s music as they present this work in “Spring Serenade” on April 2 at 8pm.

Gjeilo is a Norwegian-American composer educated at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Juilliard and the Royal Academy of Music in London. He is composer-in-residence for the popular British a cappella octet – VOCES8 (who were in Ontario last fall on their first-ever Canadian tour which included a stop at the Elora Festival, both in a solo concert and in a joint one with the Elora Festival Singers and Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal in the Bach Mass in B Minor under Noel Edison). Ola Gjeilo himself will be in Toronto in the fall as part of a festival of his work sponsored by the University of Toronto, Orpheus Choir and the Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. Before then, there are lots of opportunities to enjoy his work over the next month – make it to as many as you can!

Gjeilo’s Dark Night of the Soul makes an appearance as part of the Hart House Chorus spring concert, April 3 at 4pm. Conductor Daniel Norman leads the Gjeilo and Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War). For this free concert, donations are being accepted on behalf of Sistema Toronto, a free, accessible childhood music education organization that started in Venezuela. Great Hall, Hart House, Toronto.

The Kingston Choral Society and Kingston Community Strings present “Sunrise: A Musical Celebration.” Gjeilo’s Sunrise Mass will be performed along with Spring from Haydn’s Seasons, selections from Schubert’s Mass No.2 in G Major and Aaron Copland’s The Promise of Living on April 22 at 7:30pm.

The Cantores Celestes Women’s Choir present Gjeilo as part of “Songs of the Universe” on April 23 at 7:30pm. Director Kelly Galbraith features Gjeilo’s Song of the Universal which was inspired by the Walt Whitman poem of the same name. Also included are the world premiere of Sergey Khvoshchinsky’s Hymn to Her Hands and the Canadian premiere of Mozart’s Missa in C Major (Sparrow Mass) arranged for female voices, and more. Cantores will mark this performance with a donation to support Syrian refugees to Toronto. April 23, 7:30pm, Runnymede United Church, Toronto.

Markham’s Village Voices present “Faces of Love,” featuring Gjeilo’s The Ground, an adaptation of the final movement of his Sunrise Mass. Other works include Bernstein’s West Side Story and Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs. May 7 at 7:30pm.

VOCA Chorus of Toronto presents “Vast Eternal Sky” on May 7 at 7:30pm. Artistic director Jenny Crober has chosen to feature Gjeilo’s Across the Vast, Eternal Sky, a beautiful musical setting to text by Charles Anthony Silvestri, inspired by the idea of a phoenix. The first half of the concert will feature the Fauré Requiem accompanied by the Talisker Players. Other works by Daley, Lauridsen and more promise to make this a most lovely evening.

Just the First Weekend!? On the first weekend of April alone, there is so much happening on the choral landscape it’s almost demoralizing. It’s as if every choir in the region has conspired to compete for your attention. From Kingston to London, there is a performance on everything from Broadway to Gospel. Here are some highlights:

Hilary Apfelstadt is well-known in the choral community and has had a hand in the choral education of many conductors and students around town as director of Choral Programs at the University of Toronto. As well as director of several choirs at U of T, she also conducts Exultate Chamber Singers. April 1 at 8pm Exultate presents “Stories of Love and Longing,” featuring Brahms Op. 52 Liebeslieder Waltzes, Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus and several other works by Britten, Vissell, Jeff Enns, Mechem and more on.

On April 3 at 2:30pm, Apfelstadt is back, leading the University of Toronto choral ensembles in “Heart Songs,” an end-of-term concert featuring the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Women’s Chamber Choir and Men’s Chorus. Highlights include music by Timothy Corlis set to a poem by Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson: Heart Songs of the White Wampum (which was a joint commission with Elektra Women’s Choir, Vancouver, and Bella Voce Women’s Chorus, Vermont). Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy will join all the musical forces together. Doctoral Choral Conducting Candidates Elaine Choi (Timothy Eaton Memorial Church), Mark Ramsay (Exultate) and Tracy Wong (Mississauga Festival Youth Choir and Young Voices Toronto) join Professor Apfelstadt in marshalling the choral forces.

The Toronto Northern Lights Chorus is the 2013 Barbershop Harmony Society World Champions. These “Silly plants” (YouTube them, seriously, it’s amazing) made Toronto proud with their award-winning top-place finish at the Air Canada Centre and are returning to defend their title at the international convention in Nashville later this year. They present “Genius of Music” with an ensemble from the Toronto All-Star Big Band on April 2 at 2pm and 7:30pm.

The Toronto Children’s Chorus and the Cawthra Park Secondary School Chamber Choir team up for “Good Vibrations.” The TCC main choir was on tour in Boston and New York City at press time. With stops at Sanders Theatre in Boston, Carnegie Hall in NYC and the Aaron Copland School of Music, they were also invited to sing at the Canadian Consulate for the Prime Minister who happened to be in town. What a treat for those kids! Catch them in action back home on April 2 at 4pm.

Barrie’s Choralfest presents “A Night at the Opera: Bizet’s Carmen in Concert,” featuring the Lyrica Chamber Choir, King Edward Choir, Bravado the Huronia Symphony Orchestra and various soloists. This grand and well-loved work is sure to provide a stellar evening of music. April 2 at 7pm.

Univox and Florivox are two of the busiest and most accessible community choirs out there in Toronto at the moment. Dallas Bergen, founder and artistic director is on a sabbatical, so in his stead, accomplished soprano, Univox sub-conductor and actor Tahirih Vejdani has taken the reins. Vejdani conducts Univox in a presentation of “Everything Beautiful: The Music of Broadway,” featuring cabaret superstar Chris Tsujiuchi and  performers from Theatre 20’s composium and conservatory in hit songs from West Side Story, The Phantom of the Opera and Wicked on April 2 at 8pm.

Florivox, usually helmed by Vejdani, is being led by Gillian Stecyk in “Shadows and Light: A Journey Through Dark Corners and Open Spaces.” In community partnership with Red Door Family Shelter – one of the only shelters in Toronto that accepts families in crisis – Florivox will present songs by Adam Guettel, Leonard Cohen and more on April 3 at 3pm.

The Etobicoke Centennial Choir presents “When Daffodils Begin to Peer,” featuring Paul Halley’s Love Songs for Springtime and Holst’s Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda amongst others on April 2 at 7:30pm.

The Karen Schuessler Singers present “London Composers Exposed! Creativity Up Close and Personal.” Featuring works by local composers, the event is followed by a post-concert reception and a chance to meet the composers and artists on April 2 at 8pm.

Carmina Burana – Carl Orff’s unrivalled musical masterpiece of medieval monkish debauchery – continues to be an impressive display for an effective choir. The Amadeus Choir will doubtless do the work justice, with the added support of the Buffalo Master Chorale and the Bach Children’s Choir on April 3 at 4pm.

Other great works this early spring:

The Elmer Iseler Singers and Toronto Ukrainian Male Chamber Choir join Vesnivka Choir’s “50th Anniversary Gala Concert” on April 17 at 3pm in Glenn Gould Studio. Conductor Halyna Kvitka Kondracki founded the Vesnivka Ukrainian Women’s Choir in 1965.

The Oakville Choral Society presents “Wings of a Dove,” featuring works by Mendelssohn, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms on April 22 and 23 at 7:30pm.

The Achill Choral Society presents “Celtic Spirit,” featuring Irish, Scottish and Eastern Canadian songs including Londonderry Air and Fogarty’s Cove. In true Celtic fashion the Achill Choral Society will be joined by NUÀ, a traditional trio featuring fiddle, guitar and bodhrán (Celtic drum) on April 23 at 3pm in Alliston and April 30 at 7:30pm in Caledon.

Just before the end of the month you can catch the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s presentation of Haydn’s The Creation. An ever-popular piece, Haydn’s classical masterpiece fits very comfortably in the ear and is always a treat. Look for me in the tenor section on April 27 at 7:30pm in Koerner Hall.

Echo Women’s Choir presents “Songs of Hope and Resistance: Celebrating May Day and International Workers’ Day.” A bold idea, Becca Whitler and Alan Gasser lead Echo in a variety of labour-themed works including Chilean Victor Jara’s Plegaria a un Labrador (Worker’s Prayer); French revolutionary song Le temps des cerises and more, on May 1 at 3pm.

The combined talent of Chorus Niagara, Choralis Camerata and Chorus Niagara Children’s Choir join with TorQ Percussion Ensemble and pianists Karin Di Bella and Lynne Honsberger in a compact, but-no less powerful version of Carmina Burana on May 7 at 7:30pm. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir used a similar format in its performance with TorQ in 2012 and it was very effective.

Univox will join Masterworks of Oakville in a presentation of Mendelssohn’s grand Elijah on May 7 at 8pm in Oakville and May 8 at 4pm in Toronto. Always a pleasure to hear, this magnificent piece of music was once more popular than Handel’s Messiah.

Finally, make sure to check out singtoronto.com to see all the fun of Sing! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festival running from May 4 to 15.  We will have much more about this festival in the May issue of The WholeNote.

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

On April 28, Tafelmusik will present “Zelenka and Bach,” a concert which features Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Missa Omnium Sanctorum. The German singer, Dorothee Mields, was engaged to sing the soprano solo but a decision was made to open up the other solo parts to a competition. The winners were Kim Leeds, mezzo, Jacques-Olivier Chartier, tenor, and Jonathan Woody, bass-baritone.

Leeds and Woody are American. Leeds has sung a great deal, mainly Bach, in the Boston area. In June and July she will be performing at the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene in concerts that include the world premiere of James MacMillan’s Requiem. Woody has a music degree from McGill and is now based in New York City. While a specialist in baroque music, he has considerable experience in the performance of modern works, including singing a part in an opera by Darius Milhaud and a collaboration with the Rolling Stones. Chartier is the only Canadian of the three. He is also the only one whom I have heard previously: earlier this season he sang the tenor arias in the Ottawa Bach Society performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass. He was very good. The concert, which will be repeated on April 29, 30 and May 1, will include Bach’s Cantata No.202 (Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten), in which Mields will be the soprano soloist.

Bryn Terfel: Like many, I first became aware of the Welsh bass-baritone, Bryn Terfel, in 1989, when he was a finalist in the BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff. He did not win the main event – Dmitri Hvorostovsky did – but was awarded the Lieder Prize. Initially he was especially noted for his Schubert lieder, for Welsh songs and for some of the main Mozart baritone roles, including Figaro, Masetto and (a little later) Don Giovanni. In recent years he has moved to Wagner (Wolfram, Wotan, the Dutchman, Hans Sachs). He has sung both the title role and that of Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff. He will make his Koerner Hall debut on April 24 (with the pianist Natalia Katyukova). The first half of the concert will feature Welsh songs but it will also include Jacques Ibert’s Chansons de Don Quichotte; the second half will give us songs by Schubert and Schumann.

Finno-Ugric Synergy: Finnish and Hungarian are not Indo-European languages. Instead they form part of a family called Finno-Ugric. This probably indicates a common origin for the two peoples. In an imaginative move, Mazzoleni Songmasters have put the two together with music by Liszt and Bartók on the one hand and Sibelius and Saariaho on the other. The singers will be Erin Wall, soprano, and Stephen Hegedus, bass-baritone. The pianists are Rachel Andrist and Robert Kortgaard. Of special interest is Saariaho’s Changing Light, in which the violinist Erika Raum will perform with Erin Wall; at Mazzoleni Concert Hall, May 1.

Lunch for All Seasons: The free lunch-time concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Auditorium at the Four Seasons Centre will resume on April 19 with Clémentine Margaine, mezzo, and Stephen B. Hargreaves, piano. Subsequent recitals will be given by Russell Thomas, tenor, and Michael Shannon, piano on April 21; Simone Osborne, soprano, and Stephen B. Hargreaves, piano on April 26; artists of the COC Ensemble Studio and the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal on April 28; Anita Rachvelishvili, mezzo, and David Aladashvili, piano on May 3; and Ambur Braid, soprano, with Steven Philcox, piano, in a celebration of Canadian art song, May 5.

QUICK PICKS

A staged and costumed program of romantic opera, “The Art of the Prima Donna,” with music by Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and others, will be given on Apr 1 at Walter Hall.

 Carla Huhtanen will be the soprano soloist in Abigail Richardson-Schulte’s setting of Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee; with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, Apr 2.

Pandora Topp will be the singer a program of Piaf songs at The Extension Room, Apr 2.

 Leslie Fagan, soprano, Christopher Mayell, tenor, and Peter MacGillivray, baritone, will be the soloists in a program that includes Carmina Burana by Orff and Psalm of David by Dello Joio at Toronto Centre for the Arts, Apr 3.

 Kati Agócs will be the soprano soloist in a newly commissioned piece by her, with the Cecilia String Quartet at Walter Hall, Apr 4.

Carla Huhtanen, soprano, will sing in a program of new works by Höstmann, Newsome, Scime and S. Wilson with the Array Ensemble at Array Space, Apr 5.

Ilana Zarankin and Robin Dann will perform in a Women’s Musical Club concert, “Dannthology,” given by Steven Dann, viola, with family and friends at Walter Hall, Apr 7.

Essential Opera presents four sopranos (Erin Bardua, Maureen Batt, Maureen Ferguson and Julie Ludwig) in a program of contemporary operas by Uyeda, Raum, Höstmann, Pidgorna, Estacio and Heggie at Heliconian Hall, Apr 8.

 Darlene Shura, soprano, Jacqueline Gélineau, contralto, Asitha Tennekoon, tenor, and John Holland, baritone, give a free performance of Bach’s Easter Oratorio at Heliconian Hall, Apr 10.

 Leslie Bouza, Carla Huhtanen, Michele DeBoer and Laura Pudwell will be the singers in a concert devoted to the music of Steve Reich in honour of his 80th birthday at Massey Hall, Apr 14.

“At the Ball: Social Dance through the Ages” showcases works by Purcell, Dan Godfrey and Joplin, as well as items from the Playford and Lowe collections. The singer, at Heliconian Hall, is Paula Arciniega, mezzo, on Apr 15.

Scaramella presents a concert of works by Purcell, Melani, Bach, Merula and Odorico at Victoria College Chapel, Apr 16. The singer is the soprano Dawn Bailey.

Gallery 345 presents Beth Anne Cole singing Gershwin, Apr 17.

Castle Frank House of Melody presents works by Offenbach, Puccini, Verdi, Gershwin and others that will be sung by Cara Adams, soprano, Patricia Haldane, mezzo, and Justin Welsh, baritone, Apr 23.

Jessika Whitfield, soprano, and Matthew Whitfield, piano, will perform a free concert at Metropolitan United Church, Apr 28.

Mira Solovianenko, soprano, and Andrew Tees, baritone, will be the soloists with the Oakham House Choir of Ryerson University on Apr 30. The major work to be performed is Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (Part 1).

Charlotte Burrage, mezzo, and Clarence Frazer, baritone, will sing at Metropolitan United Church, May 1.

On May 3 and 4 Krisztina Szabó, mezzo, and Aaron Durand, baritone, will perform with the Talisker Players in a program that includes works by Purcell, Gluck, Burry, Mahler and Bernstein.

Julia Morson, soprano, and Rashaan Allwood, piano, will give a free recital at Metropolitan United Church on May 5.

And beyond the GTA: Sheila Dietrich, soprano, Carolynne Davy, mezzo, and Chris Fischer and Lanny Fleming, tenors, will be the soloists in a program of works by Handel, Monteverdi and Mondonville at St. George’s Anglican Church, Guelph, Apr 9.

Jennifer Enns Modolo, mezzo, Bud Roach, tenor, and David Roth, baritone, will be the soloists in the Spiritus Ensemble performance of two Bach cantatas, Christ lag in Todesbanden and Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen, in Kitchener, Apr 10.

Georgian Music presents Marie-Josée Lord, soprano, and Hugues Cloutier, piano, performing works by Granados, Rodrigo, de Falla, Bernstein, Porter and others in Barrie, Apr 24.

Jeffery Concerts presents Krisztina Szabó, mezzo, and Benjamin Butterfield, tenor, in a concert that includes Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared and Zigeunerlieder by Brahms, Apr 30 at Wolf Performance Hall, London.

Hans de Groot is a concertgoer and active listener who also sings and plays the recorder. He can be contacted at artofsong@thewholenote.com.