Beat Columns (Live Music)

Yes, ’tis the season, though it’s sometimes a cold one for world music lovers. I’ll put my cards on the table for you, dear reader. It doesn’t take much 6/8 time early music to put me into the Christmas spirit, and just a few bars of a polished Salvation Army brass band to warm my chilled Noël heart. I’m a sucker for Yuletide carols, period instrument performances of baroque staples by Bach, et al, grand chorales and church organ music. I may join the tenor section of a sing-along Messiah yet once more this year, the one with Ivars Taurins conducting, re-enacting moody “Herr Handel” warts, waistcoat and all. It’s an interactive event which combines several of those seasonal pleasures I don’t feel obliged to feel guilty about at all.

I wish I could say that about the Timar family holiday tradition. For decades we’ve feasted and then decorated the dessert table with super-rich confections. Make no mistake though; these are serious symbols of conspicuous abundance. Other kids had Christmas lights twinkling publicly on frosty front porches; we had tortes, truffles, candies and pastries shared in the warmth of family. Imagine homemade all-nut tortes garnished with spiked whipped cream and flavoured buttercream in thick layers. And heaping plates of all-butter shortbreads, artisanal boozy mascarpone truffles and raspberry Linzer squares, all toasted with Tokay and bubbly — but I digress from my main musical point...

My problem: none of the music performance sites I mentioned are generally considered or marketed as “world music,” my beat at The WholeNote. Thus I can’t discuss that sort of musicking here. What I do feel free to discuss however is the wealth of music originating from the second, third and hybrid worlds being performed in our midst, some of it even tied thematically to the season.

World cultures for millennia have marked the frighteningly long darkest night and looked forward to any sign of the return of the light. Lux Aeterna is a theme not only in the Latin liturgy and its music but in rituals around the world. As I write this, late fall’s first white flakes swirl from above in shifting clouds, magically dusting our world with lacy crystals of water. It puts me in the mood to engage in haiku, another season-specific activity. This Japanese poetic form, like world music itself is an imported notion, an admirable platform from which to succinctly reflect on this liminal season:

Longest night, coldest

day; Solstice sings fa-la-la —

winter pine boughs cheer.

Picks: December 3 the Nathaniel Dett Chorale presents a concert deftly merging European, African American and Caribbean hybrid musical worlds thematically evoking the season. “An Indigo Christmas: Songs to the Black Virgin” at St. Timothy’s Anglican Church, promises Christmas music with a “distinct Afrocentric vibe.” The Chorale has presented this program before and released a stirring CD titled An Indigo Christmas – Live! in 2004. The notes admirably sum up the music as an “age-old story of expectation, hope, redemption and freedom wrapped up in the promise of a newborn child.” The concert offers arrangements of spirituals and carols, “some with an African shout, a Caribbean twist, a jazz treatment, or a gospel blast of hope and joy.”

Two days earlier, on December 1 at Koerner Hall, the 2012 Canadian Folk Music Award-winning Sultans of String release their new CD, Symphony! in a concert presented by Royal Conservatory and Small World Music. The album was recorded with the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra conducted by Norman Reintamm. Toronto’s Sultans of String was co-founded in 2004 by the well-known six-string violinist Chris McKhool and flamenco guitarist Kevin Laliberté. They are joined by Eddie Paton, guitar, bassist Drew Birston, Roger Travassos on percussion and the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra. Expect a fast-paced instrumental concert mashing up elements of Arabic folk, Spanish flamenco, French Manouche Gypsy jazz, Cuban rhythms, all supported by lush pops orchestral arrangements.

In the last issue of The WholeNote my colleague Wendalyn Bartley wrote about the December 4 and 5 Continuum Contemporary Music production of Nuyamł-ił Kulhulmx/Singing the Earth at the Wychwood Theatre. Is this world music? My excuse for revisiting it here is that the composer of the work, Bella Coola-native Anna Höstman (winner of the 2013 Toronto Emerging Composer Award), incorporates multi-ethnic human texts and musical materials as well as the natural soundscape of the B.C. geography into this fascinating interdisciplinary performance. It weaves into the score not only human stories — a mixture of the indigenous Nuxalk Nation, descendants of Norwegian and Japanese settlers — but also the ever-present sonic backdrop of the place: the river and the forest. The Continuum Ensemble’s skilled septet, conducted by Gregory Oh, is joined by mezzo Marion Newman.

December 5 the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, presents its regular bi-annual “World Music Ensembles Concert” at 7:30pm in Walter Hall. This particular concert includes the (Balinese Semar Pegulingan) Gamelan Ensemble directed by Annette Sanger. They’re joined by Brian Katz’s Klezmer Ensemble; the Japanese Taiko Ensemble directed by Kiyoshi Nagata rounds out the early evening.

Women take stage centre: Rounding out the first week of the month on December 7 the Batuki Music Society showcases “Songs of My Mother: A Celebration of African Women” at the Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum. The Batuku Music press release notes that in traditional African music male voices are often privileged while the female voice “is not given [the] prominent role that it deserves” even though it is ever present. Moreover “women are often ... discouraged from assuming leading roles especially as bandleaders. Toronto has a good number of African female singers: some of them lead their own bands and others are vocalists in various groups.” This concert seeks to redress an evident gender inequality and to shine “a light on the rich talent and the diversity of music that these women possess.” The featured singers are: Tapa Diarra, Evelyn Mukwedeya, Memory Makuri, Blandine Mbiya and Ruth Mathiang. They are supported by five (male) musicians and the choreographer/dancer Mabinty Sylla.

December 7 and 8 another concert examines the female diasporic experience, this time from an Asian perspective. The Raging Asian Women Taiko Drummers, aka RAW performs “From Rage Comes” on the spacious stage of the Betty Oliphant Theatre. RAW promises this concert “will not be your typical percussion event.” Toronto’s self-described “well-loved ensemble of Asian women activist drummers” has collectively created an evening-length work which aims to tell their stories as diasporic Asian-Canadian women in the 21st century through music, movement and storytelling. They mine personal experiences which “explore the theme of rage ... and what comes from it. When it is unleashed ... when it is muted ... when it must be swallowed ... and when it empowers women to transcend.” The core taiko drumming practice of RAW, as it has evolved in North America, is a jumping off point “for an artistic journey to explore racial, sexual and cultural identities ... with a special focus on social activism, education and community building.” They’re well worth seeing.

The same night, December 8, the Echo Women’s Choir raises its 80 strong voices at the Church of the Holy Trinity with a social activist, community and world music focus in a program titled “Rise.” The Echo performs Appalachian, Croatian klapa  — a form of traditional a cappella singing from Dalmatia, gospel, South African songs, as well as compositions by several composers. The choir is joined by guest guitarist and fiddler Annabelle Chvostek. Becca Whitla and Alan Gasser conduct.

More picks: December 14 the African Catholic Community Choir presents songs from a variety of African traditions, plus works in English and French. Conducted by Serge Tshiunza, the concert is at the Holy Name Catholic Church.

We skip more than a month, and into a new year, to January 18, 2014. “Send me a Rose” is the concert by the Lute Legends Ensemble at the Glenn Gould Studio. Bassam Bishara, oud (‘ud), Lucas Harris, lute, and Wen Zhao, pipa, present music for three prominent instruments of the venerable and widespread lute family. Some scholars trace the lineages of the modern Near-Eastern ‘ud and Chinese pipa to a common ancestor about 1,100 years ago. The European lute and the ‘ud are also related. Both appear to have descended from a common forbear via diverging evolutionary paths. The Lute Legends trio aims to bend the direction of these divergent geographic paths back toward the unified goal of making music together on the cozy stage of the Glenn Gould Studio. Their program includes music from Turkey, Italy, Iraq, China and Scotland. Sweetening the Can-con, the Canadian composer Andrew Donaldson has written a work for them too.

January 18 Amanda Martinez, no stranger to our column, brings her signature eclectic Latin-centred music to our 905 neighbours in Markham. Martinez and her band will offer a generous mix of Afro-Cuban beats, bossa nova, flamenco and Mexican folk music at the Flato Markham Theatre.

Already into the second month of the New Year, on February 1, Fatoumata Diawara and Bassekou Kouyate perform the exciting hybrid music of Malian blues at Koerner Hall. Co-presented by the Royal Conservatory, Small World Music and Batuki Music, Malian singer Diawara was singled out by Time magazine in 2012 as a singer to watch. “Her well-crafted songs are often light and breezy, but her soulful voice brings a bluesy depth and potency ...” Sharing the stage is Mali’s Kouyate, the jeli ngoni virtuoso, whose music has been compared to the “electric desert blues” of Tinariwen and Ali Farka Touré.

I look forward to continuing my personal observations of the GTA world music scene in these pages next year. May you have a banner 2014. 

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

As the waves of the new and the experimental in sound continue to unfold in the life of Toronto’s music scene, it’s worth taking a look back at the institutions that brought us to this point. Certainly one of the most influential in the creation of this legacy has been the Music Gallery, which first opened its doors on St. Patrick Street in 1976. I know I’m not alone in having fond memories of all that went on within those walls. It was an experimental hub, an incubator and laboratory for the most cutting-edge musical developments. It also had an educational focus, serving the community by providing an accessible recording studio, launching Musicworks magazine, and starting its own recording label: Music Gallery Editions. And all that history over the years has been recorded. Just thinking of all the gems housed in their archives would be enough to make any aficionado salivate.

Monica Pearce: The latest news at the gallery is that they have just hired a new executive director — Monica Pearce. Monica comes with a background as a composer in the contemporary classical tradition, a concert presenter (Toy Piano Composers Collective) and an administrator (The Canadian League of Composers). She joins the Gallery’s current artistic director David Dacks; their combined distinctive musical backgrounds promise to provide inspiring leadership for the next generation of innovation. When I spoke to Monica about the Music Gallery’s current vision, she affirmed their ongoing commitment to building community and collaboration among artists of diverse genres and artforms. She sees the Music Gallery playing an important role in fostering this dialogue and sees that the time is ripe for camaraderie and mutual support amongst the eclectic range of new music presenters and artists in the city. She pointed to the creation of the New Music Passport as one sign of this collaboration. For a small fee, passport-holders are offered one discounted ticket to one concert by each of the 11 participating organizations. (This would make a great holiday gift by the way. See newmusicpassport.wordpress.com for details.) The New Music 101 series of talks at the Toronto Reference Library is another example of this growing solidarity.

The gallery also involves the artistic community by engaging different curators for the various concert series. This is evident in their current Emergent series, which is curated by all the featured artists of last season’s Emergent concerts. The December 12 Emergent concert “Strange Strings” explores diverse string theories for new music mixed with DIY electronics and progressive rock while the January 17 event brings together Toronto-based sound artist Christopher Willes and the Ensemble Paramirabo from Montreal.

And just as Monica begins her new position, the current curator of the Post-Classical series, pianist Gregory Oh, presents his last concert on December 20, a production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl Passion by American composer David Lang. Performed by a vocal quartet accompanying themselves on percussion, the piece is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic Christmas story that illuminates the dichotomy between a young girl’s suffering and hope. It draws much of its musical inspiration from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The Washington Post’s Tim Page said of the piece that it is “unlike any music I know.”

As I mentioned above, part of the Music Gallery’s vision is to collaborate with other new music presenters. On December 8 they will co-present a concert with Contact Contemporary Music titled “The Most Relaxing of All Instruments” in which listeners will experience an otherworldly program of solo and chamber works featuring guitarist Rob MacDonald and guests Stephen Tam (flute) and David Schotzko (percussion). And of course, the Music Gallery is often the preferred concert venue for many of the city’s new music groups. On January 19, New Music Concerts will present “From Atlantic Shores” featuring the New Brunswick-based Motion Ensemble performing an eclectic mix of works by Maritime composers. The program includes a newly commissioned piece by Lucas Oickle, a recent graduate of Acadia University, along with two works connected to the historical Acadian area of Grand-Pre.

James Tenney: Another aspect of the Music Gallery’s legacy from its early days in the 70s was the close relationship that was fostered with the music department at York University. Visiting artists at the gallery would often visit York and student ensembles would often perform at the gallery. James Tenney was one such York professor, composer and music theorist who fostered this relationship. On December 6, Arraymusic will celebrate Tenney’s music with a concert of several of his works, including two pieces he write for the ensemble. In the words of former Arraymusic artistic director Robert Stevenson “Tenney shook up this city’s music community, making us more aware of such experimental American composers as Conlon Nancarrow and Alvin Lucier. Through his devoted commitment to the music of our time, Jim provided us with the courage and determination to give our lives over to the music we believe in.” This concert will be a chance to listen to Jim’s brilliant visionary music, including works for different tuning systems and intriguing composition processes.

Gabriel Prokofiev: Over at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, this year’s edition of their New Music Festival gets underway on January 25 with a concert of symphonic works by two generations of Prokofievs: the famous one — Sergei — and his grandson Gabriel, who is this year’s invited visitor in composition. Gabriel Prokofiev’s distinctive sound is informed by his background as a producer of hip-hop, grime, and electro records as well as his training as a composer in the classical and electroacoustic traditions. His critically acclaimed Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra, to be performed in the opening concert, is one example of how he mixes these two worlds.

The fact of his being the featured composer of the festival means that there will be multiple opportunities to hear the full range of the dynamic composer’s music. Two concerts of his chamber works will be performed on January 29 and 30, along with a concert of his choral music on February 2. Included in the programming will be a recently released work Cello Multitracks, originally conceived as a multitrack work to be recorded by one performer, but also playable live for cello nonet. This is yet another example of how he combines influences from both dance music and more traditional classical forms.

On January 31 during a noon-hour concert of electroacoustic music, listeners will be treated to more of his works in this genre alongside recent pieces by graduate students. Later that evening, the Karen Kieser Prize Concert will present the 2013-winning piece Walking by Chris Thornborrow, as well as works by G. Prokofiev and others. Esprit Orchestra is also getting into the spirit of the festival action, and their January 26 concert will feature a movement from G. Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto. This concert will also feature guest conductor Samy Moussa conducting the premiere of his own new work as well as a piece by German conductor Peter Ruzicka. Compositions by Canadian Zosha Di Castri and Berlin-based Unsuk Chin round out this concert titled “Strange Matter.”

Walter Buczynski: Returning to the U of Toronto’s New Music Festival, there will be an 80th birthday celebration afternoon concert in honour of professor Walter Buczynski on January 26 followed the next day by a guest piano recital by Roberto Turrin. A work by David Lang (composer of Little Match Girl Passion) will also be presented in an unusual concert pairing of bassoon and percussion music on January 29. Student composers will be presenting works on January 30 (miniature operas), February 2 (jazz) and February 4.

In brief: The theme “(Re)Generations of the New” shows up in yet another configuration over these next two months with nine different concerts that mix classical and contemporary music together:

December 3, works by Colin Eatock and Jean Papineau-Couture appear in a unique Canadian Day Revisited event at the Lula Lounge. Syrinx Concerts Toronto celebrates Canadian composers Harry Somers at their December 8 concert and Kelly Marie Murphy at their January 12 event, both at the Heliconian Hall. The Amici Chamber Ensemble includes a work by Tōru Takemitsu in their December 1 concert while the Annex Singers perform a piece by Arvo Pärt on December 14. And the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society mixes in pieces by John Zorn (January 10) and Marjan Mozetich (January 12) while the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony plays Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes on January 18.

To close out, we cannot forget the invaluable contribution the Canadian Music Centre has made in facilitating the growth of new music. Events such as their piano series keep Canadian music alive. Check out the January 13 event when Chris Donnelly will perform his Metamorphosis: Ten Improvisations for Solo Piano and their “Nonclassical Night” with Gabriel Prokofiev January 28.

Quick picks

Canadian Opera Company, lobby concerts: “Power Chords” features a new work by Scott Good on December 3; A Soldier’s Tale by John Gzowski is February 6.

Soundstreams: Canadian Choral Celebration on February 2 pairs Gorecki’s Miserere with the world premiere of R. Murray Schafer’s Hear the Sounds go Round. 

Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. Her own concert, “A Winter Solstice Celebration CD launch,” December 21, features selections from her recently released Sound Dreaming: Oracle Songs from Ancient Ritual Spaces. She can be reached at sounddreaming@gmail.com.

The concept of the musical “guilty pleasure” is a dumb notion that needs to be permanently retired. Guilty pleasures, of course, are things you enjoy that aren’t especially healthy for you. The holiday season gives you an opportunity to indulge in, oh, one or two of them. So a (not especially convincing) case can be made for feeling guilt about taking pleasure in things that, in excess, can lead to ill health — food and drink certainly fall into this category.

But the idea of guilty pleasure is also commonly and perniciously associated with music, though as of this writing science has yet to establish the link between listening choice and terminal disease.

The idea is a powerful one. If your self-image is somehow shaped by your musical preferences — for many people, it is — then anything that apparently contradicts that image must be listened to on the sly, becoming a “guilty pleasure”: the Bach expert who likes to kick back with Italian pop ballads by Bocelli (while her unsuspecting husband snoozes upstairs); or the thrash metal enthusiast whose eyes mist up listening to a heartbreak ballad on his daughter’s Taylor Swift album.

During this holiday season, in which pretty much every choir around presents a program with the intent to delight and enchant, perhaps we can agree that guilt should have no place in our musical choices — no matter what the time of year.

I’ll write more about this curious but widespread phenomenon in the next column — it’s entirely relevant to our ongoing discussion of new music. In the meantime, having focused almost exclusively on the Britten centenary last month, I will turn the column over to December concerts.

Toronto has a wealth of excellent children’s choirs, and two of the most accomplished present seasonal programs in December. The Bach Children’s Chorus and Bach Chamber Youth Choir present “This Frosty Tide” on December 7; and the Toronto Children’s Chorus presents “A Chorus Christmas: Fanciful Fantasies” on December 21.

A newly formed children’s choir, the ASLAN Boys Choir of Toronto, presents their debut performance “Now is the Time!” on December 15.

The Nathaniel Dett Chorale, a choir devoted to music of the African diaspora, performs “An Indigo Christmas” on December 3. Inspired by the famous “Nigra Sum” text from the Song of Songs (“I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem”), the concert is a collection of “Songs to the Black Virgin” — music inspired by Madonna figures from around the world.

Messiah concerts: you’re on your own. Do I really need to talk up this piece at this stage in human history? Go and support the many excellent choirs who have made it a central part of their concert season. Here’s my suggestion — throw a dart at a page of the listings, chosen at random; then go see the Messiah performance that you hit. (Or if you prefer, there’s a handy Messiah Quick Picks at the end of this column!)

Handelian alternatives:For those who want to hear works by composers from the classical canon (other than Handel), there are several other good choices.

On December 7 the Cantores Celestes Women’s Choir performs Vivaldi’s Gloria as well as other seasonal favourites. This concert celebrates the ensemble’s 25th anniversary.

The day before, December 6, the Upper Canada Choristers also perform the Vivaldi work, as well as music by Praetorius and Handel.

Poulenc’s Gloria is the highlight of the Oakville Choral Society’s “A Christmas Celebration of English and French Music” on December 13.

J.S. Bach’s setting of the Magnificat text, jubilant and haunting by turns, is also a good seasonal choice for choirs and audiences. The VOCA Chorus of Toronto performs this work on December 7.

For another Bach choice, also on December 7, the Etobicoke Centennial Choir performs Cantata BWV140 “Sleepers Awake” (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme), as well as Jewish-Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick’s tuneful Kedusha.

More Bach: On December 14 the Toronto Chamber Choir presents “Christmas with J.S. Bach,” a concert that combines works for Advent and Christmas.

On December 8 the Toronto Beach Chorale performs a Christmas concert that features some tasty and unusual early 20th century British works: Finzi’s In Terra Pax, Holst’s Christmas Day and Vaughan Williams’ moving Fantasia on Christmas Carols.

One of the great virtues of Christmas music is its multicultural depth. On December 14 the Canadian Men’s Chorus presents “En Hiver,” a concert that includes the premiere of Toronto composer/conductor Norman Reintamm’s Three Estonian Carols. In the same spirit, on December 7, Chorus Niagara performs “A Canadian Christmas Carol,” a concert combining Canadian carols, poetry, prose and images.

For those who want to balance their carol intake with music from another world festival, the Toronto Jewish Folk Choir presents Chanukah concerts on December 9 and 11.

Looking ahead to January: A special choral event is taking place in Hamilton on January 19. Our city’s best choral gospel ensemble, the Toronto Mass Choir is performing a joint concert with the McMaster University Choir. Karen Burke, the TMC’s conductor, is actually a graduate of McMaster University, and the concert will be a culmination of a series of workshops in which the two choirs will collaborate and develop repertoire. This is a rare opportunity for people in the Hamilton region to enjoy a visit from this terrific ensemble.

One final thought:The print run of this December/January issue of The WholeNote will likely have disappeared well before the beginning of February, but I wanted to make note of a Soundstreams choral concert celebrating 60 years of professional choral singing in Canada. Three of Canada’s top professional chamber ensembles, Elmer Iseler Singers, Pro Coro Canada and the Vancouver Chamber Choir will perform individually in three concerts February 1 and then combine on February 2, conducted by Kaspars Putniņš, the leader of the renowned Latvian Radio Choir.

Soundstreams will also sponsor an intriguing sounding lecture on January 17, ”New Directions in Choral Music.” The event will explore innovations in the use of the voice in modern choral writing and performance.

In the meantime, check out the rest of the listings, enjoy the season, and remember that when it comes to music, no pleasure should be a guilty one. Still, I could be wrong. I’ll ponder it over some whiskey and chocolate. 

Benjamin Stein is a Toronto tenor and lutenist.
He can be contacted at choralscene@thewholenote.com.
Visit his website at benjaminstein.ca.

Concert Note: Feb 01 7:30: Metropolitan United Church. True Colours. Bach Children’s Chorus, Linda Beaupré, conductor; Metropolitan Church Choir, Patricia Wright, conductor and organ; Northern Lights, Steve Armstrong and Jordan Travis, conductors; and others. 56 Queen St. E. 316-363-0331 x26. $20; $10(18 and under).  Proceeds benefit the restoration of the Metropolitan United Church organ.

Haydn was a composer known for surprises but it’s likely that even he would have been amazed to find a complete cycle of his 68 string quartets being undertaken in Waterloo over the next three and a half years. Anyone familiar with the breadth and enterprising programming of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society (KWCMS), however, won’t be so surprised.

If someone were to quiz you on the three leading concert presenters in the greater Toronto region, the TSO and RCM’s Koerner Hall, would come to mind immediately. Yet the KWCMS, with more than 70 concerts this season is barely behind The Royal Conservatory’s 80+ and the TSO’s 109. It’s incredible really, that one dedicated couple’s love affair with music would rival the accomplishments of two such prestigious institutions. At The WholeNote we’ve been well aware of the bountifulness of the KWCMS programming since their concerts have been filling our listings pages (and the 85-seat Music Room in Jan and Jean Narveson’s home) for as long as we’ve been in existence.

Over the years the cumulative volume of talented performers who made their way to the Narvesons is astonishing enough, but it is the KWCMS’ penchant for programming complete cycle concerts that really made one sit up and take notice. Over the years, they’ve presented all the Bartók, Beethoven, Shostakovitch and even the second Viennese School quartets, three cycles of the Beethoven piano sonatas, four of the Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano, three of the Beethoven cello and piano sonatas, the complete Ravel piano works and all 49 of the Haydn piano trios.

Now in their 11th year, the Attacca Quartet -- comprised of violinists Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga, violist Luke Fleming and cellist Andrew Yee -- met at Juilliard where they spent 2011-13 as the school’s graduate resident string quartet.

Why did you decide to do this project (which began the year after the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death)? Was there a particular impetus behind this decision?

Oddly enough, I was not aware until having been asked your question that we began this project right on the heels of such a milestone!  In fact, the year of the conception of “The

68” was 2009, the 200th anniversary, but it took many things coming together to realize this ambitious idea before the first concert in October 2010.  The story actually begins before I was a member of the quartet (I joined in November 2009).  Andrew, our cellist, was out walking his dog, Chopper, one cold evening.  As usual, he had his noise-

cancelling headphones on to shield him from the noise of the Manhattan streets, and on his iPod came the slow movement of a Haydn quartet he had never heard.  As the movement went on, he was overcome by its beauty and started to cry, right in the middle

of the Upper West Side.  After returning home, he called everyone in the quartet and said,

“Guys, let’s do this.”  And when I auditioned for the quartet a few months later, it was made very clear that I needed to be on board with this (in fact, reading through a more obscure Haydn quartet was part of the audition process).  I needed very little convincing.

Last summer my daughter Saskia turned 12. Turning 12 is a rite of passage since most primary schools in Toronto do not go beyond grade six. Saskia chose, with encouragement from her parents, to move to the Downtown Vocal Music Academy on Denison Avenue, a stone’s throw from Toronto’s Kensington Market. The two VMA schools in Toronto (the other is the suburban Heather Heights PS in Scarborough) are the brainchild of Mark Bell, a man known in musical circles for his leadership of Canada Sings, a community singalong that meets every second Tuesday of the month somewhere in East Toronto (the next meeting is on November 12 at Mustard Seed, 791 Queen St. E.).

In February 2007 Bell convened a meeting of directors and managers of children’s choirs and officials of the Toronto District School Board to explore the possibility of setting up one or more schools which would specialize in singing. The TDSB came onside and a few years later Bell became vice-principal of the Downtown VMA and started preparing the 2012-13 school year. That year the program began in grade four and went up to grade six. This year grade seven was added and grade eight should follow next year. Bell would like it to continue until grade 12 eventually but there are no immediate plans for that. For now the intention is to steer students to high schools that specialize in the arts, such as Rosedale Heights.

Every day the last period at the Downtown VMA is choir (except for the afternoon, once a week, when the pupils go swimming) but there is also singing at other times during the day. It was felt impractical to offer an extended program in instrumental music, but on Friday there are after-school optional classes in piano and guitar (in cooperation with Soul Music of the University of Toronto) as well as steel pan (in cooperation with the Regent Park School of Music). Violin classes were also offered but there were no takers. At present the children are preparing for their first concert of the season December 3, “The Four Elements: Celebrating the Power of Nature in Song.” The total number of students participating is 90, but we shall also be able to hear them in smaller groups. The concert will also include the inauguration of the newly restored Heintzman grand piano.

Suzie LeBlanc is a lyric soprano, especially known for her early music performances. But her concerts are not confined to early music. A glance at her discography shows that she has also recorded classical (Mozart, Gluck), modern (Messiaen), contemporary (Peter-Anthony Togni) and traditional Acadian music. Of particular interest is a new disc with songs set to texts by Elizabeth Bishop (the composers are Emily Doolittle, Christos Hatzis, Alasdair MacLean and John Plant). She will be singing Purcell and Carissimi, with the tenor Charles Daniels and the Tafelmusik Orchestra and Chamber Choir November 6 to 10. There will be another chance to hear her this month with the viol consort Les Voix Humaines for the Women’s Music Club on November 21. That concert will be repeated November 23 in Sault Ste. Marie and November 24 in Brantford. LeBlanc will also lead a master class at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto November 20.

Simone Osborne is a former member of the Canadian Opera Studio Ensemble and has since performed several major roles for the COC: Pamina in Die Zauberflöte (while a member of the Studio Ensemble), Gilda in Rigoletto, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi and, most recently Musetta in La Bohème. Next spring she will return to the COC in the role of Oscar in Un ballo in maschera. She is the inaugural winner of Jeunesses Musicales Canada’s Maureen Forrester Award Tour. One of the concerts on this tour will be a noontime recital in the Richard Bradshaw Auditorium on November 12. She will sing Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und-leben as well as songs by Bellini, Strauss, Hahn and Current. The concert will be repeated at Midland, November 21 and at Prescott, December 6.

Other Events

Voice performance classes in the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, will be held on November 5, 19, 26 and December 3 at Walter Hall.

Adi Braun is the singer in a concert based on the songs and letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, November 6.

Erin Bardua and Maureen Batt, soprano, Stefan Fehr, tenor, and Giovanni Spanu, baritone, will be the soloists in a performance of Haydn’s L’isola disabitata at Heliconian Hall, November 8.

Eleanor James, mezzo, will be the soloist in Tanzlied by R. Murray Schafer. The concert will also feature the harpists Judy Loman and Angela Schwarzkopf and will include music by Brophy, Livingston, Buhr and Lau in the Mazzoleni Concert Hall, November 10.

Shannon Mercer, soprano, Krisztina Szabó, mezzo, Christopher Mayell, tenor, and Jesse Clark, bass, will be the soloists in a performance of Mozart’s Requiem at the Cathedral Church of St. James, November 13.

Students from the Glenn Gould vocal program will perform The Silent Serenade by Korngold at the Royal Conservatory, November 15 and 16.

Sara Papini, soprano, will sing compositions by Andjelika Javorina at the Glenn Gould Studio, November 15.

Janet Obermeyer, soprano, will sing Der Hirt auf dem Felsen by Schubert at Metropolitan United Church, November 16.

Nathalie Paulin is the soprano soloist in a concert of 20th century music at Walter Hall, November 18.

York University Department of Music presents vocal masterclasses with Che Anne Loewen, November 19 and with Leslie Fagan, November 22 at Tribute Communities Hall, November.

Lesley Bouza, soprano, and Colin Ainsworth, tenor, will be the soloists in a Britten concert by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at Yorkminster Baptist Church, November 20.

Darlene Shura, soprano, Jacqueline Gélineau, contralto, and John Holland, baritone, will sing selections from Bach’s cantatas at Heliconian Hall, November 30.

At Calvin Presbyterian Church November 30, Allison Cecilia Arends, soprano, and Stanislas Vitort, tenor, will be the soloists in Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 (Lobgesang) with the Oakham House Choir. The concert will also include a number of works composed or arranged by John Rutter.

Recitals at Rosedale presents “Opera nella chiesa” with music by Handel, Massenet and Menotti. The singers are Laura Albino, soprano, Laura Tucker, mezzo, Timothy Wong, countertenor, and Anthony Cleverton and Jason Howard, baritone, at Rosedale Presbyterian Church, December 1.

And beyond the GTA:Bethany Hörst, soprano, Bud Roach, tenor, and Alexander Dobson, bass, will perform baroque opera arias, with the Bach Elgar Choir at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, November 9 and 10.

Nicholas Phan, tenor, and Martin Limoges, horn, will perform Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. The concert will also include Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 at the Centre in the Square, Kitchener, November 29 and 30.

Charlene Pauls, soprano, Erica Iris-Huang, mezzo, Bud Roach, tenor, and James Baldwin, bass, will be the soloists in a performance of the Magnificat by Bach and the Magnificat by Rutter at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Oakville, November 30.

The first of many complete Messiahs will arrive on December 6 and 7 presented by the Bach Elgar Choir. The soloists are Jennifer Taverner, soprano, Michele Bogdanowicz, mezzo, Chris Fischer, tenor, and Andrew Tees, bass at Melrose United Church in Hamilton. 

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

El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) has been celebrated by Mexicans for centuries as a time for families to remember and honour the departed. It’s a pre-Columbian custom grafted onto the Christian triduum consisting of All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween to the secular world), All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Many Mexicans believe that the spirits of the dead dutifully visit their descendants on October 31, returning to their accustomed resting places on November 2. To properly receive their spectral relatives, families make altars and place ofrendas (offerings) of food such as pan de muertos (bread of the dead) baked in shapes of skulls and figures, yellow marigolds known as cempazuchitl, photos, candles, and incense.

This practice may sound a touch morbid to some Canadians but to Mexicans death is approached with joy, celebration and playfulness, as well as with mourning. It’s not uncommon for Mexican children to play “funeral” with toys representing coffins and undertakers. The fear of death is transformed through mocking it, as well as by living alongside it, accepting it as a fact of everyday life.

Larry Lake: Day of the Dead rituals have slowly been seeping into our secular Toronto collective consciousness over the past decade or so — see my mention of the Harbourfront events further on in this column. What better time to celebrate influential musicians among us who have recently passed? Larry Lake, the influential Toronto composer, radio broadcaster and record producer, died in September of this year (and was remembered in the October WholeNote by David Jaeger). As he was a friend I’ll call him Larry here, and this is my written mini-ofrenda.

As a composer Larry was best known for his electronic music. Much less well known however is Larry’s support of the early career of the Toronto world music group, Evergreen Club Gamelan (of which I am a member). ECG is Canada’s first performing gamelan group and this season we are marking our 30th anniversary. Larry was an “early adaptor” of the gamelan as a brand new medium for expression among established Canadian composers. “Larry’s support was critical to the fledgling group,” notes Jon Siddall, ECG’s founding artistic director. In the mid-1980s when Siddall commissioned Larry to compose a new work for ECG, the notion of a set of Indonesian gamelan instruments performing contemporary music written and played by Canadians was a brand new — even a radical — proposition. The gamelan ensemble and its music was barely known in the True North. Larry’s open ears, open mind and generous spirit helped the fledgling ECG, among Canada’s first wave of world music groups, to go from strength to strength. In the space of a few years it went on to commission John Cage, as well as dozens of Canadian composers, and to tour internationally.

Larry completed composing his Three Bagatelles for ECG in 1986. Its recording was released on the LP/cassette (later CD) North of Java on the Arjuna label in 1987, the first commercial recording of Canadian gamelan music. I re-auditioned Three Bagatelles recently. I heard a charming three-movement work effectively layering the brash sounds of 1980s electronic music synthesis with the eight-musician acoustic gamelan degung sounds of the ECG. It was in turn declamatory, lyrical and incisively percussive.

Larry’s geniality was often tinged with an endearingly gentle wry sense of humour. When I met him for the first read-through of my suling (bamboo ring flute) part for “Andrew’s Song,” movement two of his Three Bagatelles, I was discouraged by the primitive dot-matrix staff notation printout he presented. I made a comment disparaging what to me seemed an overly simplistic, unchallenging score. Unfazed, Larry gave me some memorable advice: “Treat the notation only as a guide ... go ahead and ‘Eastern it up!’” In other words, play it expressively, where appropriate using idiomatic suling ornaments, articulation, phrasing and dynamic shadings.

From then on whenever I am challenged by a score which appears musically too “square” for its own good I smilingly recall Larry’s challenge to “Eastern it up.” You can hear me heeding Larry’s advice some 27 years ago in the recording of Andrew’s Song, streaming on ECG’s website. When time came to produce a CD from the original LP tracks of North of Java, ECG called Larry. Then in 1994 the group commissioned Larry for Sanft (Soft) another work for pre-recorded electronic sounds and gamelan degung. The collaboration continued with the CD Palace (Artifact Music: 1996) which he co-produced, also streaming on the ECG site.

Through his own compositions in which he dared new cultural mash-ups, his record producing, and his advocacy via his CBC radio music show Two New Hours, Larry did more than introduce generations of listeners to the latest trends in Canadian and international avant-garde concert music. He also introduced them, as I’ve begun to illustrate here, to world music voices which challenged received notions of cultural hierarchies and aesthetic boundaries.

Picks

Sicilian connection: Let’s start this chilly month off with warming southern sounds on November 2 at the Royal Conservatory’s Koerner Hall when two Toronto groups the Vesuvius Ensemble and the Sicilian Jazz Project collaborate. Led by Francesco Pellegrino the Vesuvius Ensemble’s mission is to preserve and stage the music of southern Italy. The Ensemble’s repertoire is anchored in the songs of the Neapolitan region. Moreover they perform on some of the instruments from the region including the tammorra (frame drum), chitarra battente and colascione (plucked lute), and the ciaramella, a shawm. Michael Occhipinti’s Sicilian Jazz Project takes Sicilian folk songs and rhythms and interprets them through the harmonic and improvisatory lens of contemporary North American urban jazz, world music, funk, blues and chamber music. Its stellar lineup starts with the eight-time JUNO Award-nominee Michael Occhipinti on guitar, and continues with seven other leading Toronto jazz musicians.

Harbourfront: As I hinted earlier, on November 9 and 10 Harbourfront Centre hosts what it calls “Toronto’s longest running Day of the Dead festival ... two days of family-friendly programming.” There will be public ofrendas both large and small, plus a wide range of films, mariachi music, songs, dance, food, storytelling, crafting and performances, all with a Dia de los Muertos theme. Some of the music events are listed in The WholeNote pages. For a complete listing of all scheduled events please check the Harbourfront Centre’s website.

York and U of T: York University and the University of Toronto have had world music studio programs running continuously since the early 1970s, I know because I dabbled at them in both places back in the day. Every fall both institutions showcase faculty, students and visiting scholars in public concerts that are well worth exploring. I’ve been invariably delighted by these events and they’re at a price every student can afford: gratis.

November 5 at 12:30pm the York University Department of Music presents a rare demonstration of Azerbaijani mugham by Jeffrey Werbock, a leading expert of this modal music, at the Accolade East Building. The same evening at 7:30 the University of Toronto Faculty of Music presents its “World Music Ensembles Concert” at Walter Hall featuring the Balinese gamelan ensemble, the Klezmer ensemble, and the Japanese taiko ensemble.

November 14 at 12:30 pm York’s Department of Music presents one of Toronto’s premier Korean drum and dance ensembles, the Jeng Yi Korean drum and dance ensemble, at the Accolade East Building.

Back downtown on November 25 at 7:30 in Walter Hall, the U of T Faculty of Music showcases the work of its current world music artists-in-residence, the distinguished Balinese-based performers and scholars Putu Evie Suyadnyani and Vaughan Hatch, and their students in its “World Music Visitor Concert.” The program stages Balinese gamelan and dance including repertoires from royal courts, rituals and entertainments performed on the U of T’s gamelan semar pegulingan (orchestra).

COC Bradshaw: The free noon hour “World Music Series” continues at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.

The November 5 concert showcases the bass veena, a new addition to the Hindustani instrumentarium developed by Canadian musician Justin Gray and luthier Les Godfrey. “Monsoon:Synthesis” is the concert’s title evoking a merger of North Indian ragas and original Justin Gray compositions featuring the bass veena and the tabla wizardry of Ed Hanley, with additional percussion and Tibetan singing bowls by Derek Gray.

November 27 “Balinese Music and Dance: Temple, Court and Village Traditions” takes over Bradshaw Amphitheatre. The event is listed in the “Dance Series,” a fitting designation given that dance and music performance is intimately interrelated in Bali. The U of T’s 20-piece gamelan Dharma Santi alternates with Seka Rat Nadi the gendèr wayang (keyed metallophone quartet). The U of T world music artists-in-residence, Vaughan Hatch and Putu Evie Suyadnyani, are again featured performers.

The last event this month is on November 28. The Shargi Persian Percussion Ensemble performs Unbound. Naghmeh Farahmand, a rare female Iranian percussionist, now a Toronto resident, leads a very unusual all-female percussion group in a program of traditional music from Persia and the Middle East.

Gzowski’s Soldier: November 17 The Music Gallery presents “A Soldier’s Tale” an ambitious multidisciplinary theatre work with both aboriginal and world music elements. Composer, sound designer and musician John Gzowski can certainly be considered among Toronto world music stalwarts, having been active in groups like Maza Meze and Tasa. In this staging of “A Soldier’s Tale” he collaborates with Cree actor, artist, choreographer Michael Greyeyes, video artist Andy Moro and David Sait on guzheng. The work’s narrative explores the soldiering role of First Nations in World War II and Iraq using theatrical dance, enhanced by the contribution of other top Toronto world musicians.

Quick Picks

November 22 and 23 Nagata Shachu stages its “15th Anniversary Concert and CD Release” at the Enwave Theatre, Harbourfront Centre. This viscerally exciting Toronto group, regularly discussed in my column, goes from strength to strength and never disappoints musically.

November 23 at Koerner Hall, the Royal Conservatory and Small World Music present Anoushka Shankar. The star sitarist performs selections from her latest CD, Traces of You, produced by the very successful British Indian musician and composer Nitin Sawhney.

November 27, also at Koerner Hall, the Royal Conservatory, Batuki Music and Small World Music present “Rokia Traoré: Beautiful Africa.” Malian-born Rokia Traoré’s powerhouse voice is the ideal vehicle for her rendition of songs from her most recent album. 

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

When fans of early music walk into a concert in November, they may be impressed by the diversity of the repertoire and the performers. Concerts coming up this month feature both wide-ranging programs from under-appreciated composers and top-level performers who are just starting to emerge as soloists on the Toronto music scene.

Huizinga: One such relatively new face is Edwin Huizinga, a violinist originally from California who now calls Toronto home. Huizinga is already somewhat familiar to Toronto audiences, as he’s played as a section violinist in both Tafelmusik and Aradia, but having recently returned from a tour with his indie rock band The Wooden Sky, Huizinga is ready to come into his own as a soloist on the Toronto music scene. To accomplish this, Huizinga picked some of the hardest violin sonatas in the classical canon — having already performed the first three of Bach’s six sonatas for harpsichord and violin, he’s teaming up with harpsichordist Philip Fournier to complete the cycle by playing Bach’s B minor, A major, and E major Sonatas at the Oratory, Holy Family Church, November 8.

“I have a great love for the music of Bach,” Huizinga says when I ask him about his upcoming concert with Fournier. “As a musician, I can appreciate the well-crafted nature of his music on a purely intellectual level, but to also be the vehicle creating the notes — to be able to put a smile on someone’s face using just the music that Bach wrote — that’s amazing.” Bach composed these violin sonatas for a concert series at a local coffeehouse in Leipzig — the same place where his Coffee Cantata was performed. In a similar spirit of informality, Huizinga and Fournier are giving an additional performance at a café. The Common, located at College and Gladstone, will host the duo on November 4, and Huizinga hopes giving listeners a casual — and historically correct! — musical experience will attract new listeners to the music of Bach.

“I’ve been playing in a lot of classical revolution concerts [in bars and clubs] and I really believe it’s a great way of bringing the music to people other than regular concertgoers,” Huizinga says. “As an artist, I believe I have a responsibility to find new ways of sharing the art I’m passionate about.” While a café concert would certainly do that, the coffeehouse concert starts at 9pm, so perhaps you should consider having a beer instead of a coffee while you listen to them play. Bach would certainly have enjoyed either beverage.

Scaramella: Concertgoers looking to hear an interesting and varied repertoire steeped in a rich history should be sure to check out Scaramella’s concert on November 30 at the Victoria College Chapel. The program features composers based in England from the period of the English Civil War and Restoration, a dangerous time in English history when Catholics, Protestants, Republicans and Monarchists all fought for control of the country and supporting the wrong side at the wrong time could cost a man his head. Scaramella will play music by Henry Purcell and Matthew Locke as well as some by lesser-known musicians such as William Lawes, John Jenkins, Orlando Gibbons, Davis Mell and Simon Ives.

I caught up with Scaramella’s gambist Joëlle Morton and asked her what inspired her program. “The history of the times really had a huge influence on the music,” Morton explained. “Because there was no court for most of this period, the closest thing to court music was the private music people had in their homes. Composers who didn’t want to lose their jobs or their lives had to be very ambiguous about what religious denomination they belonged to.”

The result was a huge variety of secular chamber music for small ensembles that was performed in the homes of England’s wealthiest citizens. Perhaps because even a rich household couldn’t afford a full orchestra (or have enough space in the house for one) the instrumental combinations were incredibly diverse, and Scaramella has found a wide array of these unusual orchestrations for their concert. In addition to a duet for violin and viola da gamba plus continuo, the program features compositions for lyra viol, which has become a speciality of Morton’s in recent years. Lyra viol involves playing chords on the habitually melodic viola da gamba as well as retuning the instrument in one of over 40 different ways; this style of gamba playing will be represented by a fantasia by Jenkins for a lyra viol playing continuo and a piece for solo lyra viol by Ives. Combined with Purcell’s most famous sonata for strings (the “Golden”), a Locke suite and a virtuosic organ fantasia by Gibbons, chamber music lovers should get quite a kick out of this concert.

Daniels and LeBlanc: Music fans looking for a more conventional concert experience (or who just like their music sung rather than played) won’t want to miss Tafelmusik’s November concert series, titled “Purcell and Carissimi: Music from London and Rome,” presented at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre from November 6 to 10. “Purcell and Carissimi” features tenor Charles Daniels and soprano Suzie LeBlanc, both of whom are world-renowned singers who have made a lasting impression on audiences across Canada. LeBlanc is probably best-known for her collaboration with countertenor Daniel Taylor and the Theatre of Early Music, and is herself the artistic director of her own opera company, Le Nouvel Opéra, based in Montreal. Englishman Daniels, best known for his interpretations of Bach, Purcell and Monteverdi, astonished audiences at the Montreal Baroque Festival in 2009 with his completion of Purcell’s ode Arise My Muse. Both Daniels and LeBlanc have sung with Tafelmusik before, most notably together in a performance of Purcell’s King Arthur during Tafelmusik’s 2009/10 season. Listening to them sing, it’s easy to tell why the orchestra wants them to keep coming back.

Others to watch: Some other early-music concerts to watch out for in November: the Community Baroque Orchestra of Toronto, performing Brandenburg Concerti 4 and 5, as well as a reconstructed “Brandenburg 9” (by the late musicologist and oboist Bruce Haynes) at the 519 Community Centre, November 9; the evening will feature violinists Valerie Gordon and Elyssa Lefurgy-Smith and harpsichordist Sarah-Anne Churchill. Soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards from Musicians in Ordinary will be playing an all-Dowland tribute concert for his 450th birthday at Heliconian Hall on November 16. Finally, lutenist and choir conductor Lucas Harris will present a mixed program for his master’s recital in choral conducting at the Church of the Redeemer, November 2 at 4:30. While the program will include choral works by Arvo Pärt, Clara Schumann, and Lili Boulanger, the concert will also feature Austrian sacred music from the 17th century with some help from the “Jeanne Lamon Baroque String Ensemble,” so this concert might be an opportunity to hear some Tafelmusik players free of charge 

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

No one should ever need an excuse to attend a concert of the music of iconic English composer Benjamin Britten. But if modern music remains something you consider forbidding or unpleasant, find a reason to hear some Britten — experiencing some of his music live could be an enjoyable way to forge a new perspective. This is the centenary year of Britten’s birth and there will be many opportunities to hear his works. This year’s focus on modern music in the Choral Scene column gives me a chance to devote some space to this important composer.

Celebrated from an early age, Britten enjoyed both respect from his colleagues and a rare level of public popularity throughout his career. His first opera, Peter Grimes, was an international hit in 1945. He continued to compose operas throughout his career, but also wrote forall manner of choirs, ensembles and solo instrumentalists.

Britten founded his own music festival in 1948 — The Aldeburgh Festival — and maintained a profitable relationship with Decca Records that ensured that his works would be recorded almost as soon as they were produced. The stereotypical model of the 20th century modernist composer — a writer of unpleasant and inaccessible music, ignored by and scornful of the crowd — is not one that Britten ever believed in or embodied.

Of course, only in the museum-like culture of classical music would a composer who was born a century ago and died in 1976 even be considered modern. Surely for those who are interested in new sounds, other composers have gone farther since. Why bother with Britten?

I’d argue that like Beethoven and Mozart, Britten’s music appeals on many different levels. His ability to draw on and interpret elements of popular music, folk song and baroque music (notably that of Purcell, whose work Britten helped revive) has always attracted listeners who like strong tunes and lively rhythms.

But his individual voice and singular musical outlook moulded and developed these popular elements in unique ways. He was no musical conservative, playing it safe with conventional sounds. His work often took melodies and obvious chord changes and nudged the musical language sideways into areas that no one could anticipate or expect. A lot of mid-century music that is more simplistic – or more experimental — has dated more obviously than the best of Britten’s work.

While Britten will likely be most remembered for his operas — which contain stunning choral sections, notably in Peter Grimes, Billy Budd and Death in Venice — his music also furthered the English cathedral choral tradition.

English choral music of the Renaissance and early Baroque was brilliant and accomplished, but then languished in the decades that followed until the end of the 19th century, when it was revitalized by the the work of composers such as Holst, Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Britten further enlivened this tradition in the 20th century with oratorios and anthems that balanced immediate appeal with inventiveness and innovation. Several concerts take place in the coming weeks that will give choral audiences a chance to hear some of these compositions.

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir performs a Britten double bill November 20, with his Saint Nicolas (1948) and The Company of Heaven (1937). Saint Nicolas, of course, is the fourth-century Greek bishop and saint whose legendary exploits form the basis for the modern Santa Claus. But Britten’s cantata is thankfully free of any kind of cutesiness or sentimentality, and instead presents a portrait of Nicolas as vulnerable, dynamic and conflicted.

Because the cantata was written to be performed in part by schoolchildren, the music is also both mischievous and exuberant, especially in the choral sections. St Nicolas has wonderful moments — an exciting musical depiction of a storm at sea which Nicholas calms with prayer (“He Journeys to Palestine”), and a grisly but entertaining sequence in which children eaten by starving villagers are brought back to life (“The Pickled Boys”).

This work is great fun for children and youth to perform and attend, especially when staged. It really ought to be a Christmas perennial, a familiar favourite on the level of other choral works regularly performed at that time of year.

Unfortunately, a performance of St. Nicolas is relatively rare, and a performance of his 1937 The Company of Heaven is even rarer. I have never actually heard this piece live, and am looking forward to attending this concert. The theme of the cantata is of angels — the “company of heaven” — and their metaphysical battle with evil. Britten assembled poetry on this theme from diverse sources ranging from the Bible to Christina Rossetti and William Blake. Some of the poetry is set to music, some is recited. Britten combines his own music with a setting of the hymn “Ye watchers and ye holy ones,” a standard of the Anglican tradition, and one that would have had deep resonance for a nation on the edge of war.

Orpheus: Another opportunity to hear Britten comes courtesy of the Orpheus Choir of Toronto, which performs his 1938 cantata World of the Spirit on November 5. Britten was a life-long pacifist whose loathing of cruelty, especially involving children, is a theme that recurs in many of his compositions. Britten lived briefly in America during the beginning of WWII, in part because his pacifist leanings were not well received in pre-war Britain. World of the Spirit, a piece that draws on varied texts that express love, hope and tolerance, is both manifesto and plea. This performance is the Canadian premiere of this rare work, so attending the concert is a chance to take part in a bit of Britten’s own ongoing history.

This concert also features a very special event. John Freund, a great lover and supporter of music in Toronto, is also a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps Terezin and Auschwitz. He will read from his memoir I Was One of the Lucky Few: The Story of My Childhood. The readings will be interspersed with choral music and visual imagery, in the kind of multimedia presentation that has become an Orpheus Choir specialty.

I hope I’ve persuaded those unfamiliar with Britten to consider having a listen at some point this year. But I’m conscious that I’ve neglected other groups in doing so, especially since the number of choral concerts taking place increases exponentially as the end of the calendar year approaches. Here are “quick pick” listings for some of the other choral offerings available this month — there is some very inventive programming taking place.

Quick Picks

All the following are well worth checking out in the listings.

Nov 2, 7:30: Chorus Niagara. Handel: Grand and Glorious. Beyond GTA.

Nov 2, 8:00: Renaissance Singers. Psalms of David. Beyond GTA.

Nov 9, 8:00: DaCapo Chamber Choir. Evening Song. Beyond GTA.

Nov 9, 8:00: Guelph Chamber Choir. Passion of Joan of Arc
(Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film with live music). Beyond GTA.

Nov 9, 7:30: Amadeus Choir. The Writer’s War: A Tribute to War Correspondents.

Nov 13, 7:30: St. James Cathedral. Mozart’s Requiem.

Nov 16, 7:00: Church of the Ascension. Toronto Mass Choir.

Nov 22, 7:30: Georgetown Bach Chorale and Baroque Soloists.

Bach: Christmas Oratorio Part One and Magnificat.

Nov 23, 7:30: Cantemus Singers. Sing Noel!

Nov 23, 7:30: Jubilate Singers. This Shining Night.

Nov 23, 8:00: Bell’Arte Singers. Of Remembrance and Hope.

Nov 27, 7:30: Toronto Children’s Chorus. Take Flight. 

Ben Stein is a Toronto tenor and theorbist. He can be
contacted at choralscene@thewholenote.com.
Visit his website at benjaminstein.ca.photo for choral quick picks.

Going through the listings, I noticed that this month Continuum Contemporary Music offers an interdisciplinary work, Nuyamł-ił Kulhulmx/Singing the Earth, and Esprit Orchestra features an entire concert of hybrid music. Noticing how these two events reflected the theme of blurred boundaries between musical genres and artforms I’ve been exploring in this column, I then noted no fewer than eight similar instances of fusion in the new music on offer this month.

1. Esprit: Their “O Gamelan” concert on November 17 marks another collaboration between this country’s only orchestra dedicated to new music and the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan, a Toronto-based ensemble who perform on a series of bronze and wooden instruments from Indonesia, otherwise known as a gamelan. And they too are dedicated to the commissioning of new works from composers alongside performing both traditional and contemporary Indonesian repertoire.

Looking back historically at the rise of the gamelan’s influence within western-based concert music, one can easily see what an enormous effect this music has had. It was Montreal-born composer Colin McPhee’s orchestral work Tabuh-Tabuhan from 1936 that really got the ball rolling. It combined both Balinese and traditional Western elements, but at its core is a small gamelan-like ensemble comprised of western-based percussion instruments. The shimmering timbres and interlocking rhythmic patterns of the gamelan sound also captured the imaginations of pioneers John Cage (prepared piano) and Steve Reich (minimalism). The first western composer to build his own gamelan-inspired instruments and compose for them was Lou Harrison. And that brings us full circle to the Evergreen Club. It was when ECCG founder Jon Siddall met Harrison while a student at Mills College that a vision was spawned to form a gamelan in Canada. Through Harrison’s Indonesian connections, the Evergreen Club eventually was able to acquire their instruments in the early 80s.

By bringing both an orchestra and a gamelan together, the Esprit concert is a perfect reflection of this history and appropriately, is presenting a work that Harrison wrote in tribute to Carlos Chávez, the man who conducted the premiere of McPhee’s groundbreaking work. Alongside this historical piece will be a premiere of O Gamelan, a newly commissioned work by José Evangelista, who followed in McPhee’s footsteps by studying in Bali, and is also responsible for bringing a gamelan to U de Montréal’s Faculty of Music. We will also hear two works originally written by composers Chan Ka Nin and André Ristic for a 2005 concert inspired by the birdsong themes of Olivier Messiaen, as well as a 1983 work by Esprit conductor Alex Pauk.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Pauk himself also studied gamelan music and his work Echo Spirit Isle is a reworking for orchestra of a piece he originally wrote for Gamelan Pacificia based in Seattle. The program rounds out with an orchestral arrangement of Claude Vivier’s Pulau Dewata, composed in 1977 as a tribute to the Balinese people.

2. Continuum Contemporary Music: On December 4 and 5, CCM will present a new work by composer Anna Höstman, Nuyamł-ił Kulhulmx/Singing the Earth, an interdisciplinary piece that arose from the composer’s love of history and storytelling. Rooted in her deep personal connection with the land and communities of Bella Coola, a gem of natural beauty along the central coast of British Columbia, her creative process began with extensive research to discover the deeper layers of the area. And perhaps even more importantly, what guided her in this labyrinthian journey to uncover the stories of people from different cultural origins living side by side was her connection to the land itself. The forest is “never far away in my imagination,” she told me. In fact it is this relationship with the forest’s expansiveness and quiet that helps her find her way with music making. It is like the slipping on of a different jacket, a sensation she keeps close to herself while composing. And just as the nonhuman world of nature permeates Höstman’s creative process, it is also a “North Star,” a navigational guide, for all the peoples of the area — a mixture of the indigenous Nuxalk Nation and the descendents of Norwegian settlers.

Höstman’s piece is structured as a series of 11 modules, each one an artistic response to the beauty and isolation of the area, the changes and losses of its people. During the performance, the audience will be immersed within an installation environment, thus creating a spatial counterpoint between people, objects, video projections and displayed texts. These texts originate from a variety of sources and are in four different languages — Nuxalk, English, Norwegian and Japanese. One source is fragments from anthropological field notes published in the 1940s, while another is a list of words in both English and Nuxalk denoting the area’s flora and fauna. The work is scored for Continuum’s ensemble along with mezzo-soprano, bass, saxophone and accordian. Prior to the 8pm performance will be a 7pm screening of a film.

3. NAISA: Another take on similar themes will occur during New Adventures in Sound Art’s annual SOUNDplay series which presents new fusions between the boundaries of sound art and new media. Fitting into their 2013 programming theme of Sonic Geography, this year’s installations and performances will address concepts of home, space, land, migration, love and the human condition. The main performances are on November 7, 9, 16 and 23 in Toronto and on November 8 in Hamilton. An audio installation, “Whispering Rain,” runs from November 9 to 30 in the NAISA space.

4. 416 TCIF: As always, the improvisation scene is hopping with crossover possibilities. This month is the 12th edition of the 416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival with “the best music you’ve never heard.” For four nights from November 6 to 9, at the TRANZAC, the programming includes hand-signal-directed orchestra, laptop mash-ups by the McMaster University-based Cybernetic Orchestra, ambient dreamscapes and free jazz virtuosity with both local and visiting guest artists.

5. and 6. Soundstreams and KWS: Extemporizing even further on the subject of fusion, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony is programming an evening of rock-inspired music for orchestra on November 7 and 8 in Kitchener and November 9 at Koerner Hall, including Nicole Lizée’s Triple Concerto for Power Trio: Fantasia on Themes by Rush, a virtuosic blast for guitar, bass and drum. And on November 13, you’ll have an opportunity to experience “Reimagining Flamenco” with Soundstreams’ presentation of contemporary perspectives on flamenco works. Blending fire and passion, this concert will offer reinventions for guitar, piano and flamenco singer of the old master Manuel de Falla and Paco de Lucia, among others. Alongside these pieces will be the premiere of a new work by Canadian composer André Ristic, whose music also appears in Esprit Orchestra’s gamelan concert.

7. and 8. Piano virtuosi: On November 24, “Music She Wrote: A Tribute to Canadian Woman Composers” will be another opportunity to hear new orchestral music. This time it’s the Koffler Chamber Orchestra with conductor Jacques Israelievitch featuring pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, one of Canada’s leading interpreters of contemporary music. She will perform two piano concertos written by two Canadian women composers — Heather Schmidt and Violet Archer. The orchestra, comprised of professional, community and music students, will also perform orchestral works by Ann Southam and Larysa Kuzmenko. Ms. Petrowska Quilico has had a connection with all four composers, having previously given the premiere performances and released CD recordings of the Schmidt and Archer works, as well as a CD release of Southam’s music. Both recordings resulted in JUNO nominations for the three composers. On the same evening (November 24) Eve Egoyan, another virtuosic pianist and interpreter of contemporary music who also enjoyed a close artistic relationship with Ann Southam, will perform works by James Tenney, Piers Hellawell, Linda C. Smith and Michael Finnissy as part of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society series. This program will repeat in Toronto on November 26 presented by Music Toronto.

9. Arraymusic has a busy month with two concerts on November 9 and 10 of “Small Wonders,” their popular minatures series. Numerous composers have written these short moments in time for the ensemble over the years, and this concert will feature several ensemble pieces from the past along with eight new premieres. The Array ensemble will also perform short works by Webern, Feldman and Carter alongside two longer compositions by Jo Kondo and Canadian Ruth Guechtal. I also want to mention an important Array concert on December 6^, “The Signal Itself,” a celebration of the music of James Tenney. Tenney was a visionary and a beloved composer of this city who taught at York University for over two decades. More to come on this in the December issue, but I just wanted people to know well in advance.

10. Additional new music events:

Thin Edge New Music Collective: November 21.

Canadian Music Centre: November 9 – Rosedale Winds; November 13 – junctQin Keyboard Collective.

Canadian Opera Company: November 13 – Piano Virtuoso Series.

Royal Conservatory/Toronto Harp Society: November 10 – Works by Buhr, Schafer and others.

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir: November 20 – Britten at 100. 

Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. She can be contacted at sounddreaming@gmail.com.