I’ve never seen Amadeus before. This is blasphemy amongst choral singers and I’ve been lambasted many times. To be fair, it came out a few years before I was born and Mozart isn’t exactly standard repertoire for high school arts programs in Scarborough. I was excited when it was announced last year that the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir would be singing in a live screening of the film on October 28 and 29 at the Sony Centre. As a chorister, I’ve now sung Mozart many times, most often the great unfinished Requiem. And now I can say I’ve seen the film as well.

Toronto is a definitive choral city. With choral music of diverse shapes and sizes across the region, there is a strong appreciation for voices joined together. Every so often a great gem of a performance comes along and proves this – and the Luminous Night Festival Gala Concert was one of those.

Yorkminster Park Baptist Church is one of the busiest churches for music in the city. Several choirs call it home and two, the Orpheus and Church choir, joined together for the third edition of their Choral Encounters initiative (this year titled the Luminous Night Festival). Born out of the work of several conductors in the GTA region, the idea is to bring together academy, community, and church around a living composer. In 2013, the inaugural year, that composer was Alice Parker. In 2014 it was Morten Lauridsen. This year we had the great pleasure of experiencing Ola Gjeilo.

A Norwegian composer trained at Juilliard, Gjeilo has proven himself a world-loved composer. His accessible writing features beautiful, lush, thick sounds. His work is often set to Latin but includes English and poetry by Charles Anthony Silvestri. His compositions are evocative of ebbing and flowing, of movement like waves and water. The melodies are grand, warm and embracing, but as he says in his own words, “still intimate”.

Rarely will one ever find such an exquisite collection of choral gems – both repertoire and ensembles – in one place. The Luminous Night gala concert featured the University of Toronto Faculty of Music’s Women’s Chamber Choir, Macmillan Singers and Exultate Chamber Singers under Hilary Apfelstadt; Resonance, the youth choir of the Mississauga Festival Choir, conducted by Bob Anderson; the Yorkminster Park Baptist Church Choir, conducted by William Maddox; and the Orpheus Choir, conducted by Bob Cooper.

Each ensemble showed skill and musicality that was pleasing not only because it was the work of Ola Gjeilo, but also because the diversity of voices provided a unique experience for listeners. The mature voices of the Yorkminster Park Baptist Church Choir were quite a contrast to the clear, bright, present sound of Exultate Chamber Singers. Each ensemble was pleasingly different in its own way.

Specific credit goes to Resonance, particularly their sopranos. Their interpretation of Serenity  – my favourite of Gjeilo’s pieces – was exquisite. Their balanced sound and understanding of the music flowed through the church. It was truly a dream to listen to these young voices make such beautiful music.

The University of Toronto ensembles were also at the top of their game, both balanced and present. Their artistry showed depth and an exquisite balance of sound, with the lower voices supporting very controlled soprano notes. Eunseong Cho was particularly spectacular on the piano for Tundra, providing a powerful interpretation to suit the dynamic Women’s Chamber Choir.

Gjeilo’s Sunrise Mass continues to be a popular and accessible choice for choirs. In this festival the massed power of the Orpheus Choir, Resonance, and the Yorkminster Park Baptist Church Choir joined with the Talisker Players under Bob Cooper. The Taliskers were musical accompaniment sent from heaven, with clear articulations and rhythmic energy that the choir was mostly consistent with. The double basses were especially useful in tuning the choir through some tricky intervals and dissonances. The ensemble’s musicality – and its understanding of the flow of the music, with its undulating string accompaniment – energized the singers’ beautiful, melodious lines.

I have sung in massed choirs a few times and the one plague of having so many singers in one place is a default legato. When there is so much sound and so many people the precision can suffer. This was slightly noticeable through the The City movement of the Sunrise Mass. Still, there is something incredibly humbling about being in the presence of about 200 singers. The only other comparable experience is a congregation singing hymns during liturgy. Both experiences can be overwhelmingly beautiful.

One other great opportunity with a concert like this is to see different conductors in action. Bob Cooper’s energy comes from his elbows and shoulders, his expression generating from his upper carriage into the music. William Maddox presented his hands upwards, conducting as if in welcoming prayer. Bob Anderson conducted Resonance with palms down, stroking the sounds and energy out of his choir with detailed communication through quick movements and subdivided cues. And Hilary Apfelstadt – the only conductor to use a baton – executed her work with precision, strength and clarity. Hilary’s clarity in conducting transferred right across the three different ensembles she conducted over the evening.

One can only wish that Choral Encounters grows with each year, and that we continue to have amazing choral experiences because of their hard work.

The Luminous Night Festival Gala Concert was on Saturday, October 15 at 7:30pm, at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church.

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

A Toronto staple since 1991, the Summerworks festival bills itself as “the breeding ground for the mainstage shows of the future.” As always, this year’s festival has committed to putting music theatre in its programming, and this year, its musical component has certainly kept with this forward-thinking mandate. The festival’s musical offerings this year, many of them focused on the communicative power of the human singing voice, have made bold statements–not only for musical reasons, but because the tropes and trends on which they rely are well-poised to strike an uneasily familiar chord with audiences.

Mr. Shi and His Lover, running August 5 to 13 at The Theatre Centre, is one such piece of music theatre. Based on the real-life story of the love affair between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and male Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu, Mr. Shi blends musical elements from opera (both Chinese and European), pop music and Chinese folk song into a 90-minute interrogation of the couple’s relationship. Presented by an international team of artists from both Toronto and Macau Experimental Theatre, and performed in Mandarin with English surtitles, Mr. Shi is new territory for Summerworks, with largely successful results.

There is a subtlety to Mr. Shi that is not always audible at first listen. The music and plot rely heavily on clichés: characters sing platitudes about life and love, fall weeping to their knees, and comment on the nature of East and West through the lens of Madama Butterfly. It is baffling, until one realizes that all of these tropes are intentionally self-referential–and undeniably operatic. In this light, Mr. Shi transforms itself into a type of post-opera, one that exploits the orientalist spectacle so prevalent in opera while at the same time revealing its racist, gendered nature.

These layered messages are delivered movingly by Jordan Cheng as the conflicted and contemplative Mr. Shi, as well as by Derek Kwan, who plays the equally troubled Bernard. Carol Wang (percussion) and Njo Kong Kie (composer/piano) provide instrumental support as the minimalist onstage accompaniment.

In Imaginary Anthropologies, running August 5 to 13 at Factory Theatre, Gabriel Dharmoo serves as solo vocalist and theatrical mastermind behind a series of invented vocal traditions from ‘cultures’ around the world. Presented mockumentary-style, with Dharmoo pitted against an onscreen panel of anthropology ‘experts,’ Imaginary Anthropologies is highly weird and sharply witty. Dharmoo asks that audiences not give too much away about the show–but suffice it to say that the type of ‘anthropology’ conducted throughout the performance, and the way it resonates in our postcolonial, racially hierarchical world, feels uncomfortably familiar. For the audience, who is in on the joke, it is also intensely funny.

Admittedly, both of these shows are difficult to classify, and difficult to place on the musical spectrum. Perhaps that means, though, that they are instead representative of a powerful new type of vocal theatre–one that uses the voice and the stage in ways that make audiences think. Summerworks and the teams of both shows do a great job here, of hitting important issues while all the while committing to the presentation of exceptional theatre–theatre that revels in its own contradictions, and that reveals itself as the bold vanguard of what can be made possible onstage.

Mr. Shi and His Lover plays at The Theatre Centre at 1:15pm on Saturday, August 13, while Gabriel Dharmoo’s Imaginary Anthropologies is onstage at Factory Theatre on Saturday, August 13 at 2:30pm. For details on both shows, visit www.summerworks.ca.

Sara Constant is social media editor at The WholeNote and studies musicology at the University of Amsterdam. She can be contacted at editorial@thewholenote.com.

The Coronation of King George II took place in October of 1727; George Frederic Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the ceremony. Last July 26, Daniel Taylor led his Theatre of Early Music in a delightful hour-long re-imagining of the event that literally and figuratively was the grand centrepiece of Toronto Summer Music’s “London Calling” season. In addition to using music of the day, Taylor had the wisdom to include three anachronistic elements, Hubert Parry’s I Was Glad and Jerusalem as well as John Tavener’s Hymn to the Mother of God, which broadened the evening and extended the ceremonial maelstrom into the 20th century.

The presence of a real archbishop, a bewigged monarch-to-be and the participation of the large Walter Hall audience in the singing of Jerusalem added to the sense of occasion. The effervescent Taylor and his company had the musical smarts to carry it off. The regal Handel procession and spirited anthems, the big-voiced Orlando Gibbons and the a cappella Palestrina backed up the serious religiosity on display. And Parry’s 1916 setting of Jerusalem, William Blake’s vision of a holy city built “in England’s green and pleasant Land,” crowned the spirit of the British Empire that had ruled the waves for hundreds of years.

TSO concertmaster and TSM artistic director designate, Jonathan Crow, headlined an enjoyable evening of mostly British chamber music, July 28 in Walter Hall. The program began with an invitation into the world of the young Mozart, his Violin Sonata No.10 in B-flat Major, K15, written in London in 1764 while the eight-year-old genius was on a European tour with his violinist sister. Crow and his accommodating collaborative pianist, Angela Park, made the most of the repeated simple theme of the first movement while their well-balanced playing sparked the second.

With Elgar’s meaty Violin Sonata in E Minor, Op.82, the duo’s musicianship was even more evident in the muscular, but sweet, long lines of its first movement. The hugely melodic, virtuosic Romance was filled with tonal contrasts, sensitively played, its lovely pastoral tune and haunting ending, memorable. The finale evoked the English countryside with an Edwardian glow powerfully devolving into fragments of tunes, which it rebuilt into a positive conclusion.

Following intermission, the two were joined by violist Eric Nowlin and cellist Roberta Janzen for a fine performance of Arnold Bax’s Piano Quartet in One Movement. Crow’s musicianship shone and his leadership showed as well, while Nowlin’s rich viola playing made the most of Bax’s notes. Again, Park blended in nicely. With the addition of violinist Bénédicte Lauzière, the group concluded the night with a distinctive tour of Frank Bridge’s Piano Quintet in D Minor. Its massive first movement had a drawing room quality, its rich harmonies sensitively played. The lovely Adagio featured good dialogue among the string players, which enhanced its pristine sadness. The leisurely finale was brightened by the unexpected tunes appearing around the music’s many corners.

A week of exceptional musicality concluded July 29, with an outstanding recital by the talented Dover Quartet (formed in 2008 when its members were 19-year-old students at the Curtis Institute). It was TSM’s nod to the Beethoven Quartet Society of 1845, the first public cycle of the composer’s complete string quartets, a series of London concerts each of which included an early, middle and late quartet. So, in that spirit, the capacity Walter Hall audience was treated to Op.18 No.4, Op.59 No.3 and Op.132.

The Dovers’ playing of the early quartet was empathetic, subtle, impeccably phrased, marked by forward motion, drive and energy. They played up the inherent contrasts in the middle quartet’s first movement, the innocence and aspiration, warmth and solidity of the third and the controlled freneticism of the finale.

But the heart of the evening was the middle movement of Op.132, a work of naked supplication and beauty transformed into optimistic assertiveness. The feeling of divine well-being has rarely been better expressed. (Beethoven was suffering severe intestinal pain as he was about to write the quartet but recovered and wrote in the score, “A convalescent’s hymn of thanks to the Deity in the Lydian mode,” and for the movement’s livelier second theme,“Feeling new strength.”) Musically mature, vibrant and uncannily unified in purpose and execution, the youthful players brought passion and grace to the first two movements, took a decisive approach to the fourth and emphasized the rhapsodic character of the finale.