Tafelmusik, Toronto’s best-known period performance ensemble, played the first concert of their new season from September 21-24 at Koerner Hall. The program included concerti by Handel, Corelli and Vivaldi and a suite by Rameau, all led by their new music director, Elisa Citterio. The playing was incredible throughout, but I also experienced an unexpected revelation during the show: rather than seeing the performance as merely a gathering of musicians onstage, stuck in a static, determined and immovable formation (pairs of players sharing a music stand, ancient in its acoustically optimal strategies), I became aware of the subtle physical communications that took place between the orchestral players as they moved through the music. It occurred to me that they were dancing as well as playing, not just as individuals but also as a group, realizing the innately dance-based structures of the composers’ works through their bodies as well as their violins, violas, bassoons and flutes. They were, in essence, dancing a tango for us there onstage.

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The orchestra is onstage, dancing a tango; the leader is moving her hips, arms, legs, head, torso, clavicles heading the charge. Everything is vital and exciting but always in control, and the players behind her are feeding off her energy. Smiles are traded back and forth between players; the violinists smirk and wink and giggle (one misses the occasional entry, he’s having so much fun! He always recovers admirably.)

Everyone onstage is dressed in black, or close enough. A violinist downstage left, sparkling in a silvery, glittery dress, bops to the music like a go-go dancer on roller blades while cellists play solos like Dizzy Gillespie, riffing like Hendrix, fingers flying like Jimmy Page. A cadenza is improvised and for a moment the sounds of the prescribed, notated music on the page are overtaken by the vibe of an impromptu jam session. You forget that you’re in one of the city’s finest concert halls and get taken to that place all performers remember as the purest form of the art, spontaneous and free extemporization, that place where things happen that can never be repeated, although this performance has been and will be repeated throughout the week.

Bassoons look like saxophones boxing as they bob and weave, taking the bass line then the melody, oboes and violins and horns trading solos – a great feeling, a great vibe (and this is only the beginning!) and it seems for a brief moment like you’re the only one in the hall.

But you’re not. The man in the row behind seems unaware that he is whispering, more than audibly, throughout the concert:

“Yesss…”

“Mhmmmm…”

And, once a movement or work is over,

“That’s the end.”

He whispers with delight at a skillfully executed cadenza or flourish even when others in the crowd look bored. Listening attentively takes a lot of different forms.

At intermission there’s a reception for the younger crowd (hosted by Tafelscene, the under-35 club that has intermission parties at certain shows throughout the year) in a bustling cordoned-off area with free beer and wine. Everyone seems to know each other, breaking into cliques and groups like a high school reunion or an office lunch break around an alcoholic water cooler, and it’s good to see so much support from and for a younger demographic, still underrepresented in the classical world. Some of the performers step out onto the mezzanine and mingle with these young concertgoers, exchanging looks and smiles and conversation, welcoming them and encouraging them in their exploration of this ancient music and its age-defying wonders.

Later in the evening the final suite jives along, lively and sprightly and ebullient, vivid in its characterization. You can imagine the first performance in 1763 Paris: powdered wigs, ridiculously voluminous gowns, collars, gold and palatial scenery as the gentry dance and the performers perform.

The drummer hammers a beat and the players stomp through the Airs gay:

“Yeeesssss…”

The string players’ fingers move frantically but uniformly, choreographically, on their fingerboards as the Contredanses sprint past our ears – if they had ribbons, the bows would look like gymnastic wands:

“Mmmhmmmmm…”

As the last notes are played, the audience stands in rapture:

“That’s the end.”

Onstage these masterful musicians possess dual powers – part black-collar courtiers playing the baroque folk’s jazz, entertainers like Counts Basie, Bernstein, Brubeck and Barenboim – part mythical gatekeepers, opening our ears and minds to the wonders of the past. Where else can someone with no everyday musical, artistic, or spiritual knowledge suddenly become enlightened by and immersed in previously unknown cultural wonders? Such is the beauty of this music, a time capsule opened before our eyes and ears. For two short hours that Saturday night all sense of the present was lost, overwhelmed by the energy put out by that group of dancers that took us all for a ride through some of the great songs of long ago, and we are the better for it.

Matthew Whitfield is a Toronto-based harpsichordist and organist.

Mont Orford is nestled in Mont Orford National Park, in the eastern townships region of Quebec. It's also where the New Horizons International Music Association – perhaps best-known for their New Horizons band program for mature student and amateur musicians – held a music camp, from September 10 to September 14, 2017. As a clarinetist and member of the New Horizons Band in Toronto, I packed up my instrument and prepared to attend.

The New Horizons philosophy of music-making for mature adults, founded by Dr. Roy Ernst, was prevalent at this camp. Ernst, former professor emeritus at Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, attended himself, and performed in many of the camp’s activities.

The talented faculty from Canada and the United States enjoyed sharing time and music-making with over 150 mature attendees, over four days of rehearsals and workshops. Music sessions included several interesting and motivational choices: conch choir, Celtic and ukulele ensembles, and Jazz and Dixieland bands; chorus and pop song choirs; and concert bands at both advanced and intermediate levels. Excellent performances by all camp attendees at the final concerts concluded the four-day program.

Several members of the New Horizons Toronto Band were in attendance. The talented Toronto musicians participated in all sessions, playing a cross-section of wind and string instruments. One outstanding instrument was the alphorn, played daily by none other than Dan Kapp, music director of the New Horizons Band of Toronto. At 7am every morning, camp attendees/musicians were awakened with that tone! Dan also conducted the advanced band. The president of the New Horizons Band of Toronto, flutist Randy Kligerman, was also in attendance, performing in the advanced band as well as in the woodwind and ukulele ensembles.

As I have discovered, a music camp experience has many motivational aspects. For mature adult music makers, the self-directed learning opportunities in music ensembles, sectionals, choirs, choruses and bands are available, for those who seek them out – with New Horizons being a prime example. Attending my third International New Horizons Band Camp was rewarding – and with this motivation, I will continue to attend band camps in 2018.

On that note, do attend a New Horizons band camp. Soon.

More information on New Horizons music camps, as well as the New Horizons band programs, can be found at www.newhorizonsmusic.org.

Gail Marriott is a clarinet player (intermediate and jazz) and an educator/financial planner.

It is almost three years to the day that I first covered the Polaris Music Prize Gala for The WholeNote.

I’ve spent my creative and journalistic career in the classical, contemporary concert and various world music camps. Founded in 2006 by Steve Jordan, a former A&R Executive with Warner Music Canada and True North Records, Polaris seemed to me to represent an alternate – and in many ways much more mainstream – picture of our national music scene. Embedded in the Canadian music industry and notwithstanding its inclusive-sounding mission statement – “A select panel of [Canadian] music critics judge and award the Prize without regard to musical genre or commercial popularity” – I must admit Polaris was just not high on my personal radar.

That was until Tanya Tagaq’s brilliant, overtly political album Animism made the 2014 Polaris shortlist. Joined onstage by her band (including violinist/producer Jesse Zubot and extraordinary drummer Jean Martin) and Christine Duncan’s 40-voice Element Choir, Tagaq’s Animism album was awarded the Prize later that September 22 night.

The video of their exhilarating 10-minute performance eventually garnered a record number of online Polaris views. Tagaq’s win marked an even more significant Polaris milestone – the first time the Prize was awarded to an Indigenous musician. (The album also took the JUNO Award for Aboriginal Album of the Year the following year.)

My report When Tanya Tagaq Won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize mentioned the importance of sonic mindfulness in her work, privileging not so much music as an entertainment commodity, but sound as a universal human experience, a force for good in this world. Animism embodied those notions, and more. I saw in the album “a musical, political and cultural act of great bravery, [as well as] a provocative confrontation on colonial and ecological fronts…[and] a platform from which to continue discussions of social reconciliation and healing.”

Fast-forward to the Polaris 2017 shortlist.

What immediately caught my attention was that four of the ten albums chosen this year directly reflected current Indigenous realities. A Tribe Called Red, Lido Pimienta, Tanya Tagaq, all Indigenous artists, were joined by Gord Downie’s Secret Path, a powerful concept album about Chanie Wenjack, the young Anishinaabe boy who died in 1966 after escaping from a residential school. Secret Path acknowledges a dark chapter in Canadian history – and offers the hope of starting our country on a road to reconciliation by facing up to some very troubling truths. “We are not the country we think we are,” wrote The Tragically Hip’s frontman and lyricist Downie. “It will take seven generations to fix this.”

Arriving at the seventh floor foyer of Toronto’s The Carlu for the Polaris Gala on September 18, 2017, I was met with a room full of very loud music industry buzz. I bumped into a friend, Lido Pimienta’s percussionist Brandon Valdivia. It was Valdivia’s first Polaris and he seemed a mix of bemusement and excitement. When I mentioned the sometimes-sketchy sound system in the hall, he adroitly replied, “but Glenn Gould called the Eaton Auditorium’s acoustics among the best in North America,” before rushing off to set up.

Of the performances at the gala, Tanya Tagaq’s performance, of songs from her album Retribution, stood out – and stunned the audience. She ended with a cover of Nirvana’s Rape Me, during which a number of women in the audience rose dressed in red, fists held high, reminding us of the tragedy of the multitude of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

A Tribe Called Red was represented not by a live performance but a music video, as was Leonard Cohen and BADBADNOTGOOD. Feist sang I Wish I Didn't Miss You solo, accompanying herself on guitar; Leif Vollebekk sang his loose-limbed ballad All Night Sedans with his band; and the band Weaves rocked the house.

The Colombian-born Canadian singer-songwriter Lido Pimienta, who identifies as Afro-Colombian with Indigenous Wayuu heritage on her mother’s side, sang an explosive set, animated by a group of white-clad dancers in the final minutes. In addition to her acrobatic voice, the sound of the tambura (Colombian bass drum), snare drum, electronics and a four-piece horn section dominated the music. Her album La Papessa “has no guitar! I feel like there’s too much electric guitar in music, and it’s just so dude, so guy,” Pimienta said in a 2014 Musicworks interview.

At the concert’s end, last year’s Polaris Music Prize winner Kaytranada revealed this year’s winner, calling up an excited Pimienta, her mother and her 9-year-old son to the stage.

Pimienta’s acceptance speech was peppered with references to themes she explored on her self-produced, independent, label-less album La Papessa (meaning The High Priestess, a card in the tarot), including racism, patriarchy, spousal abuse, resilience, independence and issues facing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) communities. She made a point of acknowledging that we were guests on Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee land, and also the significance of winning Canadian music critics' top prize for an album sung mostly in Spanish, and not in English or French. She thanked “all the single mothers out there who inspire me.”

Pimienta’s 2017 Polaris win was a reminder of one powerful direction Canadian music is traveling today. Indigenous musical creators such as Tagaq, Pimienta, A Tribe Called Red and 2015’s Polaris Prize winner Buffy Sainte-Marie are being acknowledged by the mainstream not only for their artistic achievement, but also for their central contribution to the ever-evolving conversations about past, present and future Canadian identities. Like those forebears, Pimienta’s music is an act of political and cultural bravery, confronting mainstream white/settler status quos with fiery sounds and words.

The Carlu, in its previous incarnation as the Eaton Auditorium, was certainly an impressive and influential place – one that Glenn Gould described in the mid-20th century as one of the best acoustics in the world. But the 2017 Polaris Prize gala at the renovated and rebranded Carlu, unlike the Eurocentric music culture that the Eaton Auditorium once represented, points to a different reality. As Gord Downie framed it, the only viable way forward is to listen closely to one another, and to the many diverse voices among us – particularly those who were making music on this land thousands of years before countries like Canada were even imagined.

Andrew Timar is a Toronto musician and music writer.

My earliest memories of Fort York are of spending Saturday mornings when I was about ten years old learning how to make musket balls and apple pie, how to fire cannons and plan fortifications. How magical then to see how, in last weekend’s new music theatre production Miigis by Red Sky Performance, the Fort was overtaken by Indigenous dancers and musicians reclaiming the space and adding to its history – and making it that much richer in the process.

Artistic director of Red Sky Performance, Sandra Laronde, spoke about this juxtaposition in her introduction to the evening: how disconcerting at first and then how ironic it was for the company to be rehearsing in Fort York's Blue Barracks to the frequent sound of cannon fire, and surrounded by young people in the uniform of British soldiers during the war of 1812, but how as they listened to an elder retell in this setting the epic story of the movement of the Anishinaabe peoples from the sea to freshwater – the mythic prophetic history known as the seven fires prophecy – it became an increasingly positive merging of energies, a reclamation of Haudenosaunee (Toronto) “where trees grow in the water,” and a strong message of hope.

When I talked with Sandra Laronde back in August she spoke passionately about wanting to immerse audiences in nature while sharing with them this story. I was attracted by her passion for the project and was curious to see how it would manifest in the physical production of Miigis. How much of this story would be tangibly conveyed by the choreography? How much would it be storytelling and how much a more abstract reflection of the story and prophecy and the emotions that arise from it?

For me it felt to be a fascinating combination of the tangible with the evocative, with some elements of literal storytelling but other, more abstract depictions of an epic journey.

The opening movement, where male and female traditional dancers in full regalia made their way along the southern barrier wall of Fort York into the stage space (to recorded music), set the tone for Indigenous peoples’ reclamation of the land and acted as a cleansing of the palate (from urban Toronto) before the magic of the Indigenous-influenced contemporary dance and music of Miigis began.

Truly it did feel magical. In a natural historical oasis, against a stunning urban backdrop, six supremely fit contemporary dancers, dressed in flowing water-like silk costumes designed by Julia Tribe, led by choreographer and soloist Jera Wolfe, focused their condensed forces of energy and emotion to carry us on a journey of creation, travel, challenge and hope.

To a powerful, varied, original score played live from the side of the stage, the story began with hands and arms emerging sinuously from under the bare skeleton framework of a miigis (cowrie) shell – as if the people were being born, then flowing out of the shell onto the earth. Next the shell became a boat, a coracle shell to carry them from the sea to the first of the prophesied Promised Lands marked by miigis, the symbolism of shell, boat and prophecy intermingling.

The choreography then became more abstract. In solos, duos, trios, and movements for the full ensemble, the story of a journey unfolded – one that began with great hope but that was also filled with struggle, hard work and challenges. All of it was choreographed in a unique language combining Indigenous movement with non-Indigenous contemporary dance, creating a new vocabulary that felt specially invented for this work and subject matter.

I wish I could play back the full piece to capture again all the intricate detail. I am sure I missed some references more clear to the Indigenous members of the audience, and I couldn’t anchor all the movements to specific points in the epic story, but I did feel carried along on the journey.

What was very clear toward the end was seeing the dance enter the territory of the eighth prophecy, where a choice is laid before mankind to choose either the path of working with the natural world or against it. Emerging from the hard work and harsh challenges of the earlier stages, the dancers’ movement grew more lyrical, with one female dancer, raised up by the others, reaching out to humanity to join her in hope for the future – and suddenly the accompanying song was in both Indigenous languages and English, opening up to let me more fully into the story, and all around me I could sense the audience feeling energized and inspired by the experience.

What would have made this experience even stronger would have been the opportunity to have access to that same moment the creative team had at the beginning of their rehearsal process, of hearing a community elder tell the stories before watching them come to life. Perhaps another time, at a future performance, this might happen. The eighth of the seven fire prophecies really speaks to all peoples as well as the First Nations of North America.

Sandra Laronde has been called “a force to be reckoned with.” She is a force we are lucky to have if she can keep creating works like this that bring people together.

Music theatre production Miigis, created by Red Sky Performance, was premiered in Toronto at Fort York, on September 15 and 16, 2017.

Toronto-based “lifelong theatre person” Jennifer (Jenny) Parr works as a director, fight director, stage manager and coach, and is equally crazy about movies and musicals.