If the jazz purists who grumble about how there's no jazz during the TD Toronto Jazz Festival (and there are some every year) had been at the Kurt Elling show on Tuesday evening June 23 they'd have to eat their words. Elling is an uber hep cat with serious jazz cred and he and his quartet gave us a lesson on how it's done. The adorers at Koerner Hall got treated to vintage Elling – scatting and swooping his way through standards such as Come Fly With Me and Nature Boy – but also treating us to songs from his newly released album Passion World which included an absolutely killer cover of the U2 hit Where the Streets Have No Name, beautifully arranged by his guitarist John McLean. (More on that to come in the September issue of WholeNote.) To add jazz icing to the cake, that same night Christian McBride's big band was blowing the roof off the tent in Nathan Phillips Square.

That said, the no-jazz grumblers had fodder for their complaints as George Clinton headlined the big, funky opening concert on Friday night June 19. With Dumpstaphunk and Morris Day & The Time opening up the free evening of music, it was a massive dance party on Nathan Phillips Square. Boo hoo.

The iconic 70s horn band, Tower of Power, controlled the mainstage on Saturday night and an argument could be made as to whether they're jazzy or not; but the packed house of paying customers didn't care as they ate out of the hands of these soul masters. Veterans of the touring circuit, the musicians of ToP were energetic and tuneful and gracious as they nailed hits like You're Still a Young Man and What is Hip? (Answer: they are.)

The festival is only half over and there's plenty of MUSIC to come all over the city – Wednesday June 24 Michael Occhipinti reinvents Bruce Cockburn with his band at The Rex and legend Branford Marsalis plays the Jane Mallett Theare; Thursday brings the “Elegant Gyspy” Al Dimeola and on Friday it's family jam time June 26 with Snarky Puppy on the mainstage. Full lineup is at torontojazz.com.  

“You never know where you're going to meet a composer.”

Jacques Israelievitch was introducing Duo for Violin and Piano by Oscar Morawetz at the Canadian Music Centre on June 11. The occasion was the launch of the Centrediscos CD Fancies and Interludes, a collection of four 20th-century works by established Canadian composers recorded live at York University where both performers, Israelievitch and Christina Petrowska Quilico, are members of the faculty.

“On the subway or even ringing your doorbell.”

He was remembering the moment in 1988 shortly after he and his family moved to Toronto from St. Louis. He was about to begin his 20-year record run as TSO concertmaster when Morawetz appeared on his doorstep, music in hand. The composer presented the concertmaster with his Duo.

Later, Israelievitch took the score to his music room with its 90-odd boxes of carefully catalogued scores. Under “M” he found it, the same Duo, but autographed by Morawetz to Josef Gingold, the legendary concertmaster under George Szell in Cleveland and influential pedagogue at Indiana University. Israelievitch studied with Gingold, later becoming his teaching assistant. Duo (1951) was one of many scores Gingold did not have time to learn, scores which he passed on to his student.

Israelievitch played the piece with elegance and strength, bringing out the music's eloquence. He was aided by Petrowska Quilico's considerable support on the piano.

Earlier the violinist talked about passing the time while riding the subway in Chicago by studying the full score for Hindemith's Octet. A seatmate peered over his shoulder and asked if the score was by Hindemith. Surprised, Israelievitch engaged him in conversation, discovered he was a composer and within four stops had commissioned a piece from him. Three weeks later, Israelievitch's apartment bell rang and over the intercom he heard the words: “I'm the composer you met on the subway. I have your commission.”

After the Morawetz, Israelievitch and Petrowska Quilico played James Rolfe's Drop (1998) which combined percussive and repetitive keyboard writing with tentative, quasi-lyrical violin passages. Filled with referential phrases that often seemed familiar, the work ended with Israelievitch alone, a few quiet touches of the bow tenderly playing on the strings, the sound dropping reluctantly on the ears of the audience that crowded the CMC's first floor.

A heartfelt standing ovation followed. The violinist said simply: “I hope you enjoy the CD.”

Against the Grain Theatre is dedicated to experimentation. One of their experiments consists of an attempt to break down the traditional barrier between song recital and music drama. A clear example was their combination two years ago of Kurtág's Kafka Fragmente and Janácek's Diary of One Who Disappeared. Although the Kurtág is a performance piece, the Janácek would normally be done as a recital. Yet having the Diary staged and acted out (by the wonderful Colin Ainsworth and Lauren Segal) added a great deal to the musical experience.

In their most recent production, "Death & Desire," the directors, Joel Ivany and Topher Mokrzewski, have been careful not to simply repeat the earlier experiment. Whereas the Kurtág and the Janácek had been performed as two discrete halves of the evening, the works in their latest offering, Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Messiaen's Harawi, were intertwined. That certainly set up an interesting relationship between the two works, though I was unconvinced by the way the protagonist in the Messiaen became Schubert's Fair Maid of the Mill (as we used to refer to her; this production preferred The Miller's Lovely Daughter). On the other hand, the manner in which the mezzo-soprano became the voice of the brook in the penultimate song of the Schubert cycle was magical.

There was an interesting suggestion in the program that the Messiaen was composed at a time when the composer's first wife first descended into madness. The significance of that certainly came across in the song Doundou tchil, which constituted the end of the first half of the evening and in which the French text disintegrated into something completely incomprehensible.

The performers were Krisztina Szabó as the Woman in Harawi and Stephen Hegedus as the wanderer in Die schöne Müllerin. Szabó was superb throughout. I thought that, in the first half of the evening, Hegedus was better in the lyrical songs than in the more assertive parts, but in the second half he was very fine throughout. The works were interestingly staged by Ivany; and Mokrzewski played the piano with the excellence which we have come to expect from him.

There is always a threat that productions of opera come to resemble a kind of museum. Companies see the productions of new works as a risk, while Carmen and La Traviata will always fill the house. Fortunately Tapestry Opera is one of several companies that focus on the production of new work.