“Amici,” when translated from the Italian, means “friends”. It may be a simple concept, but that idea is at the core of what the Toronto-based Amici Chamber Ensemble does – and has been doing for the last 30 years.

Part of this mandate has come from making a virtue of necessity. Amici’s core ensemble formation is a clarinet-cello-piano trio, made up of clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas, cellist David Hetherington and pianist Serouj Kradjian. There’s a sizeable library of classical repertoire for this instrument combination – but it’s far less common than the standard piano trio (which swaps out the clarinet for a violin). As a result, a lot of the clarinet-cello-piano music that exists tends to get performed by ad-hoc groups, or by subsets of larger mixed instrumental ensembles.

Amici follows this pattern, performing repertoire written specifically for their instrument combination alongside works for larger forces. What that translates to, in their case, is a frequent need for guest artists – and lots of them.

Their upcoming concert on April 27 at Koerner Hall in Toronto is no exception. Titled “A Legacy of Inspiration,” the show celebrates both Amici’s 30th anniversary and the centenary of Bernstein’s birth, with several works by Bernstein, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, and Beethoven’s “Rondino” for wind octet.* Joining the trio onstage will be soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and violinist Yehonatan Berick, along with several wind players from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

“We took the theme of ‘legacy’ here, because for a clarinet-cello-piano trio to survive this long – for 30 years – is admirable,” says pianist Serouj Kradjian. “We [wanted to] define legacy by not only the artists we’ve had as guests, but also by Amici’s long tradition of mentorship – teaching, and many times, providing the first opportunity for upcoming musicians who would later make great careers.”

He’s speaking from experience. A relatively recent addition to the group, Kradjian himself joined the trio to replace founding pianist Patricia Parr in 2008.

“My own experience of Amici, before I joined the ensemble 10 years ago, was when I was a student at U of T. At school, Amici was my first experience seeing chamber music live onstage,” he says. “Imagine having that be your very first experience hearing chamber music – and now, many years later, it’s come full circle, with my becoming the pianist of the ensemble.”

Kradjian talks about the trio’s concert-planning process. In the case of their upcoming show, Bernstein quickly became the program’s keystone; other times, the draw of a particular guest artist has inspired the trio to select certain repertoire. “The three of us sit down and we brainstorm,” he says. “We look at a combination of things – the artists, the focus of the program, financial considerations – but I think that for us, artistic integrity and innovation are what come first. That has kind of been a trademark of Amici: the core musicians are only a trio, but because of these goals we grow to an ensemble of sometimes 11 or 12 musicians onstage.”

Looking at the ensemble’s work over the years, it’s clear how each trio member’s own musical connections within the local community have helped the ensemble survive. In addition to the Amici’s previous post in the late 80s and early 90s as trio-in-residence at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, both Valdepeñas and Hetherington play in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and teach at the Royal Conservatory. The guest artists that Amici has performed with have often come from the same ranks.

“Personal connections have been very important for the ensemble,” says Kradjian. “As the name says – “amici” – it’s really about celebrating friendship through music. We want to invite people who we like to work with – because that energy, that chemistry, shows on the stage. And when we’re enjoying what we’re doing onstage, the audience sees that as well.”

As the ensemble enters its 31st year, Kradjian expects it to continue developing its mandate for outreach and collaboration.

“We do all of these amazing concerts right now – but we only do them once,” Kradjian says. “We’d love to repeat one or two of them in other areas in the GTA and Ontario. We’d also like to continue making new recordings and doing co-productions. Getting together with other arts organizations in the city – and not necessarily just music organizations. Combining different aspects of the arts is part of what we’re looking ahead to.

“I think we will continue innovating,” he adds. “As much as we can. As much as circumstances allow.”

Amici Chamber Ensemble presents its final concert of the 2017/18 season, “A Legacy of Inspiration,” on April 27 at 8pm, in Koerner Hall, Toronto.

*4/13/2018: Since time of writing, a revised concert program has been announced. The concert program now includes works by Bernstein alongside a selection by winners of The Glenn Gould School Chamber Music Competition, Ottorino Respighi's Il tramonto, for voice and string quartet, P. 101, and Ernö Dohnányi's Sextet in C Major, op. 3.

Stanley Tucci’s sharply observed depiction of Alberto Giacometti’s last oil painting, Final Portrait, lingers lovingly over the artist’s exacting creative process. In 1964, Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush), primarily known for his sculptures, asked his friend, the American author James Lord (Armie Hammer), to sit for him. Tucci’s film, adapted from Lord’s memoir, gives us a writer’s POV into the artist’s methods – driven by doubt and neurosis – and his personal relationships. Giacometti’s wife Annette (Sylvie Testud) tolerates his four-year-long relationship with Caroline (Clémence Poésy), a prostitute who is Giacometti’s muse and model. In his early 60s, Giacometti lives a chaotic lifestyle, grounded by his key relationships with the two women and his brother Diego (Tony Shalhoub), a calming presence who serves as his confidant and right-hand man.

Tucci uses the uncannily accurate set design adroitly, treating the facsimile of the studio as familiarly as if it were his kitchen, and filming visits to neighbourhood bars and restaurants with a sense of verisimilitude and period detail that transports the viewer across more than five decades. Tucci’s keen eye harkens back to the observational style and verve of his classic Big Night. His actors, particularly Rush, Poésy and Shalhoub, bring art history to life and energize the slim thread of the narrative balanced by Hammer and Testud’s naturalism. Final Portrait, despite its many accomplishments, does not examine the philosophical underpinnings of the painter’s aesthetic (as Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse did, for example). Instead, frequent conversational strolls in nearby Montparnasse Cemetery by Lord and Giacometti serve up gossipy tidbits. It’s what happens in the studio that stands firmly at the film’s centre.

Evan Lurie’s score for various combinations of violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano and celeste is a model of discretion, never overwhelming what we see on screen, acting more as a linking mechanism between scenes or a subtle comment on their mood. In fact, after a brief moment of violin melancholy, the film begins with Ralf Dieter Gscheidle’s La Fleur, a typical Parisian accordion solo announcing Final Portrait’s locale. Suddenly we’re in Giacometti’s studio, with Giacometti’s iconic sculpture of Isaku Yanaihara at its centre. The soundtrack bristles with the sound of walking across the studio floor, of a canvas being moved onto an easel, of choosing brushes and moving pedestals – the soundtrack to a picture of creativity.

“It’s impossible to paint you as I see you,” Giacometti tells Lord, as a tentative violin leads into the warmth of a string quartet and a lyrical piano solo. Whether it’s a sprightly violin that signals a spirited scene in the bar of Chez Adrien or a tentative violin melody that acts as a momentary comma to the end of Lord’s sitting for the day, there’s just enough musical noodling to propel the action before Gscheidle’s accordion closes the parentheses on a footnote in art history.

One of the founding members of the Lounge Lizards, the seminal 1980s downtown Manhattan group led by his brother John, Evan Lurie (classically trained as a pianist) is also known as an actor. For the last decade he has operated a contemporary art gallery in Indiana.

Final Portrait opens April 6 at Cineplex Cinemas Varsity and VIP.

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

“Thank you for bringing us great music,” said Nicole Neufeld in a heartwarming onstage tribute to her father’s 36 years of work with the Guelph Chamber Choir. Gerald Neufeld is stepping down as artistic director of the Guelph Chamber Choir, having led it for 36 of its 38 years. In a farewell concert on Saturday March 31, 2018, the choir performed Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) and other smaller works. This was the final performance of the Guelph Chamber Choir’s 2017/18 season, and the final concert with Gerald Neufeld as its artistic director.

The first half of the concert was the German Requiem. The second half comprised six smaller works, including Ola Gjeilo’s The Ground (which is the “Pleni sunt coeli” section of the “Sanctus” in his larger Sunrise Mass); Agnus dei, arranged by Kenneth Jennings with Latin text on a choral rendition of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations; and Canadian composer Eleanor Daley’s Antiphon, the final movement of her three-piece Let All the World in Ev’ry Corner Sing Easter Anthems.

In an interview the week prior to the concert, Neufeld spoke to The WholeNote about his upcoming final performance. “I wanted to fit into the Easter Weekend,” says Neufeld. “Rather than doing a Latin requiem, I wanted to do one of my favourite works, [Brahms’ Requiem]. It’s such a wonderfully crafted piece. It’s not about sadness, it’s about remembering and joyousness. It’s really for the living rather than the dead.”

For this performance, Neufeld decided on a historically-informed rendition, with Musica Viva Orchestra on period instruments. “It may seem a bit strange to sing the Requiem with only 60 singers and 43 in the orchestra,” says Neufeld, “but the period instruments are so much softer and blend easier with the voice. Brahms’ orchestra wasn’t too much larger than what we’ll have. It’s almost like chamber music in a way. It’s bringing together Brahms’ past with his present, using some Classical sensibilities with newer Romantic harmonic material in a very interesting way.

“I’ve been performing with period players for two decades now,” Neufeld continues. “I love working with them because they want to understand the musical text and how to declaim the music. It makes the music much more effective; it communicates much more clearly to the audience. Our audiences have really loved it.” With a packed house and a thoroughly pleased audience, Neufeld’s artistic choices continue to have a strong impact on audiences in Guelph and the area: the Guelph Chamber Choir sang its first three concerts of its 2017/18 season to a sold-out hall.

At the concert on Saturday, Neufeld’s interpretation using period instruments resulted in a softer, less complex sound in the orchestra and a light, articulate choir. The choir was well-balanced, solidly supported by an exceptional bass section. The first movement of the Requiem does not include violins; with the bass sound of the lower strings and viola anchoring the sound, the choir was free to focus on the music’s emotional content.

Brahms’ Requiem was beautifully presented. Daniel Lichti provided a robust and emotional presentation as bass-baritone soloist. There was a bit of a disconnect at times between his and the choir’s deliveries – most pronounced in the third movement, where Lichti’s emotional and operatic interpretation of “Lord, teach me” was not equally repeated in the choir’s more muted response immediately following him. However, towards the end of the third movement, Neufeld’s period interpretation allowed the “Der gerechten” fugal section to ride above the long-sustains of the double basses without being thrown off. Sheila Dietrich, the soprano soloist, provided a light and comforting solo in the fifth movement. This movement is a cornerstone of the Requiem, providing an angelic moment of healing in this work, which Neufeld describes in the program notes as “comfort for the living that recognizes the human journey through times of grief, but also offers a sense of hope, victory and joy at the end of that journey.”

There were two technical issues that detracted from the overall impact of the piece. The first was ongoing instances within the soprano section of uncontrolled and abundant vibrato, especially noticeable in the fourth “Wie lieblich” movement. The second was recurring registration issues in the tenor sections. With some tenors chest-strong and others in head-tone, there wasn’t an even sound in exposed tenor lines like the “Zu nehmen Preis und Ehre” fugal section of the sixth movement. Otherwise, the blend of the choir was excellent, with a very solid grounding in the basses and a majestic alto presence. Neufeld manages to massage the tension of the Requiem, never letting the choir become too loud and allowing the suspense in the music to blossom slowly.

Neufeld has many memories over his 36 very successful years with the choir. He mentions a few great works among his memories, many of which were done with the Guelph Chamber Choir. He thinks of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, the Monteverdi Vespers, and Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Some of these memories are from abroad as well: “Performing in Austria at the Mozarteum, and the Czech Republic, in the old city of Kroměříž in the Bishop’s palace ballroom. Performing in those acoustical environments [was] really something,” he shares.

Neufeld is not done with music; he would be happy to guest conduct, and loves the rehearsal process. He feels though, that “it’s time for someone younger, who has more energy and new ideas, to take the choir forward. It’s always a good time, when things are going well, to make that transition,” he says. As the Guelph Chamber Choir enters a transition year, there will be two concerts conducted by two conductors shortlisted for Neufeld’s replacement. In the fall of 2018, Patrick Murray takes the reins, while in the spring of 2019, Charlene Pauls leads the choir. One of the two will replace Neufeld. “I would like them to be successful in whatever they choose,” says Neufeld. “I’m looking forward to being in the audience and hearing what comes from the choir under a new director.

“The thing I will remember the most are the people in the choir,” adds Neufeld. “They come because they want to, not because they have to. One of the most memorable conversations I’ve had was with three doctors during the SARS crisis. I was surprised they were at rehearsal when all of this was going on. They just looked at me and said, ‘We can’t afford not to be here. This helps us manage to get through.’ This is a big part of what choirs do. For lack of a better term: this spiritual energy, to keep going with our daily lives, working together.”

In a surprise, the choir performed a very touching final piece in tribute to Neufeld: Ron Jeffers’ setting of Fred Mitchell’s poem “I have had singing.” With his family onstage, Neufeld’s work with the choir was perfectly summed up – with great music, happy voices, and a touching farewell.

The Guelph Chamber Choir, featuring Sheila Dietrich (soprano), Daniel Lichti (bass-baritone) and the Musica Viva Orchestra, performed Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) in farewell to outgoing artistic director Gerald Neufeld on March 31, 2018, 7:30pm at River Run Centre, Guelph.

The Canadian Stage web page for upcoming song and dance show In This Body reads “conceived and sung by Fides Krucker.” It’s a testament to how Krucker, herself a vocalist, built this project – as a highly personal (and personalized) collection of music that reflects upon her own life experience. It also speaks volumes about Krucker herself – a singular creator and interpreter, who has spent her career discovering the capacity of her own body for storytelling.

As a concept, In This Body has been in the works since summer 2016, when Krucker suggested the idea to dancers Laurence Lemieux, Peggy Baker and Heidi Strauss – the latter two of whom have been her longtime collaborators. Since then, it has evolved into a 75-minute collection of pop songs arranged for Krucker’s voice, instrumentalists Rob Clutton, Tania Gill and Germaine Liu, and the three dancers, running March 14 to 18 as part of Canadian Stage’s 2018/19 VOICES3 vocal series. Exploring themes around relationships, love and womanhood and featurings songs from the likes of Feist, Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang and Serena Ryder, the show feels like a perfect microcosm of Krucker’s body of work – a musical story that is at once intensely collaborative, and wholly her own.

The following interview has been condensed and edited.

WN: I love that the program note makes a point of stating “conceived and sung by”. Can you speak about your role as a performer-slash-creator here? How did you create this idea?

FK: Periodically I’ve made semi-staged cabarets – I did one at Artword Artbar in 2002 or so, and then another one in the late 2000s at Theatre Passe Muraille. They were always a chance for me to gather a diverse cross-section of popular songs and re-interpret them – and they would often really speak to how I was feeling at that point in my life, with regards to whatever happened to be going on with my own development as a human being at the time. So this piece feels like it comes out of that thread of work.

Another thread of work that I do is contemporary opera, which I’ve done since the mid-80s. I was really cognizant of the fact that almost all of the operas that I’ve sung, in which I’m singing about the idea of love, for example, have been written by men. I thought, ‘okay...where’s the female opera?’ And then I realized, maybe putting together this 15-song program in which 12 of them are by women (and only 3 by men) is, in a way, me making a type of ‘opera’. It is a concert with dance – we’re not giving ourselves characters or turning it into a story in any way – but it feels like it’s got the emotional curves you find in opera.

It’s mostly pop songs, but our arrangements are pretty out there for some of them. We spent a lot of time with them, taking them to whatever limits felt right to us to express what the individual story of each song is. That’s where the ‘conceiving’ part came from.

WN: Your work refers in several ways to the performing body, and to “embodiment.” Can you speak to some of other ways you’ve had to reckon with the concept of the body in this show?

FK: In my work as a singer, I think I’ve dealt with the voice how a performance artist might deal with their own body or material, because of the things I’ve asked my voice to do over time.

My interest has been how to play with all of the “unsocialized sounds” that a woman typically does not make. That’s been the thrust of a lot of my career. That to me informs an idea of embodiment that’s not the same as “measuring up” to an aesthetic ideal imposed by somebody else. And these songs allow me to do that from the inside out. I do feel like the way that these women [singer-songwriters] have put word and melody together feels like how I want to express those emotions, in a very first-degree way.

WN: You’ve spoken about the concept of this being a type of ‘national songbook.’ How did you come up with these songs, and how did they form a ‘songbook’ of this kind for you?

FK: The only way I can sing material – whether it’s classical material or pop – is if it feels like when it gets into my body it belongs there. That sounds very simplistic, but it’s like: does it fit in my mouth? Does it touch me? I say to my students, “You need to cry your way 45 times through a song before it’s really yours.” ...Or be excited through it, or let it get you riled up. I like to feel those physiological responses because I think that’s where the song came from in the first place for the songwriter. So those are the songs that appeal to me – the ones that get under my skin in that way.

When I started thinking about this project, it was around the time when the allegations against Jian Ghomeshi came to light. I had been thinking about relationship a lot, and [at that time] we weren’t quite talking about consent. That moment sort of opened the door to talking about consent in a more front-burner way in our society. So the songs that were interesting to me for this project were related to this idea of what I was raised to expect around the love story – and then what I discovered through my life’s experience that was nothing like what I was raised to expect. And the norms we still think hold true in our culture, versus what’s really happening.

[The music] is personal; it’s personal to my voice. But the landscape is one that’s been shared by many of us – and we’re all speaking out about it in a different way now. And that to me is super, super exciting.

In This Body, presented as part of Canadian Stage’s VOICES3 series, runs at the Berkeley Street Theatre March 14 to 18, 2018.

It’s been more than two years since Jan Lisiecki’s last solo piano recital in Toronto. Not wanting to wait another year for his Koerner Hall concert next March, I took advantage of Bravo Niagara!’s serendipitous scheduling to hear this exceptional pianist perform March 10 in the historic St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The critically acclaimed 22-year-old Calgary-born Polish-Canadian is now an established professional, with four Deutsche Grammophon recordings, and his extensive touring has made him a member of the one million mile club. The Bravo Niagara! recital was bracketed by appearances with the OSM in Montreal on March 6 and 8 and a solo date in São Paulo, Brazil on March 13.

Lisiecki has always been comfortable speaking to his audience, charming and at ease, with a maturity beyond his years. After opening his recital with Chopin’s two Op.55 Nocturnes, he took to the microphone to introduce the “night’s music theme” that tied together the evening’s repertoire. He spoke of Schumann being awoken in the middle of the night by a brass chorale, an event he soon learned had coincided with his brother’s death and which later inspired the writing of Nachtstücke (Night Pieces) Op.23, the next work on the program. The opening movement felt like a march in the dark; the second, more harmonically complex, had the sense of looking back. After the turmoil of the third movement, Lisiecki brought the piece to a satisfying place of resolution and repose.

Lisiecki introduced Ravel’s demonic Gaspard de la Nuit by demonstrating at the piano how the repetition of one note and the harmonies Ravel wrote around it create a chilling picture. In Ondine, the first movement, Lisiecki’s unerring phrasing was coupled with a technical prowess that served the music. Le Gibet was well-paced, icily haunting, its inexorability evoking the spectre of death. Scarbo, the third and final movement, was (Lisiecki told us) the result of Ravel’s intention to write the hardest piece ever written. Lisiecki’s dazzling performance of it brought the generous helping of music before intermission to an exhilarating conclusion.

Rachmaninoff’s Morceaux de fantaisie Op.3 is a youthful composition that nonetheless typifies the Russian keyboard virtuoso’s later works in its tone colours, textures and harmonies. The Elégie harkens back to Chopin, and the famous Prélude with its searing lyricism is one of the composer’s most popular pieces. Lisiecki showed great dynamic range in both and showcased the contrasts in the Mélodie with elan, while bringing out the sinister charm of Polichinelle.

Lisiecki had command of the keyboard throughout the recital, beginning with the pointed rhythm and accelerated rubato of Chopin’s Nocturne Op.55, No.1 and strong voicing of the night music element of Op.55 No.2. The Nocturne Op.72, No.1 was overshadowed by the marvellous fusion of art and technique in Chopin’s Scherzo No.1, which the pianist brought off with matchless impetuosity. He brought a welcome serenity to its lovely midsection before the tumultuous finish produced the evening’s second spontaneous standing ovation from the capacity crowd.

Träumerei, the matchless Reverie from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood, brought the concert to a sublime musical and apt thematic end, a tranquil balance to the force of the Scherzo and a reminder of Lisiecki’s ability to make every note count while working with the quirks of the Yamaha grand piano he was playing.

Jan Lisiecki, presented by Bravo Niagara!, performed at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake on March 10, 2018.

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

On Thursday, March 1, jazz guitarist Harley Card’s Sunset Ensemble played at Lula Lounge, presenting two sets of freshly-arranged music. The performance was one of four special projects supported by the TD Toronto Jazz Festival’s 2018 Discovery Series, and was the second public performance for the Sunset Ensemble, which played a smaller-scale show at The Tranzac in early January. By foregrounding interactivity and dynamics, the Sunset Ensemble delivered an engaging, thoughtful listening experience that both expanded upon Card’s body of work and distilled his aesthetic sensibilities into something potent and new.

This particular project grew out of a relatively straightforward concept: take compositions from Card’s previous albums and adapt them for octet. Card has been an active member of the Canadian jazz scene for well over a decade, both as a leader and as a sideperson, and much of the Sunset Ensemble’s material is drawn from his albums Non-Fiction (2008), Hedgerow (2013), and The Greatest Invention (2017), in addition to new compositions from Card and other band members. Although helmed by Card, special mention must be made of the contributions of David French – saxophonist on Hedgerow and The Greatest Invention, and longtime colleague of Card’s – who collaborated on many of the evening’s arrangements.

“Sophomore,” the first song of the night, began with careful purpose, building into an atmospheric solo from tenor saxophonist Perry White. The backbeat-driven “Enclosure,” from The Greatest Invention, followed, with impressive playing from drummer Lorenzo Castelli, who was able, both in this song and throughout the entire show, to be exciting and propulsive without overwhelming the rest of the band. Ted Crosby’s slow, eerie “Primordial Valley” was juxtaposed with “Right Arm,” a swinging, medium-up song, which was the closest that the band came to conventional large-ensemble jazz playing. One of the high points of the first sets was “A Distant Bell,” on which Card took a compelling solo, playing mature, articulate phrases with subtly powerful rhythmic confidence.

Card is particularly good in dialogue with other musicians, both while soloing and while comping, and, though a technically accomplished guitarist, his instincts always seem to guide him to choose musicality over flash. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that these artistic principles carried over, in a substantive way, to his role as arranger and bandleader. Given the project’s description, it would not have been unreasonable for an audience member to expect an expanded version of Card’s quintet, in which additional horns would add extra colour to music that is still, essentially, in a small-ensemble format, as in guitarist John Scofield’s 2007 album This Meets That. What emerged over the course of the Sunset Ensemble’s performance, however, was a commitment to a very different approach: rather than flattening the material at hand to facilitate opportunities for individual instrumental heroism, Card and company’s arrangements focused on dynamic group playing, with an emphasis on tone, texture and melody that fixed the audience’s focus squarely on the music.

The second set continued this trend, with excellent playing from all members of the group. Highlights included French’s arrangement of the title track from The Greatest Invention, bassist Daniel Fortin’s “Don’t You Think,” which was one of a few charts that featured upright bass in unison with Crosby’s bass clarinet, and “Laurentia,” a short, delicate ensemble piece that had its premiere at Lula Lounge. Sunset Ensemble’s performance ended with “Albany,” a song from Non-Fiction, and, as Card informed the audience, “maybe the second tune [his] group ever played.” Ending with “Albany” was an apposite choice, as it neatly encapsulated Card’s accomplishment: by looking to the past, he has created an exciting new ensemble with a life of its own that can move confidently into the future.

Harley Card’s Sunset Ensemble – featuring Alexander Brown (trumpet & flugelhorn), Perry White (tenor sax), Ted Crosby (bass clarinet & clarinet), Karl Silveira (trombone), Harley Card (guitar), Matt Newton (Rhodes piano), Dan Fortin (bass) and Lorenzo Castelli (drums) – took place at Lula Lounge in Toronto on March 1, as part of the TD Toronto Jazz Festival’s Discovery Series.

Colin Story is a jazz guitarist, writer, and teacher based in Toronto. He can be reached through his website, on Instagram and on Twitter.