Sam “The Record Man” Sniderman, 92, died Sunday, September 23, 2012. In many ways his is an all-Toronto story: born in the city, he grew up in Kensington Market and attended Harbord Collegiate. Most notably, he built his downtown Yonge Street record store into a virtual neon icon to the record, with its dual LP-shaped marquee of coloured rotating flashing lights. It defined recorded music retail for several generations of Toronto music lovers.

Let’s be clear, Sniderman was more than a mere retailer. A crucial promoter of Canadian records, his accomplishments garnered him the Order of Canada in 1976. Later he was made an inductee of the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame and in 1999 was presented with the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts.

Sniderman’s death also reminds us of another passing: that of the record store, that physical, tactile medium of music exchange. Upon reflection I learned much about music of all kinds at Sam the Record Man (often reduced to Sam’s by his faithful customers), and I hope he made a tidy profit from my abiding love of recorded sound which teetered on obsession.

I first recall going to Sam’s with my father, a jazz lover. He bought an Ellington LP on that outing, previewing it on the store record player. It was the first time I’d heard Take the A Train. Far for being a shattering musical revelation, to my youthful avant-gardist ears it sounded very unhip, like easy-listening elevator music - remember MUZAK? Now I like to think I know better, and perhaps I do.

Whenever I had a few dollars in my pocket, I’d scratch my record itch by going down to Sams’ (and often to A & A Records, a few doors down). I figure I received an undergrad music education equivalent spending several decades on the recorded repertoire of the human race there, first on 45s and 33 LPs (‘60s to the late ‘80s), then on cassette and finally on CD.

How to describe my typical Sam’s experience? There was the thrill of the hunt, certainly. Flipping expectantly through the racks, getting my fingers dirty, was something like visiting a tactile, gritty Youtube before the internet, but with a much higher likelihood of bumping into not only music both known and unknown but also fellow music geeks. Another bonus: the promise of a much higher sonic and textual fidelity than Youtube heard over my scrappy computer speakers. There was ultimately the sweet satisfaction of possession, of finally putting “my” album into my home stereo and cranking up the volume. That was also an era when liner notes were often as not stylishly written and illustrated, an integral and important part of the album package. I still can’t bear to trash my LP copies of the Bärenreiter UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music of the World, with their large B&W photos and erudite notes.

Later, when my performances and music began to be released on commercial LP (Jon Hassell, Evergreen Club Gamelan) and a little later on CD, I’d make the trek to Sam’s second floor. It seemed important to me that “the product” was racked properly (in the front) and re-ordered if sold out. And yes, I even indulged in the guilty pleasure of the neophyte record artist: monitoring unit sales, like an anxious parent watching his baby’s first tentative steps. In retrospect, it was my way of engaging with fellow local music fans, and also of standing in a long line of recording artists whom I admired. My Sam’s visits, which started as a modest music fan and consumer, had modulated to that of an anxious but equally modest producer, each of which was, I realised, an essential side of the production-consumption coin.

At the time the word on the street was that the approachable Sniderman freely gave his expert advice and even invested in emerging Canadian musicians’ first recordings. Brian Robertson, a close Sniderman family friend and past chairman of the Canadian Recording Industry Association noted, “He was a mentor to literally hundreds of Canadian artists and musicians, and the Yonge St. record store and Sam’s presence there was the centre of the Canadian music industry’s universe for over three decades.”

Music retail went through a sea change in the 1990s, a process apparently as yet unfinished. Sniderman filed for bankruptcy and closed his store in December 2001. While he retired, his sons Bobby and Jason re-opened the store the following year, yet the losses kept accumulating. In 2007 they sold the Toronto Sam the Record Man property to Ryerson University and the building was demolished. Ryerson plans a new student centre in its stead.

End of story? Toronto forgets yet another landmark part of its cultural history? Not quite. There are evidently future plans for the old Sam’s neon sign. As a triple tribute to the physical record, to “Sam the Man” and to the store he built to serve music fans, it will fittingly be rehung, taking pride of place in the new Ryerson building.

David Perlman talks with Josh Grossman, artistic director of the TD Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival.

To hear the full conversation with Daniel Taylor click the play button below. For any of our other podcasts, search for “The WholeNote” in your favourite podcast app, or go to TheWholeNote.com/podcasts for the entire list.

Or click here to download the podcast. (Right click and "Save as..." if it's playing directly in your browser.)

David Perlman talks with Roman Borys of the Gryphon Trio and Artistic Director of the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival.

To hear the full conversation with Roman Borys click the play button below. For any of our other podcasts, search for “The WholeNote” in your favourite podcast app, or go to TheWholeNote.com/podcasts for the entire list.

Or click here to download the podcast. (Right click and "Save as..." if it's playing directly in your browser.)

Robert Wilson’s and Philip Glass’s seminal opera, Einstein on the Beach, made its triumphant Canadian debut Friday at the Sony Centre in a production that defies convention to this day, 36 years after its first performance. Filled with contemporary 1970s pop culture references from Patty Hearst to Mr. Bojangles to a list of NYC radio station WABC deejays, Einstein is both a timeless piece about time and a spacious piece about space.

Two days before opening night in a fascinating panel that uniquely chronicled the work’s origins by the three principal creators – dancer/choreographer Lucinda Childs is the third -- Wilson said its inspiration was “20th century god Albert Einstein.”  He explained that long duration plays always interested him – the production runs 4 hour and 20 minutes  -- and that he saw opera as an expression of its Latin origin “works” as in “including all the arts.”

Einstein comprises four acts and five brief  “Knee” connective interludes (Wilson calls them “close-ups”) and runs without intermission. The audience is welcome to come and go as it pleases. (Curiously, no one in the row I was in near the back of the Sony Centre’s main floor left their seats during the entire performance – except to stand at its conclusion.) The current production is the fourth since 1976 and the first since 1992. I was fortunate to attend the second at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984, a mesmerizing experience as I recall. Based on that memory and recordings from the 1970s and 1992, this Luminato incarnation is indisputably the most musically proficient of the lot.

Wilson’s conceptual starting point for the opera, he explained at the panel, was a classical structure -- a theme and variations built around three images (a train, a trial and a field that would host a space machine). This solid foundation enables each scene’s individual elasticity to flourish. Wilson advised his audience not to look for meaning but to just get lost in it, quoting Susan Sontag: “To experience something is a way of thinking.”

Yet, Wilson did reveal that “On the Beach” alludes to the atomic bomb (specifically to the impending nuclear holocaust in Nevil Shute’s novel of the same name), that the train image is there because Einstein liked trains and that the lines of light, which slowly move in a myriad of ways throughout the opera, refer to time and space.

Wilson, trained as an architect, kept a notebook filled with drawings which were his ideas for Einstein’s visual content. When Glass came to compose the score at the piano he kept Wilson’s notebook in front of him. “The music came easily,” Glass said, attributing Einstein’s continued freshness after more than three decades to its being unlike any of their other collaborations.  “It’s sui generis,” he said.

Einstein appears in several guises throughout the work, as a young chalk-wielding theoretical physicist and as a sailing afficionado, for example, but most memorably as a violinist wearing what was (apart from the Beatles’ mop tops) arguably the most iconic hairstyle of the mid-20th century. The wig was worn by the prodigious Jennifer Koh (who played Spring and Summer from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the TSO in March as part of a “What Makes It Great” concert).

In an impressive evening filled with time-bending stagecraft, energetic dancing that seemed to embody the “E” in Einstein’s most famous equation and unparallelled musicianship from soloists, chorus and instrumentalists led by Michael Riesman, Ms. Koh’s vibrant playing ranged from her forceful impeccably phrased repetitive cycles of notes -- a touchstone of much of the opera -- to the warmth of the haunting second theme in Knee 4.  

Two days earlier at the panel, Glass explained that the violin becomes a touchstone since the most important thing for a musician was that Einstein played the violin. As to why many of the lyrics consisted of solfege syllables (doh re mi) and numbers, Glass recalled that it started as a teaching device to get the singers used to his idiosyncratic tone palette and complex time signatures. Wilson happened to walk in on a rehearsal and expressed his pleasure with the “lyrics”.  Glass kept them, the result of “my clumsiness and Bob’s naivete.”

Two more standouts in Friday’s performance were Andrew Sterman’s compelling tenor saxophone solo in Act 4, Scene 1 which soared Gato Barbieri-like as twenty-one people moved onto the stage individually or in pairs, stop-frame style and Kate Moran whose rendition of  “Prematurely Air-Conditioned Supermarket” elevated Lucinda Childs’s eight lines of Laurie Anderson-like seemingly trivial consumerist insights into high performance art. That most of it was delivered while lying on a bed in front of a judge in the second trial scene (Act 3, Scene 1) only made it more remarkable. It was my personal show-stopping moment.











 

By Paul Ennis

 

Robert Wilson’s and Philip Glass’s seminal opera, Einstein on the Beach, made its triumphant Canadian debut Friday at the Sony Centre in a production that defies convention to this day, 36 years after its first performance. Filled with contemporary 1970s pop culture references from Patty Hearst to Mr. Bojangles to a list of NYC radio station WABC deejays, Einstein is both a timeless piece about time and a spacious piece about space.

Two days before opening night in a fascinating panel that uniquely chronicled the work’s origins by the three principal creators – dancer/choreographer Lucinda Childs is the third -- Wilson said its inspiration was “20th century god Albert Einstein.”  He explained that long duration plays always interested him – the production runs 4 hour and 20 minutes  -- and that he saw opera as an expression of its Latin origin “works” as in “including all the arts.”

Einstein comprises four acts and five brief  “Knee” connective interludes (Wilson calls them “close-ups”) and runs without intermission. The audience is welcome to come and go as it pleases. (Curiously, no one in the row I was in near the back of the Sony Centre’s main floor left their seats during the entire performance – except to stand at its conclusion.) The current production is the fourth since 1976 and the first since 1992. I was fortunate to attend the second at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984, a mesmerizing experience as I recall. Based on that memory and recordings from the 1970s and 1992, this Luminato incarnation is indisputably the most musically proficient of the lot.

Wilson’s conceptual starting point for the opera, he explained at the panel, was a classical structure -- a theme and variations built around three images (a train, a trial and a field that would host a space machine). This solid foundation enables each scene’s individual elasticity to flourish. Wilson advised his audience not to look for meaning but to just get lost in it, quoting Susan Sontag: “To experience something is a way of thinking.”

Yet, Wilson did reveal that “On the Beach” alludes to the atomic bomb (specifically to the impending nuclear holocaust in Nevil Shute’s novel of the same name), that the train image is there because Einstein liked trains and that the lines of light, which slowly move in a myriad of ways throughout the opera, refer to time and space.

Wilson, trained as an architect, kept a notebook filled with drawings which were his ideas for Einstein’s visual content. When Glass came to compose the score at the piano he kept Wilson’s notebook in front of him. “The music came easily,” Glass said, attributing Einstein’s continued freshness after more than three decades to its being unlike any of their other collaborations.  “It’s sui generis,” he said.

Einstein appears in several guises throughout the work, as a young chalk-wielding theoretical physicist and as a sailing afficionado, for example, but most memorably as a violinist wearing what was (apart from the Beatles’ mop tops) arguably the most iconic hairstyle of the mid-20th century. The wig was worn by the prodigious Jennifer Koh (who played Spring and Summer from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the TSO in March as part of a “What Makes It Great” concert).

In an impressive evening filled with time-bending stagecraft, energetic dancing that seemed to embody the “E” in Einstein’s most famous equation and unparallelled musicianship from soloists, chorus and instrumentalists led by Michael Riesman, Ms. Koh’s vibrant playing ranged from her forceful impeccably phrased repetitive cycles of notes -- a touchstone of much of the opera -- to the warmth of the haunting second theme in Knee 4.

Two days earlier at the panel, Glass explained that the violin becomes a touchstone since the most important thing for a musician was that Einstein played the violin. As to why many of the lyrics consisted of solfege syllables (doh re mi) and numbers, Glass recalled that it started as a teaching device to get the singers used to his idiosyncratic tone palette and complex time signatures. Wilson happened to walk in on a rehearsal and expressed his pleasure with the “lyrics”.  Glass kept them, the result of “my clumsiness and Bob’s naivete.”

Two more standouts in Friday’s performance were Andrew Sterman’s compelling tenor saxophone solo in Act 4, Scene 1 which soared Gato Barbieri-like as twenty-one people moved onto the stage individually or in pairs, stop-frame style and Kate Moran whose rendition of  “Prematurely Air-Conditioned Supermarket” elevated Lucinda Childs’s eight lines of Laurie Anderson-like seemingly trivial consumerist insights into high performance art. That most of it was delivered while lying on a bed in front of a judge in the second trial scene (Act 3, Scene 1) only made it more remarkable. It was my personal show-stopping moment.

 

As part of Luminato and of Canadian commemorations of the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus is presenting the world premiere of Laura’s Cow: The Legend of Laura Secord. The 70-minute opera with music by Errol Gay to a libretto by Michael Patrick Albano is a charming work written to include all levels of the 200-voice CCOC from oldest to youngest plus three professional singers.  Told with abundant humour and imagination, this is an opera destined to last beyond its specific occasion to become a permanent part of the CCOC repertoire.

As with other historical characters who have become the stuff of legend, there is some disagreement about what Laura Secord actually did and how.  Albano sticks to the most accepted facts that Laura, née Ingersoll, (1775-1868) moved with her loyalist family from Massachusetts to Upper Canada.  In 1797 Laura married James Secord and settles in Queenston.  James, a sergeant in the 1st Militia, was wounded in during the Battle of Queenston Heights.  The Americans sequestered property, including the Secord farm, to billet their soldiers.  On the evening of June 21, 1813, Laura overheard the Americans planning a surprise attack on British troops led by Lieutenant James FitzGibbon at Beaver Dams that would lead to American control of the Niagara Peninsula.  Her husband still incapacitated from his wound, she set out alone to walk the 32 kilometres through enemy territory to warn FitzGibbon herself.  She took a cow along with her so she could claim she was taking it to sell at market.  She collapsed a short distance from Decew House, FitzGibbon’s headquarters, but was able give her warning in time, leading to a British victory at the Battle of Beaver Dams.

Albano’s begins the opera in the present with a school class preparing a play to celebrate Laura Secord during their study of the War of 1812.  Suddenly Laura herself (Emily Brown Gibson) appears to tell the children and their surprised teacher what really happened.  It transpires that what “really happened” actually involves quite a lot of fantasy but those fantastic elements are what will attract children to the story and help enliven the history.  A Balladeer (Andrew Love) becomes the narrator to set scenes and jump from one episode to the next.  He first appears as a square dance caller to lead into the scene of James Secord (Ivan Yordanov) courting Laura.

We shift from the human world to the animal world of the Ingersoll farm with its choruses of goats, sheep, chickens and pigs that introduces in grand style Laura’s Cow (Marta Herman).  A life-sized Trojan cow is pulled in out of which Herman pops to deliver a humorously bluesy number consisting entirely of the word “Moo”, after which she leads the barnyard animals in a boisterous charleston.  The scene is so much fun it is really beside the point to ask why Errol Gay has identified the animals with music one hundred years in their future, except that one sub-theme of the opera is that animals are more advance than we are because they are much more aware of their environment.

The most fascinating scene of the opera is also the most dramatically and musically advanced.  Laura, who feels helpless after James is wounded, goes to a church service where the congregation – men on one side women on the other – are singing a hymn.  In between verses, the chorus sings directly to Laura to be prepared to do something important when the time comes.  The effect is psychologically astute since Laura wonders whether it is God or her conscience speaking to her.

As we know, the occasion does arrive and urged on by her cow, Laura does take action.  Albano dramatizes her 32-kilometre trek by having her journey overseen by Ojibwe-speaking Native Guides and by her encountering various animals along the way – a bear, a colony of industrious beavers, a pack of untrustworthy coyotes and a herd of trustworthy deer.  At Decew House, Albano brings out the detail that the British soldiers won’t at first take Laura seriously until she defiantly insists on seeing FitzGibbon (also Andrew Love).  His praise of her gradually builds into a massive chorus encompassing the entire cast in praise of Laura, of Canada and of ordinary people having the power to do extraordinary things.  It is a wonderfully uplifting sequence and beautifully sung.

The overall nature of the opera is most reminiscent of Benjamin Britten first opera Paul Bunyan (1941), with its singing animals and eclectic mix of mood music and period-inspired tunes.  Gay draws a wide range of effects from the 14-member orchestra.  Its orchestral interludes sometimes sound Debussyan, sometimes like that of the great European exiles who scored so many films in the 1940s.  Gay is keenly aware that music for a children’s chorus must be clearly rhythmic and melodic.  His arias grow out of the atmospheric music but the textures are perfectly judged to suit the voices they are meant to accompany.  Besides the remarkable church scene and the rousing finale, perhaps the single loveliest song is the one about the wedding veil that he writes for Laura’s maid-of-honour Emma (Jacoba Barber-Rozema) that is filled with both the joy and sadness of a friend seeing another move on to another stage in life.

Emily Brown Gibson, who has been a member of the CCOC for six years, has a strong, clear voice that will surely acquire more fullness when it matures.  She gives a very winning portrait of Laura, not as an overblown figure, but as a good, seemingly unexceptional person who sees what is the right thing to do and does it.  All the flamboyance of heroism Albano and Gay give to Laura’s Cow.  Marta Herman is a delight throughout.  Her mezzo-soprano combines brightness and depth and her acting has the panache to make her character the most memorable in the opera.  Andrew Love has a heroic baritone and fine acting abilities which help explain the long list of opera engagements he has lined up in the future.

Special praise must be given to costume designer Lisa Magill who has found ingenious solutions to the many challenges the opera poses.  Her cow outfit for Herman is exceedingly witty.  She has pants and a blouse with a black-and-white splotch design, white rubber boots with black toes and a pink shoulder bag decorated with a row what look like pink basting bulbs.  The beavers are also wonderful with their brown mining hats, brown overalls with dependent quilted tails and wooden sticks, sandpaper and trowels for dam-building.  Her designs along with Fred Peruzza’s specialty props make the show a visual as well as musical pleasure.

CCOC Artistic Director Ann Cooper Gay conducts the orchestra and the singers with verve and precision.  Especially notable is how clear the diction is across the board – something that is hard to find even in all adult companies.  If you’re looking for a Luminato event for you and your family, this is an ideal one to choose.

©Christopher Hoile

Laura’s Cow runs at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre, 231 Queen’s Quay West, Toronto, June 7-10.  An alternate cast to the one discussed sings on June 8, June 9 evening and June 10 afternoon.  For tickets or more information visit www.harbourfrontcentre.com.

Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, May 26 2012

It came as no surprise that Casual Saturday concert at Thompson Hall last Saturday evening was an outstanding event by any standards!

On the podium was guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard, a familiar figure with the Toronto Symphony under whom they performed a hugely successful complete Sibelius Symphonies cycle in 2010. The programme, played without intermission, was a repeat of two of the works played earlier in the week, the First Cello Concerto by Shostakovich and the Brahms Second Symphony. The soloist was Alisa Weilerstein, the 30 year old cellist whose fame had preceded her and whom I was looking forward to hearing in concert.

Dausgaard greeted the audience with a friendly and informative chat about Brahms and the composer’s skill as an orchestrator. He introduced Alisa Weilerstein to the audience and invited her to talk about the character of the concerto, what to listen for and its inherent difficulties and rewards. She is an extraordinary cellist who displayed a superb technique, flawless intonation and intimate understanding of this tour-de-force for soloist and orchestra. I doubt that we’ll ever hear a more exciting and searching rendition.

The Brahms Second enjoyed an inspired, incandescent performance, with the conductor’s unusually animated and energetic body language shaping the playing. The hoped for accelerando in the closing pages of last movement brought the evening to a breathless conclusion.

Following the concert there was an open invitation to a party in the North Lobby.

The applause between movements was an encouraging sign that in this virtually full house were many newcomers having an enjoyable evening and who would, hopefully, be back.

Last month, our roaving reporter Ori Dagan went down to Toronto's Harbourfront Centre to visit the Metis Fiddler Quartet before their debut CD release party.  Below is the resulting video with a small clip of their performance.

Check out our new Conversations@TheWholeNote video interview with pianist Stewart Goodyear, who will be performing all 32 Beethoven Sonatas on Saturday June 9 at Koerner Hall as part of the Luminato Festival, co-presented with The Royal Conservatory.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

David Perlman talks with Stewart Goodyear, pianist.

To hear the full conversation with Stewart Goodyear click the play button below. For any of our other podcasts, search for “The WholeNote” in your favourite podcast app, or go to TheWholeNote.com/podcasts for the entire list.

Or click here to download the podcast. (Right click and "Save as..." if it's playing directly in your browser.)

The WholeNote Podcasts

ArtworkWelcome to the Conversations <at> The WholeNote podcast page. Below you will find our podcast episodes for your listening pleasure.

To listen, you have a few options:

  • You can listen via this website you can scroll down and find the episode you'd like and click play there.
  • Or you can download and save the podcasts on your phone, tablet or computer - and then you can listen to it anytime (even without an internet connection) by downloading from the episode articles below.
  • Or you can subscribe to this podcast on your favourite podcast service including iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, BluBrry, PocketCasts and more. Just open your podcast app and search for Conversations at The WholeNote and hit 'subscribe'. 

If you are unable to find us on the podcast app that you use, please let us know and we'll do our best to try and make it available to you.

Scroll down to select individual episodes to enjoy.

Back to top