Hot venue on a Saturday night. Koerner Hall in its third season hosting yet another jazz spectacular.  Can’t miss!

Yet there was room at the inn on Oct. 15, far too many seats vacant given the calibre of the visitors. It should have helped fringe fans decide to attend when half the music presented was based on the songs of prolific pop icon Stevie Wonder. Perhaps it’s the don’t-care attitude to jazz on the part of mainstream media hereabouts.

For serious jazz followers the SF Jazz Collective with its innovative repertoire has been leading the charge down one of many jazz-fostered highways of 21^st century music-making since it was formed in 2004. The eight performers in the collective, whose personnel has slowly evolved over the years, decide annually to play new compositions “by a modern jazz master” and by themselves.

Some might well object that Stevie W is not on the same planet as previous honorees such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock – but what does that really matter. The concert was mostly splendid, more pleasing for jazzers rather than followers of the talent born Stevland Hardaway Judkins 61 years ago.

The atmosphere at first was studied, California cool, but the shrieking high notes of trumpeter Avishai Cohen soon dispelled the calm and proceedings began to heat up with tenor saxophonist Mark Turner duelling the exemplary  pulse pals underpinning this sophisticated octet, drummer Kendrick Scott and bassist Matt Penman.

The tune, which turned out to be Wonder’s Sir Duke, was rife with riffs and deep-layered ensemble playing, a factor all evening. This presentation, like the others, worked better when a soloist was deserted by colleagues who sidled reverently to the sides of the stage. Otherwise, you might easily think there was too much happening at once.

Vibraphonist Stefon Harris made an eloquent verbal case for the group’s  reinvention of music before employing multiple mallets effectively and effortlessly on his instrument on every tune.

Alto saxist Miguel Zenon, one of those lucky McArthur Fellowship ‘genius’ recipients, provided a rich and yearning core for his tune More To Give while exceptionally fluent trombonist Robin Eubanks (who confessed at intermission that the Stevie suggestion came from him) was in stirring, raucous mode on his own Metronome though here as elsewhere there was much forward momentum but not enough swing for my taste.

Eubanks is an imaginative standout among his peers, working well – as did everyone – with veteran pianist Ed Simon, a skilled interpreter whatever the genre and complex compositional structure.

Recent Wonder track Creepin’ preceded a bizarre segment with soloists rambling then letting bass and drum noodling intervene. Didn’t work, in marked contrast to fire-and-brimstone takes on Stevie’s Superstition and an earlier pop classic whose every word is familiar but whose title stubbornly remains elusive.

It didn’t matter. This was an inspiring evening.

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There can be very few cities to have seen two different stagings of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride within the last three years, but Toronto, luckily, is one of them.  Opera Atelier gave the 1779 opera its Toronto professional premiere in 2003 and remounted the work in 2009.  Now the Canadian Opera Company, that staged its very first Gluck just earlier this year with Orfeo ed Euridice, has launched its new season with Robert Carsen’s production from 2006 owned by several companies.  The production features gorgeous singing from the principals and the chorus.  Visually, however, it’s stultifying.

Carsen’s production employs a concept that I have seen far too often and have never found satisfying--namely, to present an opera or play deliberately in a visual impoverished, or in this case, oppressive setting, with the sole goal of setting up a visual transformation at the very end.  We had an example of this technique just earlier this year in the COC’s Ariadne auf Naxos, when the entire opera-within-the-opera was played on a tatty, cobbled-together set, only to be whisked away in the final moments to reveal a star-strewn vista.  The problem is that director Neil Armfield in the case of Ariadne auf Naxos and Carsen in the case of Iphigénie has sacrificed visual interest during the entire course of the opera for a single theatrical effect at the end.  Such a sacrifice is not worth it.  It is unfair to the audience and to the opera.

Tobias Hoheisel’s design for Carsen’s Iphigénie is particularly stark.  The set consists of the floor and three sides of a black box.  In this modern dress productions, all the women, including Iphigénie, are barefoot and wear identical black, plain, one-piece dresses.  All the men wear black--long-sleeved shirt, trousers, belt--and are barefoot when meant to be vulnerable or socks and shoes when not.  Oreste and Pylade, the foreigners, are not distinguished in dress from the others.  Thoas wear a large black coat to show his authority but his men wear identical black coats when accompanying him.  Needless to say, watching a production entirely in black on black for the majority of two hours is extraordinarily tedious.  The design necessarily forces us to focus on the performers’ faces and hands, but even then Carsen has the principals sing facing away from the audience at key moments.

The meaning of the box is clear.  Iphigénie, her brother Oreste and his friend Pylade find their lives still constrained by the curse on the house of Atreus.  Oreste believes that Iphigénie has been sacrificed by her father Agamemnon at Aulis, not knowing that Diana substituted a simulacrum for her and whisked the girl to safety in Taurus.  Now Thoas, ruler of Tauris has had a dream that he will be killed by a foreigner and so commands any new arrivals be sacrificed.  Of course, Oreste and Pylade are the first foreigners to arrive after the decree.

The meaning of all the black is clear.  Gluck wanted to reform opera to bring it back to the simplicity of the Greeks and the opera is a tragedy, albeit with a happy ending.  Yet, even the Greeks were never as stark as this.  They plays took place in the daylight and they and used colourful three-sided periaktoi to indicate change of place.
Carsen has placed the singing chorus in the pit and uses a chorus of dancers on stage to generally confusing effect.  When they lie on the ground it’s unclear whether they are asleep or dead.  The priestesses can suddenly turn into the Furies who pursue Oreste as can the prone populace into snakes.  At the end when the people are supposed to be rejoicing, Iphigénie is surrounded by seemingly dead bodies and Oreste and Pylade who ought to be celebrating with her and each other rush away from her in opposite directions.  It does not make sense.

Fortunately, the singing of Susan Graham in the title role is magnificent.  Not only is her voice warm and radiant but she has a beautiful sense of line and breathtaking command of dynamics.  Russell Braun in fine voice throws himself into the role of Oreste with even more intensity than usual, giving the most naturalistically detailed performance on stage.  As Pylade, Joseph Kaiser appearing at last again in Toronto after achieving fame elsewhere, has a wonderfully passionate, multihued voice ideal for the character.  Carsen does not go as far as Opera Atelier in depicting Oreste and Pylade’s true passionate relationship and thus places Pylade too often in the situation of trying to get close to Oreste, who repeatedly casts him off.  Thoas is Mark S. Doss, who wields a sepulchral bass and a vibrato that tends to obscure his diction.

Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, last on the podium for Nixon in China, leads the COC Orchestra in traversal of the score with a very narrow dynamic range, as if the work were all forte and fortissimo.  He does attempt to lighten the orchestral texture but he is not as successful at this as Harry Bickett was in Orfeo, and in general the sound remains overly heavy.

If one has to compare the OA and COC productions there is simply no doubt that the OA production is far superior in storytelling and in eliciting a wider range of detailed acting from its performers that makes their changing emotional states much clearer.  While it wonderful to see such performers as Graham, Braun and Kaiser in such fine form on stage they may as well be performing the opera in concert given the clothes they wear and the box they stand in.  One feels that they, like their characters, are trapped by an oppressive regime that inhibits rather than supports full enjoyment of their gifts.

‘Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn….’

Fifteen seasoned jazzmen (save one) exploded with youthful zest and irresistible momentum on stage at Toronto’s Old Mill on September 15 – thankfully all together just the once – at the annual gathering that signified the 13^th edition of the Ken Page Memorial Trust Gala.

The trust supports jazz professionals, encourages young musicians in numerous ways, sponsors live and recorded jazz performance and fosters education – and, as always, shows it can host a swinging jazz party.

Before a loudly enthusiastic audience, many of the grey-hair and no-hair persuasion, a group of jazz stars from both side of the border played 10 mix-and-match sets in various configurations, celebrating for the most part the jazz music that used to be called mainstream, a description now claimed by descendants of bebop, and even more bizarrely christened ‘traditional jazz’ by youngsters blithely unaware of accurate jazz tradition.

A program put together by Jim Galloway, former artistic director of the Toronto Jazz Festival and still very handy with his signature curved soprano sax, swiftly took shape as a lengthy highlight reel of all that’s good and great about this music, performed without benefit of rehearsal or playlists.

Numbers were called on stage, rarely with tune titles, but it didn’t matter a whit to fans familiar with songs of the era. And, amazingly, the show started on time.

It’s worth remembering that the ranks of golden oldies are dwindling, but their contribution to jazz is undiminished. The Page bash attracted American trombonist George Masso, 85, and American tenor saxophonist Houston Person, 76, while among the mature gathering of Canadians were trombonist Laurie Bower, 78, Galloway, 74, and flugelhornist Guido Basso, 73. (The youth front was represented by lively violinist Drew Jurecka and guitarist Reg Schwager, who for countless years has masqueraded as a high school senior).

All present belong in the top flight, ready to blow, strum or thrash from the first, relaxed notes of Gershwin’s “S’Wonderful”, piercing clarinet from Allan Vache (with accent ecu on e), spirited comping from breathtakingly versatile pianist John Sherwood, super-solid bassist Neil Swainson and ever-busy drummer Terry Clarke. This sextet with trombonist Al Kay and trumpeter Kevin Turcotte was in full vigour mode, notably on a rabble-rousing version of “Broadway” that stirred an outbreak of foot-tapping, head-nodding and finger-tapping among fans far from comatose despite a substantial supper.

With Toronto’s Ted O’Reilly keeping proceedings in a semblance of order, the band population shifted lightly to a frontline of Galloway, Masso and popular gala returnee Warren Vache on cornet with his succulent, bright sound. The trombonist caressed the melody with delicacy, careening delightfully at solo’s end before the group surged through “Blue Skies” over a pulsating beat.

Basso chose flugelhorn for a masterful take on Duke’s “In A Mellow Tone” in the next set, followed by John MacLeod on cornet for some heroic blowing on “Things Aint What They Used To Be”, which also had a rich, emotional contribution from Person and whiplash work from Sherwood.

And there was much more, too much to detail here, on a magical evening surely unlike any other past or planned for 2011 in these parts.

Standouts included a stylish Basso-Schwager-Swainson trio creating an achingly-lovely “It’s The Good Life”, a brass quintet belting out “Perdido” and Sherwood indulging his keyboard smarts on “Up A Lazy River”, Person plus pulse threesome whirling through a Broadway standard, sweetly breezing through “Stella By Starlight” and then charging flat-out on “C Jam Blues” followed by deliberately chosen vintage material brought to life by Galloway and Allan Vache with a minimum of sonic confusion and concluding with the former’s beautiful version of “Come Sunday”.

There was just time for Warren Vache and Schwager to deliver a poignant “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face” before the gang was all there, blaring an uptempo swinger that peaked into a devout shoutabout that mirrored the classic Mingus “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” for impact and joy.

The night as a whole was indeed classic, leaving audience and players, especially the almost constant beat boys – Swainson and Clarke – exhausted, but more than happy. Here’s to next year.