RUR Torrent of Light A by ElanaEmerSeptember waits for no magazine! School is back, and our mailbox is jam-packed with stuff that can’t wait for our September 20 print pub date. 

CASMA

Surfing the TIFF tsunami, The Screen Composers Guild of Canada has announced the nominees for their first ever Canadian Screen Music Awards (CASMA). Awards in nine categories, covering screens little and large, will be presented in person at a live streamed event at the El Mocambo in Toronto on September 21st, 2022, preceded in early September by the announcement of the recipient of the Distinguished Services to the Industry award in early September.

Barrie Concert Series

BarrieConcerts Bruce Owen by Dana RobertsThe Barrie Concert Series was founded in 1946 by eminent Simcoe lawyer Bruce Owen. Having chosen, as did many small and mid-sized presenters, to lay low during pandemic times, they have announced they will resume performances on September 10. “We lost our founder and guiding spirit, Bruce Owen [in February 2022]” their release states, “and this concert will be an homage to Bruce.” Music will feature pianist Sheng Cai playing Barber and Schubert, and and Sinfonia Toronto under the direction of Nurhan Arman playing Puccini and Dvořák. Tickets can be purchased through the Barrie Concerts website

Read more: Can't Wait to Tell You...

THE GRYPHON TRIO   PHOTO ALL PHOTOS BY KAT RIZZANestled in every story is another story, like those wooden dolls hidden within selves. The festively decorated Arcadian Court was the site of this past April’s Toronto Arts Foundation Awards. The event, also referred to as the Mayor’s Lunch, has been a part of the Toronto arts ecosystem since 1996. The venue, located in what was then the Robert Simpson Company Store, at Queen and Bay, has been part of the city’s social, cultural and commercial fabric since the 1930s. 

The large crowd in attendance included the Mayor of course, at the head table at the front of the room, along with Claire Hopkinson, Director and CEO of the Toronto Arts Foundation and its sister organization, the Toronto Arts Council, many financial donors to the arts, city councillors, and the event host, award-winning writer, producer and tv/radio host, Amanda Parris.

The Lunch

Round, white-table-clothed tables fill the rest of the room, each seating about ten guests. The finalists for the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Celebration of Cultural Life Award, Breakthrough Artist Award and Arts for Youth Award are interspersed among others like me, who have various links to the arts. So are representatives of Meridian, Ontario’s largest credit union, on hand to accept the already-decided Toronto Arts and Business Award in recognition of their ongoing program of providing transformational cultural funding to the communities they serve.

After some speeches, it’s time to eat. They feed us well and I chat with my table mates, a lustrous group of artists, arts administrators, heads of arts organizations, theatre directors, arts professors, and so on. After lunch, the brilliant Gryphon Trio plays Fugitive Visions of Mozart by Ukrainian composer, Valentin Silvestrov, followed by a tango, La muerte del ángel by Astor Piazzolla from Argentina. And then it’s time for the finalists to be recognized. 

Read more: "A Seat at the Table" Reflections on April’s Toronto Arts Foundation Awards

Tony Yike Yang, at the Royal Conservatory's event “Music Lights the Way”. PHOTO: RCMUSIC.COMThe Royal Conservatory of Music, established in 1886, was the first institution in Canada focused on providing a graded music curriculum for musicians of all ages. In 1916, it published its first piano book based on the Conservatory’s graded curriculum. For private teachers sprinkled throughout the small towns of Canada, these books became a vital teaching resource: access to regulated examinations promoted a more consistent quality of teaching and a new sense of professionalism.

Cards face up on the table – my own first experiences as a student with The Royal Conservatory repertoire and examinations were not positive. Acceptable piano pieces, of primarily the ODWG (old dead white guy) variety, were limited to what could be played for the exam. Examiners were snappish if one took too long to look over a sight-reading excerpt or burst into tears because all memory of the List A Gigue had evaporated. Then again, it was the late 1960s. I was 11. My perception of reality could perhaps have been a bit off. 

Perhaps, but 40 years into a piano-teaching career, the memory of those (mis)perceptions has been instrumental (as it were) in helping me clarify and stick to my goals as a music educator: to impart a love of music, thereby opening a door to each student’s inborn musicality; to affirm, for the student and society, the emotional, intellectual and spiritual benefits of music, while at the same time guiding the development of technical skills that will increase proficiency and build confidence; and to provide the historical and theoretical context of a wide palette of musical compositions via a depth of repertoire by composers of all sexual orientations, cultures and historical periods, living and dead. And by doing all this, to provide each student with an individual course of study uniquely aligned with their strengths, challenges and personal goals.

In attempting to fulfill these goals, I have for many years cherry-picked from the curricula of different organizations including, but not confined to The RCM. Granted, The RCM piano-repertoire books were upgraded sporadically over the years, but largely within the ODWG loop. The exception to this would be the few works by living composers, such as Boris Berlin and Clifford Poole, appearing in the 20th-century section of the books.

Read more: Music lights the way at The RCM’s Celebration Series launch

Palais Royale 1946Although spring is usually what we think of as the season for rebirth, in post-lockdown 2022, summer is the new spring, with an explosion of festivals and programs back from dormancy. Along Toronto’s lakeshore, two treasured venues are rising from the ashes of the pandemic and bringing back lakeside live music.

Music Garden

Gregory OhBeloved by many hidden-gem miners, the Music Garden, in the Toronto harbourfront, was a tiny perfect setting for beautiful and eclectic acoustic concerts for decades until you-know-what hit and things went quiet. Now, a shiny new curator has been brought on board to steer the musical ship. Gregory Oh is a respected pianist, conductor and curator. 

Read more: Music Garden and Palais Royale - Awakenings along the Lakeshore

Zosha Di Castri. Photo by David AdamcykNew York-based Canadian composer, Zosha Di Castri spoke to me via Zoom May 9, ten days before her piece, In the Half-light, receives its world premiere performance under the baton of Toronto Symphony Orchestra Music Director Gustavo Gimeno. 

Given the fact that the magazine goes into circulation the day of the concert, most readers will be reading this after that first performance is over. So our plan is to post the full length conversation after the event. But here’s a worthwhile snippet – Di Castri touching on some of the things that made this a particularly gratifying collaboration (something not to be taken for granted, especially in an orchestral context). 

“The TSO approached me quite a while ago for this project,” Di Castri says. “As far back as 2019 I think. At that time I was living in Paris and they said would you be interested in writing something for the orchestra and Barbara [Hannigan] for our 100th season and I was immediately super-excited because if someone said is there any singer you could dream you would ever work with it would be her. So it just seemed so amazing that this opportunity would come up. We had met a while ago, in summer 2014, I think, in Santa Fe in a program called Creative Dialogues organized in part by the Sibelius Academy, kind of a Finnish/US partnership – composers and performers along with guest mentors for the people developing pieces. And Barbara was one of my mentors and conducted my piece which was a short chamber piece. So I had gotten to know her a bit there and was excited that she had proposed my name to the TSO as somebody who might be right for this project.”

Read more: Zosha Di Castri in the Half-light
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