Features

When Robert Carsen came to Toronto last spring to direct Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice for the Canadian Opera Company, it was the first time he had worked in his home town in almost 20 years. In 1992 he had directed the world premiere of Harry Somers’ Mario and the Magician for the COC. At that point, he was already being recognized as one of the most imaginative and exciting directors around. Today he is one of the busiest — last year alone he worked on 21 new productions and revivals.

I spoke with Carsen backstage at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts a few days before the opening of Orfeo ed Euridice. Though his work is controversial, he does not reveal any desire to confound or outrage anyone, least of all his audiences. Instead he seems intensely concerned about being understood.

Orfeo ed Euridice was a huge hit in Toronto. At the two performances I attended, the audience stood up and cheered at the end. Performances sold out, and it went on to win two Dora awards. But Carsen was already well aware of what a powerful production he was bringing to Toronto, since it had been first presented at Chicago Lyric Opera in 2006, and had been revived elsewhere a number of times.

Douglas McNabney, violist is one of Canada’s distinguished chamber musicians. He has toured extensively throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States, and is a Juno — and Grammy-nominated recording artist. Formerly artistic director of the Domaine Forget International Festival and Academy, he is also coordinator of chamber music at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal and a busy soloist and guest artist across Canada, the USA, and in Europe, with chamber music societies, ensembles, and (in past years) at summer festivals. He is also, now, the second artistic director of Toronto Summer Music in its five year history, succeeding Agnes Grossmann last fall, which has put a bit of a crimp in his summer touring, and a significant gleam in his eye.

Most significantly, though, for this story, the Toronto Summer Music Bloor/Bathurst offices, with their eye-catching mural, are just down the hall from The WholeNote’s digs, which made him an ideal and convenient starting point for WholeNote’s annual ramble down the highways and byways of summer music (and for the story’s main photograph). As is our custom, we have chosen to follow music’s makers in their summer peregrinations, posing the same four or five questions to each respondent. Here are McNabney’s responses, followed by “teasers” from the replies of others who responded in time for this magazine’s deadline. The story now takes up its home on our website where it will, if history is a reliable precedent, continue to grow and develop as the summer progresses.

What are we interrupting (i.e. taking you away from to write this)?
Still exhilarated after performing the Black Angels String Quartet by George Crumb with the SuperNova String Quartet at ScotiaFestival in Halifax ten days ago. Keeping in touch with managers and agents after last week’s ISPA conference in Toronto to book artists for 2012 TSM. Planning to find a successor at McGill for Jonathan Crow who has just been named the new TSO concertmaster. Establishing the incredibly complex rehearsal schedule for the TSM Academy and Festival, writing programme notes, getting my tux ready to attend the MadHot National Ballet Gala this evening … Oh yes, coordinating the pouring of new foundations next week for our cottage renovations …

What are you most looking forward to as an audience member between now and September 7? That’s like asking me which one of my children I prefer! … I’ve chosen artists and put every program together with such care — I’m dying of anticipation for each. Kiril Gerstein’s Toronto debut? Sir Tom Allen? Christine Brewer, our new Mentors and Fellows series where our young artists get to perform with the likes of Menahem Pressler, Anton Kuerti and André Laplante? I won’t want to miss one of those!

How about as a music maker/player? No question, the Mendelssohn Octet — the season finale of the TSM Festival with Jonathan Crow leading. Fireworks guaranteed!

What are you already preparing for beyond the summer? and (how) do your summer plans tie in? In terms of TSM, the Festival theme for 2012 and 2013 is already set and I’m starting to book artists in consequence. For my own performing, I’m looking forward to recording the complete Beethoven String Trios with Jonathan Crow and Matt Haimovitz, our third album after the Mozart Divertimento in 2007 and the Bach Goldberg Variations in 2009.

For more On The Road stories, click here.

REMEMBER THAT ANCIENT Wendy’s TV commercial when a pugnacious senior loudly screeched ‘Where’s The Beef’ at a rival hamburger? You might just get a similar reaction from some Hogtowners and visitors consulting this year’s Toronto Jazz Festival program, one celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Even though there’s excellent jazz to be heard at this festival, there could be shrieks of ‘Where’s The Jazz?’ if they’re just looking at the lineup in what’s always been Festival HQ, the big tent.

FIVE MIGHTILY AMBITIOUS twenty-somethings make up The Heavyweights Brass Band: Rob Teehan on sousaphone, Paul Metcalfe on sax, Jon Challoner on trumpet, Chris Butcher on trombone and Lowell Whitty on drums. Barely 18 months old, the band is psyched to make a splash at this year’s TD Toronto Jazz Festival, with a main stage show on Canada Day and a CD Release event at The Rex Hotel Jazz & Blues Bar on July 3. Aside from their cordless instruments that harken back to a New Orleans of yesteryear, what’s all the fuss about? Drumroll, please. It’s the repertoire they arrange, from Lady Gaga and Beyoncé to Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber. GASP! Can a group that covers Gaga and the Biebs be a legitimate jazz band?

ELLIE SKROW, special events curator of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival (TJFF) has a real knack for coming up with a creative, plausible theme that then gives her an excuse to pull together a program of events containing an astonishingly diverse and seemingly unconnected array of material.

Last year’s theme was “People of the Comics” – based on the observation that a disproportionate number of the people involved in the emergence of the comic book as a significant cultural object were Jewish. It made for a really entertaining perspective, overall much more rewarding than just trotting off to disconnected show after show, which is what some film festivals (or music festivals for that matter) can be.

So what do you do for an encore after a brainwave like that? Well if you’re Skrow, you notice that three well-known people in the arts, who interest you for very different reasons, not only all happen to be Jewish but also share the same first name. Just like that, “The Three Lennys” – this year’s TJFF Skrow special – is born.

Unlike last year’s theme which would have been of particular interest only to readers of The WholeNote who were also movie or comic book fans, this year’s event directly ties in with what we are all about. Lenny Bruce is maybe the least obvious musical tie-in. But if you think about it, he sure knew how to scat, in a manner of speaking, and it was in the very clubs in which the “devil’s music” found its home that he found his. As for Bernstein and Cohen, what better time to view them through the same lens, especially in the year that the Glenn Gould Foundation, formerly a bastion of classical taste, has broadened its criteria to honour Cohen as its laureate?

In any case, we thought it worthwhile to bring the event to your attention. As you know from a well-programmed concert, sometimes it is from the seeming incongruity of the programmed pieces that the most interesting perspectives arise.

MIND YOU, YOU COULD SAY the same about the range of content in the section of our listings that we call “The ETCeteras.”

Just looking at the headings gives a clue to the variety: Galas and Fundraisers; Competitions and Scholarships; Screenings; Lectures/Symposia; Masterclasses; Workshops; Announcements … etcetera!

As diverse as the headings themselves are, the range of activities and opportunities captured under each heading is even more astonishing: Annual Booksale Fundraiser; The 2011 MARTY Awards; a Pulmonary Fibrosis Research Fundraiser; Choral Composition Competition; … The Lives and Loves of King Edward VII. You get my point.

What they all have in common, despite their diversity (or perhaps because of it), is that they afford wonderful opportunities, beyond going to concerts, to live an even better-rounded musical life.

We urge you to explore and sample the range of material covered here. And we invite you, having done so, to bring to our attention (by e-mail to etc@thewholenote.com) future events and opportunities of similar musical significance.

Taste and enjoy.

—David Perlman