Features

The upcoming Toronto International Film Festival (September 6 to 16) features several movies that use music in interesting ways. A handful deal explicitly with the (fictional) lives of performers and teachers. One touches on the therapeutic value of choir singing. In others, innovative sound design pushes the boundary of what we may think of as music but the results make for unique cinematic experiences. Here at The WholeNote, we’ve sifted through the 289 feature length films of the 37th TIFF program and zeroed in on those titles that we think our readers might find appealing.

A Late Quartet may be the first fictional film about chamber music’s most beloved configuration since Fabio Carpi’s The Basileus Quartet (1982). It’s certainly the only one built around and permeated through and through by Beethoven’s Op. 131.

As might be expected, this month’s 80th anniversary of the birth of Glenn Gould (and the 30th anniversary of his death) are not passing unnoticed. A lot of the planned activities fall into the range of what one might conventionally expect — concerts of Gouldian repertoire (such as the gorgeously conceived “Bachanalia” at Koerner Hall, September 24), cd and dvd releases, book launches, academic conferences and the like.

One of these upcoming events, though — the one that inspired this story — is as unconventional as Gould himself: “Dreamers Renegades Visionaries: The Glenn Gould Variations” will take over University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall for two jam-packed days September 22 and 23. With an audience of likely well over 1,000, and an astonishingly diverse lineup of over 50 presentations and performances, all under 20 minutes in length, it’s the kind of perfect cultural storm usually reserved for elite gatherings like TED and ideacity. Except that it’s going to be at a fraction of the cost, especially for students.

So who is to thank for GGV, as participants seem to be calling it?

Summer’s turning out to be another scorcher, beckoning with promises of endless sun-kissed days filled with music festivals. There’s always an embarrassment of riches on display, but the ones brimming most with energy and enthusiasm, abuzz with imagination and excitement— the most toe-tapping and hum-inducing — seem to be the open-air concerts.

Everyone loves them: families with boisterous young children, courting couples, friends exploring new music, aficionados revisiting old favourites, thrill-seeking tourists seeking out novel experiences. And then there are the homing pigeons, the ones who return season after season, the ones who think they know all the best-kept open secrets, and very often want to share them!

This column is being launched in that spirit of sharing, of shining the spotlight on the obvious, and the not-so-very obvious: on the role that programming plays in the myriad musical discoveries that everyone shares, and the personalities that shape the journeys we all take. These are the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to create a very public experience. They might even be people with very public personae or, equally, very private ones. What they all share, unequivocally, is a sense of passion, an infectious enthusiasm and the ability to get things done.

When you head down to David Pecaut Square for this year’s Luminato festival you will notice something new — and altogether different. An immense blue ribbon will sweep overhead from one end of the square to the other. Along its course it will wind around the stage and make its way past a group of balletic windsocks.

After the square was renamed last year in memory of the co-founder of the festival, it was officially designated as the festival ub. Thus inspired, Luminato inaugurated a program of architectural installations in the square. The architect Jack Diamond, of Diamond Schmitt Architects, was selected to create this initial design, which is being called Windscape.

If you have a desire to sing, you’d be hard-pressed not to find a place for your voice these days. I’ve been studying community music in Toronto, and my sneak peek at The WholeNote’s 2012 Canary Pages confirmed my own sense of the many opportunities open to singers of all ages, abilities and interests. And that’s just what’s listed in these pages. If the Canary Pages are the tip of a singing iceberg, then there are likely hundreds of places to sing in Southern Ontario. And by all accounts, Ontarians are singing.