Features

This past summer, an early music band was asked for a promotional group photo and a name for a concert at Toronto Harbourfront’s Music Garden. They realized they had neither, so they searched for a Renaissance painting to capture their spirit. The image they chose, by a follower of imaginative painter Hieronymus Bosch, shows a group inside a giant egg gathered around a book of music, singing and playing – and so they dubbed themselves The Musicians of the Egg.

Afrokando, an ode to the Cuban big band, is a searing, scorching album with the deepest groove. With it, bandleader, composer, arranger and Cuban trumpet player Alexis Baro is continuing to build his discography, documenting and sharing important aspects of Afro-Cuban music. Baro travelled to Toronto from Cuba in 2001. The young player was quickly snapped up by Archie Alleyne and his group Kollage. Since then, Baro has written and recorded many of his own albums, all rooted in Afro-Cuban jazz.

The Coalition for Music Education in Canada has announced that Adrian Sutherland is the featured artist for this year’s “Ancestors Voices: Music and Learning for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation” and that his all-Cree song Kiyash will be shared coast to coast to coast, inviting students to learn about truth, reconciliation, and the power of music as storytelling.

There’s an intersection in Prince George, British Columbia from which, no matter what direction you head, you will be on one of the roads the chamber opera, Missing, has travelled in its seven-year journey en route to Koerner Hall this coming July 24.

During my third, or maybe fourth, phone call to his home in Hamilton, as I was piecing this story together, Larry Paikin said he was starting to get a bit worried that he’s going to be the subject of the story. I promised him that wasn’t the case, but, hey, every story has to start somewhere, and the easiest place to start this one seems to be shortly after Larry, starting third year at Western, spotted the “Freshette Beanie” atop the head of a “tall Jewish girl” named Marina Sibulash.