Features

The WholeNote’s fifth annual guide to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), 41st edition, aims to once again alert you to films in which music plays a significant role. After pouring over the list of 296 films from 71 countries, the following 26 titles represent a loose guide for music lovers with a taste for cinema. Highlights include a handful of music docs, Damien Chazelle’s original musical La La Land, films with scores by the likes of Robi Botos, Jesse Zubot, Son Lux, Lesley Barber and Gabriel Yared, as well as movies with characters connected to music.

Lutz Gregor’s intimate and moving Mali Blues looks at the plight of the Malian people - since music was banned by the jihadi takeover of the country’s north - through the eyes of four Malian musicians.With a keen cinematic eye backed up by a hypnotic guitar groove, Gregor gives us the backstories of Fatoumata Diawara, Ahmed Ag Kaedi (pictured on our cover), Bassekou Kouyaté and Master Soumy . Heweaves them in and out of ordinary people in close-up and scenes that take us from Bamako to the desert, showing how integral music is to all of their lives. It’s essential viewing, especially if you missed hearing Diawara in her 2014 Koerner Hall concert (with Kouyaté on ngoni) or seeing her memorable performance in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu.

For its subject matter alone, Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary caught my eye. Early word has it that John Scheinfeld’s new film is the definitive portrait of one of jazz’s seminal figures. Made with the cooperation of the Coltrane family and the owners of his recordings, the doc is said to contextualize Coltrane’s life within the roiling social and cultural landscape of which he was a key component while vividly bringing his story to the screen.

Iconoclastic American indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has two films in the festival. Gimme Danger, is a scrupulous two-pronged documentary look at the Iggy and the Stooges phenomenon. Iggy (aka Jim Osterberg) provides a detailed historical chronology, paying particular attention to the band’s musical origins and influences. From the 1950s TV show Lunch With Soupy Sales to the idiosyncratic American composer Harry Partch, from Iggy’s brief, meaningful relationship with Nico (on the rebound from Lou Reed) to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, James Brown and Maceo Parker, the film drops one memorable nugget after another. At his press conference in Cannes (where the film premiered) Iggy also mentioned his indebtedness to Bo Diddley, Link Ray, Frank Zappa and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. Fascinating.

Paterson, Jarmusch’s clever neo-minimalist film, chronicles seven days in the life of a Paterson, New Jersey, bus driver (named Paterson), his happy marriage and daily routine. In this city of the poet William Carlos Williams, Paterson (Adam Driver, bringing sensitivity to the role) is also a poet. So is Jarmusch in his own refreshingly natural and observant way. It’s two hours of serenity, a musique concrète of city sounds and overheard conversation, the music of daily life. The spare, ambient score is by SQURL and Drew Kunin.

Part jazz history, part true-crime tale, Kasper Collin’s I Called Him Morgan uses extensive archival footage and new interviews to tell the tragic story of the talented hard bop trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen, who murdered him in a New York bar in 1972. Possessed of enormous technique with a warm, vibrant sound reminiscent of Clifford Brown, Morgan was only 33 when he died. In his last interview (some of which will undoubtedly be in the film) he eloquently described the place of black American art in American culture. This is one doc I’m particularly looking forward to.

Damien Chazelle has followed his critically acclaimed and popular success, Whiplash, with an original musical comedy, La La Land, about an ambitious jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) who fall in love while pursuing their dreams of stardom, in what TIFF calls a “dazzlingly stylized homage to the classic Hollywood musical.” Justin Hurwitz composed the score, just as he’s done for each of Chazelle’s other feature films.

Agnès Varda’s One Sings, The Other Doesn’t, which originally showed at TIFF in 1977, contagiously popular in its day, now newly restored, puts on a shiny face as part of the Cinematheque section of this year’s festival. A feminist musical about a pop singer dedicated to women’s liberation and her ongoing relationship with her old friend, a single mother of two who has moved to the country, it’s a tender reminder of another time.

In Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius, legendary Brazilian actress Sonia Braga (Kiss of the Spider Woman) memorably plays a retired music critic (Clara) fighting to keep her Recife apartment building from the hands of developers in this spirited portrait of a strong-willed 65-year-old. Needless to say, music plays a major part in this sun-dappled film whose storyline cannot be divorced from its social context. From Villa-Lobos to Maria Bethânia, Jobim and Tropicalia to Recife, Minha Cidade, Aquarius will leave you in love with the best of the Brazilian soul. Here’s the director describing the importance of music in the film: “I like the fact that Clara has LPs at home—those she bought over a period of 40 years, or those sent to her while she was working as a critic. I also like the idea that, even though she has a vinyl collection, she doesn’t refuse to listen to tracks on her phone. It was only natural, since she listens to music, for music to occupy scenes. Music also gives an indication of her tastes and moods.”

Master jazz pianist Robi Botos was approached by Jean of the Joneses’ music supervisor Michael Perlmutter who put him in touch with writer/director Stella Meghie and producer Amos Adetuyi. “After a meeting with Stella we really connected,” Botos said in an email. “So she gave me the green light for the score. I just tried to give the movie the right vibe. It’s bittersweet so the music has that role too.” The film got rave reviews when it premiered at SXSW earlier this year. Sean L. Malin wrote in the Austin Chronicle that “Meghie’s feature debut suggests an exciting new voice. Highly visually controlled, snappily edited, and beautifully acted, Jean of the Joneses is a clever New York comedy about the Caribbean diaspora.”

Bruce McDonald has always had a good ear for musical found objects to buttress his films which are often sparked by road trips. In Weirdos, he teams with veteran playwright and screenwriter Daniel MacIvor for this offbeat coming-of-age dramedy, about two Nova Scotian teens who hit the road in the summer of 1976 accompanied by the laconic ghost of (the still-living) Andy Warhol. The 70s’ pop soundtrack includes some real oddities (Which Way You Goin Billy, the title song from the Peter Lynch movie The Hard Part Begins) and performers of the day like The Poppy Family.

Nathan Morlando, whose cinematic intelligence permeated every frame of his film debut, Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster (which won Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF 2011), had the cinematic good sense to hire Max Richter to compose the music for his debut film. When Richter was unavailable for Morlando’s follow-up, Mean Dreams, he turned to Son Lux. The enterprising composer made the soundtrack a mirror of this parable of two teenagers escaping their intolerable Northern Ontario lives. Evoking memories of Malick’s Badlands, it’s finely calibrated filmmaking that nicely integrates the landscape while the luxuriant soundtrack occasionally acts as a kind of Greek chorus.

“In composing the score, I turned to acoustic sounds and colours that are beautiful on their surface, but hide a certain dystopian quality,” Son Lux said. “I chose my tools mostly from acoustic sources. With the help of a small team, I extensively recorded a variety of things, including lots of rare and one-of-a-kind instruments. One sound at a time, we created a huge, unique library of complex sound material … Through extensive editing and programming of these isolated sounds, as well as fragments of improvisation, we created playable ‘virtual instruments.’ This gave me an enormous amount of flexibility and control in order to compose the score.”

Kim Nguyen’s Two Lovers and a Bear features music by Jesse Zubot (who performs it on violin, viola, synths, sub bass, drums and programming), vocals by Tanya Tagaq; also recorded samples taken from Genetic Memory and Rabbit from Animism by Tagaq and Sun Up from The Element Choir at Rosedale United. A Tribe Called Red’s Sisters, two tracks by Gil Scott-Heron and an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty ballet are among other sounds energizing this unusual Arctic romance, filmed close to the North Pole in all of its magnificent splendour.

Montreal native Xavier Dolan won this year’s Grand Prix (second place) at Cannes for It’s Only The End Of The World, an emotionally riven chamber piece about a writer who returns to his family after an absence of 12 years to announce that he has a terminal illness. In a series of confrontations, tensions driven by resentment and lack of understanding are revealed. Working in France for the first time with an all-star French cast, Dolan’s camera lingers on his characters in close-up, accentuating pauses, building to the affective climax. Gabriel Yared’s warm, empathetic symphonic score and pop music outbursts like Camille’s Home Is Where It Hurts, Grimes’ Oblivion and the Moldovan pop group O-Zone’s Dragostea Din Tei are essential ingredients.

With J: Beyond Flamenco, Carlos Saura has come full circle. After decades of memorable films devoted to music (Blood Wedding, Carmen, Sevillanas, Tango, among many) he has returned to his birthplace, Aragon, where jota had its origins. “La Jota is folk music and dancing so powerful that it has been able to attract renowned musical composers such as Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Falla, Granados and Albéniz,” Saura said in the press notes. “Its influence is evident in the Spanish geography. Its unique rhythm, cheerful and contagious, has kept improving over the years.” Musicians  in this music and dance celebration include battente guitar virtuoso Francesco Loccisano, composer and cello virtuoso Giovanni Sollima, flamenco pianist Miguel Angel Remiro and his quartet, world music star and Galician bagpiper Carlos Núñez, guitarist Enrike Solinis and jota singer Nacho del Rio.

Terrence Malick, who touched on the origins of the universe in Tree of Life, puts his singular cinematic vision to work in Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, a documentary look at the same subject that promises to be a celestial experience. Malick has always leaned heavily on classical music as a foundation for his films and this new sound and image poem features a playlist that could serve as a Who’s Who of the music of the spheres. The soundtrack includes excerpts from Giya Kancheli’s Evening Prayers, Bright Sorrow and Morning Prayers, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, Poulenc’s Gloria, Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion, David Hykes’ Hearing Solar Winds (part 8), Arvo Pärt’s Da pacem Domine, In Principio and Litany, Mahler’s Symphony No.2 in C Minor (“Resurrection”), Haydn’s The Creation and Bach’s Mass in B Minor (IV). Malick also makes use of Eleni Karaindrou’s evocative Hecuba’s Theme I, Exodos and Terra Deserta, Keith Jarrett’s Spheres, pieces by Paul Horn, Michael Baird, Francesco Lupica, Simon Franglen, Hanan Townshend and even sounds from the Voyager’s mission to Jupiter’s smallest moon Io.

In Past Life, two Israeli sisters, one of whom is an aspiring classical musician, delve into the dark mystery of their father’s former life in Poland during World War II in this new film by Avi Nesher, best known for his highly praised The Wonders. One of the two performers recreating the amorous correspondence (1948-1967) between poets Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan in Ruth Beckermann’s The Dreamed Ones is experimental Austrian musician Anja Plaschg (Soap&Skin). Kevan Funk, who made the genre-defying Vancouver sextet Brasstronaut’s Mean Sun music video, hired its leader, Edo Van Breemen, to score his small-town hockey drama, Hello Destroyer. After making a key contribution to Kenneth Lonergan’s unforgettable You Can Count on Me, stalwart Canadian film composer Lesley Barber is back with the master observer’s latest, Manchester by the Sea, critically acclaimed at Sundance earlier this year.

Actor/rapper Nick Cannon wrote, directed, financed and stars in King of the Dancehall about a Brooklynite who visits family in Jamaica and falls in love with the island’s music and culture. Jamaican dancehall luminaries T.O.K. and Beenie Man appear, along with Jamaican-Canadian singer Kreesha Turner, Ky-Mani Marley and Busta Rhymes. Also in the cast is Carl Bradshaw, part of Jamaican film history since 1972’s The Harder They Come. In The Sixth Beatle, co-directors Tony Guma and John Rose profile Liverpool concert promoter Sam Leach who offers a spirited account of his two-year roller-coaster ride with The Beatles in the pre-Brian Epstein era.

In Andrea Arnold’s naturalistic road movie, American Honey, newcomer Sasha Lane plays a teenager who joins a group of magazine subscription salespeople who criss-cross the American Midwest in vans; Riley Keough is her hard-nosed boss and Shia LaBeouf (in a return to early form) a super salesman. The energy of the young cast is reminiscent of Larry Clark’s Kids and the extensive soundtrack, from Springsteen, Steve Earle and Rihanna to country singers Sam Hunt and Lee Brice, Juicy J, Quigley, Mazzy Star and so much more, is the engine that drives it all.

Music plays small but key roles in two Japanese films. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s finely observed family drama, After the Storm, took its Japanese title from a lyric by Teresa Teng, the “diva of Asia.” It was a link to the popular music that played in Kore-eda’s home growing up. “Teng’s songs are about dramatic love, which connects with the concept of not everyone being able to become the adult they wanted to be,” he explained. But the movie’s score and theme song were composed by Hanaregumi, a more contemporary pop figure. In Koji Fukada’s chilling Harmonium, a charming ex-con ingratiates himself into the life of family by helping the young daughter learn to play her harmonium.

Edoardo De Angelis’ Indivisible is “about Neapolitan Siamese twin sisters who are exploited as a novelty singing act by their father,” reports Screen Daily’s Melanie Goodfellow. “Kept in isolation, outside of their paid performances at social occasions, the girls start to rebel against their reality when one of them falls in love and they discover they can be separated.”

The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion - in which Cynthia Nixon portrays Emily Dickinson - “an absolute drop-dead masterwork.” He continued: “Davies films his literary script with a directorial daring that’s both precise and free, blending delicately composed close-ups and group portraits with audaciously confrontational and uninhibited visual imagination … He also makes exemplary use of Dickinson’s poetry, recited by Nixon, on the soundtrack, playing like a sort of music that meshes with the actual music track, which is dominated by well-chosen touches of further New England audacity, such as Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.”

Davies’ musical ear is evident in a soundtrack that ranges from Bellini’s “Ah non credea” and Schubert’s Nacht und Träume to the haunting 17th-century songs by Thomas Ford and Thomas Ravenscroft arranged by British saxophonist/composer John Harle and sung by British soprano Sarah Leonard, supplemented with snippets of 19th-century piano pieces and Ives’ Decoration Day.

I’ve seen ten of the 26 films previewed here and am looking forward to viewing many of the others (and more) during TIFF 2016. Watch for reports on these and other discoveries in my Music and the Movies blog on thewholenote.com over the months to come. The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8 to 18. Check tiff.net for further information.

Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.

On March 26, 2009, during a live radio broadcast and webcast from the Rolston Recital Hall of the Banff Centre in the Alberta Rockies, the young Canadian composer Andrew Staniland became a double winner. The jury in the CBC/Radio-Canada Evolution competition for young Canadian composers named him the winner of both the National Grand Prize ($20,000) and the Prix de l’Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne ($5,000) for his composition Devolution, a work composed during a month-long residency (along with his co-finalist composers, David Adamcyk, Vincent Ho, Geof Holbrook and Gordon Williamson at the Banff Centre). The live audience and the online listeners voted too and, accordingly, the People’s Choice award ($5,000) went to Vincent Ho.

CBC/Radio-Canada’s Evolution Composers Competition was a unique event. It followed in the footsteps of the earlier CBC/Radio-Canada National Radio Competition for Young Composers, which had been the principal means by which the national music departments of both CBC Radio and Radio-Canada (with the collaboration of the Canada Council for the Arts) identified and developed emerging young Canadian composers. I served as English Radio coordinator of that competition, which ran from 1974 to 2003.

It had been a productive investment in talent development; its laureates, collectively, form a Who’s Who of Canadian composers of the present, people such as Denys Bouliane, Brian Current, Chris Paul Harman, Melissa Hui, Kelly Marie Murphy, Michael Oesterle, James Rolfe and Ana Sokolovic. The Grand Prize winner of what turned out to be its final edition, in 2003, was Analia Llugdar.

Following that 2003 competition, when we would have begun planning the next edition of the project, my Radio-Canada co-coordinator and I were advised that a new direction would be required for any future competition. A small group of producers from both CBC and Radio-Canada was formed, and we drafted a number of proposals that addressed several criteria, especially a desire for the inclusion of a much greater new media component. The process of discussing, debating the details of the proposals and persuading all the various authorities in both networks proved to be a very long one. Eventually, the CBC/Radio-Canada Evolution competition launched in 2008.

Canadian composers under the age of 35 were invited to submit samples of their work to a pre-selection jury. There were 150 entries, and five composers were selected by the jury as finalists to advance to the second round, which was held at the Banff Centre. Each finalist composer received a $5,000 grant as recognition of their selection.

In March of 2009, the five finalists arrived in Banff and participated in a draw to determine the final details of the orchestration of the competition pieces they would write during their month-long residency. While at Banff, the composers also produced blogs describing the experience of composing competitively. A team of videographers documented the residency. The blogs, videos and other assets were posted online, providing the public a window into the finalists’ experiences as they composed their competition pieces.

The Ensemble contemporaine de Montréal (ECM+) and their artistic director, Véronique Lacroix, were chosen as the performing entity for the final phase of Evolution, due in part to their demonstrated commitment to the mission of encouraging emerging composers. The members of ECM+ arrived in Banff at the end of the composition process, rehearsed the newly composed works and then performed the five compositions in a live broadcast/webcast in the presence of the final-round jury. Andrew Staniland and Vincent Ho prevailed as winners; all five composers gained valuable experience and international visibility, not to mention the performances and broadcasts on both radio networks.

The Evolution competition was praised as a resounding success. The new format, combining both new media and conventional broadcasting, appeared to achieve the goal of encouraging emerging young Canadian composers, while providing audiences unprecedented access to and involvement in the various stages of the competition. In fact, the members of the organizing team, producers Sandy Thacker at CBC, Pascale Labrie at Radio-Canada and I were awarded a CBC President’s Award later in 2009 for our efforts. Unfortunately, major structural and budgetary changes were under way at both CBC and Radio-Canada that gradually reduced their capacity to produce original content; despite efforts to continue and develop the young composers’ competition, it was to be no more.

For the participating young composers, however, the Evolution experience proved to be a watershed moment.  Looking back, Andrew Staniland makes the following observations: “In retrospect, 2009 was a turning point for me ... On the positive side, it was a year of winning the National Grand Prize at the CBC's Evolution Composers Competition, and the year I was offered an amazing job at Memorial University, a place I am proud to call home. On the negative side, it was the last year of the CBC Young Composers Program. I was one of the last young composers to enjoy the mentorship and visibility that the CBC had so richly offered to previous generations. While I am grateful for the support I received and the relationships made, I know that composers coming after me will have a harder go of it.

“I remember the final night of the Competition in March 2009. It was a capstone event preceded by a wonderful month surrounded by creativity, amazing colleagues and the natural splendours that Banff is well known for. I was stunned when they called my name as the grand prize winner. Stunned not only for the honour, but by the palpable contrast in the room. Many of the CBC crew working that night were given notice that very evening that their jobs were gone. On the stage, a prize bestowed; in the control room, layoffs and the final dismantling of new music at the CBC. That last CBC young composers competition was a very bright light in a very dark time.”

A dark time indeed. The years between 2007 and 2010 marked the cessation of the various projects that had supported the development of  Canadian composers at CBC Radio, including the CBC Radio Orchestra, CBC Radio’s participation in the International Rostrum of Composers, the CBC Records label, CBC commissions, CBC composition competitions and the network contemporary music program Two New Hours. In spite of this, young composers who had enjoyed earlier support from CBC Radio continued to develop and flourish. For example, Andrew Staniland’s requiem for the AIDS pandemic, Dark Star Requiem (words by Jill Battson, commissioned by Tapestry New Opera) was a highlight of the 2010 Luminato Festival. Our CBC Radio recording of this major work has recently been leased by the Centrediscs record label and is now available to the public. The release of Dark Star Requiem will receive special notice this fall as we approach World AIDS Day on December 1.

The long legacy of CBC Radio’s development of Canadian composers was a proud one, inspired by The Broadcasting Act and marked by the creation of significant works by distinctive Canadian artists. I was pleased to play a role, along with many gifted colleagues, in that history. Whether the road ahead offers similar promise for future generations of emerging Canadian composers remains to be seen.

David Jaeger is a Toronto-based composer, producer and broadcaster

Douglas McNabney was one of the first guests we interviewed for Conversations@theWholeNote.com back in summer 2012. Last month (May 2016), on the eve of his final summer as artistic director of Toronto Summer Music, he dropped by our WholeNote office studio for a final chat – in this role at least -- with publisher David Perlman, ranging from the nuances of this year’s theme (Music IN Great Britain), to reflections on violists as artistic directors, to news of his appointed successor, TSO concertmaster Jonathan Crow ... and a whole lot more. Watch the video below:

These boys of summer are members of Toronto’s Lemon Bucket Orkestra. They have lots of exciting reasons to blow their own horns, and no difficulty getting audiences to dance to their beat.

LBO began in 2010 as a four-person street busking band consisting of Mark Marczyk, violin and vocals, Oskar Lambarri, drum and vocals, Tangi Ropars, button accordion, and Alex Nahirny, guitar. In 2016, it’s now a band of 16-plus, rolling merrily into its sixth summer and gathering members as it goes, the way a rolling  ball of burdock gathers more burdock: vocals, strings, winds, brass, percussion, including a range of world/folk instruments. The music is every bit as vigorous as “Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super band” suggests, and so is their schedule.

Counting Sheep: A Guerrilla Folk Opera is LBO’s current performance project. It’s an interactive video-music-dinner-theatre play about the Maidan Revolution, which will be performed August 5 to 29 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival following its May 26 to June 5 Toronto run at Broadview Place. The Ukrainian polyphonic choral music, exuberant performances and powerful visuals offer a visceral experience of living with present-day revolution. Based on the 2014 Kyiv experiences of band-members Mark Marczyk and Marichka Kudriavtseva, the show includes the audience alongside the ensemble members in stylized white sheep masks – there is food and music and dancing for everyone, blurring the line between what is theatre and real life.

But before Lemon Bucket Orkestra takes off for Edinburgh they’ll be shaking things up here in Canada. They have Toronto concerts at Roy Thomson Hall (“Live on the Patio” series, June 23) and at the Opera House, with Romanian band Fanfare Ciocarlia (TD Toronto Jazz Festival, June 29) followed by appearances at eight Canadian festivals including the Hillside Festival (July 24, in Guelph), Ottawa Chamberfest (July 28), and then another concert at Toronto’s Mel Lastman Square (July 29).

Lemon Bucket’s newest recording Moorka, nominated for a 2016 JUNO Award, has just won a Canadian Folk Music Award – “World Group of the Year.” It includes folk songs the band learned on their last European tour from local musicians in Romania, Ukraine, Serbia, and Macedonia, but these are spiked and shaken up into the stirring musical mix LBO audiences now hunger for in Canada and around the world. By all accounts, no matter where the band is playing, people find themselves irresistibly drawn in – weirdly at home with and involved in music that is simultaneously exotic and familiar. This includes the passengers on a delayed Air Canada flight from Toronto to Frankfurt in 2012 who were treated to an impromptu concert while Lemon Bucket waited to take off for their “Balkan Station Romania Tour.”

It’s no secret that summer, as far as the classical music scene goes, is Toronto’s off-season. As Lydia Perovic points out in her take on this year’s summer opera scene, though (see page 12), Toronto’s musical off-season tends to be a lot longer than most. If they haven’t already, most of our local music presenters are now wrapping up the last of their 2015/16 shows—which leaves a good three months of limbo until the beginning of 2016/17 in the fall.

Of course, that implies that the city falls silent for most of June, July and August—which is far from the case. Summer music festivals abound, including local giants like Luminato, TD Toronto Jazz Festival and Toronto Summer Music. International artists often schedule Toronto into their summer tours and festival circuits, and local music-makers, who jump from gig to gig all year long, finally have the gift of much-needed time—to relax, or to plan projects of their own. And while the length of Toronto’s musical break might attest to the relative youth of our music scene, it makes these long summer months the perfect moment to look beyond business as usual, towards something new.

TCML: “Something new” pretty much sums up the motivation behind at least one of the musical projects in town this month. New this year, the Toronto Creative Music Lab (TCML) is a one-week workshop for early-career music-makers (June 19 to 24), where performers and composers are formed into small groups to collaborate on new works. Designed with the spirit of peer-to-peer collaboration in mind, the workshop focuses on building a community for early-career artists that is rich in opportunities for professional development. Full disclosure: I’m one of the participants this year. But – biased though I may be – during a time when the usual music scene is taking a breather, this program is just the thing to fill in some of the gaps, and build potentially fruitful musical relationships.

Composer Jason Doell and saxophonist Olivia Shortt, who are organizing the workshop alongside William Callaghan and Anastasia Tchernikova (Musica Reflecta) and Matthew Fava (Canadian Music Centre), are hopeful about what this project will do for emerging artists. “For me, peer-mentoring is essential for early-career artists and there is an opportunity in the Toronto contemporary music scene to facilitate these relationships,” says Doell. “While technical development in any discipline may be aided by the guidance of recognized experts, most professional relationships and opportunities arise within a peer group. Also…who knows more about being an early-career artist than those directly involved in being early-career artists? Peer-mentoring is a fantastic way to access the knowledge of people who are facing similar issues and obstacles to the ones you are facing today.”

“Toronto is abundant in programs for composers and performers seeking out more traditional styles of music and art practices but there isn’t as much for those seeking workshops that offer an approach to more current music,” adds Shortt. “Especially as a saxophonist, Toronto doesn’t offer much in the way of workshops and opportunities to network as a classical/new music performer. I’ve often had to seek these opportunities in other cities.”

A project like TCML couldn’t come at a better time of year for people like me. Taking place at the end of June means that TCML can create these opportunities in Toronto, for participants, who at any other time would be busy at work, schools or conservatories all over the world. And for both organizers, June offers a moment to reflect on the rest of the year, and put their observations into action.

“[TCML] fits in well with my day-to-day life,” explains Doell. “I’m a full-time composer and I also create music educator programs, so a lot of what we are trying to accomplish at TCML is in the front of my mind regularly.” And for Shortt, an incoming masters student at the University of Toronto, being on the giving rather than the receiving end of a summer workshop has so far been a valuable experience. “This is one of the first projects for me that hasn’t been something I’m organizing for myself, like a recital or a tour,” she says. “And there’s a lot that school couldn’t teach me, so this has been the most practical educational opportunity that I’ve been a part of.”

For my part, the workshop will be a refreshing break from my rest-of-the-year schoolwork, and a welcome challenge after some time away from my instrument. It will be, in other words, the perfect summer vocation.

The final concert of TCML, featuring all of the premieres workshopped during the week’s rehearsals, takes place on June 24 at the 918 Bathurst Centre; details at tcml.ca.

Of course, Shortt and Doell aren’t the only ones with exciting musical plans in the works for the next three months. After speaking with them, we were inspired to get in touch with other local musicians to ask them this one thing:

How do you make use of Toronto’s long musical summer to recharge your musical batteries  for the season ahead?

Here are some of their responses.

Name: Gordon Mansell

Instrument: Organ

How you might know him: Organist and music director at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church; executive producer of ORGANIX CONCERTS

Summer Vocation: “I recharge by pushing my musical limits, by going to Europe to perform organ concerts in massive medieval cathedrals. The tour this coming August will be the result of my third invitation to perform in Poland (2012, 2015, 2016)...I am often the only Canadian in a festival of European organists and of course, it is an honour that I do not take for granted.

I am energized by learning and preparing new music for my concerts. For me, it is not a rest at all but a change and an opportunity to experience baroque instruments and the occasional example of the continuing vibrancy of the North German organ-building craft first-hand. By the end of this coming tour, I will have performed concerts on 11 different organs, including one museum organ dating back to 1653 in its original state. Overall, these concert tours are exhilarating opportunities for musical and personal growth.

My itinerary for this summer includes the first concert in Słupsk (August 11) followed by a very special performance as part of the Fiftieth International Organ Music Festival at St. Mary’s Cathedral (August 12 – Koszalin) and the Cathedral Basilica of St. James the Apostle (August 13 – Szczecin). After these concerts, my wife and I will then vacation in Germany and plan to visit Bach’s hometown and church, and play the famous Bach organ.”

Hear him this summer: Before Mansell departs for his tour, he plays a noontime organ recital on July 20, at All Saints Kingsway. Details in our GTA listings and at allsaintskingsway.ca.

Name: Aimée Butcher

Instrument: Jazz vocalist

How you might know her: Performer at The Rex and Jazz Bistro; Singer-songwriter on debut 2015 CD The World Is Alright

Summer Vocation: “What I am looking forward to most about my summer vacation is a chance to create new musical memories. I have my first festival gig ever on July 31 at the TD Newmarket Jazz+ Festival, which I am very excited about, and plan to schedule a few house concerts up in northern Ontario around that date. I also plan to do a little bit of recording with a couple of bands that I am a part of, which is something that we had to wait to do until summer because all of us have been very busy throughout 2016. In addition to singing for some enjoyable gigs, I am looking forward to a reduced teaching schedule so that I may enjoy some time with family and friends over the summer, as well as taking some time to myself so that I may do some songwriting and planning for 2017.”

Hear her this summer: Butcher’s performs at the TD Newmarket Jazz+ Festival as part of the Sunday, July 31 lineup, at 3:30pm, in a set featuring songs from her debut album. Flip to our Green Pages (pages G1 to G10) in this issue to read up on what this festival, as well as 40 others, have planned for the summer ahead.

Name: Julia Wedman

Instrument: Baroque violin

How you might know her: Violinist with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, I FURIOSI and the Eybler Quartet

Summer Vocation: “Since I travel a lot and play so many concerts during the year, I like to have a little time away from that in the summer!

I love to recharge by filling my soul with beauty. I go to art galleries, gardens, beaches and parks. I look after the flowers and plants on my little terrace. I play music that I love but don’t have to play in a concert any time soon. I spend time with all of the people I love but don’t get to see enough during the concert season. A perfect summer day includes a little art, a little Bach, a lot of kids, a beautiful blue sky and a big long table in my backyard with way too much food on it, surrounded by beloved friends and family.”

Hear her this summer: The Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Festival runs from June 6 to 18, and features four free concerts by Tafelmusik musicians alongside students of the orchestra’s annual summer institute (TBSI). Details in our listings and at tafelmusik.org.

Name:Ryan Scott

Instrument: Percussion

How you might know him: Artistic Director of Continuum Contemporary Music; percussionist with Soundstreams Canada, New Music Concerts, Esprit Orchestra and the COC

Summer Vocation: “Summertime is very special to me and I clear my schedule as much as possible for several weeks. My overwhelming priority is to spend meaningful quality time every day with my three children (11, 9 and 5) and my wife, harpist Sanya Eng. In addition to many excursions and activities, we’ll spend over two weeks camping on the shores of Lake Huron at The Pinery. I find it is absolutely necessary to stop performing like this every year so that I can recharge – as former Nexus member John Wyre once said “the less music I do, the better I play.” In the background, I will slowly prepare a new concerto, some newly commissioned recital repertoire and convert my doctoral dissertation on the emergence of the marimba in Tokyo to a book. I will also return to the faculty of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada to coach the chamber music program – I always leave feeling inspired. Of course, the work at Continuum never really slows down, but thanks to new technologies, one can get quite a bit of work done while waiting for the fish to bite!”

Hear him this summer: The National Youth Orchestra of Canada will present a festival of chamber music in collaboration with Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, from June 22 to July 15. The festival will feature concerts by both faculty and youth orchestra members; entry for faculty concerts is by donation and entry to student concerts is free. Details in our listings and at nyoc.org.

Off-season though it may be, this summer offers no shortage of musical opportunities, for performers and concert-goers alike. Be sure to check thewholenote.com throughout the break, where, in addition to blog posts, concert reviews and news, we’ll continue to feature local musicians’ stories about how they’re spending their own summer vocations. And if you are a musician and want to share your own summer vocation plans, get in touch with us at 
editorial@thewholenote.com (attach photos if you like). The coming months are starting to sound a lot more refreshing, already.

Sara Constant is social media editor at The WholeNote and studies musicology at the University of Amsterdam. She can be contacted at editorial@thewholenote.com.