Features

There was a heightened sense of anticipation in Toronto’s Jane Mallet Theatre as the Tokyo Quartet walked on stage for their concert in January. This was the 45th concert the quartet had played in Toronto since their first visit 37 years ago. But it was by no means business as usual. They had just announced that this season would be their last.

Earlier that day I had a chance to talk with the four members of the quartet, first violinist Martin Beaver, second violinist Kikuei Ikeda, violist Kazuhide Isomura and cellist Clive Greensmith. Both Isomura, who was one of the founders of the quartet in 1969, and Ikeda, who joined five years later, had played in that first Toronto performance. After a few other changes in personnel, Greensmith joined in 1999 and Beaver three years later.

As we talked over lunch, I was struck by how intently these four very different individuals listened to each other. They finished each other’s sentences, embellished each other’s stories, commented on each other’s thoughts and recollections, joked with each other, and laughed a lot. They just seemed to enjoy each other.

After their final performance in July at the summer home of the Yale School of Music, where they have taught for many years, the quartet will disband. Fortunately, before that, they’ll be back in Toronto in April to give two more concerts.

It’s a frigid afternoon in Regent Park, but spring is in my step as I set foot in the Paintbox Bistro at 555 Dundas Street East, and not merely because it’s a cool space. I’m here to interview two genuinely gifted Canadian musical icons, both alike in dignity and warmth.

Jackie Richardson is on stage at the tail end of a rehearsal, infusing Duke Ellington’s “Take Love Easy” with her trademark combination of swing, soul and sincerity. She’s backed by pianist Stacie McGregor, bassist Artie Roth and drummer Archie Alleyne; along with trumpeter Alexander Brown, the five will be performing in celebration of Alleyne’s 80th birthday the following evening, which launches a new jazz series at the promising Paintbox.

Pianist, composer, music director, recording artist and recently appointed Member of the Order of Canada, Joe Sealy, who will play here in late April, arrives right on time. He greets the musicians warmly as they get off the bandstand, and before long Sealy, Richardon and I are seated comfortably on the colourful couches in the adjacent room. I’ve asked Sealy and Richardson here to discuss Africville Stories, a reworking of Sealy’s JUNO-winning recording Africville Suite (1996), which will be performed as part of the Jazz Performance and Education Centre (JPEC) fourth annual gala at the Toronto Centre for the Arts on the evening of Saturday, February 23.

Moments after winning a Golden Globe for his score to Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Toronto-based Mychael Danna is answering questions from journalists backstage in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I’m watching it all on YouTube. It’s been only three days since he was nominated for two Oscars.

“Ang is the master of subtlety,” Danna is saying. “He wants emotion to be built up and held and held and then at certain very key moments, released. And that’s something that musically I’ve also worked on, that sense of holding back emotion that becomes submerged and then released at the right moment and effective that way.”

The 50-something Danna fell into his career as a film composer by accident. While studying composition at U of T he got involved in theatre where he met Atom Egoyan. Danna’s scored all of Egoyan’s films beginning with 1987’s Family Viewing. He’s worked on dozens of movies since, from Girl, Interrupted to Capote, from Little Miss Sunshine to Moneyball, from Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and Ride with the Devil to Deepa Mehta’s Water and three films by Mira Nair.

He has an uncanny, but totally unforced, ability to combine Western and non-Western music seamlessly in his scores. And he’s someone who loves being part of the filmmaking process, who loves being a member of the team serving its master, the film. He brought a scrupulous sense of responsibility to Life of Pi.

Luciano Berio (1925–2003) is one of the great icons of New Music. Among the Italian composer’s towering works is Sequenza, a series of solos he wrote for individual instruments and voice. The sequenze are a throughline in Berio’s long and distinguished career. Sequenza I for flute was written in 1958, while Sequenza XIV for cello was completed in 2002, a year before the composer’s death. Each solo explores the fullest possibilities of the individual instrument.

On Jan 21, 2013 at Walter Hall, the entire Sequenza will be presented, all 3 hours and 40 minutes of it, as part of the University of Toronto’s New Music Festival. The concert also includes the poetry written by Edoardo Sanguineti that precedes each solo. This is the first time that the complete Sequenza will be presented in Canada, and the concert features an outstanding group of soloists. (Please see page 11.)

The artistic directors for the Berio Sequenza Project are cellist David Hetherington and accordionist Joseph Petric. Hetherington is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s assistant principal cellist and a well-known solo performer. Petric tours the world as a much-in-demand classical accordionist. (Both men will also be performing their instruments’ sequenze.)

The WholeNote had a lively, early morning, three-way telephone conversation with Hetherington and Petric about Berio, his sequenze, and the upcoming concert.

Click Read More for the interview.

Award-winning, Ottawa-born composer/conductor Brian Current has had his works
performed and broadcast in over 35 countries. His honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music, and Italy’s Premio Fedora Award for his chamber opera Airline Icarus.
The Premio prize led to a fully staged production in Verbania, Italy in 2011.

Current is one of Canada’s busiest men of New Music, and November is a particularly rich month for his activities. As artistic director of the New Music Ensemble at the Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School, he will be conducting two of his students in a concert at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on November 20. On the afternoon of November 25 at Mazzoleni Hall, Current leads an all-star cast in his opera-oratorio Airline Icarus, which will be followed that evening by a commercial recording session. Finally, on November 30, the Banff Centre’s Gruppo Montebello performs the newly minted chamber ensemble version of Current’s piano solo Sungods, titled Sungods 2012.

The WholeNote met up with the 40-year-old Current at the Royal Conservatory before a rehearsal of his New Music Ensemble.