Many years ago, my good friend Stephanie Martin introduced me to her husband. A professorial man with a Lytton Strachey-esque appeal nodded briefly at me. I soon learned of the warm and affectionate soul which lay beneath the bushy beard and patched elbows of Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill. He and Stephanie were married for 22 years, and their kind and patient partnership was an inspiration to all around them.

Known for his work as music director of Christ Church Deer Park for 11 years, Bruce was also a freelance accompanist — working with the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, Pax Christi and many others over the years. He could also be heard singing at Holy Blossom Temple during the High Holy Days and at the Oratory of the Holy Family at special services.

Bruce had many nicknames (Juicy, Bruce Two-Dinners …) and was usually found outdoors. His great love for sailing was nurtured on his boat, the Hemiola. Even throughout his illness, he rode his Vespa each morning to Pain Perdu on St. Clair for his daily croissants, orange juice and café au lait. Bruce’s desire for fresh air was also exhibited by his frequent sporting of a kilt and sporran, the latter of which contained a copy of Robbie Burns’ Ode to a Haggis, read at his and Stephanie’s yearly Hogmanay celebrations.

Toronto grieves with Stephanie for the loss of this loyal and reliable force in choral and church music. Bruce was an aesthete to the end and took risks to attain excellence in everything he sought — be it music, croissants or travelling. He passed away Sunday, March 18, at the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Hospital in Cuba, in the company of his wife. Bruce is survived by Stephanie Martin and the Martin family; his mother Gillian Hill; two brothers, Andrew and Christopher Hill, and their wives and families.

—Gabrielle McLaughlin

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll mak it whissle;
An’ legs, an’ arms an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle
—Robbie Burns

IT IS A PLACE where commerce, government, and the arts meet. An acre of grass just west of Roy Thomson Hall surrounded by high-rises and theatres. All this makes it a fitting tribute to David Pecaut, the civic entrepreneur whose life reached into so many sectors.

On April 12, Toronto City Council voted unanimously to rename Metro Square, David Pecaut Square in recognition of David’s contributions as a civic leader. The Mayor’s office commented that the square would be a permanent reminder to all citizens of our obligation to not only enjoy living in Toronto but to actively engage in giving of our time and energy to make this city great.

Pecaut was born in Sioux City, Iowa, where his family were stockbrokers. He studied philosophy at Harvard and Oxford, before joining the renowned Boston Consulting Group, and being charged with establishing its Toronto offices. Like so many Torontonians, he wasn’t from here. He chose Toronto, and for that we loved him.

If you stand in just the right spot at David Pecaut Square you can hear the lick of flames from the Eternal Flame of Hope blending with the trickle of water from Bernie Miller’s post-modern fountain. Compared to the bustle of Yonge-Dundas Square, this is a space of respite, where you can hear conversations and discussions. It is a place for a stroll after dinner and meeting friends before the show.

David liked nothing more than meeting new people and learning about their passions. It didn’t matter your age, job, or income, but you’d find him in the corner deep in conversation. He would be the first to push people to explore how they could make a difference in their city.

Luminato had begun plans to move its signature outdoor concerts to the square before it was re-named after our co-founder. This serendipitous union is particularly appropriate as the Festival celebrates its 5th anniversary this June.

For the first time in his history Luminato will offer its full ten days of free events at a single hub location. Every day from June 10 to 19, residents and visitors will find David Pecaut Square alive with free concerts, film screenings, art, activations, food and beverages, the Festival box office, and more, helping christen the square as a place where all rhythms converge ... from a quirky family-friendly afternoon with They Might Be Giants, to an evening with two of the world’s best string quartets; from a tribute to 150 years of Italian unification, to electronic Arabic funk born on the streets of Egypt; from the very latest opera by acclaimed contemporary music composer Mikel Rouse, to the ancient rhythms from Central Asia; from Broadway to Bollywood and everything in between that refuses to be categorized!

The City of Toronto is a crossroads of ideas, cultures, and traditions. Luminato wants to embody this idea with diverse artists, sounds, and audiences sharing the same space and inspiring one another. You may not know Malkit Singh yet, but you will find yourself dancing just the same. If you give them a try, we know it’s just a matter of time until Marco Calliari or Hakim or Nitin Sawhney are playing on your iPod. This is what inspired David and continues to inspire Luminato each year. What’s next? Let’s free creativity and see where it takes us.

The tempo we begin will continue all summer long as jazz festivals, film festivals, marathons and tourists bring new energy and life to one of the least-utilized spaces in the downtown core. And between the parties and concerts, you can still come down to David Pecaut Square and find a quiet place for a conversation.

It was in David’s nature to always engage with and improve whatever was around him. Perhaps his presence and leadership was most acutely felt following the SARS crisis of 2004. His blend of private sector credibility and social consciousness was able to bring the right people together around the table to have non-partisan solution-based conversations. I was working in Philadelphia, and so the first time I met David was when I was invited to Toronto in May 2006 to hear about a new Festival he and Tony Gagliano were launching. Like everyone, I was skeptical at first. But over the course of that lunch, I came to see their vision, to feel their passion, and realise that what they were proposing was one part of a larger city-wide renaissance.

I have linked to a couple of articles that came out shortly after his death in December 2009, in case they are of interest in terms of how the city understood and felt his loss. For us at Luminato, it was very immediate and personal – as I think it was for so many who had the chance to work with him, however briefly.

http://spacingtoronto.ca/2009/12/14/remembering-david-pecaut-and-his-love-of-toronto/

www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/738499

Toronto-born arts administrator Janice Price was CEO of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia before returning to Toronto in 2006 as the first CEO of the Luminato Festival.

Harry Somers was a man who was always noticed. He had a presence that would fill a room: whatever room he entered, large or small. He had an enormous intellect and potent creativity, and a physical frame and a big, resonant voice to match. And his composer’s voice was and continues to be more than noticeable: it knocks you over with the force and beauty of its sound and its message. He died in 1999, but like all great composers, Harry remains with us, living in his music.

The release of a Centrediscs DVD of the historic CBC Television production of Harry Somers, Mavor Moore and Jean Languirand’s opera Louis Riel, together with another CD volume of Somers’ orchestral works, gives us an occasion to look back and to remember Harry Somers. It more or less completes, at least for now, the Canadian Music Centre’s Window on Somers project. There has never been a project on this scale to document the music of a Canadian composer; it embraces 12 volumes of CDs (several of them multiple-disc sets), and now its first DVD.

Harry was, for me, both a colleague and a friend. He was a respected composer, a creative powerhouse who could astound us with his bold new ideas and the brilliant scores that embodied them. And he was also a fellow musician who would easily and happily lend an ear to whatever topic we might wish to chat about. Harry loved big, ambitious projects and he also liked to have fun. It’s been 12 years since he died, and I still miss him.

His voice was as strong as it was diverse and multi-faceted. Over the span of his more than 100 works there are monumental creations, such as the operas Louis Riel and Mario and the Magician, and there are miniatures and other small-scale pieces like the choral works Gloria and The Wonder Song. There are chamber works such as the four string quartets and five piano sonatas, and there are media compositions such as Images of Canada and Absract for Television. And there are numerous works that defy classification, like Chura-churum for voices, instruments and electronics, and Zen, Yeats and Emily Dickinson for actors, singers and instruments. His is a compositional voice that has such range that it can at various times express itself via romantic, neo-baroque, indeterminate, interactive, graphic, polyspatial, polytemporal and other advanced means. In all cases, though, it remains distinctly and characteristically Harry’s voice. That unique, noble, glorious, sacred and profane voice that was and is Harry Somers’.

Over the course of the last 12 years Harry’s widow Barbara Chilcott and his friend Robert Cram have, with the help of many supporters, spun out a long series of recordings and other projects known as A Window on Somers. I was lucky enough to have been the person selected to produce the CDs. There are 12 volumes of CDs on the Centrediscs label, plus a few extra discs originally released as CBC Records but now distributed by the Canadian Music Centre. These recordings collect together a majority, although not yet all of Harry’s musical output. The performances are by musicians whom Harry knew and with whom he chose to work while he was alive. The underlying artistic policy embraced by Barbara and Robert throughout the project was, “just work with the best possible talent – the results will speak for themselves.”

The performances and recordings are made with great skill and superb musicianship, coupled with the affection these artists shared with Harry. The artistic achievement of A Window on Somers is one to be proud of. And it gives us all that unique possession: Harry’s music.

Of course, we would have traded all of this just to have Harry back. His passing at 73 years was, needless to say, premature. He still had so much to say. I bloody well do still miss him. But he gave us a pretty great ride, and inestimable musical riches, along the way. This moment in Canadian musical history is something of a milestone. And we all thank Harry for that.

David Jaeger is a broadcaster, composer, senior music producer at CBC Radio 2 and friend of the late Harry Somers.

For a review of the Centrediscs Riel DVD see CD Editor David Olds’ Editor’s Corner.

SCHOENBERG ONCE SAID there was great music still to be written in C. Ann Southam proved him right. As she said of some of her pieces, they “cheerfully hunted for Middle C”– and in doing so had a disconcerting way of reinterpreting familiar forms and techniques.

A graduate of the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music, Ann wrote music in a wide range of styles. Her lyricism and fascination with an instrument’s body, resonance, tone and sensuality re-invented the art. Although she continued to use a 12 tone row and spin it out, one note at a time for 20 years, Ann hoped she could bring some tonal sense to the serial technique. It may be called “minimal,” but her works embroider the layers of tonal fabric created through the serial row – weaving in a manner that reflects traditional women’s work.

Starting off as one of Canada’s pioneers in electronic music, Ann created her early work for dancers. She loved working with them, and felt that because they could sense the time space as much as the physical space, she didn’t have to write anything down. She just created her music directly.

When she wrote for piano, she continued to work directly on the instrument, as she did in composing her series of solo piano pieces, Rivers. “After the exotic and ‘disembodied’ world of electroacoustic music in which I’d worked for many years,” she said, “there was the sheer pleasure of making music by hand – the pleasure of touch.”

Some of Ann’s major piano compositions include works in the virtuosic tradition of Chopin and Liszt. Her pieces are characterized by a flow and energy produced by rhythmic cycles that repeat within interchanging melodic motifs. Her slow music suspends our sense of time, while the fast pieces, with their undercurrent of recklessness, become hypnotic and surprisingly tranquil and reflective. Although maintaining an angular tone row, both extremes reveal a serene lyricism that is a common thread in her music.

A generous philanthropist and strong advocate of Canadian women artists, Ann also mentored young composers and was always eager to learn about their music. One young composer, who is completing his doctorate at the University of Toronto, was surprised when Southam came to his concert last year. She said that she no longer wanted to talk about her work. She was more fascinated with how their encounters influenced his music.

Ann was also a fun-loving woman who loved east coast fiddle music and bagpipes. She was without pretence or artistic snobbery and could see humour in any situation. While we were working on a recording project, Ann was sitting on my floor with her manuscript laid out in front of her. One of my dogs, a puppy at the time, bolted from the kitchen and headed straight for Ann, but seeing the paper on the floor did what puppies are expected to do. I was horrified. As we ran to the bathroom with the dripping manuscript, Ann turned to me and remarked, “I hope that wasn’t a comment on my music!” Her irrepressible sense of humour is one of the qualities that made her a joy to work with.

Ann Southam will be remembered for her unique voice and individual style in musical compositions that allowed interpreters and dancers the freedom and flexibility for their own creativity to flourish. Her collaborators, who included the best artists, dancers, choreographers and musicians in Canada, are feeling her loss with immense sadness and remembering her with admiration and gratitude for the legacy she left.

Her generosity of spirit and her music will stay with us forever.

Christina Petrowska Quilico is professor, piano and musicology, and director of classical piano in the Department of Music, York University.

CANADA’S MUSIC WORLD LOST one of its most eloquent supporters last month. Critic, broadcaster and scholar Ken Winters passed away at his farm in Orono, Ontario on Tuesday, February 15, 2011. Born into a musical family in 1929 in Dauphin, Manitoba, Winters had a rich and varied career in music in Canada. He worked as an organist, choirmaster and arts critic in Winnipeg from 1954 to 1966, at which point he moved to Toronto to write dance and music reviews for the Toronto Telegram. He served as the executive director of the Ontario Federation of Symphony Orchestra and the Association of Canadian Orchestras from 1971-1975. During this time, he also was the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. He and his co-editors Helmut Kallmann and Gilles Potvin brought a rigour and scholarship to a vital and important project.

Also a first-rate broadcaster, Ken was the host of CBC Stereo’s Mostly Music for many years, presenting concerts, documentaries and series full of insight, passion and a particular appreciation for thoughtful, forward-looking performers, composers and teachers. His sonorous, well-modulated voice suited radio and his meticulously written scripts were full of poetic turns of phrase.

More recently, Ken wrote music reviews for the Globe and Mail. These were beautifully written and always gave the sense that he was holding the performance he was reviewing up to a high standard of musical emotion and meaning. That being said, he was generous and encouraging, especially towards young talent and new ventures. From my own perspective, Ken’s reviews of Toronto Masque Theatre were positive, fair and challenging and I was always happy to hear he was coming. More generally, it was just always a supreme pleasure to open the paper and read Ken’s sumptuous prose. The music always came first for him and he had no time for gimmickry or nonsense.

I have kept copies of his reviews of ventures in which I was involved and there are many excerpts I could share by way of example of Ken’s lovely turn of phrase. Of Anton Kuerti’s appearance last summer at Music at Sharon, with the Tokai String Quartet in a performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, Op.47, Ken wrote:

“All four strings played like souls inspired, as indeed they must have been by Kuerti’s phenomenal, minutely and grandly collaborative account of the piano part.”

I think what runs through all of Ken’s critical writingand his distinguished broadcasting career, is a passion for well-crafted and well-performed music, and a very public desire on his part to be moved by it. I also appreciate that Ken kept alive the memories of the significant and supremely talented composers, performers and others connected with Canada’s rich music community. He often made reference to Harry Somers, Jon Vickers, Lois Marshall, Ernest MacMillan, Maureen Forrester, the Orford String Quartet, but he never made it sound as though those figures represented a golden age. He was just as anxious to pay tribute to the young emerging musical leaders of this generation and seemed to recognize that his well-chosen and honest words carried weight and importance. Ken’s final review was of the Tafelmusik performance of Mass in B Minor on February 13. Of those special musicians he wrote:

“This choir and orchestra are deeply inside what they do. They listen raptly. They mean what they play and sing. There are no others quite like them.”

Needless to say, there was no other quite like Ken Winters.

Larry Beckwith is the artistic director of Toronto Masque Theatre, co-artistic director of Music at Sharon and a violinist, singer and teacher. He is a frequent contributor to The WholeNote.