Jeanne Lamon was back tonight to lead Tafelmusik in Jeanne Lamon Hall at St-Paul’s Centre. There’s a quiet recognition of the journey made together. While Lamon is now called “Music Director Emerita,” recognizing a new role as a kind of senior advisor, there is still the deep relationship that one senses when she leads this orchestra.

Jeanne Lamon, Tafelmusik’s Music Director Emerita (photo: Sian Richards)

Tonight was a curious mix in a program titled “The Hunt”. Horns were prominent in the works by Mozart, Kraus & Haydn.

Scott Wevers played Mozart’s 4th horn concerto on a modern replica of an old-style horn, valve-less that didn’t stop him from showing astonishing control, either in scales or arpeggiated passages. We heard a couple of marvelous cadenzas including one that elicited a few giggles as Wevers took us down down down to the lowest part of his instrument’s range. I’ve been listening to these concerti for years, but this is the first time I’ve been lucky enough to hear a performance like this, without benefit of a modern instrument. While a Tuckwell or a Brain or a Damm offer a heroic sound, and yes they do sound brave & bold on their recordings, I recognize this as real courage, to be facing the tests of a concerto without valves. There are of course trade-offs, so one can’t be as loud or as perfect: but come to think of it, that’s true for everything we hear from Tafelmusik. Instead we’re getting something that would be recognizable for someone from Mozart’s time. And the vulnerability of the performance creates genuine drama.

Jeanne Lamon with Tafemusik (photo: Sian Richards)

This is also my first time hearing Mozart’s Symphony #25 without benefit of modern instruments, such as we heard in the score of Amadeus. The first minutes of the film –when they’re carrying the bleeding Salieri through the streets of Vienna to a doctor—feature those contradictory opening passages whether the passionate G-minor tutti that begins or the answering solo from the plaintive oboe. For both the concerto & the symphony Lamon spurred the horses –that is the orchestra—to a brisk gallop, apt for a chase.

And ditto for the closing movement of the Haydn symphony, that inspired the epithet, “The Hunt” (or La Chasse). I think almost everyone in the space was sitting there waiting for this familiar piece, so well known but so different when done by this kind of ensemble, whether in the galloping opening figure or the woodwind passages answering.
And so while Tafelmusik are known for baroque –they’re called “Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra” after all—this is really what I dream of, that they venture into more recent times, laying claim to repertoire from the time after the baroque. And I see in the brochure for next season that this concert is just a tiny taste of what’s to come. Next season includes a wind concert program including Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini & a world premiere from Cecilia Livingston, another featuring Mendelssohn & Tchaikovsky with a world premiere by Andrew Balfour, plus a new original program from Allison Mackay mixing music from different cultures. Oh yes, there’s also lots of baroque too (Messiah & the St John Passion of Bach), in the exciting season to come.  Oh my…!

Tonight I witnessed the first of 3 workshop performances at the Factory Theatre of Shakespeare’s Criminal from Orpheus Productions, a new chamber opera with music by Dustin Peters and libretto by Sky Gilbert, starring Marion Newman, Dion Mazerolle and Nathaniel Bacon, to be presented again April 27 & 28.

Sky Gilbert

As I was waiting for the show to begin I was struck by how similar two words sound,

Gender:
“either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female” (via google)
–and–
Genre:
“a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.” (via google)

And isn’t it true that sometimes people are much too busy classifying, as though by assigning a category it somehow makes us safer.

It was a workshop. By that I mean that it’s perhaps unreasonable to even have something resembling a review, given that the performers were probing and exploring, helping the composer & librettist develop their ideas. While the audience lapped it up, sitting spellbound throughout, it’s unreasonable to demand that a workshop please the audience. And so please understand that I am hesitant to be judgmental of artists in their exploration.  This can be as intimate & vulnerable as psycho-therapy.

We were watching a partially-staged performance at the Factory Theatre, a string quartet conducted by composer Dustin Peters.

Mezzo-soprano Marion Newman

As mezzo-soprano Marion Newman delivered something resembling a prologue to frame the story, I was swept up into Shakespeare’s Criminal within seconds.

I felt we were in the realm of those who say ‘woot’, (who must not to be confused with the knights who say “Ni!”) whereas I am one who says “bravo” whether I’m seeing an opera or a play. And so while this was a concert presentation, there was a great deal of investment in a dramatic illusion, in performances that felt genuine & real.  The wooters are people who would see this as theatre, whereas the bravoers (like me) would see this largely as music.

Newman’s character is the Female Academic, who in delivering the prologue seems to stand outside the action as though she were a deus ex machina with god-like powers: as we would see as the story unfolded (especially near the end). I can’t help wanting to see her as a version of Sky, who could exercise certain types of power in the academic world (because he is a professor) or in the dramatic world (because he is also a prolific playwright). Forgive me if that sounds reductive.

Composer Dustin Peters

Peters’ score is very attractive, the music very singable. In the hour or so that we were in the theatre, not only was the music very enjoyable to hear (tonal, sometimes synchopated), but very fast-moving as far as exposition and use of text. I’m reminded of something Anthony Tommasini said in his recent book The Indispensable Composers, when he suggested that John Adams tends to make things seem too long. Some composers seem to take the smallest amounts of text and use a great deal of music, repeating and even milking the text for all it’s worth. In contrast, Peters & Gilbert are very generous, moving things along very quickly as far as exposition is concerned. Granted, this was workshop and so I suppose the creators were testing and will continue to test this material in front of audiences. But in contrast to Adams there’s already enough here for much more opera than what we saw. Most of the hardest parts –good melodies and beautiful moments –are already there. I think they will want to expand the ending somewhat, but then again that’s likely something that could develop in different directions, again depending on such considerations as genre (oh dear, that word again). Peters chose to write in an accessible tuneful style, at times stunningly beautiful.

Peters’ score was presented with a string quartet, which may or may not be how it will be done in future. But it’s a remarkable strategy that allows the singers to be heard, especially when we recall that male voices are usually the ones that have more trouble carrying over an orchestra. Newman’s voice had no trouble of course, including some bold coloratura passages, some intriguing choices from Peters to take us away from anything we might call realistic (if singing can ever be understood as real) into something stylized and artificial.

Shakespeare’s Criminal – Nathaniel Bacon

One of the reasons I called attention to the “land of the woot”, was because of a choice of emphasis I thought I saw in the presentation, that likely parallels the expectations of most in the audience. I discussed this briefly after the show with Sky, expressing my surprise that there wasn’t more applause. He thought that the one time applause erupted was for the content rather than the performance: at the end of a number I will call “the best of us” (and forgive me if I am paraphrasing badly). It’s a beautiful song sung by Nathaniel Bacon presented while we watch a series of photos projected, of gay men who were claimed in the great plague, which serves as at least some of the subtext for this story about an HIV positive man. I didn’t want to disagree, only that I aggressively started that applause through my tears, very moved by this moment in a theatre full of people who likely aren’t accustomed to stopping a show to show your appreciation.  I kept waiting in similar places (after wonderful solos or ensembles deserving applause), and this time held back to see whether there’d be any applause, but no there wasn’t any, and not because of any deficiency in the performances; it’s just a cultural thing, I believe.  There’s a different experience if you sit still for every song, as opposed to shouting your approval, breaking it up into a series of numbers: especially if you get a reaction from the performer, breaking the 4th wall. I suggested to Sky that maybe he should plant someone, like a claque (NB while I jokingly claimed I had done this, it wasn’t as a paid supporter but simply as a sibling… of course I clapped for my brother. He was and is amazing to hear). But by setting this up artificially you can change the show. I am not sure if Sky was just being polite to my suggestion, but I think any show becomes very different when interrupted by applause. There were a few places where the text was hard to understand, where subtitles might be a useful choice –even though it’s in English –because of the ambiguity of some of the phrases, in poetic diction.

The three performers each had wonderful moments, and worked well together. Newman has one especially intriguing moment when we’re advised that the 4th wall will be transgressed, and she then proceeds to sing (rough paraphrase) something along the lines of “what the shit is happening” over and over and over. Oh sure it’s funny, but it also works to deconstruct the illusion, as we get past the politically correct language of romance, to something much more genuine, in speaking to the matter of physical desire, of taking off clothes and getting down to business…

Baritone Dion Mazerolle

The two men are cast in a way that likely corresponds to the way the score has been composed.

• Baritone Dion Mazerolle is Shakespeare, who is mature & somewhat repressed in his sexuality, singing about “the closet” at one point
• Nathaniel Bacon is the Young Man, young, attractive and much more direct

The creative team opted to distinguish between the two by having the genuine operatic voice assigned to the closeted male, while a lighter voice more attuned to broadway or pop music sings the young man, who is in touch with his sexuality. I am trying to sort this out in my head wondering if they expect us in the audience to associate “broadway” with gayness. Maybe it’s generational (one is much older) or simply a contrast of vocal styles, a music for the young man that is aligned with a younger generation. Each had their moments. I’m very fond of Dion’s voice, a wonderfully expressive baritone, but Bacon’s sound was an excellent approach to his part, which is written quite a bit higher I think…(?)

There’s a great deal of beauty in this workshop, that I’d recommend to you without reservation this weekend at Factory Theatre. It’s not a finished opera, please note, but represents some very bold steps in that direction. I’m reminded of a topic that came up in my recent interview with Dean Burry, namely popularity (and maybe I’m reminded also because Marion Newman will play the title role in that show). Opera –meaning composers and critics alike—has been very conflicted about beauty over the past century. The most successful composers of the last hundred years –Puccini, Richard Strauss, Philip Glass—embraced a tonal world of melody that has been largely ignored by the so-called serious composers, while composers in more popular media –thinking of film-music, of musicals, as well as popular music media—never stopped aiming for beauty. It seems like a no brainer. So the conservatory might turn up their nose at you while you make millions for your composition? I think that’s a small price to pay.

I was very moved. I think you would be too. And now I am eager to see what Peters & Gilbert do in the further growth & development of this story that I hope to see again.

On paper the Canadian Opera Company’s new offering, an English National Opera production of Verdi’s Otello directed by David Alden and starring Russell Thomas, Gerald Finley & Tamara Wilson is as good as it gets. It’s an incredible luxury to be able to see a black man with a dramatic tenor voice sing this role, usually sung by Caucasians in blackface. And even better when that man is a good singing actor as Thomas has shown himself to be in recent outings here in Toronto for the COC.

I think it will get better, as indeed it improved after the intermission. In the first two acts the brilliant components didn’t quite gel. I wasn’t sure whether Thomas was over-parted or that the COC orchestra led by the ebullient Johannes Debus was perhaps a bit too enthusiastic, too overpowering in volume. I’m thinking the latter, given that the chorus were also sounding a bit overwhelmed in the first act, singing accurately but not as loudly as I would have expected in the heart-stopping storm scene with which the opera opens. But come to think of it, I was reminded of Measha Bruggergosman’s struggles in Idomeneo, wondering if the tentative sound from the chorus was perhaps due to the huge amount of choreography expected of them, challenging movement in places where their singing is also super challenging. They sounded accurate but they couldn’t cut loose. By the time we got to the third act the balance sounded a bit better, a scene where thankfully the direction let them simply stand and sing. Surprise surprise, the voices sounded much bigger.

There are two other important singers to mention.

This is the first time I watched an Otello with so much focus on the Desdemona, namely Tamara Wilson, because hers is a genuine old-fashioned Verdi soprano in the best sense. It was lovely to see a Desdemona looking so happy right into the last act, disturbed and shaken by her husband’s behaviour yet still showing love & kindness to him hopeful and not defeated. This approach to the arc of her character makes every moment watchable. Every little detail was right, from the smiles she had for Cassio—that infuriate her husband—to the conflicted emotions in the last act when she really took the stage, perhaps the finest portrayal seen on a COC stage this season.

Tamara Wilson and Russell Thomas in the COC’s Otello (photo: Michael Cooper)

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you may have seen me rave about Gerald Finley before, as a singer & actor whom I admire very much. I’m very sympathetic tonight, watching him trying to cope with an odd production that pushes him very much against type vocally & dramatically. When I say that I mean that he’s a good person, being asked to play something not just evil but demonic, and I don’t think there’s any way for good singing or acting to fix that. While I usually avoid spoilers there’s a rather big difference in the way this ends. Iago normally runs away at the end when confronted. In Alden’s production it’s as though Otello & Desdemona die, the others who were observing slink away like zombies, leaving Iago onstage. The winner? In so many ways this seems to push Finley out of his normal comfort zone, because this is played in such an extreme fashion, with vocalism to match.

And that’s problematic for the dynamics of the story. I’ve talked about this before, I think. If Otello is not to look like a complete pathetic dupe, Iago must be believable, must really be “onesto Iago” that we can believe in as a trustworthy person. But this interpretation pushes a very melodramatic reading. I refer you to Tito Gobbi’s delivery of the phrase at the end of the dream aria, when he says he sees the handkerchief in the hand of Cassio, saying “Cassio” in a hushed voice followed by the tenor’s angry explosion. Finley shouts it. There’s a great deal of the portrayal that is done in this unsubtle fashion, what I’d call un-Finley like. But it’s what the production asks him to do, trapping both him and Thomas, with Thomas in a worse position. At the beginning Thomas comes in to sing “Esultate” (exhorting the people to celebrate his victory), then petulantly throws the Venetian flag at the crowd as though he’s angry at them. WTF? I suppose the director wants to signal that Otello is already crazy, so tightly wound that he’s ready to crack up. The love-duet is fabulous—Tamara & Russell sounding exquisite. But then the direction starts to get creepier and creepier. Iago lurks at the end of that duet, and will dominate the beginning of Act IV, which is normally a blessed respite from all the villainy, when we get the two vulnerable women alone in Desdemona’s bedroom, the most beautiful moments of the opera even if you don’t also have Tamara Wilson to sing it. No, Alden wants to invade that too. And of course when we get to the end, the moment of ultimate nobility, “niun mi tema” sung so beautifully by Thomas, the surrounding courtiers slink away, while Iago stares at us in triumph. I’m not sure what Alden thought he was doing, but I’ll tell you what he did for me; he murdered the tragic element in this tragedy. The music is beautiful, the moment should be noble and stirring. The one who should have slunk off, who should finally be brought to justice in the final moments of the opera seems to be gloating. The modernization in the set & costumes (bringing it into the 19th century) didn’t trouble me at all; but changing the ending?

Different story (literally).

Andrew Haji is a likeable Cassio, a perfect foil to Otello in his affability & lyrical directness. Önay Köse was a solid Lodovico. Owen McCausland was a foppish Roderigo, Carolyn Sproule a nerdy Emilia, but very strong in the last scene.

David Alden’s Otello continues at the Four Seasons Centre until May 21st.

John Abberger, one of North America’s leading performers on historical oboes, is a familiar face locally as the principal oboist with Tafelmusik (bio), often playing key solos in concerts as he did just last week. John is also Artistic Director of the Toronto Bach Festival.

I wanted to find out more about John and to ask him a few questions about the fourth annual Bach Festival coming up May 24th -26th 2019.

John Abberger

1) Are you more like your father or your mother?

To be honest, I feel that I am an interesting combination of my parents, without any one of them predominating. My father was a thoughtful and somewhat shy person. I think in my youth I took after him more, but as I grew in my career as a musician it was necessary to find a way to overcome that diffidence, and the example of my mother provided a powerful resource upon which I could draw.

2) What is the best or worst thing about what you do?

Pretty much all of the things I do have good and bad aspects. For example, I love playing the oboe, but making reeds, not so much. But you can’t play the oboe (on a high level, anyway), without making reeds. It’s part of playing the instrument. At this point the Bach festival is being run by myself and a couple of other people who work on a very part-time basis, or who are board members volunteering their time. There are many tasks to be done, and most of them I find interesting, but there are times when I feel overwhelmed with the volume of work to be done.

(Not sure I’ve answered your question).

3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?

I don’t listen to music a lot at home. When I do, I like to listen to music I am unlikely to perform myself , such as the keyboard works of Bach, and I also occasionally listen to some of the later repertory that I don’t get to play anymore, such as Strauss and Mahler and Shostakovitch. I‘m a horrible classical music nerd, though. I like good jazz, but I don’t listen to it at home.

I love going to live theatre which I do as much as I can fit into my schedule, and I have lately been sampling some of the amazing wealth of high-quality television that is available now.

4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

I definitely wish I could play the keyboard with some minimal level of competence. I actually started my musical life taking piano lessons when I was 7, but it never seemed to captivate me the way orchestral instruments did later, and I abandoned it after a few years.

5) When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?

Cooking, reading, going to the theatre, watching some of the above-mentioned television dramas with my wife.

More questions about preparing the 4th Annual Bach Festival May 24-26.

1) You wear several hats, playing oboe for Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, in the productions for Opera Atelier and annually organizing this Festival. Of the many things you do, from practicing your oboe, performing on the oboe here and abroad with other groups such as the American Bach Soloists & curating a festival: what’s the hardest job for you, and what’s the most fun thing you do?

I feel very fortunate in that I mostly do things that I really enjoy. I love playing the oboe, with Tafelmusik particularly, but also with other groups. Making reeds can feel like a chore, but that’s part of playing the oboe. I love the work of creating each festival, and the work of the musical preparation that goes into the artistic direction. There are some purely administrative tasks that I could do without, but that’s a bit like making reeds for the oboe, it’s part of the job. What’s challenging for me is when all these worlds collide, and I don’t have time to enjoy the tasks that I love because there are deadlines to meet. But that’s life, isn’t it?

2) Your Bach Festival is growing, now with the addition of concerts at the Black Swan Tavern on Danforth. Can you describe what we’d hear in the Tavern?

We are very excited to be adding this new festival event this year. We want to do something more outside-the-box, we want to present some interesting Bach-inspired repertory, and we want to create a different kind of experience for our audience, and perhaps attract some new listeners outside of our typical audience.

Elinor Frey (photo: Elizabeth Delage)

The concert will feature Bach’s Sixth Suite for solo cello, which was written for a 5-string cello (rather than the usual 4), and this will be paired with two works that Elinor Frey has commissioned to be written specifically for this 5-string instrument. This will be our first venture outside of the typical concert format, and we are eager to see how it is accepted by our audiences and by the community. Bach performed a lot of his music in a coffee house in Leipzig, so it’s actually a good example of historically informed performance in action. I hope people will feel free to keep drinking, and if they want to talk quietly and get up whenever they like, I think that will be great. The hallowed silence and reverential devotion for the musical art is a Victorian construct. I don’t think that aesthetic applies generally to the way music was performed in the 18th century.

3) You describe The Mission of the Bach Festival as follows:
“Seventy per cent of Bach’s music is unknown to the average music lover, yet his music stands out as one of the most profound expressions of the human spirit in western art music. The mission of the Toronto Bach Festival is to introduce audiences to lesser-known works of Johann Sebastian Bach, while presenting perennial favourites, all in historically informed performances.”
Could you give examples from your program?

Our opening concert this year is a great example. It combines one of the most iconic of Bach’s works, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, with two cantatas. When it comes to the cantatas, the 70% figure goes down to about 97%! Of the more than 200 cantatas that Bach wrote, only about 5 are well-known. BWV 152, which opens the programme, is even more of a rarity, and is seldom performed because of its unusual instrumentation, which includes viola d’amore and viola da gamba.

The Lutheran Masses are another good example. The music is all recycled from cantata movements, so they are very similar to the Mass in b minor in that sense, but these works are not performed very often as they are overshadowed by that great work. And we are including on that programme an independent setting of the Sanctus, one of a small handful of individual sacred vocal works that seldom find their way onto regular programmes of Bach, perhaps because they are not part of a larger work.

4) Please tell us about the program in the Bach Festival this year.

Harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour

Friday, May 24, 8 pm
BRANDENBURG 5
Luc Beauséjour, harpsichord soloist
Julia Wedman, violin soloist
Directed by John Abberger

Violinist Julia Wedman

Programme:
Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn, BWV 152
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, BWV 1050
Concerto in A minor for Violin and Strings, BWV 1041
Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, BWV 23

Alto Daniel Taylor

Hélène Brunet, soprano
Daniel Taylor, alto
Nicholas Weltmeyer, tenor
Joel Allison, bass

Bass Joel Allison (Photo: Ian McIntosh Photography)

Alison Melville, recorder
John Abberger, oboe
Marco Cera, oboe
Thomas Georgi, viola d’amore

Julia Wedman, violin
Valerie Gordon, violin
Patrick Jordan, viola
Felix Deak, violoncello and viola da gamba
Alison Mackay, bass
Joelle Morton, violone
Christopher Bagan, harpsichord

Saturday, May 25, 3:30 pm
LECTURE
Bach and the French Style
Ellen Exner, lecturer
New England Conservatory of Music

Saturday, May 25, 5 pm
HARPSICHORD RECITAL
Bach and the French Style
Including
English Suite No. 3 in G minor, BWV 808
French Suite no 5 in G major, BWV 816

Luc Beauséjour, harpsichord soloist

Saturday, May 25, 9 pm
LATE NIGHT CONCERT
Elinor Frey, violoncello
Featuring the Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012
with new works by Isaiah Ceccarelli and Scott Edward Godin.

John Abberger (photo: Sian Richards)

Sunday, May 26, 3 pm
LUTHERAN MASSES
Directed by John Abberger

Programme:
Mass in G major, BWV 236
Sanctus in D major, BWV 238
Mass in F major, BWV 233

Hélène Brunet, soprano
Emma Hannan, soprano
Daniel Taylor, alto
Simon Honeyman, alto
Lawrence Wiliford, tenor
Nicholas Weltmeyer, tenor
Joel Allison, bass
Matthew Li, bass

Scott Wevers, horn
Christine Passmore, horn
Marco Cera, oboe
Gillian Howard, oboe
Dominic Teresi, bassoon

Julia Wedman, violin
Valerie Gordon, violin
Cristina Zacharias, violin
Gretchen Paxson, violin
Patrick Jordan, viola
Felix Deak, violoncello
Alison Mackay, bass
Christopher Bagan, harpsichord

5) You’re so busy! Do you find you have enough time to practice your instrument and to learn new works? Are you one of those artists like Horowitz who doesn’t practice very much? Or do you play regularly.

I don’t think there are any performing musicians (including Horowitz) who don’t practice regularly. It’s part of the job. I enjoy learning new works. That’s when I really recharge as an artist. I have been studying Bach’s works for my entire career, and although I have to look at them a little differently when I am preparing to direct a performance, it’s all a part of a process that I find intensely fascinating.

6) Has the festival with its focus on lesser-known works changed your thinking about what you play?

I definitely think performing more of Bach’s works provides a larger context for us to evaluate his achievement as a composer. Hearing and experiencing more of his music deepens our understanding of all of his works, both the familiar and the less familiar. I also think hearing more north German sacred music from the generations before Bach can really enrich how we hear his music. This is why I included the Passion setting by Heinrich Schütz in last year’s festival, and I hope to perform more north German sacred music at the festival in the future.

I’m not really one of the diggers, though. There are amazing scholars who devote their careers to that kind of thing, and it’s a time-consuming business, to be sure, to say nothing of the expertise necessary to do that kind of research properly. What I do is sift through the results of their work. But with Bach it’s all been examined in immense detail over the last century or so.

7) In the spirit of your festival, Are there any lesser known composers or works that you wish Tafelmusik might undertake?

Just as I feel about the Bach’s lesser known works enriching our understanding of his more familiar works, I think the same applies to larger repertories. Like any musical organization, Tafelmuisk has to balance the interests and wishes of the artistic director with the need to sell tickets to the concerts. That having been said, I think it‘s really great when we can explore lesser known composers. Even when the music isn’t “first-rate” as defined by the standards of Bach and Handel, it can really be interesting to hear, and it definitely deepens our understanding of what makes Bach and Handel so great. I’d apply this not only to early 18th century “baroque” music, but also to early classical and later 18th century music. Mozart and Haydn are great composers, but what makes them so great? Hearing more of their contemporaries can really help us to understand what makes them great, and the audience will attain this understanding on an intuitive level, without a lot of musical analysis terminology (very useful to musicians, but a real turn-off to the average listener).

8)  Is there a teacher or influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

I guess I’d say the historically informed performance movement itself has been a profound influence on the direction my career has taken. From its roots in Europe in the 1970s, it was just beginning to make its way to North America in the early 1980s. When I finished my Masters degree at the Julliard School in 1981 I was looking for an artistic direction, and my love of Bach and baroque music in general naturally led me to explore this field, which was just beginning to bloom in New York and Boston and Toronto. I immediately felt a deep attraction to the idea of applying historical research to bring music from this period alive for audiences today. I’ve never looked back. Bach’s music (and that of his contemporaries) makes so much more sense performed this way, and I believe it gives performers a better way to communicate its profound beauty to our listeners. For me it continues to be a wonderful adventure today, all these years later.

*******

John Abberger and the 4th Annual Bach Festival are coming to Toronto May 24-26. Just click for further information about the Toronto Bach Festival. 

I marked this one down on my calendar a long time ago, even though tonight on May 16th is a key date for other reasons…

• It’s COC’s Operanation
• It’s the world premiere of Shanawdithit, the co-pro from Tapestry / Opera on the Avalon
• and by the way today was also the fabulous interview on Q of Dean Burry & Yvette Nolan about their new opera (have a listen) 

I opted for the Toronto Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall because they were playing one of my favourite pieces conducted by Sir Andrew Davis (knowing I could see Shanawdithit next week), and they made me glad I chose them, one of the best concerts I’ve seen all year.

I understand that Sir Andrew is not just Interim Artistic Director of the TSO but is like a curator in assembling programs such as tonight’s, a fascinating combination:

• César Franck’s Variations Symphoniques for piano & orchestra,
• Mahler’s 7th Symphony, which is my favourite Mahler Symphony
• and “My Most Beautiful, Wonderful, Terrific, Amazing, Fantastic, Magnificent Homeland”: a very romantic & optimistic sounding Sesquie by Chan Ka Nin that almost sounded contemporary with the other two even with its bold quotation from “Oh Canada”.

But as Davis & the Toronto Symphony await the new conductor Gustavo Gimeno who will take over from Davis in the fall of 2020, they’re not just marking time. Oh no. This is an orchestra playing with passion & commitment, as Davis prepares them for the new regime. I’m eager to hear Gimeno who will be conducting in June, but for now this is an ensemble building for the future.

Sir Andrew Davis (Photo: Jaime Hogge)

Perhaps I should explain why I was fascinated by Davis putting the Franck with Mahler. While the Franck is shorter & requiring fewer players than the Mahler, they sound good together. Although the Mahler begins in B minor its opening motto begins with an F-sharp, the same key as the Franck; if one recalls old-fashioned key relationships found in classical symphonies, this one works nicely.

I was reminded of the conductor of the la boheme seen at the COC lately. Should a conductor be noticed? Should the music flow without interruption? should we be aware of the soloists? I only bring this up because I was yanked out of the dramatic illusion at the opera a few times by a conductor imposing his ego on the natural flow of the piece, which is not how I like it. Sometimes singers or soloists ostentatiously seem to call attention to themselves by altering a tempo, by disrupting the natural flow, and if they sing well we’ll forgive them. I heard an ideal reading of the Franck tonight from Davis and pianist Louis Lortie, seemingly effortless in the give & take. Franck segments the piece in places with changes from one sort of playing to another, from one kind of texture to another sound altogether. I’ve heard it many times, and often the pianist calls attention to themself in their solo work, interrupting the flow in their struggles to cope with the score. But Lortie and Davis were so seamless I was reminded of the self-effacing approach of a film-score. They say if you’re doing it right, you don’t notice the music. On this occasion Davis & Lortie made it seem easy, even though this is a deceptively tough score. Lortie’s flow never stopped the continuity of the piece nor slowed the luscious flow of notes from orchestra & piano, as though the soloist were just another player in the orchestra, not demanding anyone shine a spotlight on him. When I say “ideal” I mean that this is the best version I’ve ever heard in decades of marveling at this beautiful piece, no ego to mar the performance. I feel lucky to have been seated in a place where I could see the wonderful eye contact & communication between Davis & Lortie.

Louis Lortie at the piano, Andrew Davis at the podium and the Toronto Symphony (photo: Jag Gundu)

You’d think they’ve done this before, wouldn’t you…

And then on to the Mahler. I’m reminded of a TSO concert at Ontario Place back in 1980, where they also played the 7th Symphony. (can’t recall the conductor …. Hm could it also have been Davis?!). I remember that I ran into Carl Morey & Neil Crory, who both were dubious about this symphony; perhaps it was the scholarly consensus at the time? but they claimed the piece didn’t work.

Or was it that as of 1980, interpreters hadn’t yet figured it out? I had a recording I loved. I remember disagreeing with them at the time, loving this symphony in the slow version I had, conducted by Otto Klemperer. I’m much happier with quicker versions such as the Leonard Bernstein NY Philharmonic recording, that goes more like a bat out of hell.

Whatever pace you take –fast or slow – Mahler is a bit like Shakespeare, thinking of Hamlet or King Lear. Unless you have a good interpreter who can make a strong statement of the work, I’d almost say: why bother? There are many possible interpretations, so long as you HAVE an interpretation, a leader who can make a statement.

Davis? Ah, now we’re talking. The TSO have done Mahler over the past few years, and there’s a world of difference when someone comes who really has some ideas about how to do the work. What a joy watching this performance, hearing the orchestra respond to an experienced leader with a real vision of the work.

While Davis is not as quick as Bernstein he’s at the quicker end of the spectrum: which I think is preferable. The marching rhythms in the 1st movement cohere better if you push the orchestra, especially if you really seem to know what you’re asking for. When we had something schmaltzy or more introspective, Davis pulled back on the throttle, allowing a kind of meandering for those softer spots. And that made the climactic passages that much more dramatic, the last of the 1st movement being especially relentless.

I’ve seen Davis do this before, in the February Wagner concert where he demanded clean attacks, shorter notes with spaces between them to help articulation. Not only did this give us clarity but likely helped save the players’ chops, and spared our ears as well. The key passages were wonderfully big but that’s preferable than being loud all the way through.

This orchestra really seems to love playing for Davis, given their commitment tonight. And yet it wasn’t all big and bold. There was a great deal of internal detail, many beautiful solos throughout the orchestra in every movement. And the last movement was allowed to meander a bit without being rushed the way some conductors do it, so that when we finally came to the big statements at the end, there was some genuine excitement.

I’m sorry I can’t tell you to see it again, this was the second of two. But Davis & Lortie are back next week in another TSO program that includes Rossini’s William Tell overture, Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and Respighi’s Pines of Rome.

Njo Kong Kie has created a one man show from Xu Lizhi’s texts, that he sings and enacts mostly from the piano, I swallowed a moon made of iron, presented at the Berkeley Street Theatre by Canadian Stage. That title comes from one of Lizhi’s poems.  At times we get syncopated rock songs sung in Chinese, sometimes we get something more like classical lieder, a cross between Debussy & Schumann, the words taking us inside the sensuous experience of a worker in a place we can barely imagine.

No it’s not Marxist or revolutionary, these are the visceral life of a sensitive & compassionate young man rendered in verse.

Here’s the beginning of Kie’s program note:

In 2010 fourteen workers committed suicide at the Shenzhen complex of Foxconn, a major contract manufacturer of electronics for many of our digital devices. In 2014, 24 year old Xu Lizhi, working at the same plant, did the same. Xu was also a poet, known as one of the most promising young poets in China’s worker-poet literary movement, comprised of young labourers writing about the working class. His death sparked headlines in China and across the globe.

I remember in my childhood studying Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, pushing the envelope of tragedy with a hero who was not heroic. Where do we go from there(?), our teacher asked. Reality TV is one logical consequence, a discourse for an era when poetry & heroism seem impossible, a time epitomized by Donald Trump. As we’ve watched the rise of information technology & the transformation of labour, I’ve long hoped to see an opera someday created from R.U.R., Karel Capek’s play from the early 20th century (“RUR” =Rossum’s Universal Robots), which long seemed to be an ideal vehicle for an opera. I wondered about possible directions for the evolution of tragedy & drama, at least as seen on the operatic stage.  Ah but I see that I’m way off in my grandiose predictions as I missed the logical trajectory. I could mention a story we saw from Bicycle Opera Project in 2017, namely Sweat, that showed us the exploitation of labour in the third world. It leads to what I saw tonight.

Njo Kong Kie in I swallowed a moon made of iron (photo: Dahlia Katz)

Of course it was the ultimate irony that my experience of this opera (a staged song-cycle? Perhaps genre doesn’t matter) was disrupted by a mobile phone going off beside me. For a few moments I wondered if the sound was part of the score. There we were, contemplating the life and death of someone crushed under the massive wheels of an impersonal industry, a world apathetic & distant, epitomized in that phone going off in the midst of the performance.

Does anyone care?

Pardon my tirade, it was breath-takingly perfect. The work that might sensitize the Canadian audience and would make us care, this portrayal of a brutally insensitive industrial world was captured for me perfectly in that moment.  If she had stood up in the middle of the show and walked out while she discussed where to meet for beer..? Only making it more obvious.

Kie’s music is sometimes heart-breakingly beautiful even as the text renders something unbearable. I think that’s as it must be. If instead the show went in the direction of something Wagnerian –where the music and the text and the scene all match in some sort of “total art”—you’d get something unbearable sounding & horrific looking to match the intimations of horror in the poetry. The startling contradictions of beauty bearing messages of heart-break & pain are unexpected, brilliant. That’s why it’s poetry. And that’s what I was getting at in using the word “oxymoronic”, where we have something contradictory. We are taken very sensitively into the world of Lizhi’s poetry by a choice in the mise en scene to illuminate the words for us, projecting chunks of text in English while at least some of those words are sung in Chinese.

Njo Kong Kie singing through Xu Lizhi’s text (photo: Dahlia Katz)

Njo Kong Kie’s I swallowed a moon made of iron continues at the Berkeley Street Theatre until May 26th.

Who would expect a new opera to affirm the value of the artform?

Shanawdithit is a new opera co-produced by Newfoundland’s Opera on the Avalon and Toronto’s Tapestry Opera. There was a workshop a few months ago, a tantalizing glimpse not so much of the work we would see so much as the process in play during the creation. Telling the story of a European encountering a vanishing Indigenous culture is in some ways a perfect microcosm for the entire settler enterprise, although usually the images are so brutal as to be unbearable. This is a gentler story because most of the slaughter is in the past at the time of this story. Shanawdithit as the last of the Beothuk could calmly answer the questions of an eager historian, whose curiosity parallels the attitude of many of us in the audience, with all our good intentions & ignorance, with most of the harm and violence left out.

Opera sometimes has a bad reputation among theorists, a medium for affirming & celebrating power, a way for nobles to lord it over the not so noble, to demonstrate class difference by forcing people in the cheap seats to sit through messages from the gods telling you that the nobles deserve their divinely ordained advantages and are really better than you.

But what if it could be re-purposed, employed to tell a different sort of story? We know opera to be a Euro-centric form often employed to celebrate the assimilation of other cultures. That very history works to its advantage in the collaborative venture that is Shanawdithit. While this may be a story of cultural imperialism & genocide, it doesn’t aim to teach the superiority of a way of life.

Yvette Nolan

Yvette Nolan & Dean Burry are the two main creators of this new opera that premiered last week. I am reminded of the Mahler 7th symphony that I saw last week, that employs various objects to make noise as part of a musical score. Burry starts us in a borderline realm, not quite silence nor noise, but with breath and the clicking of stones against one another, before slowly leading us into music of greater conviction.

Dean Burry

I have to think that Burry’s experience is an archetypical demonstration of the anxiety of influence. But no it’s not the usual version of one afraid of copying, fearful of sounding like Puccini or Wagner, so much as the concern he might seem to be appropriating a cultural artifact (for instance, thinking of the song sung during Louis Riel), or at the very least, suggesting something aboriginal. Not only do we have the real music but also the offensive musics that turn up in films or sports stadiums to signify something understood as “native”, and so also needing to be dodged like explosive mines hiding under the surface.

And so no wonder that Burry’s score seemed to lean more heavily on his orchestra for expression than upon his vocalists, who often seemed to proceed with great caution through the aforementioned minefield.  Nolan sketches a story that is very generous in some ways, painting a portrait of William Cormack that verges on sainthood. I think he’s maybe too good to be true, a version of a man with great compassion and empathy alongside other settlers who are more typically bigoted.  Shanawdithit left us a series of pictures, and Cormack wrote on top of these images. Perhaps the key is to recognize that while this might be a story of an Indigenous encounter with a European who seems too good to be true in my eye, it’s told from an Indigenous perspective, which means my experience does not apply here.

Among the interviews between Shanawdithit and Cormack, we see a climactic encounter that almost made me burst out laughing at the wonder of what we saw. I don’t think I’m being a spoiler to describe the growing enthusiasm with which Cormack listens to Shanawdithit tell of her people, as the stage is filled with life. He even seems to see them all and dance along with them. And abruptly they all stop and stare at him, even though we were really watching the memories of a culture inside her head. It’s pure magic.

I am reminded of a premiere I attended back in the 1980s, a bewildering new piece that was castigated by one critic because it didn’t do what music & opera usually do. I mention this because it’s important to carefully see what the piece is trying to do and how it works, rather than taking it to task for not being what we want it to be. There is not as much conflict as some people might expect in a piece of theatre. But Shanawdithit is more celebration than tragedy, and more spiritual than theatrical.

Nolan & Burry take us back in the classical direction in sometimes employing their chorus as a greek chorus. At times I suspected that when Shanawdithit is addressing her people, whether in her family or the Beothuk people more generally –all of whom she believes to have died out—her thoughts and their thoughts are echoed in the chorus: as though we hear the spirits, the souls of those who are still alive in another realm. The opera would challenge that assumption –that the Beothuk have died out—and affirms that in some respect they live on.

I have only one small complaint, which concerns the intelligibility of the text. Often I was guessing at the meaning of lines, perhaps due to the acoustics. I would recommend surtitles especially in those moments of passionate singing, or when more than one person sings at the same time. Nolan created a wonderful libretto that I wish I could hear in its entirety. Perhaps earlier –on opening night? in rehearsals?—the cast were paying more attention to their enunciation, whereas tonight I feel they were committed to their portrayals, totally into character. The surtitles would help, as I think their singing was superb and wouldn’t want them to restrain themselves for the sake of a few consonants.

Marion Newman

Marion Newman was very powerful, in recreating Shanawdithit, in all the poignancy we might expect for someone who was the last of the Beothuk people and aware of her legacy. Nolan gives her the role of a kind of commentator or spokesperson, larger than life.  Clarence Frazer brought Cormack’s fervent curiosity to life, a portrayal of great compassion. Aria Evans plays a huge role that’s perhaps a bit difficult to describe, except to say that via dance we are given another pathway to the story, both what came before and what might yet come to pass.
(morning after: I realize belatedly that I have struggled so hard to come to terms with the piece that I omitted the conductor, the director, as well as several performers & collaborators, needing to get to bed….  If the piece works–and it does– they deserve credit)

Aria Evans

Shanawdithit articulates Cormack’s interviews, his desperate attempt to capture a culture before it vanished in the last person alive. The opera takes us beyond the face to face encounter of two persons to the encounter of peoples that might lead to reconciliation, the dream of peace and acceptance.  While it may seem like an impossible dream, an artificial construct: it can work perfectly in the realm of opera.

Shanawdithit continues at the Imperial Oil Opera Theatre, 227 Front St East on
Wed. May 22,  Thurs.May 23, and Sat May 25, all at 8:00 pm. , and then on June 21, 2019
St. John’s Arts & Culture Centre.

As I’ve been listening to a 2015 solo piano studio recording by Mikolaj Warszynski, I’ve found myself wondering about the process, about how music is made and how it comes to be heard.

If a pianist plays brilliantly and no one hears: is there a career? Is there even music?

Not for the first time, I’m pondering how it all works. I’ve heard stories of singers walking into auditions, knocking it out of the park but being ignored ultimately because they’re not famous. In an industry that needs stars the arrival of an unknown can be a destabilizing force, a threat to those big names. While there was a time when recording labels & publishing companies were custodians of art, stewards of excellence, lately I wonder whether anyone cares.

But these thoughts came later. First came the CD, a series of performances to raise such questions.

• A Haydn Sonata
• A piece by Szymanowski
• Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz #1
• Four pieces by Chopin

We went from the unknown (unknown to me that is… meaning both the Haydn & the Szymanowski) to the familiar (the Liszt & Chopin), all the while making something fresh & new. When I looked more closely inside the jacket, the label is Anima in Paris, but I saw that there was a crowdfunding initiative to make the recording happen. Warszynski has roots in Poland (where he was born), Alberta and Québec, and has performed all over the world. While I may have missed something what I didn’t see was even one mention of anywhere in Ontario: relevant only because I ponder this question of process. Ontario is sometimes perceived as vainly self-important by the rest of the country, and no wonder when—for example—the operas we see downtown are from the “Canadian Opera Company”, shows that then get reviewed by The Globe & Mail who proclaim themselves to be Canada’s National Newspaper. While I laugh at the idea we are the centre of the world (especially when we endure mockery not just from Canada but Americans, particularly New Yorkers), I wonder about the career process, and whether Warszynski would be advised to appear in Toronto, where we’d all be lining up to proclaim his brilliance to anyone who’s listening.

Okay enough about the process, and yes I can’t deny I am mystified when I listen to a CD that’s so original and so excellent that seems to have come and gone without fanfare, under the radar.

The Haydn Sonata is a glowing advertisement for the composer. A good performance should be like a speech in a courtroom advocating for the immortality of the piece & its creator, if not a testimonial to the player’s love of the music. Haydn and Mozart sometimes give us phrases that sound like people laughing aloud, full of the visceral pleasure of youthful beauty. Warszynski makes me think of Haydn on a late-night talk show, the composer’s comic phrases sounding new in the moment. The middle movement—especially in Warszynski’s pointed phrasing—makes me appreciate early Beethoven slow movements in a new way (because I should have realized the influence, made clear in Warszynski’s fascinating program note). I should have known:  that Beethoven isn’t quite as original as I thought, that maybe he’d heard something like this already from Haydn.

Warszynski could have spoken up at the keyboard and said aloud “and now for something completely different”. Perhaps in Polish?  as we went from Haydn to the first movement of Szymanowksi’s op 34 Shéhérazade. As in Prelude à l’après-midi d’un faune or Le sacre du printemps we begin with something almost improvised, like a preamble to what’s to follow, a delicate provocation to be elaborated with commentary & complication, both of the dramatic and harmonic as well. At times there are suggestions of what might in later decades be called “jazz”, even though I think it’s Szymanowski’s playful approach to sonorities & voices that takes us to that place. Need I add, where the Haydn is far from easy to execute, with Shéhérazade complex & virtuosic pianism suddenly rears its dazzling head. We are in a realm that is at times exotic at other times terrifying, which is only befitting an adaptation of this life & death love story. I wish I knew the piece better (and I’ll chase it down and attempt to play through it to see for myself), to have more of a sense as to what’s usually asked of the interpreter, and what’s original / added via the magic fingers of Warszynski.

But Shéhérazade is a very different sort of work from the Mephisto Waltz #1, not just because one was brand-new to me and the other is among the most well-known, well-worn, frequently programmed and if truth be told, critically under-estimated pieces. I put this piece in the same category with la boheme and the 1812 Overture, namely pieces so well-loved & overplayed that it’s hard to get back to the music sometimes and see it objectively. It’s in that context especially –where the music is almost like an aging movie queen in need of a makeover, turning up on late-night TV (uh oh I am repeating myself in my metaphors… perhaps this is the same show that had Haydn, as a guest? and the old dowager is on in the last 10 minutes), when the audience is all shutting off their TVs. It’s not Liszt’s fault that this piece became like the Sabre Dance or the flight of the bumblebee, an ear-worm haunting your head like Mephisto himself.  Although I suppose if you’re going to write an ear-worm (no mean feat!… what composer wouldn’t dream of this?), could the haunting ever be more purposeful? more symbolic?

What Warszynski gives us in his performance of the Liszt is counter-intuitive in its originality. Yes he plays it perfectly (like everything on this CD, regardless of its difficulty). But it’s not about the circus act element we sometimes see in a virtuoso performance, aiming for higher- faster – louder- wilder. Where I was mostly lost in the sound & fury of Shéhérazade shenanigans, again because I don’t know the work yet well enough to really experience it as a text or as a tone-poem with a story or scenario underlying its structure, Warszynski is story-telling with the Liszt. It’s a very segmented piece that can seem very wooden when there is no sense of an organic flow from one segment to the next, like a skater going from their double lutz to their triple axel double toe-loop combination. If the skating / dancing / piano-playing is really serving Liszt it must not be a series of stunts but a flowing story, a sound that serves to seduce us rather than impress us. I’ve heard a great many versions of this piece, and frankly became immune to the work for awhile: until hearing Warszynski.

And then we come to the four Chopin pieces that Warszynski would have you think of as a sonata, according to the program notes:
• Polonaise op 26 #2
• Scherzo #1
• Nocturne op 48 #1
• Polonaise op 53

It’s an interesting idea, one I don’t quite buy, but still: I love the ambition behind it. For recordings, for concerts, for church services: we are curators. Music is selected & organized for an effect. When I read the program note I don’t necessarily agree with what the music is doing, because of course we’re different people. Funnily enough I align the Chopin more with Haydn, for its neoclassical elegance & symmetry, for the delicate lines & clarity of composition, in sharp contrast to the density of the Szymanowski & Liszt. And of course the more obvious contrast is that Szymanowski & Liszt offer us program music or at least a romantic music with literary associations whereas the Chopin & Haydn are much more absolute in their conception, pure music not music seeking to tell a story. Being a Magyar I am also disinclined to see Chopin as a revolutionary, and more as an exile –not so very different from Liszt actually—which means I hear the Heroic Polonaise differently. I hear torment & conflict & celebration, as one finds in some of Liszt’s works, such as his Hungarian Rhapsody #15 (the Rakoczy March, a tune you would have heard orchestrated in Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust). After Byron, the romantic sensibility is always a painful mixture of passions.

Pianist Mikolaj Warszynski

There are four performances here, all fascinating for different reasons. I’m especially moved by the Scherzo. Chopin’s four scherzi are a funny set. As with so many of these compositions, one may open the book and play through them, but one doesn’t necessarily encounter them that way in recital. The four scherzi are all stunning pieces, but the first is a quantum leap in difficulty beyond the other three. Warszynski plays what I am fairly certain is the most impressive reading of this challenging piece that I’ve ever encountered. It opens with a wild gesture that could be like a paroxysm or the grunts of animals having sex, one of the most passionate things ever written for the instrument. Warszynski makes the most of this. It’s in some ways the most frustrating piece (all four scherzi really, although for the first one, especially true), because Chopin puts his most beautiful music, bar none, in the middle of these phenomenally challenging passages. I was thinking of Brunnhilde, placed on her mountain surrounded by fire that can only be reached by a hero who does not know the meaning of fear. What did Dryden say? None but the brave deserve the fair? One must scale this rough mountain to come out into the serenity of the mountain peak where Chopin has placed his beautiful melody in all its pristine clarity. Of course the Ring cycle wouldn’t appear for decades after Chopin. But it’s the same. We can’t get to the serenity of that stunning melody in B major without transgressing the fire of the outer section in B minor, and if you just CHEAT and play it out of context it loses much of its beauty, because it is that drama, that struggle that makes that calm serenity meaningful. I’m grateful that on top of everything else Warszynski gives us a program note telling us where that charming tune came from, its associations for Chopin in his exile.

So there you have it. Warszynski is a young piano player and a professor of performance who deserves to be heard, whether in a master class or in recital. I hope he comes to Toronto sometime. He has another CD (a live performance) that I’m working at acquiring and I’m sure there will be more, as he’s yet young. The solo piano CD can be found via Amazon (click link).

Less is more.

Pomegranate, bearing the epithet “a lesbian chamber opera,” is the latest specimen suggesting that grand opera is all but dead. Small is beautiful whatever your sexual politics, both for the lower price-tag and the ideal connection you make in a smaller space such as Buddies in Bad Times Theatre where the buzz is genuine, the enthusiasm palpable. Working with a seven member ensemble led by Jennifer Tung, Director Michael Hidetoshi Mori created a powerfully dramatic evening.

Teiya Kasahara in her modern incarnation as a bartender (photo: Dahlia Katz)

It was interesting to see mention in the program of the rarity of a lesbian opera. I was reminded of the only one I could think of, Erlanger’s adaptation of Pierre Louýs’s novel Aphrodite. Louýs also wrote the Chansons de Bilitis, adapted a couple of times by Debussy. There are some parallels between the stories for Aphrodite and Pomegranate. Besides the lesbian content, both stories go back to classical times, both concern a power struggle between male & female, that can also be seen as a kind of contest between two different faiths or cultures (for instance when the oppressive centurion Marcus keeps blustering about Apollo). As one might expect, the political aspect is front & centre.

At two hours long Pomegranate is a full meal. Composer Kye Marshall and librettist Amanda Hale created two very different acts. For the first act, when Hale & Marshall were establishing a ritualized sub-culture of Isis worshippers in Pompeii at the time of Vesuvius’s eruption, the back and forth between characters did not have the usual discursive alternation of dialogue, but instead was more like two people telling the same story together, as though they were both staring in wonderment at the same beautiful sunset. I’m reminded of a term Keir Elam used to describe the discourse of Maeterlinck’s plays (and emulated in Debussy’s setting of Pelleas et Melisande), namely “monological”. That’s what we were hearing, the rapturous exchanges between members of the same cult as though one person was singing. While it was not very dramatic, but why should it be? The effect was largely hypnotic, spell-binding and other-worldly.

Where the first act takes us to a magical world of ritual in the second act the magic has faded, as we’re very close to home, a fallen modern world that feels more like a musical than opera. The exception was a tight ensemble among family members that was the most interesting music of the night.

As I said, less is more. The text was completely intelligible, the score allowing space for the performers to act & interpret with ease. Teiya Kasahara was the most impressive presence of the night, even if her powerful voice was rarely exploited, in a score that never sounded difficult. Aaron Durand made the most of his part, especially in the modern sequence. I was intrigued by Marshall’s choices, especially in orchestration featuring a big cello sound from the small ensemble, making for a wonderful soulful effect, especially when she turned Dobrochna Zubek loose for several powerful cello solos, the nicest music of the night. Librettist Hale opted for recognizable phrases such as “My heart broke in a thousand pieces”, so that it was easier for the listener to anticipate what was being sung.  I’ve seen some choices in other libretti recently that highlight the wisdom of Hale’s choices.  I recall the longer and more poetic lines from Yvette Nolan in Shanawdithit and Sky Gilbert in Shakespeare’s Criminal, had me wishing for surtitles, because there was just too much to take in all at once. Hale’s directness is more in the tradition of Meredith Oakes in her bold adaptation of Shakespeare in The Tempest (daring to shorten iambic pentameter into brief little lines that are ideal to sing). I’m inclined to think that too much poetry in a libretto gets in the way, given that we’re listening to voices, words, instruments, watching a performance. The choice to be simple and get out of the way of your collaborators is the one that usually works the best.

For me the most important aspect of the work is underlined by the space (Buddies) & the time (Pride), namely the political implications of the work, showing the struggle against oppression in different centuries.  That’s the most compelling aspect of the work.

Pomegranate continues until Sunday June 9th at Buddies.

Should I have said “The book of HIS shames”? Isaiah Bell’s one-man show is about his shames, right?

But no. He is everyman, every-person, and so these are your shames & my shames too.

I couldn’t imagine a more apt show for PRIDE.  While I was all gung-ho to suggest that one should go see The Book of My Shames presented by Tapestry Opera, it’s over, tonight was the last performance. Sorry about that.

As I sat there watching & listening, I did what I often do when reviewing a show, trying to create a mnemonic to remember everything I might want to say. This fell into a perfect A- B – C.

A for Antinous, B for Book, C for comparison, D for dead.

And early on I was again thinking of G, as in Grand Opera and its dramaturgy. For the second consecutive night I’m feeling that Grand Opera is almost D-for dead. Bell was Antinous in the Canadian Opera Company production of Hadrian, a courageous and expensive attempt to make a grand opera, yet so stiff and limited when compared to the works I’ve seen over the past year that are done on a smaller scale, such as Pomegranate last night or tonight’s The Book of My Shames. I was reminded of my petty irritation at Hadrian when Bell gave the name a four syllable pronunciation (An-tin-o-us), even though some in the cast plus the chorus gave the name a three syllable pronunciation (An-tin-oose). Back at the time, I asked myself “When you’re spending all that money shouldn’t somebody make sure you’re all pronouncing the name the same way?” But now I am just sad as I speculate that it’s all so complex and so big, a grand opera is so impossibly detailed of a thing, a vast machine that’s difficult if not impossible to control.

Composer & tenor Isaiah Bell

Yet with this one-man show? Okay, nobody said Book of My Shames is opera. Bell’s writing is confessional text with some music, supported ably by pianist Darren Creech & Director/dramaturge Sean Guist. The flexibility on display, the ease with which Bell could connect, have us laughing our heads off? very impressive.

Pianist Darren Creech

But maybe what Bell originally roughed out at his piano was then taken up by Creech in rehearsal before Guist’s observant eye / ear. The 80 minutes of this piece, some spoken, some sung, some accompanied by piano solo are all coherent minutes, emerging from a clear-headed objective.

Director / dramaturge Sean Guist

B is for Book. It took me awhile to decide that the book we see is actually a metaphor and not literally true as the book in Bell’s life: because Bell’s presentation was so authentic. For awhile I was persuaded (like the Ghostbusters… my slogan could be “i’m ready to believe you”… and yes maybe I’m gullible) that this funky old book full of pictures was a real album from the youth of this person presenting his life to us, telling us horror stories and silly stories, and laying himself bare. But wow, what a brilliant image, this idea that our bad moments could be collected this way. Forgive me for hitting you over the head with the impact of the show, but it was very effective. This book is us, who we are and where we have been. The opposite of Pride is Shame. To get to self-acceptance one must at least begin the journey through self-judgment and on towards making peace with oneself and one’s past.

C is for comparison, as in, what’s the difference between last night & tonight? Eros (okay we’ll do E in the same paragraph with C) was surely there last night in the lesbian opera, as it was tonight, in the gay man’s one-man cabaret show. I was struck by something I didn’t properly air last night (when I alluded to Erlanger’s operatic setting of Pierre Louýs’s Aphrodite), namely that it’s a huge difference when a man writes an opera about lesbians, and women (lesbian or otherwise) undertake such a project as we saw last night. And when we watched the opening of Act III of Hadrian (if I am remembering correctly… Act III is after intermission, right?),  we see Hadrian & Antinous are in bed together. There were similarities between what we saw last night between the lesbian lovers and what we saw in Act III of Hadrian. Tonight’s solo show had some very intensely erotic recollections, even if there was a great deal of ambiguity in what we were hearing about. I think the key to all of these examples is what happens in our heads, that beauty & eroticism is in the eye/ear of the beholder/listener.

This was the closing performance of The Book of My Shames at Ernest Balmer Studio in the Distillery District . I hope there will be another opportunity to see/ hear Bell’s fascinating creation.  Whatever show he might bring to town, I’ll be sure to go see it.

Last night there was a big fuss downtown about a big sporting event. Traffic may have been slow but there was jubilation in the air. And although the game and championship were milestones for Toronto, yet that’s not the FUSS I am talking about in the headline.
“F.U.S.” also stands for focused ultrasound (FUS). The focused ultrasound at Sunnybrook Hospital is FUSS, where several different projects are underway.

Ann & Errol

The concert last night, titled “LET’S MAKE A FUSS!” was a fund-raiser for research at Sunnybrook, organized by Ann Cooper Gay, whose husband and life-partner Errol Gay has ALS.

ALS may be known to you as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”, an ailment that so far has been incurable. It eventually claimed the life of physicist Stephen Hawking. Errol Gay, pianist, conductor, composer & Toronto Symphony librarian has ALS. Recently we’ve heard that conductor & radio personality Kerry Stratton has ALS.

Dr Agessandro Abrahao spoke to us briefly about the exciting research that I’ll attempt to describe with the help of text I have borrowed from the Sunnybrook website:

Transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound has been approved as a therapeutic alternative for treatment-resistant essential tremor. This noninvasive technique is being tested clinically as a drug delivery platform in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and brain tumours, by safely and temporarily opening the blood-brain barrier in targeted brain regions.
In collaboration with the Centre of Excellence in Focused Ultrasound at Sunnybrook, Dr. Abrahao’s research aims to expand the clinical testing of MR-guided focused ultrasound to treat neurological diseases.
Dr. Abrahao’s research interests also include clinical trials and epidemiological studies of ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases. He is also interested in the development of biomarkers for motor neuron function using transcranial magnetic stimulation and motor unit count techniques.

The concert was an uplifting & inspiring event.

Members of the Toronto Symphony began the event with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

Richard Margison sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” accompanied by pianist Monique de Margerie.

Lauren Margison sang “Tu che di gel” from Turandot accompanied by pianist Monique de Margerie.

Nora Shulman, Julie Ranti and Winona Zelenka played Haydn’s Trio I for two flutes & piano.

The Canadian Youth Opera Alumni Men’s Chorus, accompanied by Gergely Szololay sang first “My Funny Valentine” –showing us an arrangement by Errol Gay—followed by the “Soldiers’ Chorus” from Laura’s Cow: The Legend of Laura Secord, an opera composed by Errol Gay.

Russell Braun sang “Sure on This Shining Night” by Morten Lauridsen, accompanied by pianist Carolyn Maule.

Then we heard from Dr Abrahao.

Dr Agessandro Abrahao

Peter Barcza sang “The Impossible Dream” accompanied by Ann Cooper Gay at the piano.

Pianist Linda Ippolito played Arlequin et Pantalon by Pierre-Max Dubois.

Adi Braun sang the “Cheeky Little Swing Tune” composed for her by Tony Quarrington, and accompanied by him as well on his guitar.

Jonathan Crow played the “Meditation” from Thais accompanied by members of the TSO.

And to close we heard “Make Our Garden Grow” from Bernstein’s Candide, sung by Tessa Laengert & Paul Williamson, plus the Canadian Youth Opera Alumni Chorus & Friends, accompanied by members of the TSO.

While the concert was very inspiring, so too was hearing about this research, that holds great promise.  The link is still live for you to make a contribution to support this exciting project: in search of a breakthrough.

Some concerts are put together so well that you can’t help admiring the clever curator, combining compositions.

Ai caramba I didn’t mean to be so alliterative.

But even so they made magic at Roy Thomson Hall tonight in a Toronto Symphony program featuring different approaches to the past. Korngold’s Violin Concerto (premiered in 1947) was followed by Orff’s Carmina Burana (premiered in 1936). To hear the pieces you might never guess which is the more recent composition. While Korngold wrote a three movement concerto using stunning melodic moments that the composer had employed previously in his films (his recent past, if you will), Orff set a series of medieval texts, in music that for me never gets old and never sounds old.  I feel as though the middle ages come vividly to life.  Each piece might be what we would identify as “popular”, whether in the lush melodies in the Korngold or the crowd-pleasing sounds of Orff’s piece.

Speaking of past, I know I’m not the only one who gets nostalgic listening to the Orff. I ran into Joseph So after the concert, who reminisced about his associations from his undergraduate days listening to the piece. It has multiple associations for me, whether in the nerdy Latin scholars I recall from high-school who loved its bawdy text, or the room at St Hilda’s College I recall vividly from my undergrad, where we smoked up to one of the finest pieces of stoner music ever written. As I looked around at the audience, I saw at least a few people tapping their feet and jerking their heads as though they were at a rock concert.

And maybe I should talk about the concert.

James Ehnes gave us a stunning reading of the Korngold from the very first note of the piece.  Conductor Donald Runnicles kept the orchestra’s sometimes thick texture completely out of Ehnes’ way, enhancing a spectacular performance. There was a bit of additional drama in the last movement when for some reason Ehnes & concertmaster Jonathan Crow traded instruments (tuning problems?

Jonathan Crow (left) and the TSO sharing the applause after the concerto with soloist James Ehnes and conductor Donald Runnicles. Photo: Nick Wons

A string needing to be adjusted or fixed? I can only guess, but will ask and if I find out I’ll let you know: see below) for about a minute. While I’m sure Ehnes plays an exceptional instrument, Crow’s violin ain’t chopped liver, from what I heard last week when he played a gorgeous Meditation from Thais at a benefit concert next door in St Andrew’s Church. The drama –concluded when Crow & Ehnes traded back shortly after—suited the high spirits of the concerto’s finale.

Conductor Donald Runnicles leading the Toronto Symphony (photo: Jag Gundu)

I’ve heard a lot of versions of Carmina Burana and must recommend Runnicles’ distinctive interpretation. He connects the sections together rather than making big pauses, he pushes the tempi in the quicker passages, which is especially electrifying if you get your percussion & brass to opt for clear & crisp attacks. You won’t hear a better performance. This orchestra is in fine form coming towards the last few concerts of the year (this week & next).

Credit too must go to David Fallis, who has the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir matching Runnicles’ requirements for clarity. The text was pristine, the dynamics sometimes beautifully restrained except in the big climaxes, so that the performance had more shape than usual (more than last time certainly). The soft singing still had great intensity, diction and consonants and energy but without being loud all the time. As a result? Extraordinary. If I could go see every concert this week, I would.

The TSO will be playing the Korngold Violin Concerto with James Ehnes followed by Orff’s Carmina Burana, including the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Toronto Youth Choir & Toronto Children’s Chorus, baritone Norman Garrett, tenor Sunnyboy Dladla & soprano Nicole Haslett: 8:00 pm Thursday June 20th and Saturday June 22nd plus a 3:00 matinee Sunday June 23rd at Roy Thomson Hall.

Tenor Sunnyboy Dladla (seated at left) and baritone Norman Garrett (singing), photo: Nick Wons

Tonight was the first concert in the Toronto Symphony’s last weekend of the season, giving us a glimpse of their new music director Gustavo Gimeno. Will he come to be known as GG? While last week’s concert with Donald Runnicles suggested a proposition, tonight was QED with GG. My hypothesis: that the TSO were in need of leadership, hungry for it, starving;  the proof can be seen in their enthusiastic and committed playing, especially with GG.

Incoming Toronto Symphony Music Director Gustavo Gimeno

Forgive me, this is one of those nights screaming for a preamble, for context above & beyond the concert: which was amazing by the way. Hurry and get your tickets before they’re all gone. The pieces are great but the performances were exceptional, the chemistry unmistakable.

I keep hearing people in Toronto musing about the magic of team leaders, that je ne sais quoi that propels a Kawhi Leonard or a Nick Nurse to victory: taking the team along with them. It’s at least a bit of a chicken & egg thing, though, when you consider that the one person can’t do it alone, that you have to assemble the key parts of the team before the special individual leads them to the promised land.

I want to properly recognize where the TSO have been and where GG puts them. Under their last long-term music director Peter Oundjian they were sometimes a remarkable collection of talented players including some brilliant young section leaders, building towards a wonderful future. You might well ask, when is the future?

I relate at a deep level to the conundrum, where we found Oundjian especially good leading the orchestra in concerti –accompanying a soloist—yet lacking some essential vision when playing big works. And in the meantime those young talents were nurtured by Oundjian the mentor, a man of wonderful kindness and generosity but perhaps not enough of an egomaniac, or whatever it is that a conductor requires, to put them over the top.

What is a leader after all? Do we know them by what they do, or by the results of those who are being led? We see this over and over, that the skills of a star player –whether in hockey or basketball OR opera or symphonic music or theatre—don’t necessarily translate into the skills to lead. They’re not the same skills are they? The assumption that a good actor makes a good director, or that a good stick handler or goal-scorer makes a good coach has been shown to be wrong over and over, because of course the skills of a leader are totally different than those of a star. The baton handling is the least of it. We watch Mayor Pete or Kamala Harris or Donald Trump tell us what they believe, and for some reason some people are moved by person X more than they’re moved by person Y, let alone what they manage to achieve if/when they’re put in charge. But I’ll leave off about leadership for the time being, although I suspect I’ll come back to it again in the next little while, because it’s such an important question.

So my first observation is simply that the TSO were hungry for what GG has got and what he gives them. They played really well tonight. The response of the members of the orchestra is a symptom, like children bouncing out of bed early on Christmas morning, or a cat running towards the sound of the can-opener. I believe they were primed and ready, given that they were brilliant last week with Runnicles.

What does GG do to get that response? I can only go by the de facto evidence, both of the performances and in Jonathan Crow’s comments in the post-concert interview, when he confirmed the rapturous response of the TSO, a curious sort of chemistry.

(l-r) Concertmaster & soloist Jonathan Crow, TSO’s CEO Matthew Loden and conductor Gustavo Gimeno

Tonight we heard three works:

• Sibelius’ violin concerto, with Crow as soloist
  (intermission)
• Prokofiev’s symphony #1
• Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite

As a former percussionist GG brings a steady hand to the tiller. I’m not suggesting he’s metronomic. But there is the matter of meter, a word I haven’t heard anyone speak of in awhile. Let me illustrate with reference to tonight’s concert.

Do you ever wonder how a band or a soloist avoids speeding up or slowing down? It’s a dreadful thing if you notice a change, unless it’s a deliberate effect such as you might get at the breathless ending to a Rossini Overture. While one mustn’t seem like a machine one wants an organic steadiness, a natural flow. GG gave me a new perspective on that Prokofiev symphony tonight, one I’ve heard many times but never quite like this. The first & last movements are sometimes taken so fast as to seem rushed, as though we’re watching a circus performance, virtuoso excellence balancing on the edge. What I found especially breath-taking about these four movements tonight was how everything seemed easy, relaxed, unhurried. The inner voices were not just clear, but seemed to be part of a conversation, as though the parts were answering one another, as though the players were not just playing their parts but listening to one another. The result was lusciously beautiful like a voluptuous salad, where every part enticed you. The Larghetto was slower than I’ve ever heard it, exquisitely articulated throughout. GG’s approach to the gavotte was especially interesting, as he played with the tempo, the phrases feeling like thoughtful gestures back and forth. If I didn’t know better I’d say that this is an orchestra who are feeling a great deal of trust, for their new leader & for one another, given the transparent textures & the precise entrances. There was no sign of any fear or indecision in the playing, reflecting their confidence in their leader & his tempi. For the Firebird, it’s the same quality but on a larger scale. I found that at times GG employed a slower tempo than what I’d previously encountered, in other places, faster: but in every respect, it hung together, collegial & alive. I don’t think it matters sometimes what vision the leader has, so long as they’re decisive and specific. The orchestra followed and for now at least it’s a love-fest, one you can likely see at all the concerts coming up this weekend at Roy Thomson Hall Saturday night & Sunday afternoon.

Before intermission we heard a different sort of work, namely Sibelius’ violin concerto with concertmaster Jonathan Crow as soloist.

Violinist Jonathan Crow with the TSO led by Gustavo Gimeno (photo: Jag Gundu)

As orchestra & conductor get to know one another –given that we’d expect this to be the beginning of a long-term relationship—it’s a great idea to have the orchestra’s resident virtuoso play a concerto, as a kind of act of calibration. They’re getting the feel of one another, right? So there they were out on the dance-floor together, getting comfortable with one another.  They reported in their post-concert Q & A that they’re speaking the same language.

Speaking of which I couldn’t help wondering: how many languages does a cosmopolitan artist like Gimeno speak? In the Q & A he spoke articulately in accented English, but I’m sure he also speaks Dutch (he had a position in Holland), Spanish, perhaps also German & French & Italian?

We have to wait awhile for the GG era to begin, not until in the fall of 2020. Our appetites have been whetted.  Argh I can’t wait.

Is it true that Alexander Neef, General Director of the Canadian Opera Company is headed back to Paris?

Today I read Michael Vincent’s news report  via Ludwig-van.com that was a natural segue from the conversation I had with my companion at the symphony, based on a report in Le Figaro.  Note that it is not confirmed yet.

“Une rumeur insistante court à tous les étages de la Bastille”

It’s hard to know, so while we’re on our Canada Day holiday weekend, why not let our imaginations run wild? Tuesday morning things will be back to normal (the global climate catastrophe, election talk on either side of the border, scandals & rumours).

I speculated last night as to whether we should be concerned that Neef is going to leave and poof she told me this morning about Michael’s scoop.

Later I googled “Neef Paris opera” and both Michael’s piece came up AND a piece from June 26 2008 in the Toronto Star from Martin Knelman announcing that

“The Canadian Opera Company has named Alexander Neef, the 34-year-old casting director of the Paris Opera, as its new general director.” 

Was it really 11 years ago?  But the rumour certainly makes sense given that there’s already a relationship & connections going back more than a decade.

Alexander Neef (Photo: Gaetz Photography)

In the wake of last night’s concert I find myself asking questions that hopefully will occur to others in powerful positions.  Michael stated the likely impact, namely that Neef might leave before the end of his current contract.

When would he go?

And who follows? That’s where my headline comes into it. Will the next General Director of the COC be a Canadian?  I wonder if I’m the only one posing the question. It comes on the heels of last night’s concert, when I couldn’t help noticing that Peter Oundjian –a Canadian music director for the Toronto Symphony–is to be succeeded by Gustavo Gimeno, who is not Canadian.  There’s a time & place for nationalism, but loyalty to one’s own country doesn’t necessarily get you the most talented person.

So in other words I wonder: is there a Canadian who is up to the job?

And one may ask whether nationality matters, given that the German-born Neef has at times been a strong champion of Canadian talent, on either side of the footlights.  Earlier this week we saw Doras awarded to COC productions composed, directed, designed by and starring Canadians (Rufus Wainwright, Robert Carsen, Michael Levine and Gerald Finley).

Could a Canadian-born artistic director do any better than that?

Happy Canada Day.

(the song is dedicated to Alexander)

It’s a day for sentimentality.  My mom’s had her birthday, which is of course a wonderful occasion: but I won’t talk about that here as it’s a bit too private for the blog.

Yes Virginia there are things I don’t babble on and on about. I also don’t talk about why I’ve been somewhat quiet the past few months, blogging far less than usual.  I don’t want to complain other than to say I’ve been busy due to a flood in my basement.  We’re very lucky with how it has turned out (and thank goodness for insurance coverage) but that doesn’t change the fact that one gets preoccupied with all sorts of details.  I’m going to write a long personal blog today because of how I feel about Larry and mortality and the necessity of grabbing life when you get the chance.

I hadn’t thought of Larry Earlix in ages and ages.

And he pronounced it so that it rhymes with “girl—ix” or “swirl-ix”, no matter how you might think he—a guitar player after all—should have pronounced it… No not “Ear-licks” or “beer licks” apt as that might be for a really good lead guitar.

But I was reminded of Larry listening to the radio yesterday, as we were invited on “Here & Now” (an afternoon drive-home program) to remember the Volkswagen Beetle and to share our memories.  I didn’t call because I knew at the time that what I was remembering would be impossible to capture in a little phone-call to the kind folks curating the contributions for Here & Now.  Indeed I wondered how sentimental I might become recalling Larry, the coolest person I knew at the time if not the coolest person I ever met.

Of course one man’s cool is another person’s faux-pas, so it’s relative.  Others from that era might roll their eyes at the thought. Larry was not tall.  Larry was not imposing. Larry was gentle and kind, articulate but not an imposing academic. Many knew him for his background support work, not any starring roles.

So, in the process of thinking about the car I remembered a lot of other things about someone who was for a time my best friend.

I remembered that I phoned Larry awhile ago. It must have been the 1990s, I realize now. Wow times flies.  I looked him up through something that might have been the internet.  Was there a google? No, it was long distance directory assistance. Yes I remember now you used to be able to ask for phone numbers, if you had the right part of the world.

But I found a phone number and called him up. I remember a friendly chat, with someone I’d known long before, the voice so familiar.

He suggested I come visit him in California.

If you have that impulse to call someone, to chat or talk? Do it.  Go with it. Don’t hesitate, wondering if there will be a next time.

That call was the first time in a long time, and it turns out, the last time we would or could speak.

Googling today I couldn’t find very much.  If I had, I’d do what I usually do, I’d make a list with bullet points. By now people know me for that, right? I do what I do blogging as in my life as a manager at the university, whether I’m talking to my customers or my staff or my boss.

But when you find next to nothing, bullets are out.

So what did I find?  The first link Google offered, I wasn’t even sure it was him at first.  The name Earlix is uncommon, just like Barcza, which is a huge advantage when you’re googling.  If your old pal from the 1970s is Smith or Jones or Mancini or Singh: you will have a much harder time.

Google gave me three possibles, and in each case I was skeptical (feel free to search for yourself, using “Larry Earlix”).  The second seems only marginally possible, but I’ll come back to #2 in a moment.

#1? The first thing that caught my eye was disheartening especially if I admit to myself that yes, I was hoping to talk to an old friend.  The first phrase is

“Unfortunately, Lawrence Earlix passed away at the age of 51, the date of death was 07/26/1998.”

Hm could it be the right Larry Earlix? Reading those words I was hoping it was the wrong one.

The site came up as

Lawrence Earlix (Larry), 51 – Monterey, CA Background Report

I don’t know about background reports. And I was just curious about an old friend. IS this him?  Larry was older than me.  In 1998 I was 43. Hm, 51? I didn’t know how much older he was, but that sounds totally plausible.  I saw Larry regularly in the latter 1970s when I was connected to the University of Toronto’s Varsity newspaper.  I was the classical music editor –a free job—and also the proof-reader –a paid gig. Larry used to drive me and the layouts to the plant up on Lesmill Rd. We used to go up the Don Valley.

Jeepers it’s all coming back to me, in a stream of banal details that are rich with associated memories.

I remember the guy who ran the plant where they printed the paper, who used to call the Varsity’s layout editor “Alex Alphabet”: because he had a long Ukrainian name, and in those days it was normal to mock anyone ethnic.  I don’t think there were any persons of colour, and speaking of colours, LGBTQ was barely on the horizon on a campus with perhaps one or two openly gay professors, one of whom I admired very much & studied with (although he –the brilliant Douglas Chambers –challenged me & my miserably mixed up attitude saying “why are you here”?..a question I still haven’t fully answered to this day. I’ll have to talk about him in another blog).

The only other thing I found on the internet about Larry that I’m certain is him –and which sadly corroborates the fact of his death in the first URL I shared– was a tiny page with a photo from 1995.  Because it’s again mentioning Monterey California, I have to think it’s the same guy in both and yes this is him in the photo.  It’s the third of the three things that come up on Google,, with this URL: https://www.qsl.net/kc6jev/

Ham Radio operators Greg Pool, WH6DT, and Larry Earlix, KC6JEV, During the 1995 Monterey Floods

Larry is the nerdy looking fellow on the right.  He’s likely posed standing because the fellow on the left who is seated is probably much taller.  I can hear his accent in my head, a very American intellectual kind of accent that brands him as a northerner, even if I should associate him with the mid-west.  He told me of his time in SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, the Chicago riot at the democrats convention in 1968 (a time like our own?  Nixon would win that election) but I don’t know what state he actually came from, was born in where that accent originated.

…where his mother and father had lived.

So #2 is much more ambiguous. No wait, having looked more closely I’m sure it’s him also. He’s politically active back in 1987 which is the date of a news report.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-12-11-sp-18712-story.html

I am going to quote this piece from LA Times because links have a way of ending or changing & then ceasing to work:

• just like the phone numbers of old friends with whom we lose touch, or
• just like the beating hearts of our friends.

The piece is written by Pete Thomas, Dec 11 1987.  And I quote:

The Alliance for Resource Management announced that an initiative to ban gill nets along the California coastline did not reach the 550,000-signature goal required to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for June of 1988.

This is the second time such an initiative has fallen short of the necessary signatures. The first was sponsored last year by editor Ken Kukuda of South Coast Sportfishing magazine.

The final count is incomplete, but ARM spokesman Larry Earlix estimated the shortfall at 250,000 signatures.

Despite the failure, Earlix said he was optimistic about next year.

“We’re already prepared for next time,” he said. “We know there is a broad-based general concern and we feel confident that we have the public mandate to take our position to the California state legislature. A whole state-wide organization of activists is now in place.”

Should it fail again?

“If there continues to be a lack of commitment by the state in protecting the fragile ocean environment, we’re just going back to the people and do it again,” Earlix said.

As I quote Pete Thomas’s piece from 1987, over 30 years ago, I think I’m honouring my mother and my old friend Larry who is fading away in my dim brain.  I suppose I’m honouring myself as I meander through memories of long ago.

Larry was a political animal. I mentioned SDS right? Larry had been in Canada for awhile. I don’t know if it’s accurate to say he was a draft dodger—that bizarre epithet of another time—because I don’t know the full timelines of Larry’s life.  Given that he was at least 5 years older than me and was doing graduate work in Psychology (ah yes, I am remembering that he was involved with the student union for Psych, that was in the basement of Sidney Smith Hall), it was entirely possible that he had come here—or somewhere in Canada—during the Vietnam War.

He had been in Chicago in 1968, a decade before I met him.   Argh, there’s so much I don’t know, and will never know about him.

I remember riding in that Volkswagen Beetle, not just the twice a week runs up to the plant (hm was it twice a week? Or was it three times? I can’t remember) but a trip up north. I had told him about the Perseids, one of the great pleasures to be had in the summertime.  This year the Perseids peak on August 13th, by the way.  Larry was enthused, and so we went north on Hwy 400 until we decided we’d reached someplace that was indeed dark enough.  The Perseids are wonderful, but even more so when you travel out of town, away from the bright lights of the city.

I also remember the last chapter of our relationship, when I guess I became impossible.  I was music-directing a show at the U of T, a production of Joker of Seville with texts by Derek Walcott, music by Galt MacDermot. Ron Bryden had worked with Walcott at the Royal Shakespeare and was enthused about the show.  Ah this is one period of my life when I wish I could have a do-over (!).  I learned a great deal about middle-management working on this show, trying to cope with the acoustics of Hart House Theatre, singers of varying skill levels (there was at least one tone-deaf singer whose song was eventually cut, at least one rhythm-deaf singer trying valiantly to sing something syncopated). They were working without amplification, accompanied by a band who were perceived as too loud and therefore felt unwelcome and alien in a show where they should have been the heart & soul of the story.  I saw the hurt in their faces (Larry wasn’t the only one) and didn’t know what to do. I was young and innocent and had not yet learned that most valuable of skills, knowing when & how to keep my mouth shut.  It didn’t matter that Larry was a fine guitarist, not when we were seeking to reconcile the impossible acoustic & the unamplified voices.  I think this is where we parted company, where Larry was kind & gentle & loyal even though he had committed to something that was a lot less fun than we had expected.  But Larry was a great stabilizer, like the heavy water in a reactor that keeps things from over-heating.  He was cool and ironic and yes, distant: while perhaps nursing slights that I didn’t properly address, being swamped with demands from all sides.

But there are some great memories.

We saw Animal House together the first week it opened, possibly the day it opened.  Yes it’s the quintessentially sophomoric sexist film that is like a best friend who keeps making jokes to make a Donald Trump proud, a film packed full of talent & funny lines and also moments so politically troubling that I find the film hard to watch.  Larry saw it as a very political film; I remember he said it was about the birth of the counter-culture.  It’s very much about the end of an era of innocence when you consider that the last scene takes place on November 21^st 1963: the day before Kennedy was shot.  Good or bad, I associate the film with my own youthful times with Larry. Funnily enough I was reading about this film, and the many tales of its creation on this IMDB page, which reminds me—again—of this whole process of remembrance and forgetting:
and mortality.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/trivia

But there’s no question that people like Larry punched above their weight-class, influential beyond what you might expect.  I recall a few American exiles of the 1970s, who influenced my life & influenced others in our city.  I met Kip at this time, a pacifist Quaker who had come to Toronto with his wife to avoid the draft, taking me to the Friends House.  I recall Jane Jacobs coming north with her children to keep them out of the war.  I wonder if anyone has tried to capture the cumulative influence on Toronto of this exiled group, some of whom would return to America when it was permitted.  Larry went back and had a whole life in California, trying to stop gill-netting: and who knows what else…? I hope our bad time in Joker didn’t persuade him to stop playing the guitar. He had a lovely sound, wonderfully musical.

I remember him for one clever thought he shared, that could epitomize him. He kept his valuable guitar in a beat-up case, so that one would under-estimate what might be inside.

Larry himself was easy to under-estimate, so much more than what he seemed.

If you see this and knew Larry in any capacity please feel free to get in touch. I’d love to know more.

Tonight was the opening concert of Toronto Summer Music, running until August 3rd at multiple venues in Toronto. In this the third year of Jonathan Crow’s tenure as Artistic Director the talent pool seems a bit deeper, suggesting exciting days ahead.

Toronto Summer Music Artistic Director Jonathan Crow

The theme of the festival is “beyond borders”, a fascinating concept. CBC’s Tom Allen, our host for the evening, called ironic attention to the relevance of the subject since November 2016 aka the moment Donald Trump’s presidency put an additional spotlight on immigration, walls & refugees.

It was not your usual concert, featuring Allen’s ironic commentary. I’ll only quote one joke, his opening words of appreciation and pride for Toronto’s Koerner Hall: “unlikely to leave Toronto even if someone does give it $150 million”.

What can it mean, to go beyond borders? A great deal and it gets clearer if you look at the adventurous programming we can expect over the next few weeks thanks to Crow & his team.  Music sometimes crosses national borders. Allen wanted to suggest that the music doesn’t know borders, but I’m not so sure. While it was kosher to appropriate exotic cultures 100 or more years ago it’s now understood to be problematic, as the Canadian Opera Company’s experience with Louis Riel and a sacred song used without proper consent illustrates. Okay, so for centuries it’s been okay to borrow, whether it was Mozart going alla Turca or the Roma (or “gypsy”) tunes spicing up violin music. There are of course disciplinary borders too, that can be transcended in performance, between popular folk and classical, or even in the norms of what we expect in a concert.

The juxtaposition of solo piano, accompanied violin, and vocal pieces made everything seem a little edgier, the eclecticism making everything sound better. Usually we get several pieces by a composer such as Chopin, not a single shining jewel as we had tonight in the Ballade in F Minor Op 52, played by Jon Kimura Parker. Allen’s little introductions made the curatorial choices that much stronger, a series of light—hearted explanations, although in speaking of Chopin, that curious exile from Poland, Allen was much more serious, and highly illuminating.

Here’s the program:

• Mozart’s piano sonata in A “Alla turca” –Jon Kimura Parker piano
• Ravel’s “Cinq melodies popularies grecques” –Adrianne Pieczonka soprano & Steven Philcox, piano
• Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen –Kerson Leong violin & Rachael Kerr piano

–intermission—

• Four Kreisler pieces (La gitana, Lotus Land, Hungarian Dance 17, and Tambourin chinois)—Leong & Kerr
• Chopin Ballade no 4 in F minor – Parker
• Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs in a new arrangement by John Greer for string quartet & piano –Pieczonka, Philcox and the New Orford String Quartet (Crow, Andrew Wan violin, Eric Nowlin Viola, Brian Manker cello)

What an evening of riches, enhanced by the contrasts between items we were hearing. There’s so much I could say, but I’ll limit it to a few key elements.

The reduced version of the Four Last Songs often sounded like a paraphrase, an original approach to a well-known piece, which isn’t to say it was bad, only that it sounded & felt new both to the ear & as I watched the artists. Curiously a paraphrase or an adaptation of an existing piece also takes us across borders to a new place. I missed the horns in the coda of the first song (“Spring”) and the woodwinds again in the opening to “September”, leading a chap behind me as we walked out to call it “fussy”. We were hearing an inner voice elevated to a prime-time role played beautifully by Crow, but all the same, changing the character of the piece. I didn’t mind although the fellow who was speaking wasn’t quite as thrilled by it. The further we went in the cycle, the more I got used to the sounds of the ensemble and accepted it as “Strauss” rather than “Greer”.

Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka (Photo by Lisa Sakulensky)

Vocal careers seem to be getting shorter. Why? Perhaps the answer is: because few people show the intelligence of Adrianne Pieczonka. I don’t need to mention the voices that are gone because of bad choices. But Pieczonka is sounding amazing, the voice still luscious and round and gleaming top to bottom. Throughout I was astonished to hear her carefully holding back. The high “B” in “Spring” was sung so softly, the B-flat in “Time to Sleep” floated gently. Pieczonka has so much voice to give –she gave us a Liebestod with the Toronto Symphony not so long ago. But contrary to my dumb-ass suggestions (wanting her to undertake bigger tougher roles), the reason she sounds so youthful and indeed so perfect is because she has the backbone to say no to those who can’t see the big picture. Of course this wasn’t opera nor even a normal performance of the Four Last Songs, which normally require a singer to work against the textures of a full orchestra in a big hall, not this tiny group in a small space such as Koerner. Pieczonka’s musicianship was a display of maturity & restraint of the highest order. Artists need to say no more often, resist the temptation to ride the gravy train, because if you sing too much too soon: the career will be over. What a treasure Pieczonka is, what a great voice and especially, what a smart singer, an intelligent artist.  She was in tears at the end of the last song, and no wonder.  The cycle was given a wonderful original reading.  I hope that this version gets performed again.

Parker gave us a very romantic evening of music, whether in the incandescent Chopin that silenced the hall before it exploded in adulation, or the Mozart sonata. And just as Parker was offering virtuosity in the service of beauty & truth, which is to say, without being a show-off, Crow’s programming suggests a comfort with virtuosity for its own sake. Leong’s pieces are all crowd-pleasers, opportunities to tease an audience with pure skill, and Leong didn’t disappoint. Rachael Kerr was mostly functioning in support but had her moments as well.

The festival continues! For further information click here.

Two for two.

It’s the second night of the 2019 Toronto Summer Music Festival and again it felt like a special event, this time in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the New Orford String quartet.  There’s a natural connection given that one of their violinists – Jonathan Crow—is the Artistic Director of TSM.

New Orford String Quartet: left to right, Brian Manker, Eric Nowlin, Andrew Wan & Jonathan Crow

They gave us another program touching upon the festival theme “Beyond Borders”:

• Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major Op 20 #4: influenced by Roma violin
• The world premiere of Christos Hatzis’ String Quartet #5 “The Transforming”, a TSM commission, that I shall elaborate upon below
  — intermission —
• Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in C major, Op 59 #3: again with foreign inputs

Hatzis? That’s heady stuff to be giving a world premiere, even if it’s not also sandwiched between Haydn & Beethoven, arguably the two greatest practitioners of the string quartet.

And his music wasn’t out of place.

The titles of the three movements suggest something  spiritual, the movements titled “Pesach” (the Hebrew name for Passover), “La Pieta (Jerusalem)” and “Regeneration”.  It’s often in a very rhetorical style, as though the instruments are doing call & response or dialoguing with one another.  In other places they are chordal suggestions of a choir, although I’m likely projecting something spiritual, knowing the movement titles.  In the second movement there’s a tonal melody played by Jonathan Crow, and later violist Eric Nowlin plays something that sounds a lot like Parry’s hymn “And did these feet”.  I have to assume Hatzis knows what he was doing in choosing a hymn that’s at least an alternate national anthem for England, a tune composed in the darkest days of WW I with nationalist if not imperial associations.  I’m not saying I don’t like the tune, I’m saying that suddenly it’s as though a big Union Jack was unfurled, especially as you could hear the change in the deportment of the listeners.   So be it, and perhaps this is exactly what Hatzis expected and wanted..

It’s an accomplished and polished creation with some marvelous moments. In the last movement I was especially moved by the use of harmonics to create some wild effects, truly magical.  While I don’t know if this is ground-breaking or “new” (whatever that means), it’s quite impressive whenever I hear a composer demonstrating that they knew how to achieve striking colours.  There’s a place near the end that reminds me of the last minute of Also sprach Zarathustra, where Strauss seemed to be posing the question about the meaning of life, balanced and unresolved between two opposing tonalities that might suggest negation & affirmation.  Hatzis does something similar except, once he’s posed the question, he brings us to a very firm & decisive answer at the end.  Hatzis would seem to be saying his eternal  “yes”.

On either side we had a pair of stunning quartets.  The Beethoven pushes the players to the limit.  All but smiley cellist Brian Manker wear a poker face, whereas Manker wears his heart on his sleeve.  Often he seemed moved by the lovely playing of the other three across from him.  Violinist Andrew Wan was especially strong in the opening movement, while Manker, in that wacky 2nd movement with all that pizzicato seemed to be channeling Charlie Mingus in his cool pluckings.   To begin we heard Haydn’s op 20 #4, in D, clean & as impressive as you could ask for.

For an encore we heard another Orford commission (but of course not a premiere), a lovely Pavane by François Dompierre that settled a raucous crowd down with its tranquil tunefulness.

The festival continues! While I didn’t drink any koolade yes I did buy the T-shirt.

My new T-shirt

The title “Voices Across the Atlantic” could refer to compositional voices or singing voices. You had Barber & Willan from our side of the pond, Brahms, Britten & Monteverdi from the other. Ditto for the performing talent, coming from many places far & near.

Such was tonight’s iteration of the Toronto Summer Music theme “Beyond Borders” venturing beyond the other festival venues clear across Bloor Street to the congenial space of Church of the Redeemer.

And it was extraordinary, professionals at different stages of their careers:

Tenor Charles Daniels (photo: Annelies van der Vegt)

• Masters of the vocal art such as tenor Charles Daniels and counter-tenor Daniel Taylor (also conducting and being a wonderfully informal host)
• Steven Philcox, one of Canada’s pre-eminent artists of collaborative vocalism, and a co-founder of the Canadian Art Song Project, at the keyboard
• And Toronto Summer Music Fellows, a talented young group including baritone Clarence Frazer, who has made a huge impression locally (for example in Canadian Stage’s Miss Julie or more recently in the Tapestry /Opera on the Avalon co-production of Shanawdithit) while still in the first decade of his career.

Baritone Clarence Frazer

Yet everything was done in that most Canadian way, without any sense of ego or flashiness. For the audience it was an impeccable performance while for the musicians it was an opportunity for collaboration of the highest sort.

Here’s the program:

• Benjamin Britten: Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac Op 51
• Samuel Barber: Dover Beach, Op 3
• Johannes Brahms: Four Quartets, Op 92
• Benjamin Britten: Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi, Op 86 (TS Eliot)
• Claudio Monteverdi:
  • Si ch’io vorrei morire SV 89
  • Adoramus te, Christe SV 289
  • Lamento della ninfa SV 163
  • Beatus Vir SV 268
• (encore) Healey Willan: “Rise up, my love, my fair one” motet #5

There was no intermission, and refreshments were offered right after the performance.

The Britten Canticles are dramas without staging, for the virtual theatre of the mind’s eye. Where the first one is solemn, the voice of God uncanny as a blend of the two high male voices and the urgent dialogue of father & son, the second with its playful text by TS Eliot is more ironic and distanced from anything overtly sacred, and feels forever timely. For the first we were treated to the blend of the Daniels’s, where the latter added the extra warmth of Frazer’s baritone. And Frazer gave a warm reading of the Barber, Arnold’s being another text that feels brand new when juxtaposed against current events.

We heard another sort of vocalism in the Brahms quartets, as two different quartets of TSM vocal Fellows each sang a pair of the lovely compositions. To close we were going back & forth between secular & sacred texts set by Monteverdi, with Willan’s motet casting the deciding vote in harmony with the church space: although the Song of Solomon would almost seem to erase any boundary between sacred or secular (speaking of “crossing borders“).

Don’t get the wrong impression, the young performers are accomplished early-career professionals not students.  And they’re performing again this weekend as part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival.

It has been a week of new beginnings.

Today was Benjamin Kidd’s ordination. As of Saturday July 27th he is no longer a student. I wonder if we’re now supposed to call him “Reverend Ben”? Perhaps that comes out as #RevBen in the world of hashtags.

I wore a shirt that for me symbolizes new beginnings. I recall being a bit scared to wear it to church when I first saw it, recalling the Biblical characterization of snakes.

But maybe snakes deserve second chances? I know I have taken to this shirt now that I see it as an avatar of rebirth, of new beginnings.

I’ve said little about the flood in our house, although yes it’s been a factor in my comparatively quiet spring this year. It’s almost as though I’ve been AWOL for the spring of 2019, compared to past years.

It has been a challenging spring, this 2019 version.

You may recall my tale of the tick, reporting a bite inflicted several months ago. I didn’t speak of the new dog Samantha (aka “Sam”), new in the sense of “new to us” although she’s 11 or 12 years old. Being a rescue it’s hard to know her precise age. But she’s amazing, often lying underneath the piano while I’m playing. She’s smart enough to know: flattery will get you everywhere, especially if you’re a dog.

If Sam seems a bit blurry it’s because she’s actually reflected in the surface of the piano.

And we had a flood. While we’ve been blessed, fortunate in our insurance coverage, that doesn’t change the disruption we’ve endured the past few months.

Last week we took the first delivery of boxes returning to us from storage including CDs, DVDs, music books, all sort of things we had to live without since the end of March. They arrived on our anniversary, a lovely coincidence that reinforces my sense of new beginnings: new beginnings for Ben, a new life for Sam, and for us as well.

I will gradually return to a more active life, although yes, I still have lots to unpack & organize. The scores aren’t yet in alphabetical order, nor the DVDs.

Of course I did alphabetize the CDs.

The mysterious dark one is an interview with Jon Vickers.

I am just basking in the afterglow of Ben’s ordination service, that included a very wacky postlude. I cobbled together a medley of tunes based on Ben’s requests (via Facebook), because of his past associations with the Canadian Forces.

This includes

• Logistics – (March of the logistics branch)
• Medical – (Farmers boy)
• Chaplain – (Ode to joy)

And so here’s how it went.

1) We start with “Joyful joyful we adore thee” (aka the ode to joy from Beethoven’s 9th) in G, and forgive me for presupposing that you know that tune.

2) The Farmer’s Boy in B-flat (G being the relative minor to B flat, in other words easy to segue)

3) March of the Logistics branch in E-flat (a natural, especially when the first notes of this march start on that B-flat)

4) …and knowing that Ben loves Star Wars, we did a little segue into the rebellion’s theme in C Minor (the relative minor to E flat)

5) And to finish we go to the Ode to Joy (Joyful joyful we adore thee) in C (major this time) with a big AMEN to finish.

Bridging each segment I let the fanfares from the Star Wars Throne Room scene (near the end of Episode 4) to serve as the natural glue to attach each segment to the next.

I think there’s a party tonight, but I had to get home to look in on Sam, who had been alone all afternoon.  12 years old, when translated into dog years? (7 years for each human year). Do the math.

She’s older than me, that’s for sure.

Tonight’s concert at Walter Hall –“Europe and the New World”—in the Toronto Summer Music Festival put artistic director Jonathan Crow into the spotlight.  He seems very comfortable there.

That’s what I’m getting at with the headline. Our concert was sold out, the audience buzzing with excitement.  We watched violinist Crow and pianist Philip Chiu play a series of pieces from either side of the Atlantic.

The young concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony with the matinee idol looks also has wit & charm to burn, as we saw between pieces tonight.  And with this year’s festival he’s arriving as a genuine star in this city.

Toronto Summer Music Artistic Director Jonathan Crow

There were four items on the program plus an encore.

• Brahms’s Scherzo in C minor
• César Franck’s Sonata for violin & piano
  intermission
• Heifetz’s arrangements of five selections from Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess for violin & piano
• Corigliano’s Sonata for violin & piano

Crow introduced the encore with a dedication to Toronto Symphony’s longtime manager Walter Homburger, who passed away a few days ago at the age of 95.

Walter Homburger, onetime manager of the Toronto Symphony, who passed away this week.

For the second time in the past few days, a TSM concert encore featured a piece by Healey Willan, namely his Romance.

Chiu was very much Crow’s equal throughout even if we may be a bit more familiar with Crow.  In the Brahms I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of weight he used, especially in a series of triplet eruptions, resembling a galloping rhythm.  It was a great omen for a concert requiring a pianist to take the stage and not merely “accompany” the soloist.

Pianist Philip Chiu

The Franck sonata is perhaps best known for its finale featuring a melody that gets passed back and forth between the two instruments.  I was amused watching Chiu turn his head to watch Crow before some of their entries, a remarkable feat even if he weren’t also playing as well.

After the interval it was Gershwin’s turn via Heifetz’s stunning arrangements.  Chiu gave a recommendation to the audience that tempted me to stand up –big mouth that I am—because he was telling people they need to go see Porgy & Bess.

I’m surprised he didn’t mention that it’s featured on February 1st 2020 in this season’s Metropolitan Opera high-definition broadcasts, starring two singers seen in Toronto, namely Angel Blue (seen in last season’s La boheme) and Eric Owens (seen in Hercules a few seasons back).

What we heard tonight were those wonderful tunes, via Crow’s violin.  Heifetz’s brilliance was able to turn a duet (“Bess you is my woman now”) into a virtuoso violin solo, Chiu’s piano grounding the violin with the necessary jazziness.

To close we were dazzled by Corigliano’s sonata, a work Crow rightly described as having “many notes”. Oh yes, and they were played with fire & passion.

Toronto Summer Music is in its last week.