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Tafelmusik record Beethoven’s Ninth
Tonight’s Koerner Hall concert was recorded, one of a series. But it seemed like a pair of concerts. Before intermission we watched the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, led by their founding director Ivars...
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Salieri’s Falstaff: first time in Canada
To most people Antonio Salieri is unknown except as the older composer associated with Mozart in Amadeus, perhaps best captured in this little clip from Milos Forman’s 1983 film. Of course the way that...
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Cakes and Puppets/Buchty a Loutky: La Calisto
The Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at University of Toronto are in the midst of a residency by Cakes and Puppets, a Czech puppetry company. Who are they and what are they...
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Questions for Iain MacNeil: Guth’s Figaro
Canadian bass-baritone Iain MacNeil joined the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio in the fall of 2014, after studying at University of Toronto Opera with Canadian soprano Wendy Nielsen. There’s a...
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Questions for Christos Hatzis
Christos Hatzis is a Juno award winning composer and professor of composition at the University of Toronto. I was recently blown away by his score for Going Home Star, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s...
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CASP – The Pilgrim Soul
“The Pilgrim Soul” was the name given to tonight’s collaboration between pianist Emily Hamper and baritone Phillip Addis for Canadian Art Song Project (aka “CASP”). I had assumed that tonight’s program...
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Betroffenheit’s ambitions
I am riding the emotional high of Betroffenheit, a co-creation & co-production of Crystal Pite’s Kidd Pivot and Jonathon Young’s Electric Company Theatre, presented tonight at the Bluma Appel...
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Last tango in Siviglia
There’s a curious mix of adventure and nostalgia that goes with the annual Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio performance of one of the season’s operas. After having seen a production with a cast...
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Toronto Symphony and the music of change
I will eventually talk about the music performed at tonight’s Toronto Symphony Concert at Roy Thomson Hall but I must first observe a few things that were different. At intermission I met two guys from...
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Questions for James Ledger: Anton Webern and John Lennon come together
When I go to James Ledger’s website his bio begins with “The orchestral music of James Ledger is well known to Australian concert-goers:” which sounds like an admonition to this Canadian, who doesn’t...
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Going Home Star: against Babel
I’ve been listening to Christos Hatzis’ score for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Going Home Star and by that I mean that it’s constantly playing in my car over the past week. I saw the ballet earlier this...
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10 Questions for Kevin Lau
I first encountered composer Kevin Lau on the 2012 CD PREMIERES, where I said the following: Speaking of happy, I find myself more and more impressed by the work of the most junior contributor, namely...
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Questions for Stephanie Martin: Babel
Stephanie Martin is a composer & conductor, associate professor of music at York University. I heard about her because of a brief controversy that has already been settled, concerning her choral...
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Opera as blood sport: the Hutcheons contra Regietheater
I raced at top speed, not from jungle to city but from one end of the U of T campus to the other after work, afraid I’d be late for the (lecture about) opera, somewhat like the hero of Werner Herzog’s...
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TSO – Fragile Absolute
The Toronto Symphony’s three-concert New Creations Festival launched in impressive fashion tonight, a spectacular variety of styles on display in a programme with the title “Fragile Absolute”. Before...
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The history of film music = the history of film
A friend of mine asked me to suggest a way to begin studying film music, knowing that I teach a course at the Royal Conservatory called Cinematic Music: How We Hear Film. The course begins later in...
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TSO’s happy midweek memorials
The second of the New Creations concerts by the Toronto Symphony Wednesday at Roy Thomson Hall was a wildly diversified program as Festival curator Brett Dean put a collaborative work by two Canadians...
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Knocking at the Hellgate
While the Toronto Symphony has been doing New Creations Festival for a dozen years or so, things seem substantially different in 2016. One of the comments I sometimes hear from my colleagues is a...
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Toronto Symphony Scheherazade
I had the pleasure of hearing the Toronto Symphony play Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade the final three times they played the work on their recent Florida tour. As a souvenir of my trip, I’ve had a CD...
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Travelogue, or Bicycle Opera take Toy Piano Composers for a ride
If you can judge a book by its cover – or a small performing arts company by its poetic name – then it’s a match made in heaven, this idea for Travelogue: a collaboration between Bicycle Opera Project...
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