Dr. Colin Eatock, composer
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Illusions at 21C

5/30/2015

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PictureComposer Gabriel Dharmoo.
This review was originally written for the website Wolfgang’s Tonic (here).

Multimedia concerts are a growing trend in the classical music world. Often, such performances make use of projected visual images, giving the audience something to look at while the music is played.

Sometimes the marriage of music and visuals results in a merely pleasant entertainment. Ideally, multimedia generates something greater than the sum of its parts – something that makes the audience see, hear, and understand things in a profoundly different way than it would if it experienced each element separately.



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Saariaho at 21C

5/23/2015

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PictureKaija Saariaho paid Toronto a visit.
The last time I heard a big chunk of music by Kaija Saariaho was three years ago, when Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company staged her opera L’Amour du loin. At the time, I remember being very much impressed by the production, but also perplexed by the music. Was it enchantingly ethereal or amorphously precious? It seemed to be both at the same time.


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My Top Ten List From the 20th Century

5/18/2015

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Picture
A little while ago, the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez recently named ten musical compositions as the “most important” of the 20th century. (You can read his list here.)

Part of me wants to say that this kind of David Letterman-style musicology is nothing but self-indulgent foolishness. And in this case, it seems especially self-indulgent, as Boulez has included himself on his own list!

But, on the other hand, in a musical world that offers a virtually infinite array of options – you can hear just about anything you want nowadays, with the click of a mouse – a listener’s own
“musical centre” can get easily lost in the shuffle. Making a short-list of just ten pieces is a challenge that brings core musical values and tastes into sharp focus.



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Montreal Symphony in Toronto

5/17/2015

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PictureComposer Samy Moussa.
On Wednesday evening, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and its tiny, perfect conductor, Kent Nagano, paid a visit to Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. I’m glad they did – and I think the same thing would be said by just about everyone in the near-capacity audience.

The program, while adhering to the traditional (and unimaginative) overture-concerto-symphony formula began with something that was new and impressive.



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The COC Revives Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung

5/12/2015

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PictureSzabó in Erwartung (photo: Michael Cooper)
This review was originally written for the Classical Voice North America website (here).

The Canadian Opera Company and its widely admired, double-bill production of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung have shaped each other for more than two decades. It was in the early 1990s that the COC commissioned the production from a pair of rising stars on Canada’s theatrical scene: director Robert Lepage and designer Michael Levine. (In Lepage’s case, it was his debut as an opera director.) What the pair created changed the company.



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    Eatock Daily

    I'm a composer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

    When I first started blogging, Eatock Daily was a place to re-post the articles I wrote for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.

    But now I have stepped back from professional music journalism, and I'm spending more time composing.

    These days, my blog posts are infrequent, and are mostly concerned with my own music. However, I do still occasionally post comments on musical topics, including works I've discovered, enjoyed, and wish to share with others.


    – CE

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