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Luminato presents Song of Extinction

6/27/2016

This year, Luminato was presented at the old Hearn Generating Station.

Song of Extinction is a film by Toronto-based documentarian Marc De Guerre. But, as the audience at Toronto’s Luminato arts festival found out on Wednesday, it’s not a conventional documentary.

The best way I can find to describe it is to say it’s directly descended from the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. Like Koyaanisqatsi, the film is a montage of striking images: the screen is filled with art, landscapes, war-scenes, animals and scientific diagrams, among other things. Some of the footage looks “archival”: grainy stuff from various decades of the 20th century.

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James Ehnes with the Toronto Symphony

6/15/2016

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Canadian violinist James Ehnes.

In a musical landscape increasingly populated much-ballyhooed child prodigies, competition laureates and every manner of publicity-seeking flash-in-the-pan, it’s nice to know there’s a violinist out there named James Ehnes.

Of course, Ehnes was a prodigy, and his exceptional musical gifts were duly noted and cultivated when he was a child. Also, he did win a few competitions in his early years. But these things were never made into launching-pads for a “meteoric” career. Rather, his rise to international prominence has been steady and methodical – more about stamina than speed, and more about artistry than sensationalism.

He turned 40 earlier this year, an age when classical musicians are no longer considered young, and are expected to don the mantle of maturity. But Ehnes has been a mature musician for many years. Every time I’ve heard him perform – and I’ve heard him a number of times over the last two decades – he has played with intelligence, sensitivity and sincerity.

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Yannick Nézet-Séguin Goes to the Met

6/4/2016

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Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Here’s a short piece I wrote for Canada’s National Post newspaper about Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s new gig at the Metropolitan Opera. Also, four years ago, I wrote a more extensive article about his appointment at the Philadelphia Orchestra, which you can read here.

Canada’s super-conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin — who leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain — has added yet another podium to his list. And it’s a big one.

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21C at the Royal Conservatory

6/4/2016

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Composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh.

This review was originally written for the Classical Voice North America website.

So what can be said about contemporary music nowadays – especially after attending Toronto’s third annual Twenty-First Century Music Festival?

It’s a harsh, atonal cacophony, or it’s consonant with a vengeance. It’s a high-volume assault on the eardrums, or it’s a barely audible whisper. It’s a dense, opaque wall of sound, or it’s sparse and spacious. It’s a through-composed stream of consciousness, or it’s repetitious in the extreme. It’s jarringly experimental and iconoclastic, or it’s deeply rooted in ancient traditions. It is all these things, and more.

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Kathleen Battle at Roy Thomson Hall

6/3/2016

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Soprano Kathleen Battle.

As one of the northern terminals of the Underground Railroad, Toronto was an apt place for soprano Kathleen Battle to make a rare appearance, with a program of spirituals.

For the last two decades, Battle’s performances have been infrequent – and the reasons why have become the stuff of operatic legend. By all accounts, at the height of her career she was cruel, and she was unusual.

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Luminato presents Song of Extinction

James Ehnes with the Toronto Symphony

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Goes to the Met

21C at the Royal Conservatory

Kathleen Battle at Roy Thomson Hall

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