Blog Posts

About professionalism

5/2/2018

Proofessionalism: it's all about the shirt and tie.

If you’re a composer and you tell a non-musician friend that you’ve been asked to write a new composition by a performing ensemble, the friend may ask, “When and where will this new piece be performed?” Tell another composer the same news, and the composer may ask, “How did you get the commission?”

And if you show a non-musician friend the new CD of your music that’s just been released, the friend may ask you, “What does this music sound like?” Show it to a performing musician, and the performer will immediately flip it over to check the credits, to see which musicians recorded the disc.

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Opera Atelier's Return of Ulysses

4/29/2018

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Penelope (Mireille Lebel) is beset with suitors in the Return of Ulysses.

For most of its 35 years, Opera Atelier has maintained a remarkable consistency in its high artistic standards. And a happy by-product of this state of affairs is the fact that the Toronto’s “period” baroque opera company has built up a substantial repertoire of productions worthy of re-mounting.

One of these is Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses, which returned to the Elgin Theatre this month, eleven years after it received its OA premiere. And while eleven years may seem like a long time to wait, it’s worth remembering that poor Penelope had to wait much longer for her Ulysses to return to her. That, of course, is the kernel of the story that composer Claudio Monteverdi and his librettist Giacomo Badoaro told in their opera of 1640: Ulysse’s struggles to find his way back to Ithaca from the Trojan War, and Penelope’s struggles to fend off an increasingly bold gang of suitors until he does.

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Esprit's "Taiko Plus"

4/19/2018

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Canadian composer Chris Paul Harman.

Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra’s 35th season certainly ended with a bang on Sunday evening (Apr. 15) – with the new-music ensemble sharing the stage of Koerner Hall with nine taiko drummers, in a program called “Taiko Plus.” To be sure, a piece like Maki Ishii’s furiously percussive Mono-Prism for taiko ensemble and orchestra can’t fail to make a big impression – but first, I want to talk about another piece on the program.

The world premiere of Chris Paul Harman’s … with silver bells and cockle shells … wasn’t nearly as loud as Mono-Prism, but it was impressive in many other ways. The piece is a song-cycle, sung by soprano Shannon Mercer, based on such familiar nursery rhymes as “Hush Little Baby,” and “Jack and Jill.” They are short – sometimes arrestingly so, as with “Hickory Dickory Dock,” which felt about 30 seconds long.

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The Pulitzer, and what classical music needs to do

4/18/2018

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Lamar's album won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Among the many “breakthroughs” that have followed in the wake of Kendrick Lamar’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize for the album Damn is the fact that a hip-hop artist is now being discussed in classical music circles. “What are we to make of this development?”, various classical-music commentators, practitioners and enthusiasts are asking. Is this a good thing? Or a bad thing? Or what?

I’ve noticed that some classical types have been careful to sound respectful and inclusive when discussing this issue. Perhaps fearful of being labelled “elitist,” or hoping that just a little bit of hip-hop’s coolness might rub off on them, they praise Damn for its musical craft, sophistication and cultural authenticity, and say supportive things about Lamar’s prize-win. (See here, here or here.)

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Elmer Iseler remembered, after two decades

4/17/2018

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Elmer Iseler, with his choir.

It was a worthy idea to present a concert to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death Canadian choral conductor Elmer Iseler. And Saturday (Apr. 14) night’s concert, at Toronto’s Eglinton St. George’s United Church, had all the ingredients of a glowing acknowledgement of the man founded the first professional choir in Canada: the Elmer Iseler Singers.

The Iseler Singers were there, as the musical foundation of the evening, led by Lydia Adams, the EIS’s music director since 1998. And also present were several composers who wrote choral music for the choir, David Jaeger (formerly of CBC Radio) who acted as emcee, and members of the Iseler family. As well, there was a slide-show up on a big screen throughout the evening, showing photos of Iseler (young, with lots of hair; older, with not so much) leading choirs large and small.

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"New Creations" takes a final bow at the TSO

3/14/2018

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Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason.

One of the initiatives that Peter Oundjian undertook when he was appointed music director of the Toronto Symphony, back in the dark days of 2004, was a project called New Creations. It began as a three-concert mini-festival of contemporary works and has retained this format for 14 years. Through those years, New Creations has displayed a wide range of programming (often thanks to guest curators) and has showcased the TSO as a band that’s an enthusiastic “quick study” where new music is concerned. As well, New Creations has often attracted sizeable audiences, including many young people.

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An Abduction for our times, at the COC

2/21/2018

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A scene from the COC's Abduction from the Seraglio. Photo: Michael Cooper.

The big news about the Canadian Opera Company’s current production of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio (in case you haven’t heard) is that director Wajdi Mouawad has substantially expanded on the original spoken dialogue of Christoph Friedrich Bretzner and Gottlieb Stephanie. In so doing he has surgically deconstructed some of the implicit values buried in the text – values rooted in 18th-century Western culture. As well, Mouawad has invented a prologue, in which the happy couples are seen to be safely returned to Europe, thereby turning the whole opera into a flashback. And as if all this were not enough, he also inserted a Muslim prayer scene.

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New Music I Like (No. 15): Max Schneider

2/8/2018

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What would Caccini think of Max?

I haven’t posted one of these “New Music I Like” blogs in a long time. In fact, I wasn’t thinking about posting another one until I found myself watching TV late at night, on Tuesday. I had the Late Late Show on in the background, and wasn’t really paying much attention to it – until “MΛX” (i.e. Max Schneider) and an unnamed harpist took to the screen.

“Eatock Daily” is a classical music blog – and I claim no real knowledge of any other kind of music. As for pop music, I haven’t paid much attention to it since 1979, so I’d never heard of MΛX before Tuesday. But a little Googling revealed that he’s an American musician and actor whose star is on the rise.

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A Rigoletto with two Dukes at the COC

1/31/2018

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A scene from the COC's 2018 Rigoletto. Photo: Michael Cooper.

The audience for the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Rigoletto got a little more than it expected on Saturday (Jan. 27), when not one but two Dukes of Mantua took to the stage.

Tenor Stephen Costello was scheduled to sing the role. Then, at the opening of Act II, it was announced that he was in poor health but would carry on. However, in Act III he did not reappear, but tenor Joshua Guerrero (scheduled to sing the role at the COC from Feb. 11-23) stepped in. Although it was Costello who did most of the heavy lifting on Saturday, it was Guerrero who took the final bow.

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Tafelmusik's Safe Haven

1/29/2018

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Kora player Diely Mori Tounkara, originally from Mali.

elmusik has been presenting multi-media concerts for a while now. Since 2009, when Toronto’s “period” baroque orchestra staged The Galileo Project, these concerts have popped almost annually, all (largely) created by the orchestra’s multi-talented bassist, Alison Mackay.

Indeed, their ongoing success can be attributed to the winsome application of a effective formula: music, projected images and spoken-word narration, constructed around some kind of unifying theme.

In the first few multimedia productions, the themes Mackay chose often seemed suitable for infomercials emanating from some imagined “Ministry of Baroque Industry, Trade and Commerce.” Audiences learned, in much detail, about how telescopes, raisins, mirrors, linen, ink, candles, wire and coffee (among other things) were produced in Europe, back in the day.

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