Volume 21 Issue 8 - May 2016
INSIDE: The Canaries Are Here! 116 choirs to choose from, so take the plunge! The Nylons hit the road after one last SING! Fling. Jazz writer Steve Wallace wonders "Watts Goode" rather than "what's new?" Paul Ennis has the musical picks of the HotDocs crop. David Jaeger's CBC Radio continues golden for a little while yet. Douglas McNabney is Music's Child. Leipzig meets Damascus in Alison Mackay's fertile imagination. And "C" is for KRONOS in Wende Bartley's koverage of the third annual 21C Festival. All this and as usual much much more. Enjoy.
INSIDE: The Canaries Are Here! 116 choirs to choose from, so take the plunge! The Nylons hit the road after one last SING! Fling. Jazz writer Steve Wallace wonders "Watts Goode" rather than "what's new?" Paul Ennis has the musical picks of the HotDocs crop. David Jaeger's CBC Radio continues golden for a little while yet. Douglas McNabney is Music's Child. Leipzig meets Damascus in Alison Mackay's fertile imagination. And "C" is for KRONOS in Wende Bartley's koverage of the third annual 21C Festival. All this and as usual much much more. Enjoy.
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Juliet Beckwith:<br />
The Fairy Queen<br />
family, however, also lives beyond<br />
its means and Paul’s Uncle Oscar<br />
and the gardener Bassett seek to<br />
increase the family income by betting<br />
on horses. Paul is literally haunted<br />
by mysterious voices in the house<br />
that tell him “There must be more<br />
money.” To solve the problem he<br />
rides his rocking horse until the<br />
name of the winning horse magically<br />
comes to him.<br />
Chatterton says that she and<br />
Williams changed certain details of<br />
the story: “We set the story in the<br />
present and made the pivotal character<br />
Paul – originally a young boy<br />
in Lawrence’s short story – into a<br />
young man who is on the autistic<br />
spectrum.” Bassett is changed from a gardener to Paul’s healthcare<br />
worker. Nevertheless, Lawrence’s original themes are still there<br />
and still relevant. As Chatterton says, “The story is very much about<br />
entitlement and greed, and also about a mother who can’t feel love<br />
for her son and all the complexities that come with that disconnect.<br />
We feel these themes still speak to today’s society.”<br />
The cast features soprano Carla Huhtanen as Ava, Paul’s mother;<br />
tenor Keith Klassen as Paul’s Uncle Oscar; baritone Peter McGillivray<br />
as Bassett; and in his professional debut with Tapestry Opera,<br />
tenor Asitha Tennekoon as Paul. Tapestry’s artistic director Michael<br />
Hidetoshi Mori will direct and Jordan de Souza will conduct.<br />
Performances take place <strong>May</strong> 27 to June 4.<br />
Christopher Hoile is a Toronto-based writer on opera and<br />
theatre. He can be contacted at opera@thewholenote.com.<br />
July<br />
8 and 9<br />
<strong>2016</strong><br />
Shakespeare and Music<br />
with Christopher Plummer<br />
Presented by<br />
TD Canada Trust<br />
7:30 p.m. | Dominion-Chalmers United Church<br />
www.musicandbeyond.ca<br />
Bach To The<br />
Future!<br />
DAVID PODGORSKI<br />
Funny how new initiatives<br />
that should be big news have<br />
a way of sneaking up on you.<br />
Case in point, apparently there’s<br />
a Bach festival (three concerts)<br />
happening in town next month<br />
and nobody told me! Titled<br />
“Four Centuries of Bach. First<br />
Annual Toronto Bach Festival”<br />
it appears to be the brainchild<br />
of John Abberger, who besides<br />
being a principal oboist for<br />
Tafelmusik and the American<br />
Bach Soloists, recorded an<br />
album of Bach organ concertos<br />
for Analekta in 2006 as well as<br />
an album of Bach’s Orchestral<br />
Suites 2 and 4 in 2011. His principal accomplice appears to be Phillip<br />
Fournier, organist at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, on King St. W.<br />
Fournier will doubtless dazzle the audience <strong>May</strong> 28, in the middle<br />
concert of the three, performing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d BWV<br />
565 and other works on the Oratory’s historically inspired Gober and<br />
Kney instrument.<br />
The other two concerts,<br />
bookending this one,<br />
<strong>May</strong> 27 and <strong>May</strong> 29 take place at<br />
St. Barnabas Anglican Church,<br />
361 Danforth Ave and are, I<br />
suspect, Abberger’s “babies.”<br />
The first is a concert that<br />
includes two of Bach’s Weimar<br />
cantatas (Weinen, Klagen,<br />
Sorgen, Zagen and Herz und<br />
Mund und Tat und Leben), with<br />
a vocal lineup featuring Ellen<br />
McAteer, soprano, Daniel Taylor,<br />
alto, and Lawrence Wiliford!<br />
Beat by Beat | Early Music<br />
Phillip Fournier<br />
John Abberger<br />
Info for the Sunday closing concert is somewhat vaguer – sonatas and<br />
trios by J.S. Bach, played by “Musicians of Four Centuries of Bach.”<br />
But if the calibre of the players in the first two concerts is anything<br />
to go by, we’re in for a three-part treat!<br />
Given that the scope of the project is fairly ambitious, the people<br />
responsible really should devote more time to publicity. To wit, their<br />
website lists only concert titles, venues and dates, and a chance to<br />
order tickets. And that’s pretty much it. You may see some concert<br />
programs if they update the website by the time you read this, but it<br />
doesn’t look like they will. So being somewhat diligent about these<br />
things, and wishing always to provide a service to my readership, I did<br />
a little sleuthing and managed to uncover a few details, with which<br />
I can make some conclusions about this little-known upstart of a<br />
music festival.<br />
Which leads me directly to my second reason for exhorting you<br />
to catch this Bach festival while you can, which is that the organizers<br />
seem to be burying their light so deep beneath a bushel -<br />
lack of publicity, last-minute organization - that “Four Centuries<br />
of Bach” might end up being how long it takes Abberger et al to get<br />
through Bach’s catalogue of compositions for at least (wait for it) four<br />
centuries.<br />
Grumbles aside, Abberger has enough experience with Bach’s<br />
cantatas and other works to be able to craft a better-than-average<br />
24 | <strong>May</strong> 1, <strong>2016</strong> - June 7, <strong>2016</strong> thewholenote.com