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Ensemble Paramirabo

Le Vivier’s 12th Season: Celebration and Perspective

By LSM Calendar on 16 September 2020 Contemporary

In spite of the health crisis, Le Vivier has no plans to cease operations. After a summer consisting of several outdoor activities, the producers specializing in new music have an ambitious fall season planned, punctuated by anniversaries and celebrations. The opening event of Sept. 12, for instance, isn’t simply a concert but a full afternoon including a double bill and roundtable. Additionally, over the next few months, Le Vivier will present anniversary concerts in celebration of 40 years of Production SuperMusique (PSM), 20 years of the Quatuor Bozzini, and 10 years of the Ensemble Paramirabo. We were able to gather…

Lorraine Vaillancourt. Photo: Bernard Préfontaine

Nouvel Ensemble Moderne: Back on stage for the Azrieli Prize Gala

By Justin Bernard on 16 September 2020 Contemporary

The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) and its artistic director Lorraine Vaillancourt will open its new season on Oct. 22 with a gala concert presented by the Azrieli Foundation. On tap that evening are three works by the latest recipients of the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes. At the outbreak of the pandemic last spring, the NEM was forced to push back several of its events to 2021 while developing online activities to bridge the gap until a return to normalcy. Vaillancourt is more than eager to return to the stage, having sorely missed her musicians for such a long period. True…

Lisa Rubin

English Theatre: a lightly seasoned autumn

By Nathalie de Han on 16 September 2020 Classical Music

Theatre and the performing arts are among the sectors hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, two inspired directors, Eda Holmes and Lisa Rubin, who run the city’s major English-language theatres, have, in their separate ways, rolled up their sleeves and managed to turn the situation around. September at the Centaur Centaur Theatre Company opens with The Portico Project: six eclectic performances, integrating theatre with dance, clown, comedy and music, that will transform its grand entryway into an outdoor stage. Spectators will also participate in Vancouver’s innovative Red Phone Project. “I love that it puts the audience right inside…

Opera and Jewish Cantorial Music: a 21st-Century Update from Montreal

By Philip Ehrensaft on 16 September 2020 Baroque and Early, Vocal

Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim synagogue is well known as a centre of Jewish music. The title track of Leonard Cohen’s penultimate album, You Want It Darker, brought the Shaar’s cantor, the lyric tenor Gideon Zelermyer, and its choir, directed by Roï Azoulay, to the attention of a wider public. Cohen, the grandson and great-grandson of past presidents of the Shaar, was a lifetime member of the synagogue, and is buried in the Shaar’s cemetery on Mount Royal. When Cohen inserted repetitions of the Hebrew word hineni (“here I am”) into the title song he was acknowledging that his end was near,…

Opera in Europe Makes a Comeback

By Olivier Bergeron on 16 September 2020 Opera

Back in March, when most of the world went into lockdown, music organizations around the globe made the difficult decision of cancelling the remainder of their 2019/2020 seasons. Some cancelled or postponed all live performances until January 2021 for safety and budgetary reasons, leaving thousands of musicians, stagehands, set builders, technicians and others unemployed until further notice. While North America is still relatively silent, operatically speaking, European companies have found creative ways to bring live opera back to their audiences. In Germany, the Deutsche Oper Berlin came up with what was probably the most creative and bizarre way to bring…

Photo: Caroline Desilets

Keiko Devaux: Being Canadian by Being Herself

By Eva Stone-Barney on 16 September 2020 Canadian Music, Contemporary

Keiko Devaux was already a composer at age five. Unsatisfied with the methodical character of her piano lessons, she found freedom by playing the top line of the score as written and inventing the rest. Thirty-three years later, Devaux has been named the inaugural winner of the $50,000 Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music. Her youthful preference for improvising over practicing was prophetic. Moved by a desire to create rather than make perfect, Devaux went on to earn both a Bachelor and Master’s degree in composition at the Université de Montréal. She is now working on a doctorate at the same…

A large majority of respondents, 71 %, agree that audiences should wear masks during indoor performances, contrary to Quebec government requirements.

COVID-19 Survey Results: Fans ready, but masks should be mandatory

By La Scena Musicale Team on 16 September 2020 Classical Music

By Philip Ehrensaft & Wah Keung Chan The classical music sector in Quebec will operate and earn revenue with a new combination of resources after the COVID-19 era, according to a survey of arts consumers undertaken by La Scena Musicale. Important elements in the new concert economy include a reduction of live-audience events; monetized streaming of live and archived performances; increased government support; increased private-sector funding; and more individual donations despite an uncertain economy. The challenge is daunting but not necessarily overwhelming. Conducted in July and August, the study resulted in findings relevant to both live performances in venues where…

The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts launches its multi-platform fall season

By Newswire on 15 September 2020 Classical Music

Kingston ON – The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts (“the Isabel”) at Queen’s University launches its fall 2020 multi-platform season including the classical, baroque, and the Kingston Indie series featuring Kasador, Miss Emily, and Michelle Kasaboski. The Festival also features Kingston’s innovative Electric Circuits Festival of Electronic Music, Performance and Digital Art led by Shannon Brown. The Isabel’s 2020/21 Ensemble in Residence, the JUNO award-winning Gryphon Trio, will undertake their epic performance of the entire Beethoven Trio cycle in this special Beethoven anniversary year in addition to their multi-media program with Jamaal Jackson Rogers, Ottawa Poet Laureate. “We…

For the MSO opener, a masked ball

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 September 2020 Concert Reviews, Opera, Orchestral

Not your usual opening night. Small crowd. No mingling. No buzz. Except insofar as the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Labadie proved itself equal on Sept. 11 to the repertoire at hand. This band has met only sporadically since March, mostly in popup chamber concerts that remained stubbornly under the radar. Apparently the players have not lost their team spirit and pride in playing well. Even in social-distance formation – 43 looking more like 60 as spread across the stage of the Maison symphonique – the MSO sounded like a balanced and cohesive ensemble. The start could not have been…

The Rolston Quartet will open the LMMC's 129th season

Ladies’ Morning Musical Club forges ahead

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 September 2020 Classical Music

The Ladies’ Morning Musical Club will open its 129th season on Sept. 13 before the smallest crowd the organization has ever welcomed in Pollack Hall. The blame lies not with the Rolston String Quartet, much less with Haydn’s Quartet Op. 74 No. 3 (“Rider”) and Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59 No. 1, but rather the fixed limit of 160 listeners – a fraction of the 600 seats normally available in this McGill University facility, not to mention the 427 subscribers on the LMMC roll last season. “We feel there is a real longing for live music, so we were happy to accommodate…

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