The Canadian Sinfonietta’s new album was a family affair, in more ways than one. The ensemble, founded in 1998, specializes in culturally diverse programs that move between sounds of the classical past and present, in both large-scale orchestra presentations and smaller chamber performances. Led by Artistic Director and Concertmaster Joyce Lai, its 14 to 25 professional musicians perform throughout the Greater Toronto Area. With a strong mandate to support young musicians, they showcase winners from their own Canadian Sinfonietta Young Artist Competition as well the Unionville Music Academy Competition.
Canadian Mosaic was released in November through Akashic Classics and showcases a keen musical curiosity as well as a palpable community spirit that stretches beyond the Greater Toronto Area to encompass continents. The six-track album hosts a variety of creative sound explorations highlighting the Canadian Sinfonietta’s mission to cultivate (in the words of the album notes) “a new generation of concertgoers by presenting concerts that have a balance of traditional and newly composed or culturally interesting programs.”
Tak Ng Lai is the founder and music director of the Canadian Sinfonietta. The conductor, director, and music educator leads four works on Canadian Mosaic, including the opening “Seven Canadian Folk Songs In Chinese Style” by award-winning Chinese-Canadian composer An-Lun Huang. Bruno Degazio’s “Pilgrimage” is also featured, along with “Romance No. 2,” a work penned by Lai himself.
Joyce Lai with Tak Ng Lai conducting Canadian Sinfonietta. Photo: Paul Lau
A longtime music lover and advocate, Tak Ng Lai came to Canada from China in the late 1970s and met composer Michael Pepa, who himself had emigrated from his native Romania in 1953. “Michael was one of the first people to say, ‘Let’s support all these musicians and composers’,” Joyce Lai says. Pepa eventually became Canadian Sinfonietta’s composer-in-residence. His “Liliane” is Canadian Mosaic’s fifth track and features mezzo-soprano Maria Soulis. The piece uses the words of the titular Liliane Gerenstein, an 11-year-old French girl who wrote a “letter to God” in 1944 begging for her parents’ return just before her own deportation to an internment camp. “It’s very moving and frank,” Lai says of Pepa’s composition.
Plans for Canadian Mosaic began in 2018, with its second track—“Mirage”—recorded in 2019. The piece is one of two works by album co-producer Ronald Royer, who is also music director and conductor of the Toronto-area Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra. “Mirage” was originally composed for orchestra in 2007 and then rearranged for string, chamber, and quintet configurations; the latter is on Canadian Mosaic and features Mate Szucs, principal viola of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 2011 to 2018.
The album’s launch party at the beginning of December was particularly illuminating for Lai. “There are a lot of people out there who don’t know anything about classical music other than the name of Beethoven,” she says, “and yet they are the very people who are listening to our album. These are the people we’re reaching out to.”
For more on Canadian Sinfonietta’s season of concerts visit www.canadiansinfonietta.com
