Canadian Music - my/maSCENA

20th Anniversary: An Indispensable Voice for 20 Years

By Caroline Rodgers on 1 November 2016 Canadian Music, Classical Music, La Scena Spotlight, Quebec Music

Readers, know this: like all of our issues, the magazine that you hold in your hands is the result of a small miracle produced by a very small team. For twenty years, while many publications have unfortunately shut their doors, or exist now only in digital form, La Scena Musicale stayed the course, despite the well-known issues facing print media, be it readers’ changing habits or lower advertising revenues, among other problems. Each of our issues was the result of the efforts of true enthusiasts, a persistent band of people who devote their time and perseverance so that the classical…

20th Anniversary: Quotes from LSM Ambassadors

By La Scena Musicale Team on 1 November 2016 Classical Music, Interviews, Quebec Music

Keri-Lynn Wilson: Congratulations to the marvellous La Scena Musicale for the last twenty years of your extraordinary publication. The musical world is extremely enriched by your passionate reporting on arts in Quebec. Thank you for being an indispensable resource for sharing the musical experience outside of the symphony hall, the opera stage, or the jazz club and for inspiring a new public to participate in current events. With La Scena Musicale, the arts have a future! Bravo! Stéphane Tétreault: It is with great pleasure and pride that I support La Scena Musicale. For two decades, La Scena Musicale provides invaluable…

Celebrating the Metro and The OSM’s New Octobass (Review)

By Rebecca Anne Clark on 21 October 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral, Quebec Music

Last night was the first performance of the OSM’s concert celebrating 50 years of the Montreal metro system, which first welcomed passengers in October 1966. To commemorate the occasion, the OSM and the STM co-commissioned two new works: José Evagelista’s orchestral piece Accelerando, and Robert Normandeau’s electroacoustic work Tunnel Azur. While this concert marks more than one historic premiere – Tunnel Azur is the first electroacoustic piece ever to be commissioned by the OSM and to be presented at the Maison Symphonique (read LSM’s article on the new work here) – the main question on Montreal music lovers’ minds seems to be,…

Robert Normandeau, Photo: Bernard Préfontaine

Robert Normandeau: Metro Music

By Caroline Rodgers on 1 October 2016 Contemporary, Interviews, Quebec Music

For the first time in its history, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal will showcase a piece in which the musicians won’t play a single note. Tunnel Azur is an acousmatic composition created by Robert Normandeau on commission by the OSM and the STM. The ten minute long Tunnel Azur celebrates, and is entirely inspired by, the 50-year history of the Montréal metro. “With permission from the STM, I had the privilege to go and record the sounds of the metro at night, afterhours. It is a universe that nobody knows, because the metro is closed at night,” says Normandeau. “I…

Brian Current

Brian Current: The Keys to Creativity

By Caroline Rodgers on 1 October 2016 Canadian Music, Choral, Contemporary, Interviews, La Scena Spotlight, Orchestral

This month, Brian Current will experience something many composers would envy: the premiere and recording of one of his major works by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The $50,000 Azrieli Prize enabled him to compose The Seven Heavenly Halls for solo tenor, choir and orchestra. The composer talked to La Scena Musicale about this work and his career. Like many musicians, Brian Current first learned piano as a child. “I was lucky my parents were so persistent and constantly got me to practice, even when I didn’t want to,” he says. “My parents weren’t musicians by profession, but they sang in…

Filumena, Banff Centre, Photo: Don Lee

New Opera Productions in Canada

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 Canadian Music, Classical, Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight, Opera, Romantic

The 2017–18 season is shaping up to be a milestone for new opera productions by Canadian companies. In celebration of the country’s 150th birthday, several works with Canadian themes will get their world premieres in Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto. Furthermore, Vancouver Opera has a watershed season with the inaugural year of the Vancouver Opera Festival. If you missed its triumphant opening run in Montreal last spring, Opéra de Montreal’s production of Les Feluettes (Lilies) travels to Pacific Opera Victoria this April. The Lost Operas of Mozart City Opera of Vancouver, 27 to 29 October, 2016 It’s a little-known fact that…

Orchestre de la Francophonie, Photo: Michel Pinault

Review: Orchestre de la Francophonie (July 28)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 2 August 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral, Quebec Music, Romantic

For their 15th anniversary season, the Orchestre de la Francophonie participated in Les Concerts Populaires for a celebration of French music that placed foundational Quebec composers in a lineage extending from Ravel to Claude Champagne, Saint-Saëns to Pierre Mercure. The evening of July 28 marked the first Thursday of the season that was not interrupted by the Jeux du Québec, which increased competition for venues at the Parc Olympique from July 17 to 25. The concert, a veritable kaleidoscope – even with its French roots – began with a piece of the same name by Mercure, a constantly-shifting ternary form…

Video of the Day – Lara St. John

By Weiyu Dang on 27 July 2016 Canadian Music, Folk, Video of the day, Violin

At La Scena, we rather enjoy NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts because they’re always well curated and quite often line up with what goes on in the festival circuit. Today’s video of the day features Canadian violinist Lara St. John who will be performing later tonight at the Ottawa Chamberfest. Born in London to two educators, St. John began violin at age two and made her orchestral debut two years later. Something of a precocious talent, it could be said. Now forty-years into her career, St. John is now a powerful virtuoso performer and “owner of Ancalagon record label and the…

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt

This Day in Music – 1958: Angela Hewitt is Born

By Weiyu Dang on 26 July 2016 Canadian Music, Piano, This Day in Music

This day in music, we celebrate Angela Hewitt’s birthday. Of a musical family, Angela Hewitt turns fifty-eight today as one of Canada’s and the world’s finest musicians. Hewitt began piano lessons at three before a meteoric rise led to her first full-length recital at nine with the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. Hewitt’s pivotal success was her capture of Toronto’s 1985 International Bach Piano Competition, held in honour of Glenn Gould. The win garnered not only accolades, but more importantly, led to a relationship with recording company, Deutsche Grammophon. With DG, Hewitt’s recording of English Suite No. 6 launched a legacy…

Daily News Roundup: 21 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 21 July 2016 Canadian Music, Daily News Roundup, Mainstream Jazz, Musical Theatre, Popular Music, Scena Jazz, Violin

Today’s Daily News Roundup is heading to Broadway. Plus Aretha Franklin and Polaris Music Prize news. + Aretha Franklin will headline a New City Winery Festival in Queens in September. + Video of the Day – Eric Dolphy. + The big Franco snub: Polaris Music Prize voters aren’t showing much love for francophone albums. + This Day in Music – 1920: Isaac Stern was born. + Come from Away, the Canadian musical focusing on the 38 planes and their occupants who were redirected to Gander, Nfld., on Sept. 11, 2001, will be performed at a Shubert theatre on Broadway in February.

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