Browsing: Canadian Music

On Oct. 14, the Molinari String Quartet marked its 25th anniversary at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal with a retrospective of works by such contemporary Eastern European luminaries as Penderecki, Kurtág and Ligeti. In years past, all string quartets of these composers have been played by this enduring Montreal foursome. Those on hand surely must have appreciated hearing a cross-section of that repertoire, some for the first time, others anew. First violinist Olga Ranzenhofer, the group’s artistic and administrative director since its inception in 1997, is more than happy about the turn of events. In her words: ‟Our concert…

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On Nov. 15, Isolde Lagacé bids a fond farewell to the Salle Bourgie after 10 years at its helm as artistic and administrative director. Two months before, on Sept. 18, she officially passed the torch on stage to her successors: Caroline Louis as the new administrative head and her counterpart programmer Olivier Godin. ‟In the early days of my work for Bourgie,” recalls Lagacé, ‟I could handle both of these tasks easily thanks to my own life history of growing up in a musical family first and then pursuing a career in arts management. After five years on the job,…

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In 1982, composer and conductor Alex Pauk identified a gap in the Canadian music scene. Although he had already founded smaller musical organizations (ARRAY Music, and Days Months and Years to Come) in the hopes of creating environments in which composers—often his friends—could hear their music played by high-calibre musicians, the lack of such opportunities in larger, orchestral contexts, led to the conception of Esprit. His goal with the orchestra was to champion new works by Canadian composers, and to provide orchestral musicians the opportunity to immerse themselves in the process of preparing new music, by always guaranteeing sufficient (and…

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Composers Aharon Harlap, Iman Habibi, and Rita Ueda hail from different backgrounds, each drawing from their own ancestral culture to present original music. Because each composer carried a message of reconciliation, they were awarded the 2022 Azrieli Music Prizes in the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music, and Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music categories.  Aharon Harlap: Past predicting the future Harlap grew up in Winnipeg, beginning his music studies at the University of Manitoba in 1962. After studying composition with Bernard Naylor privately, he studied with Peter Racine Fricker at the Royal College of Music in…

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After two years of pandemic, La Nef is taking to the sea again this fall with a very eclectic program, between world and early music. Their 2022-23 season opens in October with Per violino e liuto, an intimate evening of baroque and popular repertoire from the 17th century, followed in November with a program  inspired by Nordic and Middle Eastern musical traditions. For violin and lute Presented on Oct. 16 at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, Per violino e liuto will feature two of the city’s finest baroque music performers, multi-instrumentalist Sylvain Bergeron and rising violin star Marie Nadeau-Tremblay.…

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There are trajectories of life that strike the imagination and seem to indicate that beyond the vicissitudes of fate, nothing is left to chance. The life of the young Canadian composer Adam Vincent Clarke is one of those, from his modest childhood in Nova Scotia to the great European concert halls where his works are presented today. Whether by chance or by providence, it is the result of a succession of choices, trials and chance encounters that will see him return to Canada this fall, nearly seven years after his departure for the Old Continent, as part of his fascinating…

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Bruce Liu, piano Montreal native Bruce Liu, 2021 Chopin Competition Winner, jumps into the 2022-2023 concert season after a robust summer of performances, featuring appearances in Germany, Finland, France, Switzerland, Italy and Canada, to name a few. Liu finishes his summer with a performance in Poland (Aug. 26-31), under the baton of Vasily Petrenko with the Warsaw Philharmonic (Chopin Concerto No.2). He begins his fall in Norway, where he will perform a program of Rameau, Chopin, Ravel and Liszt (Sept. 2). This will be followed by two appearances in Ottawa (Sept. 8 and 9), with the National Arts Centre Orchestra…

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After surviving the second pandemic since its founding in 1898, the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto (WMCT) is going big for its 125th anniversary. Its 2022-2023 season, called “Connection and Continuity,” will celebrate the ­organization’s historical legacy. Each show in the series of five concerts will highlight one work that represents a distinct 25-year block of time. The works will be accompanied by ­explorations of their cultural backgrounds in an expansive, online program led by historian and archivist Robin Elliot, according to ­Artistic Director and cellist Simon Fryer. “We (want) to demonstrate that 125 years is a huge amount of…

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On July 31, Toronto Summer Music (TSM) presented Canadian composer Keiko Devaux’s award-winning piece “Arras,” and Klaus Simon’s chamber ensemble arrangement of Mahler 4, two works whose highly contrasting styles demonstrated the TSM Festival Orchestra’s mastery of both sound worlds in equal measure. The festival’s concert, Inspirations, featured soprano Karina Gauvin and conductor Nicolas Ellis. Arras originally premiered as the winner of the inaugural Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music in 2020, and was performed by Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. The work was composed in response to the Azrieli Commission’s “Canadian music” prompt: it comes together as an amalgamation of Devaux’s sonic…

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Body in motion Daniel Janke, piano and composition; Adele Armin, Mark Fewer, Aaron Schwebel, violin; Rory McLeod, alto; Amahl Arulanandam, Richard Armin, cello; Alan Hetherington, percussion Centrediscs, 2022 “Body in Motion is an homage to choreographers and dancers of the world. They are the hardest workers in the peforming arts. They are an inspiration.” This is what Canadian composer Daniel Janke had to say about his new Centredisques album. After Songs of Small Resistance in 2021, he has returned with three chamber music works and a solo piano work. We can only recommend this album. Listeners are charmed in the…

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