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Esprit Orchestra @40 : Standing Tall

By Eva Stone-Barney on 4 October 2022 Canadian Music, Orchestral

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…

Orchestre Métropolitain. Photo: Ludovic Rolland Marcotte

2022 Azrieli Music Prizes

By Justin Bernard on 1 October 2022 Canadian Music, World Music

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…

Sylvain Bergeron. Photo: Guillaume D. Cyr

La Nef presents Per violino e liuto and Long Way Home

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 1 October 2022 Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Folk, Violin, World Music

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.…

Ensemble Silakbo. Photo: Sofia Nathanlshar

Adam Vincent Clarke: a journey from East to West

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 1 October 2022 Canadian Music

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…

Bruce Liu (from the Bruce Liu website) (Credit: Yanzhang)

Canadians Abroad

By Eva Stone-Barney on 2 September 2022 Canadian Music, Classical Music

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…

Fjóla Evans

Women’s Musical Club of Toronto: Celebrating 125 Years

By Zenith Wolfe on 2 September 2022 Canadian Music, Classical Music

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…

Nicolas Ellis conducts the TSM Festival Orchestra (Credit: Lucky Tang)

Toronto Summer Music “Inspirations” Concert Features Sensitive Interpretation of Keiko Devaux’s “Arras”

By Eva Stone-Barney on 4 August 2022 Arts Industry, Canadian Music, Classical Music, Concert Reviews

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…

CD Review | Body in motion (Centrediscs, 2022)

By Justin Bernard on 26 July 2022 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music

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…

CD Review | Journey Through Night: Canadian Music for String Quartet (Akashic Entertainment Recordings, 2021)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Contemporary, Strings

Journey Through Night: Canadian Music for String Quartet Alex Toskov, Laurence Schaufele and Tanya Charles Iveniuk, violin; Samuel Bisson, cello Akashic Entertainment Recordings, 2021 The Odin Quartet’s conductor and cellist, Samuel Bisson, has an affinity for atmospheric chamber music: his work as a film-score composer has brought him onboard such projects as Yan Ma’s Up We Soar (2020) and Kacey Kox’s Finding Manny (2020). But Journey Through Night poses a different challenge for him—with no visuals to complement, Bisson must generate ambience through music alone, while also showcasing contemporary Canadian composers in an accessible way. Though this is only the…

CD Review | Found Frozen: Songs by Jeffrey Ryan (Centrediscs, 2022)

By Justin Bernard on 26 July 2022 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Contemporary

Found Frozen: Songs by Jeffrey Ryan Danika Lorèn, soprano; Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano; Dion Mazerolle, baritone; Steven Philcox, piano Centrediscs, 2022 The Canadian label Centrediscs specializes in contemporary music and has accustomed listeners to performances for all kinds of ensembles and instruments. Found Frozen, however, is a return to a more classical form—that of piano and voice. This collection features new songs by Canadian composer Jeffrey Ryan, gathered into cycles (except for one song), and performed by three different singers and a pianist, Steven Philcox. Like so many others, this project comes to fruition after long, pandemic-related delays. The album opens…

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