Brilliant young Juilliard professor Nicolas Namoradze is a unique artist, playing with a balanced restraint, surprising intellectual and emotional honesty, as well as exquisite taste and finesse.
We’ve been keeping up with Koerner Hall and TSO performances through a series of concert reviews written by our talented reporters.
The Orchestre Métropolitain and María Dueñas In November, the illustrious Yannick Nézet-Séguin will interpret Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 with his Orchestre Métropolitain. Known as the Leningrad symphony, the piece became a symbol of hope during the Second World War. Also on the program is Halvorsen’s Violin Concerto, which will be interpreted by the young Spanish violinist, María Dueñas (Nov. 17 and 18). www.orchestremetropolitain.com Gala des Jeunes Ambassadeurs et Ambassadrices Lyriques The Gala des Jeunes Ambassadeurs et Ambassadrices Lyriques will take place in the Concert Hall at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (4750 Henri-Julien Ave.). This benefit concert will feature…
Beyond his prolific work as a composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein made an impression on the world of classical music as a formidable educator. According to his own website, he himself was proudest of this work. His daughter, Jamie Bernstein, writes that “it wasn’t enough for (him) to compose music and conduct orchestras. He felt equally compelled to talk about music. What he loved most was to communicate his excitement to others.” In 1957, Bernstein collaborated with the television network CBS to get his Young People’s Concerts broadcast on TV. Featuring the New York Philharmonic, these hour-long specials included both…
Adam Zinatelli started playing the trumpet when he was in Grade 7. Some years later, when he was in Grade 12, he heard Mahler’s third symphony at the Glenn Gould School. “When I left that concert,” he says, “I knew that this was what I wanted to do.” The eager trumpet player went on to study at both the Glenn Gould School (Royal Conservatory of Music), and the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has since appeared with orchestras across Canada, and has held the position of principal trumpet with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) since 2009. Ever since he…
Against the Grain Theatre (AtG) is a pillar of the Canadian opera scene. The award-winning company has been pushing boundaries and challenging audiences to experience opera in exciting, new ways since its founding in 2010 by director, librettist, educator, and administrator Joel Ivany, and his partner, soprano Miriam Khalil. Ivany didn’t grow up with opera. He recalls watching La Bohème, starring Pavarotti, on Laser Disk, and later, going to the Canadian Opera Company (COC) for the first time, in Grade 13. Entranced by the “big stage, big sound, big … everything,” he remembers thinking: “How are we going to…
Who will carry on the standard set by the Emerson String Quartet? Among the names mentioned recently was the Danish String Quartet.
Concerto Antico: à travers un miroir fumé Jaap Nico Hamburger, composer; Orchestre classique de Montréal; Ensemble Caprice Leaf Music, April 2023 Jaap Nico Hamburger brilliantly explores centuries of musical history in a powerful 11 minutes on Concerto Antico. Hamburger suggests in the album’s booklet that just as Nostradamus “stared into a smoke covered mirror to look at the future,” Hamburger himself is “star(ing) into the mirror of our times to look at the past.” Split into five concise tracks, Concerto Antico addresses modern, romantic, baroque, and classical eras through a variety of styles. An airy flute conjures the image of…
Esprit Orchestra has a big season ahead of it—in every sense of the word. Conducted by Maestro Alex Pauk, the orchestra will perform five concerts featuring challenging repertoire, composed for large orchestral configurations. It will honour the legacies of some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most influential compositional voices, including the late R. Murray Schafer, György Ligeti, and Kaija Saariaho, and will also spotlight the work of new and emerging composers. This ambitious season starts on Oct. 15 with a concert titled X Marks the Spot, featuring works by Anna Meredith, Iannis Xenakis, Ligeti, and Schafer. Following this first…
Although Davóne Tines may have “tumbled his way into the opera world” somewhat accidentally, his artistic output has been deliberate ever since. As a young person, he says, he didn’t know where he would end up. Tines completed undergraduate studies in sociology at Harvard University, and worked at a series of arts organizations as an administrator, before considering the prospect of life as a professional musician. Tines grew up singing – in the Black Baptist church, growing up in Virginia; at college, in a Renaissance polyphony ensemble; in the professional choir at the National Shrine in DC; and in a…
