Contemporary - my/maSCENA

New Releases: June-July 2021

By Wah Keung Chan on 4 June 2021 Arts Industry, Baroque and Early, Classical, Contemporary

This section is an advertising supplement. To announce here, contact [email protected] Studio Piccolo Session Stick&Bow. Leaf Music LM242 Discover the new videos of the two young musicians of Stick&Bow as they revisit the Cuban masterpiece Che comandante by Carlos Puebla, rewrite the rock success of Sting’s She’s Too Good For Me and perform two commissions written especially for them, Romanza by Luis Naon and Folk Suite by Jason Noble. Recorded at the prestigious Studio Piccolo in the heart of Montreal, the Canadian duo Stick&Bow bring life and energy to “Studio Piccolo Sessions.” Eckhardt-Gramatté: 28 Alphabet & Character Pieces “From My…

Azrieli Foundation announces call for proposals for its Music Prizes Performance Fund

By Newswire on 1 June 2021 Arts Industry, Contemporary

Toronto, ON, Canada, June 1, 2021 – The Azrieli Foundation is pleased to call for proposals from professional orchestras worldwide for its Azrieli Music Prizes Performance Fund (AMP-PF). Now in its second year, AMP-PF financially supports professional music ensembles in preparing and presenting public performances of AMP-winning works. The Foundation is currently accepting proposals for performances in the 2021-2022, 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 concert seasons. The AMP-PF provides new opportunities for professional ensembles to share the powerful and extraordinary quality of Azrieli Music Prize-winning works with their audiences. Until June 30, chamber and symphonic orchestras may submit a proposal requesting support…

Katia Makdissi-Warren and Marie-Hélène Breault

Free concert: “Dialogues” between East and West

By Benjamin Goron on 1 June 2021 Contemporary

Despite a challenging year of building a season on shaky foundations, between September 2020 and June 2021, the SMCQ and its Artistic Director Walter Boudreau presented a season of concerts and a festival. A breathless and daring journey that ends in the most beautiful way, by rediscovering a dialogue that has been broken for too long. The result of a co-production between the SMCQ, Marie-Hélène Breault and Ensemble Oktoécho, these Dialogues retrace fifteen years of collaboration between composer Katia Makdissi-Warren and flutist Marie-Hélène Breault, whom we met in preparation for this concert. A concert marked by a spiritual ambience Marie-Hélène…

Source: canadahelps.org

NEM pays tribute to André Prévost and composers of several generations

By Justin Bernard on 16 April 2021 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Orchestral, Quebec Music

Undeterred by the pandemic, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and its artistic director Normand Forget were hard at work in recent months. In February, the ensemble recorded a composition by Sandeep Bhagwati at the monastery in Oka for an online video webcast, then streamed a performance dedicated to all health workers, one of them being its oboist Julie Sirois-Leclerc, also emergency physician. On April 16, it will perform live and online from its usual venue, Salle Claude-Champagne. The concert pays tribute to André Prévost, a composer and eminent teacher who passed away in 2001. The orchestra and its conductor Lorraine Vaillancourt…

MNM festival: Free webcast extended

By Newswire on 3 March 2021 Contemporary

Montreal, March 3, 2021 – The 10th edition of the MNM festival has just ended on a high note, with concerts both live and recorded, attended by thousands of Internet users. This first online version of the festival received enthusiastic responses and was relayed on social networks, thus creating a moment of sharing and enthusiasm beyond borders, in keeping with the festival’s theme. “Mission accomplished! Despite COVID-19 we managed to present an entire festival and bring a little balm to the hearts of audiences, as evidenced by the moving comments received during the concerts. Above all, we were able to…

Jake Heggie and baritone Joshua Hopkins

New song cycle by Margaret Atwood and Jake Heggie to be released

By Newswire on 9 February 2021 Art Song, Contemporary

HOUSTON, Texas – February 9, 2021 – On the morning of September 22, 2015, in Renfrew County, Ontario, a single man went on a killing spree, brutally murdering three ex-partners in their separate homes. They were victims in a crime now recognized as one of the worst cases of domestic violence in Canadian history. The murders devastated the rural Ottawa Valley community where baritone Joshua Hopkins grew up – his sister, Nathalie Warmerdam, was one of these women. Hopkins has since set out on a journey to use his voice to wake people up to the global epidemic of gender-based violence…

Volumina: the fullness of sound fills empty rooms

By Benjamin Goron on 9 February 2021 Contemporary

For the 10th edition of the Montreal/New Musics festival, the SMCQ and Artistic Director Walter Boudreau present Volumina, bringing together works by Ligeti, Sokolović, Tremblay and Garant in the Maison symphonique. Both a tribute to Quebec creators and an evocation of key moments of the SMCQ’s history, this audacious concert, directed by Jean-Michaël Lavoie and hosted by Georges Nicholson, presents a panoply of contemporary languages based on vast space, the sacred, and the very contemporary relationship between the full and the empty. A long unbreakable arc Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed Volumina in 1961. Five years earlier, he had fled…

Prix Opus 2021: CQM unveils the winners

By Justin Bernard on 7 February 2021 Arts Industry, Canadian Music, Classical, Contemporary, Indigenous, Scena Jazz

Owing to government restrictions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) was obliged to organize its 24th Gala des prix Opus online, a first for the ceremony. The webcast was made public on Feb. 7 on the Facebook page of the Fabrique culturelle de Télé-Québec. The setting was unchanged: Bourgie Hall in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. A total of 26 laureates were recognized for their achievements during the 2019-2020 season, before and during the pandemic. Exceptional circumstances led to an exceptional tribute to Kent Nagano, former music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra,…

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

American Classics: The Forgotten Lineage

By Marc Chénard on 28 January 2021 Classical Music, Contemporary, Piano

Western Classical music is Eurocentric by nature. Centuries ago, the so-called Old World made up the rule of an art form that would gain universal acceptance as something of a legit form of culture. Performers and composers working within the confines of that tradition are found everywhere nowadays, and need not have been raised in any one its countries or lived there to play this musical cannon with proficiency. Over the last century or so, foreign influences have seeped into it, be they the exotic scales of the Far East or the syncopations of the Far West. American composers for…

Prélude à l’Opéra: Creation and the vertigo of absence

By Michel Joanny-Furtin on 20 January 2021 Classical Music, Contemporary

Mikaël, the author, enters the theatre (Ludger-Duvernay Hall in the Monument-National) holding in his hands a kite and a lamp, which traditionally lights the stage and the hall of empty theatres, and… a rifle. The tone is set. A drama, or rather two dramas, will play out before our eyes. This is an absolute must-see! First of all, the drama felt through the emptiness of the hall brings into our minds the virus of desertion. The battle of Mikaël, the author (Sébastien Ricard): to evoke a story, musicians, singers and an upcoming performance. For him this means haunting this space…

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