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by David Jaeger
In December of 1971, Toronto newspapers began running an unusual ad. It began as a tiny rectangle with the simple message in upper case letters, “BERIO IS COMING”, together with a location, a date (Jan. 6) and a phone number. Each week the ad size increased, until on Jan. 5, 1972, the text changed to “BERIO IS HERE!”
Renowned Italian composer and conductor Luciano Berio was the guest at the inaugural event of New Music Concerts, and the following night at a sold-out performance in Walter Hall at the University of Toronto. Thus began a series of contemporary music presentations that continues to bring its audiences the newest of new music.
Toronto’s New Music Concerts (NMC), the brainchild of the virtuoso flutist and composer Robert Aitken and composer and broadcaster Norma Beecroft, is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The decision to launch the series with Berio was brilliant. He had just returned to Italy after several years of intense activity in North America, and was a star within the international new music community. The premiere of Berio’s Sinfonia in New York in 1968 had raised his visibility to the point that he had begun to resemble more of a mainstream 
figure. NMC’s inaugural concert featured Berio conducting an ensemble of Toronto’s finest chamber musicians in a program that included five of his works ranging from the late 1950s to newly composed pieces. Of these latter, Sequenza VII (1971) for solo oboe with drone was the most recent, followed by Chemins II (1967) for solo viola and chamber ensemble. The complete inaugural concert program, can be viewed at www.newmusicconcerts.com/memory-box.
Aitken and Beecroft proclaimed a number of their guiding principles for NMC in this first concert. The first and most important was that the composers should be present to assist in the preparation of their works, and if possible should lead the performances. Of course, not every composer is also a conductor, but the authenticity of the performances achieved by their presence was crucial. Another of Aitken and Beecroft’s core beliefs was that the musicians should be allowed a full schedule of intensive rehearsal to assure a definitive performance that fully represents the composers’ vision. These principles established a standard of excellence that was internationally recognized.
Word of this new series travelled fast and soon composers and publishers were clamouring to be included in the concerts. Over the subsequent decades a long list of the world’s most influential composers was drawn to Toronto and introduced to the NMC audience: John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Henry Brant, John Cage, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Peter Maxwell Davies, Morton Feldman, Vinko Globokar, Betsy Jolas, Helmut Lachenmann, Witold Lutoslawski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Toru Takemitsu, Iannis Xenakis and many more. A similarly long list of Canadian composers also appeared, including John Beckwith, Walter Buczynski, Brian Cherney, Harry Freedman, Chris Paul Harman, Alexina Louie, Bruce Mather, Barbara Pentland, R. Murray Schafer, Harry Somers, Ann Southam, Gilles Tremblay, Claude Vivier and, John Weinzweig as well as Aitken and Beecroft themselves.
My own role in this history was primarily as the founding executive producer of CBC Radio’s Two New Hours. Our team recorded the vast majority of NMC’s concerts between 1978 and 2007 for broadcast on the national radio network, offering the most recent developments in contemporary music, as presented by a superb performing ensemble. Among the many broadcasting firsts in our collaborations with NMC, I will never forget the marathon live-to-air broadcast of the World Premiere of the four-hour-long Second String Quartet by Morton Feldman, with the Kronos String Quartet.
NMC’s international profile was strengthened by its ensemble’s touring Europe and the United States. Aitken and the NMC Ensemble also recorded 16 commercial releases, with music by Colin McPhee as well as Carter, Crumb, Lutoslawski, Schafer and Takemitsu, among others.
Brian Current, Aitken’s successor as artistic director, has committed to, “scour the globe for the greatest music.” The 2021-22 season’s theme is Crossing Over celebrating a long legacy while also pursuing a fresh vision.
NMC has announced a 50th-anniversary initiative titled Sequencing Berio, in which emerging composers have been offered commissions to create original works that respond to the distinctive series of Berio’s Sequenzas, bringing us full circle from that dramatic first step in 1972, that led to this remarkable history. These presentations will include video performances of Sequenza III for solo voice with soprano Xin Wang, Sequenza X for solo trumpet with trumpeter Guy Few, and Sequenza XIV for solo ‘cello with cellist Amahl Arulanandam.
The series of NMC’s virtual programs produced during the current pandemic and filmed at Koerner Hall, as well as the details of live concerts beginning this spring can be found at www.newmusicconcerts.com.
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