Browsing: Interviews

In honour of our 20th anniversary, we are proud to introduce the seven artists who will perform at our gala on Thursday, November 24. Each artist talked with La Scena Musicale about his or her favourite works, the pieces they will be performing at the gala, the challenges of performing them, the high points of each piece, and which artist they dream of meeting. For more information about the gala click here. David Dias Da Silva – Clarinettist Joly Braga Santos : Aria I Bella Kovacs : Hommage a Manuel de Falla Debussy: First Rhapsody I chose Debussy’s First Rhapsody…

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COMPANY REVIEW: On Site Opera (New York City); PERFORMANCE REVIEW:  An Evening of Monodramas – La Morte de Cléopâtre by Hector Berlioz; and Miss Havisham’s Wedding by Dominick Argento; The Harmonie Club, 4 East 60th Street, New York, New York (September 29 and 30, 2016; viewed September 30). “Waiter! There’s a diva in my soup!” Actually, there wasn’t any soup – but a double helping of diva was definitely on the menu at Manhattan’s Upper East Side Harmonie Club on the evenings of September 29th and 30th. That’s when On Site Opera, a spry and peripatetic company that has been…

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An Advance Profile of Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27, an opera about Gertrude Stein, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, to be presented at New York’s City Center, October 20 and 21, 2016. “Knock, knock” was no joke at chez Gertrude Stein in early 20th-century Paris. Rather, a knock at the private side entrance of one cramped room in Stein’s small apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus cued the commencement of serious and exciting business on any given Saturday evening. That was when the likes of Matisse and Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Man Ray, and other artists, writers, and avant-garde headliners of…

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For the first time in its history, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal will showcase a piece in which the musicians won’t play a single note. Tunnel Azur is an acousmatic composition created by Robert Normandeau on commission by the OSM and the STM. The ten minute long Tunnel Azur celebrates, and is entirely inspired by, the 50-year history of the Montréal metro. “With permission from the STM, I had the privilege to go and record the sounds of the metro at night, afterhours. It is a universe that nobody knows, because the metro is closed at night,” says Normandeau. “I…

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This month, Brian Current will experience something many composers would envy: the premiere and recording of one of his major works by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The $50,000 Azrieli Prize enabled him to compose The Seven Heavenly Halls for solo tenor, choir and orchestra. The composer talked to La Scena Musicale about this work and his career. Like many musicians, Brian Current first learned piano as a child. “I was lucky my parents were so persistent and constantly got me to practice, even when I didn’t want to,” he says. “My parents weren’t musicians by profession, but they sang in…

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“To be innovative, you need to have the means to take risks.” The Conseil des arts de Montréal is celebrating its 60th anniversary. To mark the occasion, La Scena Musicale takes a look at the high points of this institution’s history, its contributions to Montreal’s artistic scene, and the prospects for its continued development with president Jan-Fryderyk Pleszczynski. What moments have been turning points in the evolution of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal? One of the highlights is definitely April 18, 1956, the date that the institution then known as the Conseil des Arts de la Région Métropolitaine de Montréal was…

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OPERA REVIEW: Breaking the Waves at Opera Philadelphia Brotherly Love, Independence, the Phillie Phanatic – this city has always been a hotbed of innovative and big ideas. How apt, then, that Opera Philadelphia has taken on a big idea of its own, having committed to the future of indigenous American opera with a 2011 pledge to present, every season for ten years, a major new American operatic work. More than halfway through that initial pledge period, the company’s “American Repertoire Program” can claim impressive achievements, including Dark Sisters in 2012; A Coffin in Egypt in 2014; and Charlie Parker’s Yardbird…

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As part of his 40th birthday celebrations, Canadian virtuoso violinist James Ehnes is hitting the road. Travelling across Canada with his family and accompanist Andrew Armstrong in tow, Ehnes will cross coast-to-coast-to-coast in Canada, trekking from Vancouver to St. John’s and all the way North to Iqaluit as part of his James Ehnes @40 tour. Next month, Ehnes plays the Dvořák Violin Concerto with the OSM (October 13, 8PM & ­October 14, 7PM), and a recital of Beethoven, Franck, and Ravel with Armstrong (October 16, 2:30PM). He returns to Montreal this spring in recital at LMMC Concerts, (April 30, 2017, 3:30PM). Below is a…

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To catch all the members of the Borodin Quartet off stage is almost impossible. Formed in 1945, the legendary Russian ensemble, rarely, if ever, gives interviews – especially when they are on tour abroad. I conducted this interview after their spectacular opening Pollack Hall concert on August 14 at the McGill International String Quartet Academy (MISQA), where they gave masterclasses to quartets from all over the world. Speaking in Russian, first violinist Ruben Aharonian, second Sergey Limovsky, violist Igor Naidin, and cellist Vladimir Balshin covered a range of subjects at the four-star Omni Hotel in downtown Montreal. Nuné Melik: The…

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The Segal Centre’s latest mega-musical celebrates teen spirit, family, and a Canadian milestone for gay rights. In 2002, 17-year-old Marc Hall invited his boyfriend to his high school prom. His Catholic school in Oshawa, Ontario, declined Hall’s proposed guest on the grounds that homosexuality is incompatible with Catholic teaching. With support from his parents and friends, Hall took the Durham Catholic School Board to court, sparking a controversial case that questioned how the religious freedoms guaranteed in the Canadian Charter should be applied to a school receiving public funding, and about queer rights at a time when same-sex marriage had…

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