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Jacques Marquis, Photo: UQÀM

Jacques Marquis Leads The Cliburn

By Paul E. Robinson on 1 April 2017 Interviews, Piano

Many years ago, Ft. Worth, Texas was perhaps best known for its stockyards. Ranchers would organize massive cattle drives to bring their herds to its railhead and slaughterhouses. It was a “cowtown” with all the unsavoury services that went with that connotation, including gambling, drinking, prostitution, and all-out hell-raising. Bits of the stockyards are still there, now a tourist attraction rather than a collection of foul-smelling pens and meat-packing factories. Over the past 20 years, Ft. Worth has undergone a major transformation. Its population today approaches a million residents and it boasts such major businesses as Lockheed Martin, one of…

Dover Quartet, Photo: Carlin Ma

The Enduring Power of Beethoven’s String Quartets

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 April 2017 Chamber Music, Classical, Interviews

“After this, what is left for us to write?” —Franz Schubert after hearing Beethoven’s late String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131 This year at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, the Dover Quartet will be in residence to play the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 String Quartets and the Große Fuge Op. 133. Winners of the first prize at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC), this youthful US-based quartet recently won Avery Fisher Career Grant, the highest honour for performers at this stage of their career. The Dover Quartet—comprised of violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van…

Salle André-Mathieu

Stronger Acoustics for Salle André-Mathieu

By Ian Cochrane on 1 April 2017 Interviews, Musique québécoise, Orchestral

“The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics, but no architect worth their name wants to build a shoebox.” Fortunately for classical concertgoers, this remark from Harvard professor of architecture Rem Koolhaas was made tongue-in-cheek. This is particularly fortunate for the Orchestre symphonique de Laval (OSL), whose principal performance venue was successfully renovated in 2016. Originally opened in 1979, Salle André-Mathieu, located within walking distance of Laval’s Montmorency metro station, now boasts excellent acoustics for symphonic music. In recent years, the hall’s managers, patrons and performing organizations lobbied for an array…

La Balade pour la Paix, Photo: Claude Cormier et associés

La Balade pour la paix, an Open-Air Museum at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

By Olivier Gentil on 1 April 2017 150/375, Interviews, Visual Arts

The museum walks forth “I believe that everyone, whether they want to or not, will find their own Treasure there.” — Malraux We might well hear the – probably ill-founded – criticism that museums are too hermetic, but the project the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts intends to launch in partnership with the McCord for the city’s 375th anniversary festivities seems like a legitimate attempt to break down conventional boundaries. Entitled La Balade pour la paix: An Open-Air Museum, the exhibition will celebrate the ideals of openness and humanism that have moulded the history of Montreal and Canada, while also…

Dang Thai Son, Illustration: Hefka

Dang Thai Son: The Finer Things in Life

By Arthur Kaptainis on 1 April 2017 Canadian Music, Interviews, Piano

Dang Thai Son is a man of discriminating taste. After a swirl and a sniff and a sip, he sent back a glass of red from Burgenland at a midtown Montreal bistro. “It’s quite light,” he said in his soft and gently accented English. “Maybe something richer.” This Hanoi-born pianist and long-time Montrealer is in the business of making fine distinctions. Recently recognized with an Opus Prize for a 2016 recital of Chopin and Schumann at Bourgie Hall, Son is perhaps even better known as high-end consultant to young pianists from around the world and a judge on the competition…

Oliver Esmonde-White

Piano Esmonde White: A New Cycle for the Piano

By Kristine Berey on 1 April 2017 Interviews, Musique québécoise, Piano

Oliver Esmonde-White’s great passion is the piano. But his love for the instrument is different from that of the pianist, whose heroes may be Bach, Beethoven or other great composers. Esmonde-White, a master piano technician, draws inspiration from the great piano builders of the past. “Pianos were glorious once upon a time,” he said, citing names like Bechstein, Mason & Hamelin and Bösendorfer. Each piano had a distinct sound, but was considered on par with Steinway. Closer to home, “We have forgotten that Heintzman, Willis, Lesage and Lindsay were made not far from here. We have done virtually no research…

Mark Adamo's Little Women

Singing Our National Stories – The AMERICAN LYRIC THEATER… Part I – Beyond Words and Music, with Mark Adamo

By Charles Geyer on 21 March 2017 Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

Mark Adamo, in conversation with Charles Geyer It started as an idea over drinks. It became a quest to “achieve everything.” In 2002, Larry Edelson, then an assistant opera director completing his graduate degree at NYU, and Mark Adamo, the celebrated American composer-librettist of Little Women (one of the most oft-produced and critically lauded new operas of recent decades), were discussing – take a guess – American opera. Not how great it was, or how imperiled it was; not its funding nor its popularity – but something much more fundamental, and mysterious: Where it came from. The opera field was…

Michael Kelly as Edward Kynaston and Maeve Höglund as Margaret Hughes, Photo: Tina Buckman

A King in New York: Opera Royalty Carlisle Floyd Brings His ‘Prince of Players’ to the Big Apple

By Charles Geyer on 9 March 2017 Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

OPERA REVIEW: Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players, presented by the little OPERA theatre of NY; and INTERVIEW: with the work’s creator, acclaimed American composer Carlisle Floyd. “You will be hearing more about Carlisle Floyd,” said Howard Taubman in 1956, writing in The New York Times of “a young composer who teaches at Florida State University,” whom Taubman deemed “meant for the lyric theatre.” And barely three years later, composer, critic, and educator Eric Salzman (also in the Times) already discerned in Floyd a voice that had “prepared the way for the burst of American works that followed.” The young man…

Opera McGill’s Lisl Wirth B!NGE Festival: By the Numbers

By Kiersten van Vliet on 6 March 2017 Interviews, Opera

Binge, n. (bɪndʒ): A bout of overindulgence; an instance of engaging in a particular activity (esp. eating) to excess Usually the practice of binging refers to unhealthy things: imbibing, eating whole bags of chips, and—since the invention of internet streaming services—watching so much of a television show that your computer has to check that you are still living. It was in the latter binge situation that Patrick Hansen, the Artistic Director of Opera McGill, came up with the concept of an opera binge. “My boys and I were binging on [History channel show] Vikings and I went, ‘We need an opera…

Nicole Lizée, Photo: Marc Bourgeois

Interview: Nicole Lizée Redux

By Kiersten van Vliet on 2 March 2017 Contemporary, Interviews

Back in January, I interviewed Montréal-based composer Nicole Lizée for the cover of the February/March issue of La Scena Musicale. We had a long and involved conversation, covering many topics that simply could not make the print article due to space constraints. In light of the evening of her music last night with Standing Wave at the SMCQ’s Montréal/New Musics festival (which runs until March 4), I thought it would be interesting for my own sake to return to our original interview. But that’s when I realized that there’s a lot more in there that could be relevant to those…

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