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La Scena Tête-à-tête: Michael Spyres

By La Scena Musicale Team on 2 August 2022 Arts Industry, Baroque and Early, Classical Music, Contemporary, Interviews

In this Tête à tête segment, Don Adriano interviews Michael Spyres for La Scena Musicale during his passage through Montreal to sing at the Lanaudière festival in July 2022! On Youtube: Interview with Michael Spyres: During the interview, Adriano and Spyres discuss Rossini, operatic traditions, voice technique, the Baritenor voice and much more. The following is a sample of their discussion. How to sing like an opera performer As an internationally renowned baritenor opera singer, Michael Spyres has a lot to say on the topic of operatic singing. According to him, the body is not comfortable with operatic singing until…

Chloé Robichaud (left) and Sophie Desmarais (right) first teamed up for "Sarah préfère la course", in 2013 (Credit: Ninon Pednault)

Highlights | Actress Sophie Desmarais Conducts OM, TSO Emails Hacked, New Ergonomic Curved Keyboard

By Zenith Wolfe on 29 July 2022 Classical Music, Highlights

Welcome back to La Scena Musicale’s Highlights, a curated, weekly list of arts-related news stories from across the world! Music Industry Ludwig Van | Toronto Symphony Orchestra among international cultural institutions victimized by hackWordFly, a email software used by institutions like the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and the Canadian Opera Company (COC), was hacked in early July. Personal information like names, email address, TSO and COC account IDs, and survey responses were stolen – no credit card or financial data was accessed by the hacker. The data was removed from the hacker’s possession less than a week later. La Presse…

Banner image from the Matangi Quartet website

Lebrecht Weekly | Matangi: Outcast (PIAS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 29 July 2022 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

I dithered for weeks over whether or not to review this release, for reasons that will soon become clear. In the course of my indecision I listened to it at least ten times, so much so that it became a signifier of the state of our world in the war-torn, climate-seared summer of 2022. It is now a candidate for record of the year. Matangi are a Dutch string quartet, enterprising in its choice of unheard and little-heard music. The album consists of works by Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov and Dmitri Shostakovich, none of whom can be considered obscure or,…

UCLA Philharmonica (from the UCLA Philharmonica website)

Newswire | Ashkenaz Festival to Premiere First Yiddish Opera Ever Presented in Canada

By Newswire on 27 July 2022 Newswire, Opera

Toronto, Ontario (July 27, 2022) – Ashkenaz 2022 proudly presents the North American premiere of Henekh Kon’s “Bas-Sheve,” based on the controversial biblical story of David and Bathsheba. The only known pre-Holocaust Yiddish opera, and never performed after its 1924 premiere in Warsaw, the work was forgotten for decades before the only known existing manuscript was unearthed by German musicologist Dr. Diana Matut in 2017. After Matut discovered 16 pages missing from the original score, she enlisted Toronto-based Yiddishist (and New York Times best-selling author) Michael Wex to complete the libretto. Renowned klezmer musician, composer and ethnomusicologist Joshua Horowitz was…

Lorenzo Guggenheim

Newswire | Oakville Symphony Selects Lorenzo Guggenheim as New Music Director and Conductor

By Newswire on 26 July 2022 Arts Industry, Newswire, Orchestral

Okaville, Ontario (July 26, 2022) – The Oakville Symphony is thrilled to announce that Lorenzo Guggenheim has been selected as its new Music Director and Conductor. He will begin his leadership of the orchestra in the 2022-23 season. Mr. Guggenheim guest conducted the OS in April 2022 at the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts. Former OS Board President Anna Hewitt recalls: “From the minute Lorenzo stepped onto the stage, he conveyed confidence, warmth and passion for what he does, and a genuine desire to share that passion with the audience.” On his appointment, Lorenzo shared the following: “I am…

CD Review | Vienna 1840: Romantic Viennese Music (Analekta, 2022)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Romantic, Strings

Vienna 1840: Romantic Viennese Music Pascal Valois, guitar Analekta, 2022 Johann Kaspar Mertz, for whom no exploration of Viennese Romantic music would be complete without his compositions, dominates the album Vienna 1840: Romantic Viennese Music. Guitarist Pascal Valois tackles Mertz’s Barden-Klänge, Op. 13 in a series of five highly expressive and technically demanding tempo rubato works. Valois’s virtuosic talent is on full display in the latter half of Tarentelle: Più Allegro, and in the entirety of Fingals-Hohle: Maestoso—the transitions between chord-playing and fingerpicking are made imperceptible through careful arpeggiation, and his ostinato is never dull. In line with the Romantic…

CD Review | À ses derniers pas, entrant dans la boue (Centrediscs, 2022)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Piano

À ses derniers pas, entrant dans la boue Aleks Schürmer, piano; Grégoire Blanc, theremin Centrediscs, 2022 There’s something to the theremin, a no-contact electromagnetic instrument invented in the early 20th century, that makes it impossible not to smile upon hearing one, and composer Aleks Schürmer is acutely aware of this in his album À ses derniers pas, entrant dans la boue. By contrasting the goofiness of the theremin against a grim piano performance, Schürmer squares 20th-century peoples’ visions of a utopic technological future against our dystopic 21st-century reality. In Ils se sont trouvés sur Tinder, Blanc reaches into the depths…

CD Review | Elle (Analekta, 2022)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Indigenous, Piano, Strings, Violin

Elle Angèle Dubeau, solo violin; Valérie Milot and Antoine Mallette-Chénier, harp; Lydia Etok and Nina Segalowitz, throat singing; La Pietà Analekta, 2022 Angèle Dubeau, solo violinist and conductor for the string ensemble La Pietà, has decided to use the ensemble’s 25th anniversary album, Elle, to showcase a variety of contemporary female composers. The result? A thrilling experience where the listeners never gets too comfortable with one style. Just as they come to understand the cool and brooding nature of Rebecca Dale’s Winter, for example, they’re surprised by the fiery Inuit throat singing of Katia Makdissi-Warren’s Mémoire. The album is filled with…

CD Review | Body in motion (Centrediscs, 2022)

By Justin Bernard on 26 July 2022 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music

Body in motion Daniel Janke, piano and composition; Adele Armin, Mark Fewer, Aaron Schwebel, violin; Rory McLeod, alto; Amahl Arulanandam, Richard Armin, cello; Alan Hetherington, percussion Centrediscs, 2022 “Body in Motion is an homage to choreographers and dancers of the world. They are the hardest workers in the peforming arts. They are an inspiration.” This is what Canadian composer Daniel Janke had to say about his new Centredisques album. After Songs of Small Resistance in 2021, he has returned with three chamber music works and a solo piano work. We can only recommend this album. Listeners are charmed in the…

CD Review | Glass: Complete String Quartets – String Quartets Nos. 1-4 (Vol. 1) (ATMA Classique, 2022)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Orchestral, Strings

Glass: Complete String Quartets – String Quartets Nos. 1-4 (Vol. 1) Olga Ranzenhofer and Antoine Bareil, violin; Frédéric Lambert, alto; Pierre-Alain Bouvrette, cello ATMA Classique, 2022 This four-work album is an excellent start to Quatuor Molinari’s series on the string ensemble compositions of Philip Glass. Mishima, originally composed as the soundtrack for a film by the same name, is the most well-known of the works on the album, and the only one that tells a story. Quatuor Molinari’s violinists effortlessly transition between different melodies in Award Montage, which makes the listener feel like a storyteller is interweaving several narratives. After…