Monthly Archives: March 2016

Essential Opera: She’s the One

Season 6 Spring Performance: A Collage of Contemporary Opera Join us for “She’s the One” on Friday, April 8 at 7:30 pm! It’s a concert celebrating and exploring women’s lives through Canadian and American contemporary opera. Discounted early-bird tickets are available online till … Continue reading

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Questions for Peter Togni: Isis and Osiris

Peter Togni, a well-known name from his time on the CBC, also known as Peter-Anthony Togni, is a busy Canadian composer of spiritually rooted and contemplative music. You can read a detailed biography here.  Originally from Pembroke, Ontario, he currently … Continue reading

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Knocking at the Hellgate

While the Toronto Symphony has been doing New Creations Festival for a dozen years or so, things seem substantially different in 2016.  One of the comments I sometimes hear from my colleagues is a concern that when so many of … Continue reading

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Life is a social media exercise

Life is many things. It might be a dream – as in the title of the classic play Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (no relation)—but in the collective adaptation of that play that I experienced … Continue reading

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TSO’s happy midweek memorials

The second of the New Creations concerts by the Toronto Symphony Wednesday at Roy Thomson Hall was a wildly diversified program as Festival curator Brett Dean put a collaborative work by two Canadians between works by two Australian composers. Each … Continue reading

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The history of film music = the history of film

A friend of mine asked me to suggest a way to begin studying film music, knowing that I teach a course at the Royal Conservatory called Cinematic Music: How We Hear Film.  The course begins later in March. As a … Continue reading

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Questions about Life Is a Dream

Aleksandar Lukac aka Sasha Lukac is a director known on both sides of the Atlantic, a former Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Serbia who now teaches and directs in his own inimitable style at York University. I’ve had … Continue reading

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TSO – Fragile Absolute

The Toronto Symphony’s three-concert New Creations Festival launched in impressive fashion tonight, a spectacular variety of styles on display in a programme with the title “Fragile Absolute”. Before the interval felt like personal testimony from the festival’s curator Brett Dean. … Continue reading

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The Devil Inside

TAPESTRY OPERA presents THE DEVIL INSIDE A Co-commission & Co-production by Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales Libretto by Louise Welsh  Composed by Stuart MacRae Limited Run! March 10 – 13, 2016 Harbourfront Centre Theatre “It is one of the … Continue reading

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Opera as blood sport: the Hutcheons contra Regietheater

I raced at top speed, not from jungle to city but from one end of the U of T campus to the other after work, afraid I’d be late for the (lecture about) opera, somewhat like the hero of Werner … Continue reading

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