Aida by Request

Posted on June 26, 2016 by barczablog

I am doing something I’m not supposed to do.  I went to a concert more or less having made up my mind what I was going to say before the first note sounded.  It’s not because I’m prejudiced and lacking objectivity.

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William Shookhoff

Instead of talking about the performance I really wanted to talk about context, about the circumstances underlying tonight’s Aida, presented by Opera by Request.  As you may recall, I’ve reviewed them before, a rather unorthodox opera company run by Artistic Director William Shookhoff.

“By request” means just what you think.  Instead of a company whose programming and casting are driven by market forces, Shookhoff reverses the usual expectation.  Singers come to him wanting to undertake particular roles, although sometimes Shookhoff does pursue a singer.  But this company sometimes performs a valuable function, wonderfully illustrated by tonight’s concert.  Yes it was a concert, so not only were there no elephants, there was no chorus, nor orchestra nor set, nor any costumes either.  It was given for a relatively small audience of devoted listeners, likely drawn by the prospect of hearing the singers in new repertoire.

Here’s the thing.  The template one sees in opera companies –whether we speak of the Merola program in San Francisco, the Ensemble Studio here in Toronto with the Canadian Opera Company, or a host of other frameworks for young talent—is one with strengths and weaknesses.  This is a great way to give young singers a kind of paid apprenticeship, leading to a career.  It seems to be a great way to spot future Zerlinas or Figaros or Taminos, but when it comes to the bigger voices you need for a Verdi opera such as Aida..?

We’re told there’s a worldwide shortage of singers who can handle the roles in operas like Aida.  But maybe it’s the template that’s at fault, the philosophy of companies that select the wrong sort of talent, aiming to fill small parts.  To sing Aida or Radames or Amonasro or Amneris, you need to somehow hang around in the business until the voice comes around, until it’s ready to take on this heavier repertoire.  Some do people manage to hang around.  We’ve seen Christine Goerke, who had sung lighter roles for years, come to Toronto to undertake her first Brunnhildes.  Thank goodness she was able to wait for the changes in her voice.   We heard Sondra Radvanovsky sing a fabulous Aida a few years ago, opposite a weak Rhadames and a barking Amonasro.  Adrianne Pieczonka took on Amelia in Ballo in Maschera,  again a case of patiently waiting for the right time to take on a killer role.

What do you do if you’ve got a bigger voice, but don’t fit the ensemble template?  I don’t know!  It’s a scary question.  Some singers manage to stay in the business, while others continue singing intermittently, as their voices develop.  If you’re not singing regularly the development doesn’t happen the same way.  And so this is where Shookhoff and Opera by Request can play a useful role, at least for the singer, if not for the community at large.

I watched a production of Aida presented by a group of singers who are not singing with a big company such as the COC, perhaps not singing as often as they would wish.

  • Soprano Carrie Gray

    Soprano Carrie Gray

    Carrie Gray sang Aida, and was not at all daunted by this difficult role. Both of the big arias were musical highlights of the evening.  If she were singing more often she’d be better, but wow this was impressive, her legato smooth, her control solid.  I wish I could hear this voice more often.

  • Paul Williamson sang Rhadames, a voice that has grown in heft and colour since I last heard him. While he still has a very Italianate line, a splendid sound up top, he’s making a big big sound that matches Gray’s powerful voice.  This is a voice that would have improved the COC production had he been cast instead.
  • Michael Robert-Broder was for me the highlight of the show, speaking as someone who thinks Amonasro is the most interesting character in the opera. This is one of the prettiest readings of the role I’ve ever heard, a part that is sometimes barked (and again, this mellifluous singing would represent an improvement for the COC), which means that he gave us subtlety and even something verging on bel canto musicianship to which I am unaccustomed in this opera.
  • Ramona Carmelly was every inch the diva princess as Amneris, in a thoughtful performance that held nothing back, especially in her big scene in Act IV. This is a voice that could develop in several directions, as she has the top and low notes, and sang a huge role in a bluesy style a few months ago in the premiere of David Warrack’s Abraham.
  • Andrea Naccarato as the High Priestess made a huge impression in this small role.  I’ve heard Andrea sing “Un bel di”, so this was luxury casting, having such a powerful voice invoking the ancient god.

I have to wonder.  Would Jon Vickers or Maria Callas have managed to make it, to have a career had they come along in the opera world of the 21st century?  One would hope so.   But in the meantime, as the younger versions of Vickers and Callas sing as often as they can, seeking to make an impression, hoping for a career breakthrough, at the very least one can enjoy the voices in performances like this one.

For more information about Opera by Request click here.

Posted in Opera | Leave a comment

Lydia Perović’s All That Sang

Posted on June 24, 2016 by barczablog

Perhaps art is really a proposition. I’m not sure there’s much difference between the approaches we make to one another in our discourse or our intercourse, particularly when so many of the words we use for one, apply to the other.

I recall an amazing conversation I had long ago with a director who had begun to speak retrospectively as if taking a long valedictory victory lap, enjoying the sunshine before the expected onslaught of a major illness. He explained that he got into the theatre because there was someone he wanted to fuck, and yes that’s exactly how he said it, and he was sure that lots of people were in the arts for the same reason. At the time I giggled a little bit, to conceal my surprise but as the years have gone by I’ve started to notice that his statement has more than a little truth to it.

all_that_sangThat conversation came back with a vengeance while reading All That Sang, Lydia Perović’s recent novella. There’s a chicken-and-egg quality in some relationships, as we may wonder: did that couple become intimate first and collaborate later, or were they working together and only later ended up in the sack? The happy oblivion of desire means that people don’t necessarily do what logic or planning would dictate.

That I am speaking this way of All That Sang should tell you that I am fully engaged in its world and its loves, having bought into its narrative, fascinated by the way the book unfolds.

I am reminded of a conversation I had back in university, one that I recall regretting for how it showed my naivete. I’d read a short story about a cellist, and told the writer “I didn’t know you played the cello”.

“But i don’t” he told me matter of factly, while I picked my jaw up off the floor, and realized, oh yes, that’s why it’s called “fiction”, that’s what’s known as “writing”. I think the first mistake I’d made was in under-estimating that writer, someone I’d mistaken for a rock-n-roller without depth. Or maybe the problem was that at this point in my life, I casually underestimated lots of people (rockers and cellists alike), and needed to look deeper, and seek to understand.

I am taken back to this story because in reading All That Sang I recalled the expert descriptions of how to play the cello, and wondered whether I should assume it was all from a kind of expertise.   Of all the different sorts of prose in All That Sang¸ I don’t doubt Perović’s authority and expertise in the explorations of lesbian eroticism, both because she has more or less told me –excuse the euphemism here—that she plays the cello, and also because Incidental Music (another of her books) also demonstrated a comparable virtuosity.

As with Incidental Music, All That Sang takes us into a world that seems to be within Perović’s comfort zone. This time we’re not in the realm of opera but instead the symphony, but every move in the milieu into which we’re taken is made with confidence. This is a work of great self-assurance.

Every note is played with conviction, every word significant. But it’s a lightly Apollonian exercise, less Mahler than Satie, and one that leaves you in your right mind rather than stirred or intoxicated. All That Sang calls for admiration, leaving us with a strong sense of skill and the clarity of Perović’s purpose.

I keep coming back to that notion that there is an intersection in our second Chakra, that creativity and procreativity are related if not actually the same thing. All That Sang takes us to the ambiguous and conflicted heart of passion and amorous vulnerability, not flinching from the unpleasantness we sometimes encounter.  I’m reading it a second time, discovering additional depths and nuances.

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For further information & to purchase, click here to go to Véhicule Press’s website.

Posted in Books & Literature | 1 Comment

Gourmet Schnitzel House: look eastward, Toronto

Posted on June 22, 2016 by barczablog

I don’t want to provoke an argument, particularly not one of those regional disputes where someone tries to suggest one place is better than another. Toronto is a city full of neighbourhoods, ethnicities, communities, and nothing stands still because it’s a dynamic city. Not only is the skyline encumbered with construction cranes, testimony to the ongoing growth transforming the place, but every street has the capacity to confuse with new places. It’s impossible to keep up with them.

web_logTonight I’m writing about Gourmet Schnitzel House, the restaurant that’s earned a place in my heart and gulp maybe a place on my waistline as well. Tonight I overate, and while I started out thinking I’d pursue a path of moderation, I let my appetite get the better of me, sigh, again.

Maybe it’s because ancestral voices call to me, singing songs of my ancient home, Magyarország, aka Hungary. I don’t literally mean music, so much as the scents and sights on your plate that go with this breath-takingly simple menu. Everything they offer is executed brilliantly.

I can say that because I’ve tried them all.

Tonight I had their Cordon Bleu Schnitzel, other nights I’m having Goulash Soup, or Cabbage Rolls, or Chicken Paprikas. The schnitzel that’s made here is unlike any I’ve encountered in a Toronto Hungarian restaurant (and I’ve tried a great many). I’ve long been conflicted about Hungarian cuisine (someday we can discuss the mixed joys of Töpörtyű, something I never liked as a child). Most of the schnitzels I encountered around Toronto in Hungarian restaurants were a troubling experience, a celebration of the same fatty excess.

Imagine my joy to discover a new approach in the Gourmet Schnitzel House. These schnitzels are less fatty than any I’ve ever encountered because their process suspends them vertically, while they drip, losing most of their fat. They’re then served dry and crispy.

Ideal!

I was stunned at how beautifully the smoked ham and emmental mixed in my Schnitzel tonight, much subtler than other such Schnitzels I’ve encountered. I recall a dinner long ago at the Austrian House on Beverley (where I think the same one was called the “Franz Josef Schnitzel”), or Tarogato, or so many others, where I struggled to finish those greasy behemoths.

Madness! I didn’t slow down for a moment.  I had dessert too. I passed up the ice cream that could have decorated my warm Apple Strudel, and insanely finished off my wife’s Palacsinta too. The coffee accompanying dessert is the best coffee I’ve had in weeks, muscular without any bitterness.

Such are the blessings of this little corner of Toronto, the Cliffside – Bluffs part of Scarborough. Gourmet Schnitzel House can be found on Kingston Rd a couple of blocks west of Midland, licensed. Here’s their website where you can view the menu, hours and contact information.

Posted in Food, Health and Nutrition | Leave a comment

Divergent objectives from TSO

Posted on June 12, 2016 by barczablog

For awhile now the Toronto Symphony has been offering a series of concerts organized around ten-year periods of history, in other words, their Decades Project. Some have been more illuminating than others, but for me tonight’s pairing was especially powerful, seeming to illustrate a kind of musical fork in the road.

As Peter Oundjian described it, you could see one part of the concert pointing to the past, and the other to the future. One work portrayed the tenderest emotions. The other? human sacrifice. One enacted a secret program rather than anything explicit, while the other was as subtle as being hit by a stick. One gave us a concerto, a celebration of foregrounded virtuosity, while the other subsumed all skill into the total effect. Or in other words, we began with Elgar’s Violin Concerto played by James Ehnes, and concluded with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, both works conducted by Oundjian.

James Ehnes, Peter Oundjian 3 (Emma Badame photo)

James Ehnes violin, Peter Oundjian, leading the Toronto Symphony (photo: Emma Badame)

The contrast between the two works made this the best Decades program yet in my opinion.

When I turned on my laptop after getting home, I googled “effect of heat on acoustics”, seeing a few links confirming my suspicions: that both heat and humidity can make things totally wonky especially in the realm of classical music.

I did so because

  • this was the warmest TSO concert I’ve ever attended, a day with ambient temperatures around 30, and a humidex even higher.
  • There were some very strange effects in the hall

In the first movement of the concerto at times the TSO was drowning out the soloist even though he had lots of sound, plenty of oomph to his playing, particularly on his higher strings. I couldn’t help wondering whether Oundjian –standing a few feet away from Ehnes—could possibly have heard what we heard, sitting in the mezzanine. At times it was more a concerto for violin vs orchestra. I smiled when we got to the third movement passages where the orchestra gets out of the way, quiets down for some exquisite cadenzas, masterfully played. I’ve always heard Oundjian lead with great sensitivity, himself a violinist who surely cares about the result. I have to think he’s undone by Roy Thomson Hall, a space that tonight had the oddest effects. At times the strings –who are assembled downstage, closest to us—seemed to be a big pool of woofy sound enveloping everyone else, making all other details (eg woodwind solos) emerge as though coming through a fog.

Ditto with Le Sacre, and sacre bleu I might have said (an epithet I recall from childhood in comical send-ups, showing a French person cursing: and please excuse me that I have no idea what it actually means when you say this!). The same effect at times concealed finer details that should have been able to emerge. Oundjian seemed to lead a very committed performance, although at times the strings were all that was coming through, as even the massive brass was seeming remote, distant, as their fat sounds were clearly coming from way upstage, rather than emerging properly. The bass & kettle drums seemed to be the only ones who could cut through but that’s likely because they’re playing in an entirely different register, so low that they’re not clogged up by anyone else’s sonic residues.

Even so the audience ate it up, making me wonder if they were hearing something substantially different. Ehnes played superbly, the orchestra especially sympathetic in the last two movements.

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews | Leave a comment

Rite of Survival: a cheap drunk’s view

Posted on June 11, 2016 by barczablog

Let me first explain myself, why I’d admit (or even boast) that I’m a cheap drunk. Anyone wanting to cut to the part about the beer and avoid the theoretical talk, please skip down to the pictures.

Our culture associates the consumption of alcohol with the rites of passage leading to adult-hood, whereby we prove or fail to prove ourselves. Drink a lot and you’re a man, right? (plug in the appropriate gender- and culture-appropriate descriptors and epithets as needed).

The usual assumption is that sophistication and experience, possibly in the company of maturity, are more or less parallel, while naivete and inexperience, encumbered by youth, stumble along, clutching one another for mutual support. That’s the conventional wisdom.

Yet I am a long-time advocate of innocence, Pollyanna rejecting the trappings of wisdom even as s/he seeks a kind of enlightenment. Those of us hoping to quiet the mind may mistake alcohol for a pathway to nirvana. Before entangling you in too many contradictions, let me simply say—mangling a bit of Shakespeare in the process—that the fault lies not in our contradictory goals (such as the achievement of nirvana and the quiet mind, amidst too much stimulation) but in our logic that can’t handle contradiction & complexity. A child regularly expects to be dazzled and overwhelmed, whereas those of us chasing PhDs and assorted academic /professional laurels, may assume that someday we may achieve clarity, like the pompous teachers we recall. But this is an illusion, the clarity being a performance rather than real wisdom. Life is full of contradictions, not clear like Bauhaus but messy and shadowy as Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro (a word I love as much for its wacky phonetics as its intimations of things I can’t quite see or fathom. I am reminded suddenly of Professor Douglas Chambers at Trinity College, whose lectures were themselves a bit impenetrable in their verbal chiaroscuro, parts of his discourse eluding me like heads ducking into the shadows). In emulating the innocent child, the student looking up at the light rather than the expert talking down to his followers, I model an attitude. A cheap drunk? This is one who is no hardened drinker, eager to be moved-delighted rather than callused and impervious to sensation. It’s the reason I laugh too loudly at some shows, but also cry uncontrollably. Doug Chambers also used the word “sensibility”, to speak of an attitude celebrated by the Romantics that has resonance for me to this day, a readiness to feel and a preference to drop my defenses, given that those defenses may tend to prevent or even preclude joy.

And of course this sounds so pretentious that you’d be right to say “get that man a drink” (and anyone wanting to scream “S.T.F.U.”simply stopped reading. One of the great things about social media is how we’re all preaching to the choir. Anyone who disagrees would simply close the page and go elsewhere).

Still here? Thanks.

Friday was a vacation day, and a morning after. I’d seen Die Fledermaus and stayed up late writing about it, prolonging the sensations (I wasn’t kidding when I said I was star-struck in the review…) even as my caffeinated brain refused to let me go off into sleep even at 2 a.m. Next morning’s breakfast had included eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, cheesecake and scotch. After a walk to the grocery store, it was time for yard work, dealing with a mucky pond (speaking of chiaroscuro). We’d had our moments of hedonism, balanced with the walking and shoveling.

We needed to re-balance with more hedonism.

John Lennon might have said “beer is the answer”, or perhaps he did when he was young.

Hanging around home I turned to something I’d purchased from the Beer Store at the instigation of a very friendly & capable young sales agent (i will thank her next time i see her by buying more of the same product). Knowing that I had a guest from abroad, I was advised to buy a sampler, giving us the makings of a beer tasting, the ideal way to relax on a backyard patio after cleaning the muck out of a pond. Muskoka Brewery has created this fascinating box of fun & games, their SURVIVAL Sampler. Six beers, two bottles of each.

survival_six

Six different beers: SURVIVAL Sampler from Muskoka Brewery

I had opened the pack and then shoved them into the fridge without really paying close attention.  I had noticed that wow there were several different varieties.

Now?  I grabbed the first one to come to hand. Hm… Mad Tom. What a curious name for a beer. It was the closest and the bright red caught my eye.

What we then chose to do, as I looked more closely at the box, was entirely an innocent exercise, as we hid in the shade with beer. We took six bottles, one of each type, and, dividing each in two (a medium sized glass for each of us from each bottle), proceeded to rate them. As we’re going to hear Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps tonight with the Toronto Symphony, (aka “Rite of Spring”) you could call it a “Rite of Survival” for our SURVIVAL Sampler. It was only after trying a couple that the idea of a comparison emerged, a tasting exercise. For me, the more innocent activity isn’t tasting but drinking, consuming.

And becoming inebriated. (see headline)

It’s especially funny in light of where we started, our friend Mad Tom.

But more about Tom in a moment. Let me simply identify the survival six, in their “Survival Sampler”.

• Mad Tom
• Kirby’s Kölsch
• Cream ale
• Detour
• Summerweiss
• Craft Lager

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What the Survival Sampler box tells you

So let me take you along for our taste-test.

Mad Tom happened to be the strongest beer of the six. I wish I’d known, but maybe that’s just it. It was a gentle echo of the mystique of Brador, the epic beer of my youth that at one time you couldn’t get in Ontario. Speaking of rites of manhood, traveling to a different province was once necessary to get a stronger beer. Later we could get things like Black Ice to name a strong beer that I used to consume regularly. Black Ice is just over 6 % (regular beer = 5% while light beers are usually around 4%) but Tom is stronger still at 6.3%.

But thirsty people sitting down to their first beer after yard work may have trouble calibrating the strength of their beverage, especially if they inhale their half of a Mad Tom in one mad gulp.

Next up was the oddest of the six, something called “Kirby’s Kölsch”.

They tell us it has a hint of peach, which I didn’t mind. But it’s not like the other. Aha, I see how tasting and comparing all these beers may lead one from the realm of innocence into something like sophistication, as I googled the word “kölsch” to try to understand how this brew is different. Ah but that’s something I did the next day (writing), trying to recollect this process from a sober (and hungover) vantage point.

In all honesty, yesterday? I expected that I might write something that led parabolically into a drunken rant, as I became wackier and wackier. Instead of (say) Diary of a Madman which becomes progressively less coherent, it would be an irrational stream of consciousness to match the eventual stream of something else when I went to the bathroom, to return the brew(s) to the source.

Let me simply say that KK was not universally loved like Mad Tom, with the result that it would end up at the end of the rating of 6 bottles. It’s hard to rate things when your brain is a moving target, your taste-buds changing every few minutes. You might enjoy trying this yourself even if it’s less an academic – scientific thing and more of a parlour game. I think KK would have done better had it not followed the unassailable Tom.

The third bottle to be sampled was well-received as the first, the Muskoka Cream Ale. We were off in a reverie of ales, as I recalled how I’d begun my undergraduate pub life drinking Molson Ex, an Ale drinker who also enjoyed many other ales (hmm was Brador an ale?), before morphing into the bizarre dilettante who now sits at his laptop, recalling his drinking yesterday. This was to be #2 in our list, likely the best tasting but only edged out by Tom due to his hefty alcohol content.

Size matters, and never let anyone tell you differently.

Then came beer #4 and how apt to see something called DETOUR… I recognized even before I opened it that yes we needed a bit of a detour because we were getting hammered pretty fast in the afternoon heat.

And so I went to grab something from the kitchen to eat. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast (the afore-mentioned eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, cheesecake and scotch, plus tomatoes, strawberries, toast and coffee), admittedly a feast stretching from 10 to 11 am.

logoAs we sat lunching at 4:30 pm, looking but not touching the Detour, as we took a bit of a non-alcoholic detour, we wandered off the path. I thought back to Muskoka, a place a bit beyond my family’s price-range, where a couple of my classmates had owned properties, a place giving its name to an iconic chair that appears on the label of the beer (see?).

We had company in the yard, between the four different chipmunks (meaning chipmunks of different size who circled around as though they wanted some of our beer), assorted birds & squirrels, the breeze and the obbligato car-horns (“obbligato” as in unavoidable and undeniable in our urban setting). Salami, swiss cheese, and rye bread gave us a bit of a break and put something other than beer inside us.

And then it was time to get back on the road with the Detour, if you will excuse my apparent contradiction. Wow, this has to be the best light beer I’ve ever encountered. Being a bit on the drunk side didn’t hurt. This is one of the best times to drink a light beer, like the smaller personal risk for the gambler seeking to stay in the game without going bust.  Ah but there’s the risk. Like the smoker consuming twice as many light cigarettes than the normal ones, we inhaled the light Detour, losing any advantage it might have conferred upon us.

Number five was Summerweiss, another departure. We were still in the brewer’s realm but this tasted like none of the others, an edgy and quirky taste, wacky with its wheat flavour, somewhat sour and truly unlike any other beer. But it’s refreshing all the same.

Our last bottle was the Craft Lager, possibly a brew beyond the capabilities of our taste-buds at this point. Were we now only susceptible to high alcohol? I found it bland, especially compared to the quirkier flavours of Summerweiss. If we did this the way professional tasters did it –a little taste and spit it out—maybe we’d have a different response but this was primarily fun fun fun, a recreational activity. We weren’t tasting, we were drinking.

I have to recommend this. We had two people drinking and discussing as we rated our Survival Six, but this could work for many more: so long as you have lots more beer to compare. For us this was an innocent activity, not really about identifying who is good or bad, so much as a fun way to enjoy some beer on a summer’s day.
http://shop.muskokabrewery.com/

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Posted in Food, Health and Nutrition, Personal ruminations & essays | 2 Comments

Good-time Fledermaus from Opera 5

Posted on June 10, 2016 by barczablog

Let’s set aside the yard-sticks of excellence that critics use.  I went to see Die Fledermaus tonight in its new immersive Opera 5 Production. Although I was the designated driver I was totally immersed. It was fun even though I only had one beer.

It was one of those nights when I was laughing so loud I got funny looks from the lady standing beside me. Hm, that’s odd isn’t it, that we were standing?

aerial

A lucky photo i took with my phone of aerialist Jamie Holmes: not precisely your usual operetta.

Let me phrase it differently, even though I did not get drunk but still am in an altered reality, a bit star-struck, and energized by lots of belly laughter.

You know you’ve had a good time when:

  • You not only wish that you were in the show as a participant but somehow could slip into the world they’re representing onstage
  • You are going back through the photos you took –and when was the last time you were at an opera shooting photos, let alone a hundred or so?—and are surprised by joy, recalling a moment from earlier in the show
  • You wish you weren’t saddled with the role of designated driver, unable to take advantage of the free beer.

Ah yes let me repeat that last one. Yes there is free beer, courtesy of Steam Whistle Brewery. The cast sing their praises a few times (mini-ads?) during the operetta.

beer

Chips & beer at the opera?

As one of the more sober persons present I promise you that our enjoyment was genuine rather than drunken, even if the beverages do help remove inhibitions.

I had heard of the premise: that after the exposition of Act I, we are (mostly) standing for Act II, chairs removed to encourage us to mingle with the show. And then when the cops show up for the last scene we’re put behind caution tape, a simple little device as modern as an episode of CSI.

caution_tape

Standing or sitting behind the caution tape

For the last two acts we’re functioning in the round, with audience on all sides, watching performers fully exposed while singing, dancing and/or acting. There’s so much going on you never know where to look. In addition to a talented set of principals, we have a full chorus as well as a series of additional performers.

Oh my. The story is told well enough, the music is spectacular, joyous and full of life, yet it’s really a big happening. Yes Act II is meant to be a party but wow this was real, including aerials, burlesque and dance to go with a few performances from the players we’ve already met.

For the past five years a series of small companies have been competing for attention on the Toronto scene. For the most part Against the Grain have seemed to be the most accomplished, certainly as far as their ability to maintain a consistently high level musically & dramatically, including A Little Too Cozy, their most recent transladaptation. Now Opera 5 step up to the plate with Fledermaus, a show bursting with ideas, beauty, and charisma, that doesn’t just answer, but would be my choice for the most interesting show from a Toronto opera company this year even if it’s not precisely an opera: and that’s not just the free beer talking.  And who would have expected it..? Operetta is really the same form as the musical, although no one would mistake Fledermaus for Assassins or Light in the Piazza, to mention two of the more adventurous examples of the form.  What we saw and heard was something far more daring.

There’s plenty of credit to be had for the overall effect, a fun deconstruction of the space in the tradition of Brecht, even if old Bert might have some qualms about the show’s politics (as the only thing even a bit Marxist was the beer for all, a celebration of something capitalist). Opera 5 Artistic Director Aria Umezawa clearly knew what she was doing in her stage direction and in the translation she created. The bold choice to broaden the disciplines from just singing in Act II is totally legit (lest any purist claim that an operetta can’t include burlesque or aerialists), and one of the most sure-handed bits of stage-craft I’ve seen in a long time. While I admired what I heard coming from Johannes Debus, once you get past the pit & the musical presentation, there was nothing from the COC this year with the confident swagger of this show.

Alongside Umezawa I want to mention Jennifer Nichols, whose choreography goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen in an opera. The only thing I can compare it to is the few times in amateur musicals or a church choir where we’re working with people who don’t sing. Nichols creates a world populated by dancers and amateurs alike, graceful and empowered whether they’re in dancing shoes or not. I’m reminded of Pina Bausch whose wonderfully moral influence can be seen in Nichols’ willingness to work with bodies of every age, shape, and fitness level, a democratic world that’s genuinely representative of everyone and not just the elite few.  [morning after addendum: recalling Madison Angus as Ida, whose party performance was one of my favourite moments in the show, a fit of choreography against choreography that was like an answer to anyone –like me– who finds virtuosity troubling.  Conventional dance, emulating other  sorts of romantic virtuoso display seems to proclaim “look at me, i’m better than you”. Nichols seems to offer a loving alternative, untroubled by any skills deficiencies, and using attitude above all.  It’s the most curious mix of edgy (when Ida gets heckled for her faux dance) and forgiving (her response: because she can handle it) that i’ve ever encountered, but that’s not a contradiction. It’s adulthood.]

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The small orchestra led by Patrick Hansen matched the theatre at 918 Bathurst beautifully. For Act I, most of which is played up on the stage at one end, the acoustics were at times a little difficult, the text sometimes lost in the space’s reverb. But once the show came into the middle of the space, my gosh what a difference, as everyone sang full out right in front of us, and fearlessly.  Umezawa kept the different constellations of bodies moving to ensure that everyone played out in all directions, so that we were all included.

There were many splendid performances to enjoy. Rachel Krehm as Rosalinda enjoyed the comical oversize costume elements that were part of the Brechtian design scheme by Matthew Vaile. We’re put into a self-conscious self-reflexive sort of world at times resembling cabaret, yet the singing was full-out operatic, Krehm rising every time to the powerful high notes without losing her sense of fun. Julie Ludwig as Adele was every bit as good in her singing, while Michael Barrett as Eisenstein came into his own once he started to play several levels of inebriation at the party scene. It was great to hear Keith Lam’s warm baritone, camping it up as a flamboyant Dr Falke, alongside the brilliant physical comedy of Geoffrey Penar as Frank. Erin Lawson was a highly original Orlofsky, while Justin Ralph was a modern version of the foppish Alfred, complete with pop – song references.

ONE_WEB-200x300I should mention, too, the ways in which Fledermaus flies free of the operetta tradition. There’s the persona of Pearle Harbour played by Justin Miller (must be Canadian with that spelling), aerialist Jamie Holmes and burlesque artist Rubie Magnitude. A pair of dancers—Drew Berry and Lily McEvenue—raised the bar (no pun intended) in several numbers.

There are two more performances of Opera 5’s Die Fledermaus at 918 Bathurst St. Friday & Saturday nights.  Don’t miss it!

Posted in Music and musicology, Opera, Reviews | 1 Comment

Tapestry’s Winner

Posted on May 28, 2016 by barczablog

The DH Lawrence short story The Rocking Horse Winner is a recognizable image of modern life. I’m sad to say that I know people like this mother for whom no amount of money is ever enough, whose son’s mysterious gift (knowing which horse will win makes money for his family) offers her the possibility of wealth, even if happiness continues to elude her.

Tonight Tapestry Opera previewed an adaptation co-produced with Scottish Opera, libretto by Anna Chatteron and music by Gareth Williams, work of deceptive simplicity. I’m tempted to call it minimalistic in its spare writing that at times offers pattern music we’ve heard from composers such as Glass and Adams, firmly in the tonal realm. Sometimes we’re hearing waltzing rhythms apt for the fantasies of such a woman, sometimes sounds that are child-like in their simplicity. Every word comes through clearly in this production offered without surtitles.

The first line of the opera is enacted as a kind of significant form. Ava, the mother sings “Nothing is as it should be”, while she is seated at the piano, having displaced the piano player who was there earlier (and later).

What could be a clearer illustration?

[a thought i am adding the morning after, having tossed and turned with this: that the set by Camellia Koo and the stage picture is wonderfully complex. We have a piano upstage right with a piano player, and a small ensemble upstage left. Is the piano part of the set and the world of the characters, or part of the orchestra? The ambiguity is one of several undercurrents in the show, as though genuine feeling insinuates itself through a surface of lies, or perhaps a life without clear boundaries, leading to the confusion of roles and values]

The chord against which she sings will be heard at the end of the opera, closing the circle as perfectly as in such operas as Pelléas et Mélisande, another opera where both the main female protagonist and her music are static. She and her music resist change between the first and last time we encounter her.

There’s another moment like this roughly in the middle of the opera, when her son Paul asks her why she sings only sad songs. Not only does she resist this, but she bangs on the piano. Needless to say, her son –who had been under the body of the piano—is overwhelmed with the sound, and scared off.  I don’t know if this is something in the opera or something added by director Michael Mori, but it’s unmistakeble in its simplicity.

The house – which is like a perverse Greek chorus, giving vent to her materialist fantasies—is enacted as The House: a group of four singers prodding her like a sick superego. I had wondered how the story would make the transition to opera, given that fiction will speak to us quietly on the page, but collides with the blatancy of theatre. Putting something symbolic onstage may fail horribly. This is where opera can help a text overcome the resistance of an audience. In the story it is the unspoken message that “there must be more money”, made explicit in the words sung by The House. It may be obvious (like the banging of the piano that terrifies the boy, as i mentioned) but that’s how opera works. I’m glad to see a score unafraid to make use of the simplest techniques of opera, working exactly the way opera is supposed to work. I’ve seen recent pieces in Toronto that are influenced by film & spoken theatre, becoming too subtle, too unwilling to approach the blatancy that opera requires.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw & heard in this preview. I’d read something in a press release telling me that the boy was to be made older than in the DH Lawrence story, a prospect to make me shake my head sadly at an apparent lack of faith in the original. But when I saw the show tonight I wondered if they found their way back to the original story. We can’t really tell how old this boy is.

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Carla Huhtanen (left at the piano) and Asitha Tennekoon in Rocking Horse Winner. (photo: Dahlia Katz)

Of course he’s played by an adult, namely Asitha Tennekoon, in an intensely obsessive portrayal. I feel sad that this is even an issue. Nobody blinks when we put a 40 or 50 year old soprano onstage to play Butterfly, a fifteen year old. We accept people singing their stories in opera. It’s not a great leap to go from there to accept this man playing a boy, especially when he does such an effective job. The character dynamics between mother and son as Lawrence wrote come through beautifully in this take on the story.

Carla Huhtanen enacted a fascinating mix of frailties as singer, actor and even pianist. Ava isn’t a very likeable person, yet I was moved, able to understand the boy’s love of his champagne-drinking mom.

At an hour the opera is the perfect length, the drama building gradually. Keith Klassen as Paul’s uncle and Peter McGillivray as Bassett (who is something like a butler or teacher), play vital parts in framing the story while helping to show us Paul’s special talent. Jordan de Souza led a small ensemble that were always supportive, never covering the singers, making a great case for Williams’ setting of the libretto.

Rocking Horse Winner runs until June 4th at Berkeley Street Theatre—Downstairs.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | Leave a comment

Popular genius: John Williams as seen by Steven Reineke

Posted on May 18, 2016 by barczablog

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that tonight’s season-concluding Toronto Symphony Pops Concert, featuring the film music of John Williams conducted by Steven Reineke, played to a full house clamoring for more.

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Conductor Steven Reineke (photo: Michael Tammaro)

And yet I was surprised.  Film music is the hot new thing in the symphonic world, as orchestras are programming films with live scores all over, including our TSO who played Psycho, Vertigo (as part of tiff) and Back to the Future with live accompaniments.   The music may not be new, but the orchestra’s enthusiastic embrace of this repertoire surely is new, especially when they have a champion like Reineke.

While Reineke lives in the parallel universe of pops concerts distinct from the more lofty objectives of the orchestra he performs an important function, as a kind of curator / teacher.  Tonight’s concert was an intriguing mix of pure gratification in a few hugely popular selections alongside some more obscure choices reflecting Reineke’s own interests, as he explained recently.

In the first part of the concert we heard excerpts from Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Hook, and Jurassic Park.  It’s a powerful exercise to lift these scores out of their films, and play them without the visuals.  I wish we could see the films without the music, so that people could see just how much of their emotional response is created in the music.

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Hm is that the Mother Ship from Close Encounters?

With the music of Jaws, one of the best-known themes, that thing we sing when we joke about something scary (that back and forth between adjacent notes) misses so much more that we can’t quite replicate, especially the brass.

I was very pleased to be able to listen to some of ET’s score alongside Close Encounters, music that in some resembles two sides of the same coin.  With ET we have a film about children, whereas C.E. is more a film about the child in us, even as its score is full of adventurous & dissonant touches.

I pause here to note that even in a concert sampling eleven films scored by Williams, that some of my favourites are missing (JFK? The Patriot? Home Alone? Always? Superman? Harry Potter? Empire of the Sun? War of the Worlds?).  But some of my favourites are certainly here.  Hook, to be sure, and then we come to that amazing theme from Jurassic Park.  I was musing as I stood at the urinal during intermission, listening to people humming tunes from the first part of the concert while peeing (surrendering to one impulse, they give in to another).  I was struck by how remarkable that first big tune is in Jurassic Park.  Did Spielberg tell him to create something staggering, stunning, breath-takingly beautiful?  When you think about it, yes it’s a movie about dinosaurs with unprecedented CGI. But it’s above all a film that unexpectedly balances a reverence for these creatures, the miracle of bringing them to life, with the horror of what they can do.  Would we be as impressed by those images without Williams’ stirring tune?

In the second half Reineke dared to probe a little deeper before offering us what we’d presumably paid to hear.  Three different examples showed us something unexpected from Williams, in portraits of diverse nationalities:

  • The Jewish sounds of Schindler’s List
  • The English echoes in the score for War Horse, that Reineke unpacked for us, in speaking of echoes of Vaughan Williams and Elgar
  • The Americana in Lincoln, this time via echoes of Copland

And then it was time for Star Wars music, first via episode IV, and then in music from the recent film.  You’d think we were at a Rolling Stones concert listening to “Sympathy for the Devil”, in other words, the crowd went wild.   I could mention that the concert is being repeated twice on Wednesday May 18th (2:00 and again at 8:00 pm). If you’re curious here’s the link. 

Of course we had to have an encore, which took us back to episode IV, for a wonderfully jazzy arrangement of the music from the bar.

Next season there will be more film music including a few more films with live accompaniment.  I can’t wait. What would be really radical –and totally awesome– would be to give Reineke a chance to program a concert or two as part of the main season rather than in the “Pops” category.  What if he gave us a suite from The Mission or one of the spaghetti westerns, with scores by Ennio Morricone, perhaps alongside some of Herrmann’s music from the Hitchcock thrillers…? And there’s so much more I can imagine, including Rota, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Glass and many other legit composers who ventured into the cinematic world.

I couldn’t help noticing the delight the orchestra took in this music. And it’s contagious.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Music and musicology, Reviews | 1 Comment

10 Questions for Danny Ghantous: Lemon

Posted on May 15, 2016 by barczablog

Danny Ghantous is a recent graduate of Ryerson University’s Performance Acting program, and recently starred as Sadiq in Factory Theatre’s acclaimed production of A Line in the Sand directed by Nigel Shawn Williams.

“It will take me a long time to shake the images of recent Ryerson graduate Ghantous’ imploring, too-eager-to-please smile”
– Karen Fricker, Toronto Star
“As Sadiq, Danny Ghantous has the poise of a pro.”
– Lynn Slotkin, The Slotkin Letter

Next up, Danny’s preparing for the screwball comedy Lemon, to open May 25th with Filament Incubator. I took the opportunity to check in with Danny to ask a few questions.

1-Are you more like your father or your mother?

If I had to choose I would say I’m more like my mother, but I’m discovering everyday as I mature, how I am slowly becoming more and more like my father. I think I like to think of myself as more akin to my mother because of her creative eye and intuition. She’s a former graphic designer, a current hobbyist of jewellery design and has a keen eye for aesthetic. Whereas my father, as an engineer, is very logical, precise and careful. Nonetheless I think I carry the Arab passion that is imbued within them both and it translates in my personality and my work.

In terms of theatre and acting in general, my parents have no idea where I get it from. I think it came from the fact that I was raised in many different countries by quite reclusive and very safe parents who seldom had me playing outside or meeting new friends, so I planted myself in front of a television (theatre in Egypt was limited to the occasional private school production, usually of fairy tales). The shows and films I watched shaped my view of the world, and how society and people worked. I idolized the fantasies and relationships I saw on the screen and I wanted to be a part of them. Wanting to act, create art and perform wasn’t form of escape but rather, a means of inclusion.

Danny Ghantous

Danny Ghantous

2-What is the best thing about being an actor?

The play. In the sense of playing around. With the words, the relationships, the minute details, the history, the story and the means of communicating it all to the audience. I find play both in the physical and emotional work on stage, as well as the long discussions at the table. The act of creative collaborations and discussions, allowing the ensemble as a whole to shape the product, is what excites me the most.

3-Who do you like to listen to or watch?

If you’re referring to music, I listen to artists from so many different genres, from rock, to hip-hop, to funk, to jazz, to classical music and more. I love discovering new music, and I’m always searching for more (unless its country or pop, no offence, I just don’t prefer it). Some artists I really like right now include Anderson .Paak, Hiatus Kaiyote, Kaytranada, Skepta, Hop Along, Kendrick Lamar and Courtney Barnett. If you’re referring to people in general, then I would say just people in general. Walking along the streets of Toronto you come across a lot of different characters. Keeping an ear out for how they speak and what they say informs you of the people in your community. Which, as an actor, can actually help you develop characters, based off of real living people. As well, I love to hear artists talk within and about their craft. Getting the chance to be in a rehearsal space with a director and actors, and seeing the way they shape the actions and story, is mesmerizing.

4- What ability or skill do you wish you had that you don’t have?

I wish I could play an instrument. I always wanted to my entire life, but I just can’t seem to buckle down with an instrument long enough to learn enough. My dream is to be able pick up or sit down to an instrument and play whatever music is in my head without thinking about it.

5-When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?

Eat. I love food. Discovering new restaurants and cuisines around the city, and also trying new recipes to cook at home gets me really excited. There’s always a sense of play in my kitchen.

Danny Ghantous

Danny Ghantous

Some more about Lemon with Filament Incubator

1- Please talk about your connection to Filament Incubator.

I became involved with Lemon after one of its co-founders, Aaron Jan, saw me at a reading for another show and asked me to audition for Filament Incubator’s second show in their season. When Aaron sent me the sides to the script, the energetic writing and the pace throughout the scenes genuinely excited me. I came out, feverish and suffering through the flu at the time, and by some miracle they saw something in my approach to Dennis as a character.

2- I found this description of Lemon:
Desperate to retain her potential after courting a barren, post-college job market, Liz opens a lemonade stand on her parents’ front lawn. It wouldn’t be so bad, if her high school fling wasn’t determined to rekindle feelings between them, and her eight-year-old competition wasn’t willing to go to any length to ensure her downfall. A biting satire of a downtrodden economy, Lemon is a tale of dog-eat-dog-eat-dog.
…Please talk about Lemon and what attracts you to the play.

These days a university degree is becoming less and less valuable in the job market. There are thousands of people coming out of these institutions who aren’t able to find work in their field. As a recent university graduate I understand this reality all too well. When I read Lemon I could see the thoughts and fears of my generation come to light through satire. Lemon excellently showcases the struggles of post-graduation, of love, of power and of potential.

3- A famous quote says “Dying’s easy, comedy is hard.” Talk about Lemon, as an opportunity to play comedy and why it’s so hard.

I think considering my darker features and looming, broad body, I got used to being cast as very villainous characters. So any time I am given the opportunity to play a character that doesn’t have a blood lust, I get very nervous. The implicit difficulty in playing any comedy is both the necessity for the appropriate response from the audience and at the same time not playing the comedy. I say this in the sense that if you play any joke, as an actor, acknowledging its humour, the joke falls flat. Getting to play Dennis is both a challenge and a pleasure. He has the power to be optimistic even in the face of complete failure. And though it can seemingly come off as ridiculous, as an actor I have to always come back finding how all of his actions, ideas and decisions are grounded in a real, desperate will to push forward.

4- Talk about this project in context with your recent experience in Factory Theatre’s A Line in the Sand, universally well-received and a totally different kind of project.

After reading Lemon for the first time in its entirety, I immediately saw the similarities between Dennis and Sadiq, my character from A Line in the Sand. Both exemplify this desperate need to break free of the cycle that they feel they are they are trapped in. They both cling to their will as a coping mechanism and a means of survival. I learned so much from A Line in the Sand, from all the people involved, and it has helped my process as an actor, immensely, especially throughout the rehearsal process for Lemon. Getting the opportunity now to work and create new and exciting works with young artists excites me for the world I am entering into.

Danny Ghantous (left) and Morgan David in Factory Theatre's recent A Line in the Sand (photo: Dahlia Katz)

Danny Ghantous (left) and Morgan David Jones in Factory Theatre’s recent A Line in the Sand (photo: Dahlia Katz)

5-Is there a teacher or influence you’d like to acknowledge?

I would like to thank every teacher at The Ryerson Theatre School, or as it is now called The Ryerson School of Performance. To Perry Schneiderman, to Marianne McIsaac to Cynthia Ashperger, to Philippa Domville, to Ian Watson, to Sheldon Rosen, to Irene Pauzer, to Leah Cherniak, to Diana Reis, to David Warrack, to Allen Cole, to John Boylan, to Patrick Robinson, to Vicki St. Denys, to Rafal Sokolowski, to Steve Wilsher and more, I thank you all for your hard work, dedication and patience. As well I would like to thank Diana Yassin, wherever you are, thank you for seeing something in me that I never thought would spring. Lastly I would like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Bob Anderson and Ms. Carole Anderson. Without whom, I would have no voice, and who taught me, through music and choir, some of the most important lessons that I still use in my approach to acting.

*****

Danny Ghantous stars in Andrew Markowiak’s Lemon produced by Filament Incubator from May 25th until June 5th with LeeAnn Ball and Julia Hussey. For tickets click .

LEMON

Written and Directed by Andrew Markowiak
Presented by Filament Incubator

Starring Danny Ghantous, Julia Hussey, and LeeAnn Ball
Set Design by Cass Brennan
Sound Design by Wesley McKenzie
Photography by Jordan Laffrenier
Publicity Video by Andrew Pieroni

Onstage: May 25th-June 5th
Preview: May 25th
Opening: May 26th

Showdates:
May 25th – 29th @ 8 PM
June 1st – 5th @ 8 PM

Venue: Majlis Art Garden (163 Walnut Ave)

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Interviews | Leave a comment

Questions for Steven Reineke: the film music of John Williams at the TSO

Posted on May 15, 2016 by barczablog

Steven Reineke is a pops conductor, an arranger, a composer, and very busy all over North America, as Music Director of The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, Principal Pops Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Principal Pops Conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Principal Pops Conductor Designate of the Houston Symphony. Reineke has collaborated with a range of leading artists from the worlds Hip Hop, Broadway, television and rock including: Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Sutton Foster, Megan Hilty, Cheyenne Jackson, Wayne Brady, Peter Frampton and Ben Folds, amongst others. As the creator of more than one hundred orchestral arrangements for the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Mr. Reineke’s work has been performed worldwide, and can be heard on numerous Cincinnati Pops Orchestra recordings on the Telarc label. His symphonic works Celebration Fanfare, Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Casey at the Bat are performed frequently in North America, including performances by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His Sun Valley Festival Fanfare was used to commemorate the Sun Valley Summer Symphony’s pavilion, and his Festival Te Deum and Swan’s Island Sojourn were debuted by the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops Orchestras. His numerous wind ensemble compositions are published by the C.L. Barnhouse Company and are performed by concert bands worldwide.

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Conductor Steven Reineke (photo: Adrian Mendoza)

Reineke will be leading the Toronto Symphony this week in a program of film music by John Williams, arguably the real genius behind the Star Wars films, and a composer of many great scores.  I had to ask him a few questions.

1. How did you become you? What were the early influences on you?

Well as with anybody, especially in a creative, artistic field, I think there’s more than just one person that you take training from and influence from. My earliest influence I would say was my father. From the time I can first remember until I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, my dad, who was a banker – it was his profession his whole career – would sit on the edge of my bed with his guitar and play his guitar and sing me to sleep almost every night. That instilled in me a very early love and passion for music – in particular a lot of popular folk music, because it was the music that he would play, was the music of John Denver; Peter, Paul and Mary; Harry Chapin; and the like. And that was a very early memory of mine that instilled this great love of music. And then, as I got older, of course there were several band directors along the way that were very influential, but it wasn’t until later in life, in college, when I really started to get another mentor that taught me a lot. His name was Ron Matson and I never actually had any official class with him, but he was a piano player, an accompanist, and a faculty member at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where I did my undergraduate. I was studying to be a trumpet player, and he would accompany me for recitals and such, and he taught me so much about music and he didn’t know anything about playing the trumpet, but he knew music, so that was a certain thing that was very helpful to me, but also he taught me a very valuable lesson. We would hang out as friends as well and we’d go see a movie together, say, and I would come home and play 85 – 90% of the movie score on the piano, and I thought everybody in music did that. But he was able to convince me, “No, that’s kind of a unique, special talent.” That was a turning point for me, because I almost didn’t want to recognize that that was a unique special talent, because with that came a responsibility of what am I going to do with this? In a way, I didn’t necessarily want to be special, and he taught me that I had a special kind of talent, and something that I really needed to focus on, and hone, and work to figure out how to best use that.

And then my great mentor came in 1995, when I became the assistant conductor for Erich Kunzel.  He was the founder and conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and he hired me to be his assistant and right hand man, eventually becoming his Assistant Conductor. He was the greatest influence I ever had, and took me under his wing, and we truly had one of those great mentor-protegee relationships, where he taught me everything he could about this business, and taught me how to be a conductor. So he was quite influential in my life. When you’re able to look back in the rear view mirror you see how the path unfolded and you see the people that came into your life that were the most meaningful in your career.

2. What is the best thing about what you do?

The best thing about what I do is entertaining an audience and seeing them light up, and have a wonderful time enjoying many styles of popular music. I always say, when I conduct a concert, those two hours of conducting a concert are my favourite two hours of every day. There’s so much work going into it, and yes I do get to arrange for my own programs, I compose for my own programs, put it all together, fundraising, the rehearsing, all of that. But the best part is when we finally get to go out there and I always say, it’s game time. Game on! And there we are. The spotlight hits, and there’s a full audience, and we take them on a journey. Because as a pops conductor, what I do isn’t about some great, deep mystery of education, necessarily. It’s about entertainment. And people love to be entertained, and I think I was a born entertainer. People think it’s maybe an act, but that’s no act, I couldn’t act that, that’s just a natural response. I can be in the worst mood, or have other things going on in my life, and it doesn’t matter. Still, when I take that stage, and the lights are on, nothing else exists for me. It’s the one time where I’m completely immersed in the moment. I just conducted concerts in Vancouver this weekend on Friday and Saturday, and my father passed away Wednesday. I was thinking about it because he of course was a great influence for me and he loved coming to my concerts, and so I was kind of in a bit of a funk all over the weekend, but the concerts were a huge success and I felt so energized and it didn’t even cross my mind while I was conducting. I knew I was there doing my life’s work and I loved it.

3. What do you like to listen to or watch?

As far as listen to, my go to music if I just am relaxing in my house, maybe throwing a dinner party or just cooking dinner for myself and my husband – Ella Fitzgerald is one of my favourites. Ella is one of my girls. But all the girl singers of the Golden Age, the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, I’m really particularly drawn to the music of that era, and the girl singers, especially Ella, are very near and dear to my heart. As far as watching, there’s lots of TV shows that I love. I binge watch on Game of Thrones, and House of Cards, those are two of my favourites.

4. What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

The ability to fly like Superman. That may not be where you were going with that question, but yes, if I had the ability to fly! I have dreams about it often, and they’re the most amazing dreams when I’m physically soaring. Also I fly on airplanes so much, and that gets so tiresome, if I could do it a different way, just like Superman, I would love that.

5. When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?

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Conductor Steven Reineke (photo: Michael Tammaro)

A couple of things that I really love to do that I find very relaxing: I’m a crossword puzzle fanatic. I do at least one crossword puzzle a day, normally four or five, really. They go rather quickly, it depends, if it’s a travel day, this is how I bide my time on airplanes and whatnot. I definitely do pretty much every day at least one crossword puzzle in the morning, that gets myself awake and alert and gets my brain moving. Another thing I love to do is shoot billiards. I’m quite a pool shark, and that’s great way for me to relax and unwind and spend time with friends. We have a pool table in our building, so when I’m home and not working, and we’ve got our free evenings, that’s what my husband Eric and I do. We go down there and have a glass of wine, shoot a few games of pool, play best out of three or best out of five, and then we’ll go up and make dinner. It’s a great relaxation, fun, game time.

6. Tell us about the “Music of John Williams“, and which films you’ll be spotlighting.

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Composer & conductor John Williams

The concert we’ll be performing is called, “The Music of John Williams: From Spielberg to Star Wars”. This really started out as I wanted to do a tribute to the collaboration between Steven Spielberg and John Williams, getting Spielberg in there because this is the year of Spielberg’s 70th birthday, so it was a bit of a celebration of Spielberg as well. And so, most of the program is devoted to their 40 plus year collaboration. And then the last 25 to 30 minutes of the concert is music from Star Wars, and most of it is the newest music John wrote for The Force Awakens, which J. J. Abrams directed. The music is just recently available for orchestras to be able to perform, and it’s so, so good. And also garnered John Williams his 50th Academy Award nomination for The Force Awakens, which is astounding. That’s the living person with the most Academy Award nominations by far, and he’s only second in history. The only person with more Academy Award nominations is Walt Disney with 59 nominations. John might have a chance to beat him, if he keeps doing this, he might get up to 60, who knows. And oddly enough he’s only won five times out of 50 nominations. Our program begins with a great way to open a concert, with that soft, menacing motif from Jaws. It’s the Shark Theme from Jaws, which was the first big hit that Spielberg and Williams had. They had done one movie prior to that called The Sugarland Express that was rather forgettable for most people. And so in 1975 they had a hit on their hands with Jaws, and that’s where we begin the program. Of course there are some big hits like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, but I particularly love some of the other music. I am such a fan of the music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s such a romantic, lush, almost operatic score that John created for that film. And I’m also very partial to the music from War Horse and from Lincoln, which is a little more subdued than the bombast of Star Wars or Jurassic Park. It’s got really great meat on its bones, some very elegant music. So that’ll be a lot of fun! John has a particular way about him to contribute to films. When you hear a John Williams theme – well first of all, the music can be taken out of a film and put in a concert hall and be just as successful as if you were watching the movie, because the themes become so closely identified with the movie that you immediately think of the film. You may think of the first time you saw the movie, you may think of a particular actor or character, you may think of a scene…it will take you right there. It’s so visual and visceral, and he has a knack for writing these melodies that are just inseparable from the memory of film. Also, I have lately been working on – we do these film with orchestra projects where we screen the movie on a large movie screen above the orchestra, and the orchestra plays the soundtrack live, coming up these year I’m going to be doing a couple of movies that way, so in my practise I have had the opportunity to watch those films with no music in it, and I wish everybody could see it. They’re still good movies but it’s so not the same movie until you put the soundtrack there. So much of it is incredibly boring, dull, nothing going on. You add the music into this and boom, suddenly you have magic! You have cinematic magic. But it takes the music to make these movies work. Spielberg would go over to John Williams’s studios and John would play several themes for him, and they’d work on that together. There’s a wonderful story about the bicycle chase sequence in E.T. where John had a particular idea in mind with the music he wrote, and in the actual scoring session where they were recording the soundtrack, and the movie was playing on a big screen, John could never get it to line up exactly the way he wanted with the music he had created and wanted to create. Spielberg eventually said, “John, let’s turn off the movie, you conduct this awesome music the way you intend it to be.” That’s exactly what they did, and Spielberg went back and re-cut that sequence of the film to match John’s music. Now, think of directors that do that – not many have every done that. Spielberg actually changed his movies after he shot them and edited them, because the music is usually one of the last things to be added. He went back to the drawing board and re-did an entire scene just to fit John’s music.

7. There are several points of contact between you and John Williams, the composer, the arranger and the conductor who succeeded Arthur Fiedler at the helm of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Do you identify with him and his music?

First I have to say that I am a huge John Williams fan and I have been ever since I was a teenager. As a matter of fact, when I was in college studying trumpet and then music composition, I wanted to become a film composer. I would say I wanted to be the next John Williams. I actually won a grant and went to Los Angeles and studied film music for two years as a composer, and even had the opportunity to meet John Williams briefly while I was out there. So I have extraordinary respect for him. If one were to listen to my original music, my compositions, there is clear indication of John Williams’s influence in the music that I wrote. There are a lot of moments of pieces of mine, where you can tell, that’s a bit of an homage to John Williams, which I take as a great compliment, to be able to achieve something as good as that. Now, the other thing is I just totally respect the fact that he is one of the last bit of the old guard of film composers that comes from true European orchestral tradition, where he’ll record with a 90-piece orchestra, and a lot of movies just don’t do this anymore, and the sound of that is a very different type of sound than you get with a lot of modern movies that are using pop or rock music or sourced music. The scope of it is very different, and it goes in the long line of the Europeans that came to Hollywood to do film music, and those include Prokofiev and Bernard Herrmann and Max Steiner. Those guys of the 40’s and the 50’s that were real life composers. John is too. He writes more than movie music, he’s written several concertos and sonatas and lots of orchestral pieces and they’re very different than his film scores. They are true pieces of classical literature and classical repertoire and they are in the classical world. I love the fact that he comes from that tradition, because that’s where I feel I come from too, as a classically trained composer.

8. It’s been said that film music works best when it’s not noticed, a truly challenging medium. How do you handle the paradox of bringing attention to something that lives under the radar?

Well that’s very true, and I’ve heard that quote many times. Some of the most successful film scores, the music just gets out of the way – it isn’t meant to draw attention specifically to itself, but enhance what’s happening visually or dramatically inside of the movie. John’s music is a little different because his music is as much a character in the films as any of the characters. It’s as unmistakable as anything else, he writes real themes and melodies instead of just a bunch of esoteric sounds. There’s real melodic and harmonic structure to it instead of just droning on with a minor chord just to make people feel sad. I’ve got no problem drawing attention to John’s music because it just works so perfectly outside of the film and in its own concert setting. His music works in a concert hall setting better than most. You listen to a lot of other people’s film scores, and if you listen to the entire score you might only find five to 10 minutes out of a 90-minute score that you could actually pull out of it that would be interesting to do in a live concert setting. The rest of it is just often background music – something that is meant to be in the background – atmospheric. His pieces are truly concert pieces. He’s like the Mozart of our day. He is that prolific, and the fact that he has worked in all these different genres – if Mozart were alive today, I believe he would be doing what John Williams is doing. He would want his music out there to as many people as possible, and I think he would have loved the idea of writing for film.

9. What are your favourite film scores?

I’m a big fan of Ennio Morricone.

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Composer Ennio Morricone

He’s one of my absolute favourites. And I would say my favourite film score probably of all time is from Cinema Paradiso. Beautiful, beautiful Italian film with just incredible music by Morricone. One of my favourite film scores. It’s a love story about a young boy and a girl, and also his love of film from his hometown as a boy growing up. But the music that Morricone wrote for it, it just touches my heart and soul so deeply because it’s so incredibly beautiful. I’m so jealous, I have often sat down writing, and thought, “God, if only I could write a love theme this good.” The love theme from Cinema Paradiso is one of my favourite pieces of music there is. But also it’s a gorgeous film, and the score and the film work so brilliantly together, and it’s a fairly simple little score, but it’s just so gorgeous and so effective. Of course, the music from The Mission is another great one by Morricone. I am a huge fan of his.

10. Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

I could list a few. My father, Erich Kunzel from the Cincinnati Pops, who I owe so much of my career to, and then other great influences in my music are Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and John Williams. No lie. These three Americans – they have a distinctly American sound to them as well, and I just love how accessible their music is while also maintaining real integrity. It’s music with real meat on its bones. They all have written substantive music. It’s music that has weight and power to it, which will give it longevity because it’s not just a flash in the pan and then you get bored with it, because it’s not a novelty, necessarily, it’s music with substance. Every time I’m working, creating, I always judge myself, probably more harshly than anyone else, about, “Is this music good?” And that’s such a subjective thing, but does it have real merit as good art?

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Steven Reineke comes to Toronto this week, leading the Toronto Symphony in a program of film music by John Williams on May 17th and 18th .  Here’s the program:

  • Shark Theme from Jaws (1975)
  • Selections from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
  • March from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
  • “Adventures on Earth” from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
  • “The Flight to Neverland” from Hook (1991)
  • Theme from Jurassic Park (1993)
    Intermission
  • Main Theme from Schindler’s List (1993)
  • “Dartmoor, 1912” from War Horse (2011)
  • “The People’s House” from Lincoln (2012)
  • Main Title Theme from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
  • Suite from Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)
    March of the Resistance
    Rey’s Theme
    Scherzo for X-Wings
    The Jedi Steps and Finale
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