TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – March 30, 2016) – The Board of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Jeff Melanson, President & CEO of the TSO, have mutually decided that it is in the best interests of both parties that he resign from his employment with the TSO. The TSO has accepted Mr. Melanson’s resignation effective March 29, 2016.
Richard Phillips, Chair of the Board of Directors of the TSO, thanked Mr. Melanson for the many positive contributions he has made to the TSO. Mr. Melanson has been instrumental in developing a new strategic plan, which has delivered on the following priorities:
Artistic Excellence – The TSO created Canada Mosaic, selected by the Government of Canada as a Signature Initiative for Canada’s Sesquicentennial. This funding announcement marks the largest investment for the TSO in its history.
Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra – In April 2015, the TSO moved ahead with a new strategy to make the TSYO tuition free. This important initiative has resulted in a 50% increase in applications and a much more diverse and accessible TSYO.
Education and Community Engagement – The TSO has developed a plan for a city-wide music education programme with the aim of serving 345,000 students by 2020. This plan will remain a major priority of the TSO.
Innovation – Mr. Melanson and his team created Sunday Night With The TSO, a weekly radio show on Classical 96.3 FM that serves over 44,000 listeners each week, developed new partnerships with the Polaris Music Prize, TIFF, SickKids among others, and have recently launched new initiatives to engage much more of the diversity of Toronto in the artistic planning of the TSO.
The TSO is proud of these initiatives and accomplishments and looks forward to building on them. To that end, the TSO Board of Directors has formed an executive search committee to identify a new CEO. In the meantime, Sonia Baxendale has agreed to accept the position of Interim CEO. As an experienced leader in industry and philanthropy, and a TSO Board member, Sonia has the in-depth knowledge of the organization and skill set to continue to execute and build on the strategy in place. She will step aside from her position on the Board and begin immediately as interim President & CEO until a new leader is appointed.
About the TSO
Founded in 1922, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions, recognized internationally. Music Director Peter Oundjian leads the TSO with a commitment to innovative programming and audience development through a broad range of performances that showcase the exceptional talents of the Orchestra along with a roster of distinguished guest artists and conductors. The TSO also serves the larger community with TSOUNDCHECK, the original under-35 ticket program; the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra; and music-education programs that reach tens of thousands of students each year.
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“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment
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 March 25 only. Full-price tickets will be available at the door for cash or credit (using Square).
“She’s the One” showcases excerpts from recent works that will soon be mainstays of the operatic repertoire. Diverse composers include Leslie Uyeda, Elizabeth Raum, Anna Höstman, Anna Pidgorna, Fiona Ryan, John Estacio, and Jake Heggie. The programme is an exciting and eclectic mix exploring women’s lives: intense personal stories, lighthearted moments, and classic Canadiana. Performers: sopranos Maureen Batt, Erin Bardua, Maureen Ferguson and Julie Ludwig are all known as valued Canadian vocalists interpreters of opera and song. These vocalists are joined by dynamic pianist and new-music champion Cheryl Duvall.
See you there on April 8 at Heliconian Hall!
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“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment
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 resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he composes and teaches at Acadia and Dalhousie Universities.
Isis and Osiris, a new Canadian opera, concludes Opera in Concert’s 2016 season with performances April 1st and 3rd. In anticipation of that exciting premiere I asked Peter questions to get a better sense of who he is and what he has created.
1) Are you more like your father or your mother?
Composer Peter Togni
I think I am more like my mother then my father, fathers actually, my natural father was killed in a car crash when I was five. My mother re-married and my step father taught me many good things, mostly about telling the truth about myself in all situations. I am indeed very much like my mother. My mum is an introverted extrovert. She has a quiet inner strength but also has a flare for the dramatic, she did a lot of theatre in high school and in fact had a chance to go to Hollywood for a screen test but her mother didn’t like that very much, so she never made the trip.
She can be very self critical as can I. For many years I struggled with what is sometimes referred to as ANTS, automatic negative thoughts. Turning to the negative first before anything else particularly when it comes to my art. If someone paid me a complement I would think to myself,” Ah, fooled them again” It is a terrible place to live and I have since been able to let go of that, well most of that. It is a re-programming of sorts. What makes my life difficult and what is good for me as a composer, is that, like my mother I feel things very deeply. It is often very painful but then the music takes over.
2) What is the best thing about what you do?
The best thing about what I do now is to share the music I write, my craft, my love, my pain, my joy with other people. I write only what I hear and only what I want to listen to. I think I am honest about that now. I have been composing actively since I was fifteen. When I am true to myself, when I care for the gift I have been given and someone tells me they are deeply touched, that keeps me doing it, even on the days when I would rather binge watch some Netflix!
3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?
Composer Peter Togni
I listen to very little music these days. I am now writing 7 days a week and that’s a slow week….ha, ha………… My mind needs some space. The only time a really actively listen is when I am in the car and it is a very limited menu, the Stones, Dylan, Zeppelin, Patsy Cline and Cold Play I sometimes enjoy the stations that play the oldies!. I don’t usually go to concerts unless it’s someone I know personally, I always enjoy hearing Canadian sax player Mike Murley ,drummer Gerry Granelli and bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly all of them happen to be dear friends. I don’t watch T.V. but I do enjoy the Midsommer Murders on Netflix and have been known to binge!! As for movies I have a small list that I watch over and over again. A Man for all Seasons, The Big Lebowski, Office Space, Diva, Gorki Park Dr Zhivago, Big Night and Bullitt, mostly for the car chase, to see the fantastic 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 and the other car was also pretty hot, the Dodge Charger 440 Magnum! I love reliving the experience of these films and they generally fit my various moods.
4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
I wish I knew a thing or two about car engines as I would enjoy working on old cars. My favourite is the Ford Mustang mentioned above. My dream is to drive to New Mexico in one of those with my son Benedict, we have talked about it for years!
5) When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?
My most favourite thing to do is to chop wood and sit by the fire, not just sit there, but to poke at it and just let my mind wonder. I really enjoy watching murder mysteries with my wife Patricia, we also love the real estate program Grand Designs. Of course I love spending time with my two grandsons when I see them,. they live in the U.S.A.
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More questions about creating Isis and Osiris
1- Please talk about your understanding of opera as a form, both with respect to how it works best and how you emulate that in your own work.
I have never been drawn to a particular form of music I just react to something I love at a certain moment in time. I have never given opera much thought really. There are certain operas that I love and admire. I love the sheer beauty of them and also how they are put together, the craft. I love how so many of the arts come together in the opera world, drama, dance, stage design, lighting and of course the written word. It speaks of humanity and our fragile nature like no other form. Singing is the most pure form of music, when the body is music! This is my very first opera. I am certainly influenced by the operas of Handel, Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Britten. I draw from these composers in different ways but I do not seek to emulate, certainly not in Isis and Osiris. I am bringing the wonderful libretto by Sharon Singer to life with many different sound worlds. Arabic drumming, medieval sounding chords and even some of the harmonies of Cold Play, there is something in their chord progressions that I find captivating and warm.
2- what operas / composers do you admire, or think are good in the theatre?
I am always deeply moved by Puccini’s La Boheme tragically beautiful and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin I am also a great fan of Carmen, it just seems perfect, those amazing melodies just fell from heaven! I greatly admire Monteverdi, he would have been a maverick in any century. On the gloomiest of day’s his Beatus Vir always makes me smile, it is the perfect blend of craft and joy!! Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms is life changing, he really wrote what he heard and took what had come before, the great masters, Mozart and Bach and gave them back to us in a fresh and new way as Bernstein used to say.
To me, the most original composer, who wasn’t trying to be, was the Finnish, Jean Sibelius. His fifth Symphony is full of the energy of the universe and has chords that are truly cosmic!
3-Please describe the pathway that led to your collaboration with Sharon Singer on Isis and Osiris
I got to know Sharon Singer through a mutual friend of ours, Andrea Ludwig. Andrea is a wonderful singer and soloist whom I have worked with and written for. One day Sharon and Andrea were talking, I think it was at the grocery store and Sharon said she was looking for a composer for her opera Isis and Osiris. She had worked with another Canadian composer but he backed out and it deeply saddened her. She worked on it for many years. Sharon wanted to find a composer who would be comfortable with writing music about an exotic and ancient time. Andrea then suggested me, as much of my choral music is based on plain chant or draws from the medieval period in some way.
Sharon and I were friends from the first phone call. It just felt right. The opera was her baby but I soon became a co-parent! As the libretto was completed when I began, it was very much the way I usually work, with a finished text. However as I was writing I would play her some of the music and then there was a give and take and she changed some of her text and we were almost building together in some cases. We were also working directly with the stage director for the opera Guillermo Silva, the director of Voicebox Opera in Concert, he was wonderful to work with, with great insights which were very helpful to me as this is my first walk in the opera world. I learned a great deal about the importance of drama, something I never really thought about before and I perhaps should have, as everything is drama in some way, even in liturgical music which I am also involved with.
Voicebox- Opera in Concert artistic director Guillermo Silva-Marin and librettist Sharon Singer
4- Please tell us about your new opera, as a way of telling a story and with reference to other operas we might know.
I was drawn to work on the opera not because it is set in ancient Egypt, but firstly because the beauty of Sharon Singer’s work, her way of telling the story is full of vivid pictures and gets inside the human nature of these Egyptian Gods. It is the story of the desire for power over love. Seth wants that and nothing else and is such a dark figure he makes Darth Vader look like Santa Claus, well almost. Seth is dark, black, evil, but not completely, he has truly loved. Love triumphs in the end, however, Seth is not destroyed, he is still around at the end of the opera. It is a good reminder, beware of tranquility! Every day we have a choice to make, not so much about good and evil but more about balance!. The opera is really through composed, there are arias and duos throughout the work, but they are not really stand alone pieces they are always connected the larger framework, like a movie really. There is a very wide range of musical moods and sounds, from very pure music that speaks of ancient mystery to really thorny sounding music, sometimes terrifying! The same as one would find in the film score today, the mood and sound of the music is tied to the scene at the moment. I feel this opera has everything that is me right now, ranging from the liturgical chant like music to extreme edge with blood on the floor! The opera really does dance a fair bit. I am not trying to recreate ancient Egypt sonically, we don’t know what the music sounded like, we do know some of the instruments were played, including trumpets and oboe like instruments. I imagine it would have been quite bright sounding and somewhat angular and a bit strange?
Isis has the real strength in this opera and is a very modern woman, displays true love and great sacrifice! Her undying love for Osiris keeps the opera flowing and gives it energy!
5-From the examples I have heard, your operatic voice is very original, and not like any current composer I can think of. How would you describe your musical style?
My musical sound comes out of the music of the medieval period, it is often mystical sounding, a little bit in the world of John Tavener and Arvo Part. I am also influenced by some of the romantic Russians and the lyrical line of Puccini. I spend a lot of time thinking about the harmonies I use. I almost define myself by the sound of my chords. I am not scared of dissonance, but I always come back to a tonal center, since that is what I want hear. Even when I am writing instrumental music I always sing the lines, I get inside the sound. There was a time when I felt I had to use a certain amount of dissonance and strangeness to be accepted by the composer community, but gladly those days are over, at least for me. I write what I want to hear and that is true. I am very clear about my filters, I know where the sound is coming from and am open about it. I am always in search of beauty, even in the darkest moments or the most thorny subjects can be shown beautifully and artfully in music, just think of JS Bach’s St Mathew Passion, or the Passio of Arvo Part, that aches and yet is hopeful at the same time.
6-please talk about the spiritual element in opera, both the works you’ve experienced that might have influenced you, and their relevance to Isis and Osiris.
Most of the music I write is sacred, much of it choral, it reflects my life as a Catholic. I am also the artist in residence at St Benedict’s Parish In Halifax. This is very important to me as I play the organ and direct the choir at the 11: 15 Mass. In the old days it was called the High Mass. We sing a good deal of chant and choral music. I also compose for the choir. It is my spiritual centre and bedrock for all of the other things I do. The sacramental nature of it is reflected in much of what I do. I come in contact in the most direct way with some of the most beautiful music of all time, like the Masses of Palestrina, William Byrd, this deeply influences my own music and sound.
Some people were quite surprised when they found out I was writing music about these ancient Gods, how could I do that? To me the story actually foreshadows the death and resurrection of Christ. Osiris died a cruel death and suffered mutilation and then was reborn, the resurrection of a transformed body.
7- Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?
Jean Langlais
I had the good fortune to study organ and improvisation with the great French master Jean Langlais in Paris. He showed me how to develop an idea in my improvisation lessons and gave me the confidence to think of myself as a composer. He also had great stories, and had been a student of Paul Dukas, the composer of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, who was apparently a very tough teacher!
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Voicebox- Opera in Concert present Isis and Osiris– a new opera by Peter Togni and Sharon Singer– April 1st & 3rd.
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 the supporting patrons for the performing arts are older, what will become of these organizations in a generation? Will anyone carry on the support?
But Roy Thomson Hall is a different experience lately. Just as the TSO has some new young performers, so too in the audience. I believe half of those in attendance were under 35. There was a brief concert in the lobby before and more music in the lobby afterwards.
Roy Thomson Hall has become a very cool place to be.
For tonight’s concert –titled “Knocking at the Hellgate” from Brett Dean’s big work on the program—we were again confronted with an intriguing mix of styles and influences. Dean hit on a wonderful formula for this festival he’s curated. We heard Australian music alongside Canadian music, vocal, concertos and orchestral, with a big emphasis on popular musical influences for each concert.
We opened with Water, a piece by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, an Australian commission in its Canadian premiere. Greenwood is the lone classically trained member of the band, known for film-scores such as There Will Be Blood. Superficially it’s a minimalist piece, with a kind of pattern music at least at the beginning, as long notes on the tanpura (like a fretless sitar) give us a steady tonality against which other faster patterns work their way through the ensemble. Concertmaster Jonathan Crow was given lots to do, especially on the last pages, when his furious patterns of quick notes seemed to spiral him into orbit, as the ensemble gradually subsided into peace around him. For the moment the TSO were led by Peter Oundjian.
After this meditative beginning, we were ready for the main work on the program, namely Dean’s Knocking at the Hellgate, a six-part suite from his first opera Bliss (2010). Three orchestral interludes surround three arias, sung on this occasion by Canadian baritone Russell Braun, and this time conducted by the composer. Dean offers a surreal amalgam of tiny shards of the detritus of popular culture glued into a nightmare flashback of a life remembered from beyond in all its glitzy banality. It’s an idea I’ve heard attempted before, but without ever getting close to the richness of this remarkable tapestry including electric violin, electric guitar and MIDI. Braun has a substantial sing, especially considering that the orchestra is sometimes very powerful. In addition to a pair of substantial falsetto passages, Braun was asked to sing all over his range for a good fifteen minutes.
I was reminded of something he sang almost exactly five years ago at the Met in Nixon in China, as Braun was again the voice of hope in the last lines sung:
And when at last I take that final breath and disappear eternally above; it will be just a passing breeze, this death that carries me away from my true love. If you would seek salvation remember this: A life in Hell can still aspire to Bliss
[from Amanda Holden’s libretto]
To close the evening & the festival, Dean & Oundjian turned to DJ Skratch Bastid for his Festival Remix, ostensibly sampled from rehearsals of the concerts this week. My hat’s off to the DJ for his work which was well received tonight by the young audience. I’m again reminded of a question (pardon the pun) bedeviling me for the past few weeks, watching Going Home Star, listening to Christos Hatzis, Stephanie Martin, and Kevin Lau (to name just the first three I can think of), each looking at the question of musical idiom as communication. Electric Counterpoint from Soundstreams will also employ a DJ as they pick up this question next week.
It was a happy crowd that emerged into the warm night air.
If I may indulge in a tiny comment, I have to notice that both the TSO and Tafelmusik put libretti into programs, and at least are kind enough to leave the house-lights on for us to follow. But when every opera company in the greater Toronto area (name one and I am sure they are included) manages to project subtitles, isn’t it time for the TSO (and Tafelmusik) to consider doing so as well? Yes I followed the text in my program but would have preferred to stare straight at Russell Braun. Had the words been projected behind (as they could be whenever undertaking songs or choral symphonies like Mahler’s 2nd or Beethoven’s 9th) I believe the experience would be even better. End of rant.
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 at Glendon Theatre? Life is tweets, photos, video games.
Sasha Lukac, director and ringmaster, was quick to admit –through his narrator and in an interview a few days ago—that social media is now an unavoidable part of the pedagogical landscape. The adaptation seems to begin with the assumption that “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em.”
We are in a very funny place, self-consciously mocking anything and everything onstage. Some of it is deadpan and dry, but often it’s physical and silly and over-the-top. Henry the Horse –from the song—puts in an appearance.
Calderon’s old play is brought up to date at least in deference to smartphone addicts. The up-stage picture often resembles a desktop, through which we see some of the characters peering out, onto the stage-floor. I’m guessing that the credit should go to Production Manager / Scenic Designer Duncan Appleton and/or Technical Director Dean Johnston.
Protecting the castle from: space invaders?
At one point we’re watching the King commanding one of his lackeys to fight off an invasion: one we’ve seen in the old game “Space Invaders”. The images invoked take me back a long way, to the previous generation of games, including a couple of characters reminding me of Mario & Luigi, aka the Super Mario brothers. It’s deja vu from the 1980s.
Brandon Goncalves, taking no prisoners as Clarin, alongside Ashley Moniz as Clotaldo
At times we’re exploring the themes of the play from a distance, as though sending up the whole process, at other times things almost get serious. Almost. But before anyone gets too carried away, there’s usually someone there to poke fun, defusing the seriousness.
I am guessing that Brandon Goncalves is central to the adaptation even though his part –Clarin, a servant who speaks with an accent—is easy to underestimate. Goncalves came across as the director’s alter-ego, a complete wiseass unafraid to dress down anyone and everyone in sight. His part is a mix of Sancho Panza and Harlequin, and enjoys a privileged place on the outside of the action looking in.
Others in the show are not quite as anarchic, perhaps closer to conventional acting. One of the great joys watching a Glendon Theatre show is to bask in the talent, employed in several ways in this kind of show. It’s not a musical but that doesn’t mean we don’t get singing and dancing. I could picture Walt Disney turning over in his grave: that is if it’s possible to turn over when you’re cryogenically preserved. While I may have tweeted “Disney is a Popsicle in a vault somewhere”, parts of this show are like a nightmare you have after babysitting (and watching too many Disney DVDs).
Jonathan Macey’s Narrator confidently runs the show. Amy Ludwig’s Estrella is stretched in her role, sometimes playing along as everyone’s idea of a fun princess, at other times abused horribly. Jameel Baker’s Astolfo, Laith Hamid’s Basilio and Raphael Marcolini’s Segismundo gave us a fascinating assortment of approaches to masculine strength. Director Lukac also populated the stage with several wonderful choral moments, whereby he redressed the usual gender imbalances by giving the women lots of great things to do, often the most enjoyable things to watch.
There’s also a meta-theatrical element via Twitter using the hashtag #HeySegismundo. Prince Segismundo has spent his whole life in prison, due to predictions that he would cause upheaval in his father’s life (something like Oedipus), but in this production tweets are projected onto the upstage screen, as we attempt to advise the prince. I posted a couple of silly –and anarchic– things myself including “loud is good. The loudest actor wins.” Just a few minutes ago (as i worked on this review) Clarin (that is, Goncalves) replied “Sooooo I won?” And i had to admit, yes indeed. I am not sure about this, speaking as someone who is already a miserable social media addict. When i was tweeting –fun as it was– i wasn’t watching the performances.
When my head was up, engaged in the show, I laughed a lot, and loudly. It’s funny as I was struggling to avoid coughing two nights ago at the TSO concert, whereas tonight with free rein to giggle or howl, I feel much better. It’s said that laughter is the best medicine, and I do feel better than I’ve felt in days. Alas, alack, Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (no relation) concludes its run tomorrow night at Glendon Theatre.
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 work seemed unsurpassable: until the next composition that is.
Composer James Ledger
We began with James Ledger’s Two Memorials (for Anton Webern and John Lennon), the work giving its name to the evening’s concert. After Ledger explained some of his rationale in a recent interview I was sitting on the edge of my seat, eager to hear how the two composers might be reconciled in the same composition. The piece wanders around before finally deciding to be powerfully elegiac, but this too makes sense considering the brutally casual way both of these men were killed. Webern—who seems to be closer to Ledger’s native compositional voice—is there at the beginning, while Lennon takes a bit longer to show himself. When he does manifest himself it’s rather subtle, as for instance in gentle rhythms in four that sound like something from a pop song but with a great deal more complexity.
It’s apt for the day when we all heard of the passing of George Martin, the Beatles’ producer and a significant influence upon the band, particularly in its last few years. Ledger said in the program note that
“The latter memorial also contains recorded samples of Webern’s memorial played in reverse—an effect that typifies the type of studio trickery The Beatles were experimenting with in the mid-1960s.”
…which of course means George Martin. At times we seemed to be exploring one of Webern’s influences, namely Mahler, who seemed to peek through the pages a couple of times, particularly for a big bad chord reminiscent of his 10th Symphony. Or maybe it’s simply that the eventual meeting place for Lennon & Webern was tonal & regular in rhythm, verging on chorale solemnity. Ledger brought us home with an especially powerful last 3 minutes.
Peter Oundjian leading the TSO in Frehner and Mettler’s From the Vortex Perspective (photo: Malcolm Cook). I suspect that’s Mettler partially occluding the computer monitor in the first row.
From a Vortex Perspective, the next item on the program was a World Premiere, described as a work for “live cinema and orchestra derived through a cyclical exchange of musical and visual propositions between composer Paul Frehner and filmmaker Peter Mettler.”
Interviewed before the performance by conductor Peter Oundjian, Mettler spoke of a chicken and egg relationship between music and film in the collaboration, possibly because we are likely tempted to ask which came first. Usually –in film scoring–one observes two options, where either
the music responds to the film (in most film-scores the music is added after the film has been made),
or
the film responds to the music (as in films such as Fantasia or 2001: A Space Odyssey).
But this was another option altogether, as the film and the music seemed to create a shared discourse, resembling a true conversation. Early in the film we saw natural images including something resembling a forest, and sure enough we heard something in the music that seemed to match this motif. Mettler supposedly edited and mixed live in response to the performance, although I have to take that on faith, as I couldn’t really tell. As the title might suggest, we were watching images that spun around in various ways. We saw dervishes and water and abstract patterns, at times very intensely active, at other moments much calmer. Because the film was largely abstract, there was no pressure to match the images to the music.
Composer Paul Frehner
Last on the program was Brett Dean’s Dramatis personae, a trumpet concerto in three movements featuring Hakan Hardenberger. As in Dean’s viola concerto (heard last Saturday), we were again watching an intense conversation between the soloist and the orchestra that verged on a portrayal of hostilities.
Soloist Hakan Hardenberger beside composer & conductor Brett Dean leading the TSO (photo: Malcolm Cook)
The first movement subtitled “Fall of a Superhero” calls the trumpet “the embodiment of goodness”, requiring a broad array of mutes, tonguings, attacks, bent pitches. The exuberance of the writing, particularly Dean’s unrestrained demands on Hardenberger’s virtuosity, make this one of the most appealing trumpet concerti. A contrasting second movement titled “Soliloquy” is far gentler in its sound, as if the hero pauses in their struggles, to reflect and to rest.
To close, Dean gives us something jovial and celebratory, an uplifting answer to the tragic overtones of the first movement. Inspired by Charlie Chaplin this last movement is called “The Accidental Revolutionary”, a trumpet surrounded by swirling march-tunes as if an uprising were erupting before us. Eventually the soloist seems to abdicate his role as soloist, as he wanders over to the trumpet section in a display of solidarity with the other trumpets. I would love to hear this piece again, even if it may be something beyond most other trumpeters.
New Creations closes Saturday night with a program titled Knocking at the Hellgate.
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 kind of preamble, I come back to a simple thought: that the history of film music is really the history of film. When you study the cinema, one of the first things you should be discovering is how collaborative this art form actually is, how many different visions and skills are combined in the final work. Some people prefer to organize their thoughts around the different directors that they love even though it’s fallacious to behave as though the director is the one who made the film, not when there are so many others who contribute as well. It’s also natural to focus on a favourite actor, to explore their body of work. Yet each of these (direction or acting) is only part of the full story, and we do the same when we choose to focus upon any aspect of the cinematic art such as the editing, the screenplay, the cinematography, the art direction…to name the most prominent. Film music then becomes your lens –one of many possible lenses –through which to view the history of the collaborative medium.
So in other words a good place to start is to list the films that you think are the best, and/or the ones you like. Talking a bit about my favourites is meant to be a natural departure point for anyone to think about what films they prefer, and whether the reason for that preference might begin with the score.
Vertigo Every few years I find that my favourite changes. Currently it’s Hitchcock’s study of obsession. Getting to see Bernard Herrmann’s score played live, accompanying the film projected onto a big screen at Roy Thomson Hall last fall as part of tiff was a big thrill. Would this film be nearly as powerful without its score? Surely not. I will combine Hitchcock’s trilogy with Herrmann into one selection, as at times North by Northwest or Psycho has been able to displace Vertigo from the top of the list. I wonder if there’s any scene in these films that doesn’t depend at least partially on Herrmann. I am especially mindful of the shower scene, that gains so much from Herrmann’s strings. But i will let you think of the best moments in these films.
Star Wars: episode 5 The Empire Strikes Back Count me among the disappointed in the latest release in the series. For all the social media talk about avoiding spoilers, I wish someone had warned me not to bother with episode 7.
Of the seven so far only episode #5 really works for me. In this sequence you see how the music by John Williams for once very subtle and understated, gradually insinuates itself into the action.
2001: A Space Odyssey I adored this film when I first saw it even if it perplexed me somewhat. Kubrick may have put some noses out of joint (something at which he was skilled come to think of it) in his choice of music, but half a century later there’s no argument, as this film gradually drifts to the top of lists of the best of all time. And this is the context for my response to Star Wars.
Citizen Kane The movie that used to perennially sit atop lists of the greatest films of all time is a triumph of great direction and script-writing, yes. But it also draws a great deal of strength from the first film-score by Bernard Herrmann: not bad for a first effort.
Gone With the Wind. The top film of 1939 and one of the greatest films of all time –still the box office champ when you adjust for inflation—employs Max Steiner, both in the composition of original music and in the arrangement of pre-existing tunes in the score. One of the emotional highlights of the film – a triumph of art direction and cinematography is scored as a perfectly timed medley of Southern tunes – as the camera pans back to reveal the scores of wounded in the Atlanta train yard concluding with a view of the tattered Confederate Flag to frame the scene.
Metropolis. Listing a silent film, it might surprise you that I pick this one with a score in mind, but there was an “original” live score played by a large orchestra when Fritz Lang premiered the film in Germany in 1927, by the composer Gottfried Huppertz. There are several versions (that is, there have been many different scores), making this a very useful exercise to compare.
Across the Universe is a film directed by Julie Taymor. The story is rather loosely assembled out of a series of situations that serve as pretexts for Beatles songs. Like Mamma Mia –a film that it resembles—it’s less an attempt to tell an important story than an excuse to make a film out of some of the most popular music you could use for such a purpose. Some of the adaptations of the tunes are better than others .
A couple of weeks ago Ennio Morricone won an academy award for his original score for Tarentino’s Hateful Eight. Listen to what he did more than a half a century ago, in A Fistful of Dollars, the first of a series of films he did with/for Sergio Leone. The titles music creates an epic space for the battles to come in three minutes.
Does music have to always underscore some heroic action? How about something more mundane such as baby-sitting? Uncle Buck is John Hughes’ painting character dynamics with the help of tiny snippets of music from composers Michael Ross and Matt Dike. It doesn’t take long to make a point.
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.
Director Aleksandar Lukac
I’ve had (full disclosure) the privilege of working with him, writing music for a couple of his shows as well as watching him transform an opera I wrote into something unbearably powerful.
Next up for Sasha is Life is a Dream, previewing Tuesday March 8th then running March 9-12 at Theatre Glendon.
I asked him about the play and the production.
1) In your presentation of Life is a Dream how do you reconcile
Wagner (Gesamtkunstwerk: dramaturgy as in a dream, absorbing us completely in the illusion)
vs
Brecht (the avatar of self-conscious theatricality to break the spell/ illusion)
OR IN OTHER WORDS:
is LIFE presented as a DREAM, in Life is a Dream?
Well I am going completely eclectic with this production. We start with a heavy dose of Commedia and venture into some Theatre of Cruelty and then come back to Commedia. I was trying to push genres out of their place of comfort and enjoying the resistance this caused – when I say resistance I don’t mean from the performers but from the theatre rules – the connectors between the scenes of different nature are the hardest to bridge – knowing that you have established one language for the audience and then inverting it, creating a shock or the need to readjust to the new form – and then back again. In that sense it is very Brechtian.
2) Please talk about the style that might have been used in the original show in the 17th century, and whether this has any significance vis a vis your interpretation.
I also do not know much about the style from the period (1635) but am finding it intriguingly comical – completely different from Shakespeare even though the periods are very close. Almost as if there is a significant philosophical difference in what theatre means in general. It seems that Calderon’s theatre, despite its myriad of classical Spanish ethical motives, takes itself far less seriously then the Elizabethans did. So it was easier to throw the play through an aesthetic chopper so to speak.
This performance encourages participation with the audience through the use of social media. Make sure to visit our twitter @LifeIsADream_GL and to use our hashtag #DreamGL. Cellphones are encouraged during this performance, so make sure to bring your smart phone! Make sure to stay up to date on our Facebook event page and twitter feed.
Does the social media aspect de-familiarize this world / reality, employing or reinforcing a Brechtian distancing and dramaturgy?
Absolutely – since the social media is only a part of the production – activated when Segismundo is actually released from the cave in which he had been held captive for 27 years – we are asking the audience to use Twitter to teach him about the world – what should someone waking up from this dream know about our world/time before they decide how will they conduct themselves as a king. Which rests on the original premise of the play. We are not filtering any tweets so I anticipate everything.
4) What can you tell me about what you’re exploring in this production, both for the interpretation and pedagogically with your students?
Really it is an exploration in trying to make the theatre experience relevant in today’s world. Most of educators today cannot teach without the frustration of seeing their students deeply immersed in the tiny screens of their cellphones – it is hard to talk to the tops of the heads without the eye contact. Of course I am old school but you realize that this will not change so it is smarter to try to incorporate it in the process rather than regulate it. Allowing the students to explore the potential of social media in performance is an important aspect of that incorporation. I have been doing it at Glendon Theatre for the past four years – enjoying the fact that much of it wouldn’t be possible in professional context – due to Equity rules which make live-streaming quite impossible. Our productions of Marat/Sade Occupied (2012) and WWI Revisions (2014) are still available on YouTube.
5) Why is this a good text to use in a student context?
Since I teach a political theatre course – Life Is A Dream seemed like a perfect opportunity to investigate some classical universal themes – in this case, how do we clumsily attempt to prevent political disasters which, for whatever reason, seem inevitable. Even today, we push panic buttons, build walls, imprison people for years on in an absurd attempt to force a worldview on them. King Basilio does that to his own son because of what the stars have told him and of course this experiment fails miserably. I find this very similar to western reliance on skimpy or, at best, one-sided evidence of danger, before we employ the cruellest and usually most inefficient methods of prevention.
6) Why is this a good text that an audience would enjoy?
It is actually very funny and also functions a bit like a tele-novella – so a lot of intrigue, love and honour mixed in.
7) Do you use music?
Interestingly enough our set (Design by Duncan Appleton, Tech director of Glendon Theatre) is a video game – a mash-up of Super Mario and other games with interactive videos – which is very exciting on its own – so a lot of music is directly from a number of games and other popular culture venues.
8) What do you hope to see / expect to see in the social media side..? do we get into some sort of meta-theatrical or meta-textual place with the use of twitter / social media?
Last time when we did WWI Revision we had some extremely provocative tweets that had actually helped the whole Brechtian aspect of the production. For example, at a point in the play when actors were at the most serious exploration of contemporary wars (that were arguably a direct result of the world divisions that came after WWI,) we received some inappropriate, comical tweets that actually stunned the audience in the house – particularly since we also played some actual news footage of conflicts. It left us all in shock but also made everyone think that this is exactly the world we live in – half of the planet is in total disaster and we are collectively far more worried about which Kardashian did what to whom. This collective, for lack of better word, blindness is also manifested in the elections south of our border. I am hoping that perhaps some of that will seep into the show through the audience participation.
*******
Theatre Glendon’s Life is a Dream previews Tuesday March 8th, with a run beginning Wednesday March 9th to run until March 12th and note that performances begin at 7 pm, at Theatre Glendon – 2275 Bayview Ave YH188, Toronto, ON M4N3M6, Canada
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. We segued from a mysterious performance of Kurtág’s Ligatura: Message-Hommage à Frances-Marie Uitti (The Answered Unanswered Question) without interruption, directly into Dean’s Violin Concerto. In his pre-concert remarks Dean mentioned that Kurtág had been a key influence on him, which could perhaps help decode the mystery. We heard the Kurtág –a work for two cellos, two violins and celesta—played with the four string players off-stage, and the house lights and stage lights dimmed. The music emanated around us without a visible source. I have to think that Dean sees himself influenced by Kurtág, such that his own music seemed to come right out of the other composition, almost as if they were one idea. At the very least Dean was making a self-reflexive statement.
Dean’s concerto is a splendid composition, three very different movements. The use of the viola was at times very plaintive, the composer himself acting as soloist in a reading that must surely be authoritative.
I listened to Dean’s varied sounds, sometimes almost impressionistic and colourful, forcing me to stare desperately from player to player, trying to figure out how he achieved such subtleties of timbre. I found myself thinking “orchestration!”, impressed by his mastery of sound. Although the movements vary, from the rhetorical manner of the first movement, to the energized second, and the deeply internalized third, Dean’s viola seemed like a character in a drama.
After the interval –during which we watched a big and complicated set-up of instruments—Dean’s countryman Anthony Pateras took the stage as part of the ensemble for the North American premiere of his 2010 piece Fragile Absolute, for Winds, Percussion, Electronics and Celesta, the work giving the evening its title. I think I understand “fragile absolute” to mean that the composer had set out to let the work’s structure function in very arbitrary terms: but that exigencies conspired to compromise those plans, making the absolute—his a priori objectives—fragile, as I suspect they always are when confronted by de facto.
Pateras told us in the introductory conversation that he was influenced by Bartók’s composition Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Here we were in the presence of a mass of brass & percussion without strings, but with some electronics, and with continuous action from a very busy celesta player, so much so that it could be a concerto for celesta. Where Dean’s piece had been a subtle surface of quiet murmurings, a composition that seemed internalized (much like the Kurtág), Pateras’s work was much more an extroverted exploration and seemed to be a deliberate contrast to what came before. Groups of instruments repeated patterns within a narrow band of notes, sometimes swelling in flamboyant effusion while at other times the music mostly dropped away. The celesta kept bubbling along, occasionally joined by percussion & either or both of two pianos.
In our recent interview I’d asked James Ledger about what might be a typical Australian trait in the music he and/or his countrymen compose, to which he spoke of a time when he’d been told that “only an Australian could have composed it”, possibly because distance gives them freedom, and likely less than the usual anxiety of influence. In the two pieces I’d heard so far by Australians – that is, Dean’s viola concerto and Pateras’s Fragile Absolute the music seemed to escape sounding like the typical compositions understood by the epithet “new music”. In tonight’s concert I felt a great deal of freedom.
Composer & pianist Kevin Lau (photo: Bo Huang)
Last on the program was a World Premiere/TSO Commission by a young Canadian that brought the audience to their feet, a definite crowd pleaser from Kevin Lau titled Concerto Grosso for Orchestra String Quartet, and Turntables. My appetite was already whetted for the piece by a conversation I’d had on the bus with the cellist Adrian Fung, who also happens to be the TSO’s VP of Innovation, a musician with an MBA. At the time I heard about Spin Cycle, an ambitious composition aiming towards an integration of styles & musical ideas that led to a JUNO nomination. Lau is on to the next stage with his Concerto Grosso, another fascinating investigation of the fusion of styles.
Forgive me if I digress for a moment, but it amazes me when I see parallel actions among several artists, as though their preoccupation has become suddenly universal
In Going Home Star the Royal Winnipeg Ballet brought together composer Christos Hatzis and several aboriginal musical voices seeking to embody the process of reconciliation onstage.
Stephanie Martin’s choral symphony Babel concerns the (im)possibility of communication
James Ledger’s piece to be presented next Wednesday at this same festival –his Two Memorials: Anton Webern & John Lennon—is a composition that seeks a reconciliation or at least a mix between two very different sound-worlds
And latent in Lau’s work is a question that I posed to Ledger, concerning popularity. Had I heard what Lau had composed I would have asked him the same question I fired at Ledger, concerning a piece juxtaposing austere Anton Webern and popular John Lennon, namely to ask how he feels about popular music. But the answer is right there in the music, where Lau seems very comfortable in tonality and popular sounds, possibly because he also writes film-scores, a medium that isn’t afraid of tonality or unabashed beauty.
I would love to hear the Concerto Grosso again, a piece that galvanized the audience. Lau takes us on a wonderful journey, juxtaposing the sounds of an orchestra with a DJ, in this case “Skratch Bastid”. Mediating were the four members of the Afiara string quartet, including Fung, viola Eric Wong and violinists Valerie Li and Timothy Kantor. There were two contrasting movements, namely the opening “Surface tension” and “Fusion dreams”. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a two-movement work of diametrically opposite movements, for instance Beethoven’s piano sonata op 111 resembles it, in the fury of the opening movement and the serenity of its closing.
“Surface tension” sees materials emerging in the quartet that are then picked up either by the DJ or the orchestra. If there is a conflict, it’s enacted not in classical counterpoint or pure juxtaposition, but in passages resembling an actual battle (as the sonorities reminded me of the fight in West Side Story). Lau is a real crowd-pleaser, his music always listenable and often stunningly beautiful, whether in his writing for the quartet or the orchestra. I can understand how this conflict emerges, given that an improviser such as the DJ is fundamentally alien to the notion of a work scored and determined on the page. When we came to “Fusion Dreams” we begin with a pretty little tune from the quartet picked up in the orchestra, and then riffed by the DJ without fracturing the rapport. We build to a kind of diapason, a sonic climax employing everyone… that hangs before us like the dream of a fusion of the players & styles, the hoped for reconciliation of opposites. And we are then pulled back into the quartet for a few miniature paraphrases of what came before, as though remembering the dream, and still daring to hope. The ending was like a question mark reminding me of the way Richard Strauss ends Also Sprach Zarathustra, poignant with possibilities.
For such a young composer I’m in awe, and eager to hear what comes next from Kevin Lau. Ah yes, he’s been commissioned by the National Ballet, so next is this June.
The New Creations Festival continues Wednesday March 9th with Brett Dean’s Trumpet Concerto Dramatis Personae, James Ledger’s Two Memorials, plus a live film From the Vortex PerspectiveI by Paul Frehner and Peter Mettler.
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 most interesting, well sung and well produced pieces of opera that has been seen on the Scottish stage for quite a few years.” – Opera Britannia 2016
The Devil Inside_SCOTTISH OPERA,Music; Stuart MacRae,Words; Louise Welsh, Conductor; Michael Rafferty, Director; Matthew Richardson, Designer; Samal Blak, Lighting; Ace McCarron, Catherine; Rachel Kelly, Richard; Nicholas Sharratt, James; Ben McAteer, Old Man_Vagrant; Steven Page,
Tapestry Opera presents the North American premiere of THE DEVIL INSIDE, a new co-production by Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales. The latest work from Britain’s trailblazing librettist-composer team, Louise Welsh and Stuart MacRae, THE DEVIL INSIDE is a modern Faustian tale,“finely paced” and “immaculately crafted” according to a 5-star review in The Guardian (UK). THE DEVIL INSIDE marks the first time Scottish Opera has been presented in North America and the first time a UK Opera company has been presented in Toronto in over a hundred years.
Inspired by The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson, THE DEVIL INSIDE is an imp in a bottle who can grant every conceivable desire. The bottle can be bought and sold, but only at a lower price each time. And anyone who dies while in possession of the bottle goes straight to hell . . . forever. A compelling look at human nature from love and selflessness to greed and mass consumption.
“This is a brilliant new work that makes you think. It is spine tingling opera.” –Opera Britannia 2016
Tapestry Opera and Scottish Opera have been collaborating together since 2009 following Tapestry Opera’s international LibLab: Composer-Librettist Laboratory. THE DEVIL INSIDE is their third of four collaborations, the first being Pub Operas in 2011, followed by M’dea Undone, which had its world premiere May 2015 at Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto. Tapestry will be premiering their fourth collaboration, the co-commission Rocking Horse Winner, this May.
THE DEVIL INSIDE is also the third collaboration between Librettist Louise Welsh and composer Stuart MacRae. Ghost Patrol (2011), which followed their first partnership Five: 15 Operas Made in Scotland (2009), was a critical success and winner of the exclusive 2013 South Bank Sky Award for Opera. Also a British crime writer, Louise Welsh is the author of six novels includingThe Girl on the Stairs (2012) and A Lovely Way to Burn (2014). Scottish Composer Stuart MacRae was writing powerfully expressive works in his mid-twenties receiving commissions from such organizations as the BBC and the London Sinfonietta and being appointed as Composer-in-Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. His 52 completed compositions include works for opera, theatre, orchestra, ensembles and soloists.
Ghost Patrol’s director Matthew Richardson and conductor Michael Rafferty lead the cast of mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly, a recent graduate of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden’s Jette Parker Young Artist Programme; baritone Ben McAteer, a 2015/16 Scottish Opera Emerging Artist; tenor Nicholas Sharratt (The Pirates of Penzance 2013, Ghost Patrol 2012); baritone Steven Page (The Rake’s Progress 2011, The Pirates of Penzance 2013); and players of the Scottish Opera Orchestra.
Tapestry Opera continues to drive the evolution of opera with an innovative 36th season, which concludes with the world premiere of ROCKING HORSE WINNER, another Scottish Opera co-commission, May 27 – June 4 at Berkeley Street Theatre-Downstairs.
TAPESTRY OPERA
Presents the North American Premiere of
THE DEVIL INSIDE
A Co-commission & Co-production by Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales Based upon Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp
Limited Run! 3 Performances only!
March 10, 12 @ 8pm and March 13 @ 4pm
Harbourfront Centre Theatre, 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto
Libretto by Louise Welsh
Composed by Stuart MacRae
Directed by Matthew Richardson
Starring Rachel Kelly, Ben McAteer, Steven Page and Nicholas Sharatt
Featuring Players of the Scottish Opera Orchestra
Designed by Samal Blak with Lighting Design by Ace McCarron
Tickets available via Harbourfront Centre Box Office
The Devil Inside_SCOTTISH OPERA,Music; Stuart MacRae,Words; Louise Welsh, Conductor; Michael Rafferty, Director; Matthew Richardson, Designer; Samal Blak, Lighting; Ace McCarron, Catherine; Rachel Kelly, Richard; Nicholas Sharratt, James; Ben McAteer, Old Man_Vagrant; Steven Page,
Season Subscriptions are available and can be purchased online at
Sharon and I were friends from the first phone call. It just felt right. The opera was her baby but I soon became a co-parent! As the libretto was completed when I began, it was very much the way I usually work, with a finished text. However as I was writing I would play her some of the music and then there was a give and take and she changed some of her text and we were almost building together in some cases. We were also working directly with the stage director for the opera Guillermo Silva, the director of Voicebox Opera in Concert, he was wonderful to work with, with great insights which were very helpful to me as this is my first walk in the opera world. I learned a great deal about the importance of drama, something I never really thought about before and I perhaps should have, as everything is drama in some way, even in liturgical music which I am also involved with.
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 the supporting patrons for the performing arts are older, what will become of these organizations in a generation? Will anyone carry on the support?
A friend of mine asked me to suggest a way to begin studying film music, knowing that I 
barczablog 