Tonight in a Soundstreams concert titled “Adrianne Pieczonka: Beyond the Aria” we saw and heard two great operatic artists go beyond their usual boundaries, using their instruments in unexpected ways. Soprano Pieczonka was joined by mezzo-soprano Kristina Szabó in a program whose oldest items date from the 1960s, in keeping with Soundstreams mandate to present contemporary music.
Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka (Photo by Lisa Sakulensky)
Earlier at today’s Array concert at the RBA I wondered whether virtuosity is over or just out of fashion, hearing gentle sounds in minimalist compositions requiring none of the usual vocal fireworks one expects in an opera house. I had wondered if Soundstreams were merely seeking Pieczonka –the world-famous singer –as a draw to attract a bigger audience. While it’s true that the concert at Koerner Hall was packed, this was a unique concert. We heard singers go in several non-operatic directions, but with the expressive capabilities of the voice always front and centre.
The program was framed (beginning and ending) by works composed by American George Crumb. We began with five excerpts from American Songbook, Crumb’s bold paraphrases of traditional materials mixed and reframed in flamboyant arrangements employing both singers either in solos or duets. “Dry Bones” uses the well-known song complete with percussion to make you shiver in their grotesquely comical resemblance to skeletons. And while the Saints may indeed go marching in, it’s in an abrasive 5/4. The ensemble was extremely tight, led by conductor Leslie Dala.
The light-hearted beginning was followed by a contrasting world premiere, namely Canadian composer Analia Llugdar’s Romance de la luna, luna. Soundstreams sought to commission a work that would underscore the Crumb piece that concludes the program—Ancient Voices of Children—which Pieczonka performed with Soundstreams a quarter of a century ago, when she was just beginning her career. Both works utilized texts by Federico Garcia Lorca and have similar instrumentation. Szabó faced a different set of challenges, in a work that is more recognizably Hispanic in its rhythms and harmonic idiom, which shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Llugdar was born in Argentina. The work is a tour de force, a showpiece, and perhaps so full of flamboyant challenges as to at times obscure some of the simplest elements in the text. But Szabó and Dala were more than equal to its challenges.
The last item before intermission was a bit of a departure, and probably the moment when the audience were most attentive, namely three of Berio’s arrangements of Beatles songs. While there is an element of surprise in the framing of “Michelle” among unexpected chord progressions and a moody opening, the other two songs (“Yesterday” and “Ticket to Ride”) generated a bit of hilarity in their ironic packaging, particularly the former in its near-exact quoting of Bach’s “Air on the G String”. There was the usual discomfort in trying to orient ourselves vis a vis the genre, calibrating the choice to sing in pop or classical style. Pieczonka can’t turn off her legato, which does betray her slightly in creating a smoother phrase than is idiomatic for pop. But the combination of the new arrangements with that stunning voice still brought down the house,.
After the interval Pieczonka and boy soprano Andrew Lowe gave us Ancient Voices of Children. We began with a singer projecting her sound into the depths of a grand piano, the strings resonating with her many different approaches to singing. She emerged to join with Soundstreams for the wonderful variety of sonorities Crumb calls up in support, from toy pianos to harmonicas to bells and percussion.
Vocal pedagogue Mary Morrison (click for bio)
With the contrasting approaches to singing I remarked upon (the gentle softness this afternoon, the flamboyance from both women tonight) it’s worth noting that a voice teacher was singled out by both programs, namely Mary Morrison. This afternoon she was given a shout-out by Rick Sacks of Array, and acknowledged by Pieczonka both in the program tonight and in our interview. The program mentions the vocal techniques Morrison showed her. In the interview Pieczonka said
I performed Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children nearly 30 years ago (with the group before it became Soundstreams). I was still a student at U of T at the time. I’m sure Mary Morrison, with whom I then studied, was somehow instrumental in this engagement.
It’s intriguing that Morrison is so influential among singers of such divergent approaches, both among singers who employ a soft minimalist approach, and also one of our biggest stars of the operatic stage.
Today’s free noon-hour concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre (the upper lobby of the Four Seasons Centre) offered a rich pairing of matched works, presented by the Array Ensemble & a pair of sopranos. Today feels especially like a preparation for Barbara Monk Feldman’s Pyramus and Thisbe, an opera that gets its world premiere October 20th with the Canadian Opera Company. A concert like this one feels like a win-win partnership, exposing the magic of Array’s music to a broader audience, helping COC fans to explore outside their usual comfort zone, while helping introduce a style of music we will be encountering shortly.
Composer Linda Catlin Smith
The first work was Linda Catlin Smith’s Hieroglyphs (1998), using violins, cello & percussion and soprano Brooke Dufton. I’m tempted to look up the meaning of “hieroglyph”, given that the text was assembled from definitions in dictionaries dating from 1859, 1906 and 1939. I think it’s fair to say that the text aims to capture something from another time, not unlike the picture-words embedded in a wall as hieroglyphics. That notion of a fixed paraphrase –something embedded in a wall—places the composition beyond the usual realm of interpretation. Sure, Dufton sings, and Array’s Artistic Director Rick Sacks led the players through the score. Yet we’re not in that kind of exuberant vivid enactment of life, not experiencing opera nor even a ballad or song, but into a reified place of reflection and ideas about things. It’s a quiet place, one where the singer is a gentle medium, and you wouldn’t expect ringing high notes. There were indeed two songs (as I recall: if they should even be called “songs”) that took Dufton to each extreme of her range, but it was a calm traversal of that remote place, done without drama or tension.
Array Artistic Director & Conductor Rick Sacks
As this is my first concert of the season I may be overly fulsome in my response simply because I have missed these daylight explorations. At one point an ambulance siren added a charming obbligato voice to the composition we were hearing. Both pieces on the program dialled the dynamics down several notches, quieter than what most of us usually experience, especially in an opera house, where virtuosity usually manifests itself via extroversion and flamboyance. I have to wonder if virtuosity is merely out of fashion or completely over, listening to this mature kind of expression, as though the species has outgrown ego and the performer’s egomania, the need to belt or blast, and instead is in a tranquil place of reflection.
One can dream.
While this might be the longest such concert I’ve ever been to (the COC concerts normally start at noon and end before 1:00, whereas this one went past 1:00): I didn’t want it to end. I believe any art implies an interface, as we learn how to watch & listen in the encounter. I experienced a kind of altered reality, surprised at how the time had gone, and listening extra carefully to every quiet little nuance. I have to think that if I could have gone back to the beginning with the ear I had at the end, I would have been more appreciative, more sensitive. I hope i remember this when i see the opera later this month.
I think –but can’t be sure—that Smith’s composition was the longer one on the program, at least based on the number of words in the program. Yet I totally lost my sense of time, listening to the second composition, Barbara Monk Feldman’s The Love Shards of Sappho(2001). I was reminded of the way I felt the first time I heard the ending to Mahler’s “Der Abschied”, the last of the songs in his Lied von der Erde, with its repeated patterns of notes, and oh so gradual diminuendo, as though one were lost in a slow sunset that is a long goodbye. She might hate the comparison, given that I am speaking of a piece with a telos and a genuine sense of ending, whereas I think Feldman’s piece has even more of a labyrinthine quality: where we are very gently disoriented, among very soft sonorities, safely enclosed and protected.
At the risk of projecting –in a program with two women singing works by two women composers—I find myself embracing the alternative that I think they present to the masculine option, where we are in a realm of soft sounds that are not required to be explicit or dramatic, where the expression seems to transcend ego. We are on the boundaries of meaning, sound for the sake of sound, beautiful sounds that signify, but also, sounds that simply are. The chunks of the various words are genuinely shards, as though the words were fragmented. Is this merely the arbitrary syntax of the composition & its procedures, or rather the fragmentation of experience itself? Or of love? I can’t say. There is also the element of history –again—as we might wonder if Sappho’s text, paraphrased millennia later in this form, must inevitably shatter, an encounter across distances of miles & years, meaning failing like a soap bubble stretched too far.
Feldman’s piece is for a violin, clarinet, piano & percussion, plus soprano Ilana Zarankin, who sang with such remarkable softness for such a long time, I went into an altered state. I am reminded of what Phillip Addis said in our recent interview, which now makes a great deal of sense:
Singing Pyramus and Thisbe is challenging not in its virtuosity but in its minimalism. In rehearsal we are striving for such a spare aesthetic that we are having to let go of habit, ego and expectation in order to participate in any given moment. There is very little dynamic variation and the range of my part is just an octave, meaning that any move towards the extremes of these narrow parameters is more deeply felt, like one wave on otherwise still waters.
Canadian Baritone Phillip Addis “is praised for his creamy, bright, smooth voice as much as for his spell-binding, daring, yet sensitive interpretations. A rising star on the international stage, Addis has performed in opera, concerts and recitals throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan.” (additional biographical info can be found on his website)
Addis has already made an impact on the Toronto stage, especially impressive as Don Giovanni in the Opera Atelier production in 2011.
Addis returns to the Canadian Opera Company (where he debuted in their production of la Boheme in 2013) in October in Pyramus and Thisbe, a program combining operas from the 17th and 21st centuries. I asked Addis ten questions: five about himself and five about the upcoming project.
1) Are you more like your father or your mother?
My parents were very supportive as I found my way through my education, despite being very surprised when I switched from the sciences to music and then specifically to vocal studies. I certainly have inherited traits from both of them that have been useful in being myself both on and off the stage. They both have good singing voices and a strong memory for songs and lyrics, far better than my memory has ever been. They are great collaborators in their fields, and this has been a good example to me as I strive to put projects ahead of my own ego.
2) What is the best thing about being a singer?
As French Lt. Audebert in the Opéra de Montréal production of Silent Night (photo: Philip Groshong)
The greatest reward is the experience of using one’s body as an instrument of the mind, in sync with one’s musical partners, and feeling the rush of pleasure when the imagined ideal is fairly realised. Basically, when things go even better than rehearsed thanks to adrenaline.
3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?
I like to be surprised, whether by a comedian who sheds new light on a subject, a musician who ruptures my prejudices about how a sound can be used, or a filmmaker who leads me down one path, only to reach an unanticipated destination. These three things meet at a point known as the musical-parody/comedy video.
4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
Organisation. I would probably achieve more of my dreams if I knew how to plan to make them happen.
5) When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?
I don’t have one favourite activity. A short list would include connecting with my wife over food and drink; reading, playing and creating with my son; getting slightly lost while exploring new places; stargazing; birding; and photography.
Baritone Phillip Addis
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Five more about the upcoming COC production Pyramus and Thisbe.
1. Please talk about Barbara Monk Feldman’s vocal writing, and how it feels to sing her composition.
Singing Pyramus and Thisbe is challenging not in its virtuosity but in its minimalism. In rehearsal we are striving for such a spare aesthetic that we are having to let go of habit, ego and expectation in order to participate in any given moment. There is very little dynamic variation and the range of my part is just an octave, meaning that any move towards the extremes of these narrow parameters is more deeply felt, like one wave on otherwise still waters.
2. You’ve sung several modern classics, such as Jauffré in Love from Afar, George in Of Mice and Men¸ and last year Lt Audebert in Silent Night, yet you also played Don Giovanni for Opera Atelier. As you prepare for this intriguing mix –both the 17th century composer Monteverdi and the contemporary Barbara Monk Feldman—please reflect on how you approach the mix of repertoire.
In fact these two composers are a good pairing and not so far removed from one another. If anything, the writing of Monk Feldman almost seems like a renaissance antecedent to Monteverdi’s baroque sentiments. Singing these works is no great challenge in terms of vocal stamina, but is a major endeavour mentally and physically. We’ve decided that the characters have an arc through the whole production, so we’ve made efforts to harmonize the pieces and hide the seams. Our movement through the piece is as important as anything we’re doing vocally, and that has required a strong discipline and an exploration of our physical limits.
3. What is your favourite moment in the show?
We’re still rehearsing, but what I like best about this production are the moments where the lovers have a kind of near miss, that is to say, when they almost connect in a positive way, but then things turn for the worse. The tension created by the frustration is what’s interesting.
4. Please talk about the psychology of your portrayals and how you come at the character.
I begin with the text, under the assumption that this is also what the composer had as inspiration, and I read it dryly, then in the rhythm that has been established in the score. These I alternate to explore possible meanings, or double meanings, of specific words. Then I consider the pitch and melody as contours which drive the inflection. It’s sometimes frustrating when you want to stress a word a certain way, but the composer has had other ideas. Sometimes you can keep a kernel of your original idea, but usually you have to submit to the composer’s will in this case. As for any psychology, it would be false to say that I embody the character. I’m constantly aware of what words I need to deliver next and how and when. If I look like I’m in an emotional state, it’s because I’m imagining how it ought to look, and then creating the appropriate mask. One can’t get too worked up on the inside in opera, not really, or the very instrument upon which you rely will not function. The only time I can really remember losing it was in a final chorus of Hänsel and Gretel, as the father, at a time when my wife was expecting our son. I was blubbering away and it was all rather overwhelming.
5. What is your next big gig?
I’m looking forward to a return to the role of Pelléas, this time in Hamburg. Pelléas et Mélisande has, to my great fortune, become a niche for me over the years, and I never grow tired of it. It is such a masterful score and the general aesthetic lies very close to my heart. This upcoming production is new to me, but I feel like I could be happy telling this story with almost any setting. Kent Nagano will conduct, and I can’t wait to see what musical ideas he brings to this score.
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Phillip Addis stars in the new Canadian Opera Company production Pyramus and Thisbe, a combination of baroque masterworks by Monteverdi and a new work by Canadian Barbara Monk Feldman, opening October 20th at the Four Seasons Centre. For further information click the image below.
Sunday morning instead of church I went to hear Doctor Gábor Maté address a mixed crowd at the George Ignatieff Theatre. Maté has a huge following from his writings & lectures exploring such pathways as the role of trauma & stress in addiction, ADHD, and the mind-body connection. Whatever mysterious process brought this small crowd together, they were decidedly sympathetic to the homily from their guru at the pulpit, a message titled “Ayahuasca transformation & a truer life”.
Dr Gábor Maté
If you google “Gábor Maté Ayahuasca” you’ll find words from both him and his supporters, but also dissenting opinions. Nobody has all the answers, or so we’re told. Maybe so, but I’ve never heard such an elegant explanation of so many things. While Ayahuasca may have been the subject, the discussion of this herbal brew with psychedelic properties was the occasion for Maté to articulate a simple but lucid understanding of human consciousness under the influence of trauma and stress. Our time in the theatre was an escape from the world of blame & stigmatization, into a parallel realm of unconditional love, forgiveness, support and healing, in some respects a lot like a church service.
Speaking of parallel worlds, Maté walks the dividing line between the positivistic world of measurements & scientific proofs and the realm of metaphysical belief. At the very least he is aware of the requirements, the rules the scientists play by, even if they don’t really work for the kinds of questions Maté probes. Yet he seems reluctant to fully surrender to the world of his followers, at least using the language of science even as he mocks so many of the tenets they hold sacred. In that world Ayahuasca can be employed in a coldly clinical way, or within a more spiritual context such as that of the South America shamanic communities who were the first to brew the mind-altering drinks. The assembled listeners were not skeptics demanding proof, but rather a group of believers dissatisfied with the failings of traditional medicine, eager to hear his wisdom.
While I am comparatively new to Maté and even newer to Ayahuasca, I share their skepticism from my lifelong struggles with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an auto-immune disorder. Or perhaps I should speak of my experiences with the medical profession, a noble cause whose banner is sometimes carried by dogmatic practitioners who seem to be throwbacks to the Dark Ages given the rigidity of their thinking.
But Maté strikes me as a genuinely humble man who doesn’t claim to have all the answers, using a no-bullshit language that deconstructs his own status as a media darling, a reluctant icon if ever there was one. At one point he alluded to that scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the prophet loses patience with the flock and tells them where to go. And even after that rather colourful command, they simply ask for his instructions on how to F-off.
Maté doesn’t want to be anyone’s messiah, but one who empowers by offering ways to find out for ourselves. We heard a number of anecdotes about healing, stimulated by the encounter with Ayahuasca. As a retired doctor Maté can testify to the usual approach of western medicine, its cultural assumptions and ultimate limits.
What I think I saw was someone who has learned to respect the limits of the conservative establishment, after championing harm-reduction in his role at a Vancouver clinic. If we accept that psychedelics –such as LSD, psilocybin or Ayahuasca—can all be powerful, Maté makes a big deal out of context:
There is a difference between an experience under the supervision of a shaman who is part of a community, the drug part of their belief system, as opposed to drugs without the sheltering context
At one point he stopped a questioner from the floor who spoke of “mood-altering” to offer another goal, namely “consciousness-altering”
And there is a third item that touches upon context at least in a metaphorical sense, in the distinction between drugs that come from plants as opposed to those that are chemically synthesized. Does it matter that the shaman connects to the plant? You tell me.
But I see Maté taking a safer pathway –where the drug is grounded in something quasi-religious—to avoid some of the resistance encountered previously, and perhaps to get a kind of legitimacy. I believe this context question is vital, because it removes quibbles like the sort raised by the government & policies resisting harm-reduction initiatives. There is for example a letter of his I saw re-produced online that’s directed to Rona Ambrose, the Minister of Health, concerning government policies.
And –perhaps as an indication of the man and his choices—there’s the indirect evidence of a question from the floor, a totally charming inquiry from a young U of T medical student, asking how the paradigm of medicine could be fixed. His reply, a self-deprecatory joke about the limits on his time and energies, suggests that he is picking his battles carefully, a man humbled but not daunted.
I am grateful for the simple construct Maté gave me to explain the power of psychedelics, namely how they put you in touch with your authentic self, the version of yourself that you may repress or perhaps not even know. In passing Maté said “there are no bad trips”, perhaps because context is really the key. If we approach these powerful consciousness altering tools not as a roller-coaster to offer a fun ride, but rather with the respect & awe that is their due, we will make great discoveries about ourselves. We could possibly help to heal illnesses such as auto-immune disorders that have a psychic component. I’m not saying I am going to turn to Ayahuasca to fix my AS, but I do see how there is surely merit in the investigation of these pathways.
After the lecture I bought one of his books complete with an autograph. I will be reading Maté’s book When the Body Says No, as I seek clues to find health & wellness.
One of my favourite things about Toronto Symphony concerts is the steady stream of gratitude in the speeches that usually precede performances. While opening night may be weighed down with ritual, the language was sincere, tonight’s season opener at Roy Thomson Hall offering more reasons than usual to give thanks.
Music Director Peter Oundjian spoke of preparing to enter Juilliard to study violin, encounters with the two great violinists –both of whom served as mentors– namely Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman on the path that eventually led Oundjian to the podium of the TSO. This put the concert in proper context, as Perlman’s abrupt cancellation due to emergency surgery was followed by the fortunate substitution by Zukerman in the same work, namely Bruch’s 1st violin concerto in G.
I am certainly grateful. I first heard this work performed by Zukerman a very long time ago at Massey Hall, when we were all much younger.
Violinist Pinchas Zukerman
My impression at the time was first and foremost a kind of visceral shock: that I’d never heard a violin sound like that. Tonight I heard something similar from a more mature version of the violinist. I can’t imagine how many times he’s played this concerto, but it flows out of him as naturally as the sweat on his brow or the air out of his nostrils. Zukerman gets sounds from his violin that open up dynamic possibilities both loud and soft, changing everything. I was especially transported by the second movement and its elaborate dialogue between soloist and orchestra, Oundjian leading a particularly urgent & passionate reading. For an encore Zukerman and the orchestra offered a soulful reading of Nigel Hess’s “Ladies in Lavender”.
Between the opening and closing items that were conducted by Oundjian, we heard one led by Resident Conductor Earl Lee. This is that study in mentorship gone wrong, namely Paul Dukas’s tone-poem L’apprenti sorcier. The piece could be understood as a study in gothic horror if it hadn’t been forever re-framed via Fantasia and Disney as something seen merely as the mickey-mousing for a cartoon. But it’s so much more than that. As I sat watching Lee I didn’t envy him, reminded suddenly of the young apprentice in the symphonic poem confronted by huge forces threatening to spiral wildly out of control: not unlike the players in Dukas’ orchestra. As the brave conductor faced an unruly orchestra getting louder and louder, i thought “better him than me”.
We began with a completely indirect invocation of youth in the first Peer Gynt Suite, one of the very first pieces I got to know as a small child. I never stop being impressed by the bold clarity of Grieg’s writing, phrases that instantly invoke morning or mourning or the unforgettable grotesquerie of “In the Hall of the Mountain King”. Oundjian led a clear reading building to its climax, a wonderful opening to the season.
The TSO will be back tomorrow to play a classic program of the three B’s Friday through Sunday: Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor (and speaking of Fantasia, it’s in Stokowski’s arrangement), Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and Brahms double concerto.
Last summer I mentioned the Pride-themed display & sale at Bay St Video, when, in addition to HBO’s Behind The Candelabra (2013), the Michael Douglas / Matt Damon vehicle about Liberace, I picked up Another Country (1984).
I’d been captured by the familiar baby faces on the cover (NB not the same as the image currently selling the film on Amazon, which only features one of the stars, not the three on the cover at Bay St Video)
Rupert Everett
Colin Firth
Cary Elwes
Now please note, Another Country dates from 1984, when –if the dates in the IMDB bios are correct—Everett was 25, Firth 24 and Cary Elwes just 22, five years before we saw him in The Princess Bride.
Tonght I finally pulled the DVD off my shelf to give it a look. My purchase decision was entirely superficial, namely the assumption that I’d see some famous actors early in their careers, and indeed Another Country gives us Firth & Everett & Elwes before they’d become the personalities we know. Firth’s voice is already highly recognizable, able to grab you right away. Elwes, the youngest of the three, is more or less who he is in many of his roles.
Everett? In fact this is who Everett has always been, the actor who has been out about his sexuality for a very long time. Another Country is Julian Mitchell’s adaptation of his play that had starred Everett in 1981, bringing him to prominence in his portrayal of Guy Bennett, based on Guy Burgess, a real-life British spy. We’re flashing back from the present day, as we see the childhood of the spy in a private school in England back in the 1930s. This is not to be mistaken for period romance, a portrayal of the worst things you’ve heard about English private schools of the time. Firth’s character is a marxist with whom Guy (Everett) has a great deal in common: in their alienation from the brutal conformity imposed at the school.
It may be election time, but it isn’t a time of vision as far as I can see. The two big contenders to replace Harper –the Liberals & NDP—are offering a few key policy choices on child-care, marijuana, restoring the CBC, pharmacare, bill C51. I suppose that when so much of the conversation is about the damage done by the Conservatives, that their decade of disaster defines the discourse. Yes we need the census, we need the CBC, we need to restore Parliament instead of circumventing it with omnibus bills and the PMO all-powerful.
But what if we really stopped for a moment to think about what they could and should offer the electorate?
Stop the election, or at least put it on pause for a moment.
Let’s dream big for a moment. I’m off work today (food-poisoning), recovering, grateful that my stomach doesn’t hurt so much. So i am taking a moment to reflect on the meaning of life, to pause and inhale and imagine.
First and foremost, I think our system isn’t just flawed, isn’t just broken, it’s bullshit. The problem? It is too expensive to run. As a result we have multi-million dollar campaigns. We have millionaire Prime Ministers. Should people get rich leading the country? Maybe that attracts the best people. Or maybe it attracts people for the wrong reasons. What if the office of PM didn’t pay any more than other bureaucrat jobs? What if spending were restricted?
What if all communication were vetted and controlled by the CBC? Imagine if you could log in anytime to see online debates stored, position papers where key questions were directed to the various candidates, who were properly cornered and recorded answering or evading in full public view?
And what if you or I could run for office? Maybe I have nothing to offer, but then again, should it depend on whether I have millions of dollars in my pocket or have been recruited by big businesses to represent them in Ottawa? Lobbying should be illegal. The “conversation” as it goes now is mostly driven by the candidates and large interests, not really a conversation but a monologue. Nobody listens to us. Imagine something like CBC’s “Cross-Country Checkup”, where candidates are perennially asked questions from the electorate, where the conversation truly IS a conversation. No hiding from the electorate (I’m talking to you Stephen Harper).
Okay so we have imagined a very different process. What about policies, what the government offers.
I like pharmacare for starters, as the NDP have proposed. Medicare needs to be shored up and protected, bolstered by this other arm, as well as Denticare. Please don’t tell me we can’t afford it. You get what you pay for always. Toronto (speaking of municipal politics for a moment) is like a Walmart, showing you what you get when you keep playing the game of cheap cheap cheap. A series of Mayors won on a promise of zero tax increase, going back decades. Is it any wonder that our infrastructure is aging, every winter a series of broken water mains tie up traffic, every summer the roads closed for patching up? Taxes are a necessity, and I think the Liberal approach –tax the rich—makes more sense than the NDP choice to tax the corporations, who simply pass it on to us in higher prices or simply leave the country altogether. There are other tools to use for revenue.
The conversation around defense has been knee-jerk, driven by sentiments that are poisonous. Yes we love our soldiers especially when they make the ultimate sacrifice. But do we send them into harm’s way based on posturing, based on pressure from other countries? Our strategy needs to begin with an idea of what Canada is all about. Buying more fighters –whether we want the F35 or something else—puts us into the foreign adventure conversation: a role out of step with who Canada really is. Unless we increase our military spending hugely (recalling that at the end of WW II we had a huge navy and air force), we will never have the army to fight foreign wars. We have been non-aligned peacekeepers for most of the past half-century, taking on a new more belligerent role under Harper. While he also speaks of defending our Arctic –a phrase that must make Putin cough up his borscht with laughter—we simply don’t have the equipment or the personnel. Trudeau is right to propose shifting our emphasis from jets to ship-building, especially given our real priorities. But before we talk about these things, we need a conversation about the Canada we imagine, its role in accepting refugees and helping build a better world, not just as allies in bombing campaigns that only serve to create new orphans, the next generation of recruits for world terror.
The big topic missing from the conversation concerns poverty and income disparity. It’s a complex topic that has the added hazard that there are no votes in it. Generally homeless people can’t or won’t vote, while the rich might oppose policies designed to make the rich pay (the boldfaced phrase is from Communist Party of Canada literature back in the 1970s).
Let me suggest something very simple via analogy.
Profiteering is understood to be immoral and illegal. During the big blackout of 2003, some gas stations raised their prices to capitalize on the desperation of customers: and were punished for it.
How is that any different from owning more than one house at a time that people are living in the street? I would be willing to meet them halfway. Yes it will be legal to own multiple properties (to propose anything else would get me killed but nevermind my own butt). But until such time as everyone has a place to live (and I don’t mean shelters), those second and third homes should be taxed heavily. Perhaps even punitively. Making huge amounts of money while people are forced to live on the street? some think that’s just Darwin at work, some people are smarter than others and deserve their reward. But the reality is that the game isn’t fair and never was.
We are seeing the hollowing out of the downtown, as the statistics on the use of foodbanks –a de facto measure if ever there were one—drops downtown while swelling massively in the suburbs. This isn’t good for the downtown, but (as nobody says much about this) it’s horrific for the poor, who now have to get their groceries in regions totally built for cars rather than transit.
I dream of mass transit that’s cheap or even free in all our cities. The expenditure will pay off.
I dream of free tuition for universities & colleges, just as they have in Europe. I am not sure this would pay off, just an intuition. But huge student debt seems hugely immoral.
Sustainability is nowhere in our conversation. I dream of clean lakes and air and water that is drinkable, fearing that the planet is being destroyed all too quickly. But this conversation is international and one that may lead to conflict. So be it.
I dream of arts funding that recognizes the value of artists and their creations, not just as creators of wealth (which is significant! arts funding dollars are huge drivers in making cities attractive and livable) but art as the essence of a good life. Imagine people wanting to come to Toronto from Italy or Germany to see our art. It’s a funny thought, isn’t it: precisely because we see the profound value of their culture. Imagine if we did that here. It might take 200 years, but why not start now?
But that’s just what I dream of. Imagine a process that allows a real conversation, that isn’t stifled by rich white men who don’t want to hear you or me. Dare to dream.
I saw precisely one film at tiff this year, a movie conceived when I was a toddler. While you might know it as “Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo”, I would be more inclined to call it “Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo”, especially when given the chance (as I was today), to hear Herrmann’s score played live by The Toronto Symphony from the stage of Roy Thomson Hall in accompaniment to the 1958 film.
This old film might be the beginning of something new. The TSO will be offering more live performances of film-scores in accompaniment of beloved old films. Back to the Future with score by Alan Silvestri will be screened Oct 16 & 17, then Psycho –Hitch & Herrmann again—will be the TSO’s Halloween-night offering.
It’s a totally different perspective even if you’re not a film-music buff. Watching Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos, you couldn’t help noticing the way the film music works, cued by something in the film. I wondered if they would manage to synchronize with the film. Oh yes!
Sometimes it was so subtle as to be barely noticeable, other times the swelling score almost drowned out the dialogue. The music heard by the characters on the screen in the film (for instance, the Mozart record on Scotty’s pal Midge’s record player when she visits him in his psych ward) was left as before. If you could only watch one film done this way, Vertigo would be the one, an amazing collaboration between Hitchcock and Herrmann. There are big sequences that make no sense without a gifted composer. Without Herrrmann? A good film but not nearly the great masterpiece we saw today.
Although Roy Thomson Hall wasn’t completely full, the audience raised the roof a couple of times. There was a loud welcome for Kim Novak who said hello before and did a brief Q & A after. But the biggest applause was at the end of the film, a huge powerful ovation. I have to think many of these people will be back for the October screenings. I know I will.
We were reminded by tiff CEO Piers Handling that the British Film Institute had installed Vertigo in place of Citizen Kane as the new best film of all time in their 2012 poll. What he didn’t mention is the rather curious thing those two films have in common. Kane and Vertigo may not be similar, but they both have scores by Herrmann, a composer who has four of the BFI top 50. Taxi Driver (his last film) tied for #31 and Psycho (not long after Vertigo) tied for #35.
I hope the TSO gets a big response for their upcoming films and makes this a regular feature. The real classics of the past century are the film scores by Rozsa, Korngold, Steiner, Elfman, Herrmann, Williams, and Bernstein, to name just a few. I can’t help noticing that the last popular opera (Puccini’s Turandot premiered in 1926) appeared just before the advent of talkies (The Jazz Singer premiered in 1927). If we look simply at popularity, we can notice that for example
Herrmann wrote one unsuccessful opera (Wuthering Heights) and a huge body of work in cinema (not just the 4 films mentioned in the BFI top 50, but several more wonderful films)
Erich Korngold had success in both media, but is known both for his operas and his films
Philip Glass has had success in both media
It may take awhile for the word to get out on this amazing way to see film & hear music. What I experienced today was something thrilling, a new perspective on a favourite film. Psycho is another favourite that I’m eager to see done with a live orchestral performance. I could name a dozen films the TSO could undertake, beginning with such extraordinary scores as Star Wars and Jaws by John Williams, Beetlejuice and Batman by Danny Elfman (who did a Halloween concert with Hollywood Symphony Orchestra back in 2013 celebrating his collaborations with Tim Burton)…
click for some of the answers
…or Magnificent Seven and The Ten Commandments by Elmer Bernstein.
If tonight’s Tafelmusik concert at Jeanne Lamon Hall (Trinity –St Paul’s Centre), with Mireille Lebel mezzo-soprano, and led by violinist Rodolfo Richter is any indication, I think we’ll see a lot more of him in future concerts.
Richter doesn’t just play brilliantly. We heard his reading at breakneck speed of his transcription of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto (identified as a “reconstruction” on the fascinating premise that the work was conceived by Bach for violin before it was composed for the keyboard): wonderfully apt for a concert titled “The Human Passions”.
And to begin he offered up a preamble that is the basis for my bizarre headline, as the entire concert could be understood as a kind of experiment. If I understood correctly, this was his concept, his baby that was being explored. Richter said –and here I paraphrase very loosely—that baroque composers express passion for soloists, whether they’re instrumental or vocal, with the baroque big three — Handel, Bach & Vivaldi–all on the program. One of the implications of this might be that the human voice is just another instrument, which is perhaps true. It is only in more recent times that composers exploited the natural dynamics of singers (the tendency for the voice to get louder as it goes up) rather than repressing such tendencies.
To phrase this more bluntly –and without Richter’s delicacy—we’d be asking a forbidden question, at least as much of a forbidden question as could be posed in a concert. But dare we juxtapose instrumental and vocal solos, to compare the way they work and even to ask which is more powerful, which is really the ideal way to convey passion? I had a professor long ago who proposed that all art could be understood as hypothetical, so that in her eyes performance was by definition a kind of research. It is in that spirit that I look at tonight’s concert, as an extraordinary exploration. My response is perhaps suspect as an opera fan.
Mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel (click photo for more)
Mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel made her Tafelmusik debut even though she had already sung with them in her portrayal of Gluck’s Orpheus last spring on behalf of Opera Atelier (for whom Tafelmusik are the pit band). In tonight‘s program we more or less want back and forth between vocal and instrumental solos. As far as passion is concerned? Each operatic solo took a single emotion, or perhaps two, on the occasions when the da capo section was in a contrasting mood. We who are accustomed to seeing operas presented in their entirety might be astonished at the power of an anthology of unrelated arias.
But come to think of it, this might be far more authentic than what we usually see on our operatic stages even without the modernization of COC productions such as Hercules or Semele, and even compared to Opera Atelier. Lebel was in a lovely red and gold dress, smiling as she came up the aisle to sing her first solo, without any hint of a dramatic illusion. But that is how baroque opera worked, the magic generated by the voice and strengthened by our imaginations, rather than from the kinds of set & costume to which we have become accustomed in recent times. In the centuries of restricted onstage expression, rigid ideas of decorum (even without the additional power of the censor) meant that one would listen rather than watch, for a voyeuristic thrill. The expressions of grief in a mezzo-soprano’s coloratura offered a kind of aural voyeurism, a non-verbal exhibitionism by the singer for a strait-laced world. Each of Lebel’s arias radiated a genuine heat, varieties of beautiful pain in which the listener could indulge.
To answer the forbidden question, much as i enjoyed the other parts of the concert, their passion couldn’t really compare to what could be conveyed with a voice but instead resembled interludes, background music between the over-the-top emotion of Lebel in her arias. Notwithstanding the intensity each of the soloists brought to their concerti (Dominic Tresi– bassoonist as well as Richter), that was always music, never passion. A passionate bassoon cadenza in a baroque composition (Vivaldi’s concerto RV485) is at best an impressive display. Richter’s feat of playing the reconstructed concerto was more exciting given how well-known the original is, so we had the added intensity of a familiar work, and the game of signification we see in any adaptation or transcription. We are accustomed to calling great playing “passionate”, for the play upon our emotions of tension & release. But it was still gorgeous music, and not what i would call “passion”.
Lebel, Richter & Tafelmusik will be back for more explorations of passion through the weekend at Jeanne Lamon Hall.
Adrianne Pieczonka is one of Toronto’s treasures, a fabulous ambassador for Canada when she sings abroad.
I first encountered her in Atom Egoyan’s Die Walkure with the Canadian Opera Company, a vocal and dramatic interpretation so compelling that it was as
though she hijacked the production. Everything was about Sieglinde because she made you forget everyone else. Her Ariadne changed the way i think about that sad mournful character, the most joyous Ariadne I ever saw.
The bio on her website proclaims the basic facts:
Internationally acclaimed for her interpretations of Wagner, Strauss, Verdi and Puccini, Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka has brought to life such powerful women as Senta, Chrysothemis, Sieglinde, the Marschallin, the Kaiserin, Tosca, Elisabetta, and Amelia on leading opera and concert stages in Europe, North America and Asia.
Performances have taken her to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper, ROH Covent Garden, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Munich Frankfurt, Los Angeles, and La Scala, as well as at some of Europe’s finest summer festivals including Salzburg, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne and Aix-en-Provence under the direction of such conductors as James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Sir Neville Marriner, Claudio Abbado, the late Richard Bradshaw, Lorin Maazel, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Anthony Pappano and the late Sir Georg Solti.
What the bio misses are the impossibilities she encompasses. You cared about Pieczonka’s Sieglinde, the most remarkable dramatic portrayal completed by that big powerful voice. Her Ariadne (or Tosca, or any of a number of other roles) seduced you with a sweet vulnerability that doesn’t usually happen with Olympian vocal production. These qualities are something you need to experience in person. We’ve been very fortunate here in Toronto.
And now Pieczonka goes in a different direction: “beyond the aria“. Soundstreams take her away from operatic portrayals in her upcoming program at Koerner Hall. I had to ask her ten questions: five about herself, and five more about this extraordinary concert.
1) Are you more like your father or your mother?
I am more like my mother than my father. My mother studied English and drama at McMaster University and she attended the Banff School for the performing arts as well. She could have had a career as an actress and she certainly had a dramatic flair in general. She notably played the Wicked Witch of the West in an amateur production of The Wizard of Oz when I was a child. My sister played Toto and I was a Munchkin. She trained as a teacher and taught off and on while raising her four children.
She was interested in all the fine arts – she was a very good painter and she tried her hand at ceramics, flower arranging, etc. She was a gifted seamstress and made many of my clothes when I was young. She exposed her children to all sorts of artistic endeavours – as a child I studied ballet, jazz dance, piano, guitar, saxophone and of course later voice. My parents weren’t big opera lovers but they did have a subscription to the Hamilton Philharmonic and we attended regular concerts as a family. My parents enjoyed lighter musical fare: they enjoyed popular musicals and Pops-style classical music. Both of my parents were very supportive of my desire to study music as a child, in high school, and later at University. I was never told that I should perhaps study something more “reliable” at University in terms of future employment. I am really grateful for their support.
My father is an electrical engineer and has a very scientific, pragmatic mind. My mother was (she died in 2011) a highly emotional being and I’d say I am also a rather emotional person. I suppose my parents balanced each other out in this respect. People often found my mother “larger than life” and a bit intimidating. She was 5′ 10″ and liked to wear rather flamboyant clothes and styles.
Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka (Photo by Lisa Sakulensky)
2) What is the best thing about being a singer?
The best thing about being a singer is that I can earn a living doing something I truly love. Singing is something very special: it’s a physical thing but there is a large emotional element too. It’s also intimate and elusive. It’s a hugely satisfying thing, singing. It can be exhilarating and very daunting too. I am 52 now and I still learn new things every day. The learning never stops – be it regarding repertoire, technical aspects, etc. No day is the same – or year or month. I travel a lot and there is pleasure in this of course. I have had so many marvelous experiences during my nearly 30 year career.
3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?
I certainly don’t enjoy listening to or watching myself! I think there are other singers who feel this way. I have a few DVDs of operas I’ve performed in which I have never watched. I rarely listen to a CD I’ve made. I don’t often listen to opera in my free time. I do tune in on occasion to the MET broadcasts but I’ve never attended one of the HD performances in the cinema.
I love jazz and probably my favourite performers are pianist Bill Evans and singer Ella Fitzgerald. I love radio station 90.3 Espace Musique which plays the best jazz selections from 6-8 pm during the week and some nice classical programming on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I sadly don’t often listen to CBC Radio 2. I find the playlists way too bland. I lived for 11 years in London UK and loved BBC Radio 3. What amazing classical programming they do, 24/7, and all classical! It’s sad to think what has become of the classical programming at CBC. I enjoy watching TV and films. I don’t like blockbuster type action films. I love indie, often foreign films. I like dramas – often quite grim stories, but not gruesome/horror stuff.
Meryl Streep is my favourite actor of all time. I marvel at her body of work, her versatility and artistry. In terms of TV shows, I watch Nurse Jackie, Breaking Bad, Homeland, Better Call Saul, Fargo, Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Mad Men, and Masters of Sex. I enjoy documentaries too. I’d say I watch a fair bit of TVO – what a wonderful station this is!!!
4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
I wish I could speak Russian and Polish. I’ve sung a few roles in Russian and it’s the most gorgeous language, so satisfying! I tried to learn the language with some tapes but I failed badly! I can’t even read the Cyrillic alphabet. My father was born in Poland but we were not taught Polish as children. In Europe I often have people coming up asking if I speak Polish and I am always a bit embarrassed to say “nyet.”
5) When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?
Probably playing with our cat, Shadow, is the best relaxation for me – he loves to play and he is very feisty and beautiful. He gives me and my family so much pleasure and we just adore him. There’s nothing more calming than watching him sleep or snuggling up beside him. I love to read and I also find cooking very relaxing. I’m a big tennis fan and watching a great tennis match is also a nice way to relax.
******
Adrianne Pieczonka (photo: Bo Huang)
Five more about the upcoming concert with Soundstreams.
1) The program with Soundstreams is sub-titled “”Beyond the Aria”, a big change from what we are accustomed to hearing you sing, namely romantic opera. Could you speak for a moment about the importance you place on alternatives such as new music and how you feel singing such repertoire?
I am really excited about the Soundstreams concert. I performed Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children nearly 30 years ago (with the group before it became Soundstreams). I was still a student at U of T at the time. I’m sure Mary Morrison, with whom I then studied, was somehow instrumental in this engagement. I have not performed the piece since then, and so it’s quite interesting to revisit it after so many years. My career is comprised of 95% opera – I’ve just spent the past four months singing back to back Fidelio productions (in Madrid and Salzburg). The pressure to be “Beethoven perfect” for the performances – stylistically, vocally, etc, is huge. Everyone has an opinion of how the music should sound – from tempi to appogiaturi. There’s so much tradition with these composers, so much history and one could maybe describe it as “musical traditional baggage.” I find modern music much more liberating. It’s thrilling to use my voice in different ways. In Ancient Voices, I have to do trills, clicks, sighs, whispers, sirens, etc. I sound like a bird at times, trilling, whooping and flitting here and there. It’s exciting and there’s less pressure to be “perfect.” Of course, my voice is much more dramatic and rich than it was when I was a student at U of T in my early 20’s.
Compared to Krisztina Szabó and Barbara Hannigan, I have performed next to no modern music at all! I saw both Krisztina and Barbara in Written on Skin earlier this year and was really impressed by the entire performance. I must admit that revisiting the Crumb especially has made me think that I should try to do more contemporary music. I am thrilled that the COC will feature more contemporary (and Can con!) repertoire in the present and future seasons. I do think that audiences should sample contemporary music along with the standard romantic/ classical repertoire.
2) Please talk about the program you will be performing with Soundstreams Sept 29th.
The program will appeal to a wide audience. Ancient Voices of Children is by far the most “out there” contemporary piece I will perform at the concert. It will feature last on the program. It’s a setting of some gorgeous Lorca texts in Spanish and I find the piece very earthy, sensual, and extremely beautiful at times. The small ensemble of soprano, boy soprano, oboe, mandolin, prepared and electric piano, and percussion manages to make some really unique sounds. Often the chamber players are required to whisper, yell, chant and hum! Fun!
Krisztina and I will sing a few solo and duet arrangements of some American Songbook songs by Crumb as well. Like in the Beatles Songs which will follow, the audience should be familiar with these tunes: When the Saints Go Marching In, Dem Bones, etc. They are quirky and often humorous settings and I will need to count like mad!!!
I will also sing three Beatles Songs, arranged by Lucianio Berio for voice and small chamber ensemble. I have a lot of fun singing these as I grew up as a child/teenager listening to the Beatles. Again, it will be nice for the audience to hear these very familiar songs (which I guess are now classics themselves) in a unique setting.
3) Please talk about the difference for your voice preparing this kind of repertoire, especially Berio’s version of songs by Lennon & McCartney, as opposed to an operatic role.
I don’t exactly know how I will perform the Beatles/Berio songs – sometimes I practice them with more of an operatic sound but then I sing them with a more natural pop or folk sound. I think if they are sung too operatically, they can appear like a parody and I want to avoid this. Yesterday is one of my favourite songs of all time and I am pleased to be able to perform it with Soundstreams!
Ancient Voices of Children is by far the most challenging piece vocally. When I sang it as a student I’m sure I had more flexibility to my voice. I’ve sung lots of dramatic Wagner, Puccini, and Strauss over the past years and my voice has grown and matured. It’s more rich and dark than it was as a student. Some of the very high bird-like acrobatics in Ancient Voices will be challenging for sure. I am enjoying the process – trying to train my voice to be agile and fast. Again, I have sung nearly 20 performances of Fidelio over the past four months, so I am switching gears technically. I do love playing around with my voice to find the right effect for these songs – playing with vibrato, shading notes with volume, fluctuations, etc. Ancient Voices has a few high C’s and even a high D which is a stretch for my voice. I’m sure I’ll squeak something out! It’s different writing than say Amelia in Ballo by Verdi which also has a few high C’s. The writing in Verdi has longer lines, which rise and fall more naturally. Crumb uses the voice differently – he has it sounding like a loon, like a banshee, and jumps around more from style to style.
4) I’m one of many fans watching your development with baited breath, eager to see what you might do next. After that beautiful liebestod you sang with the Toronto Symphony earlier this year, I wonder if you are considering singing a Wagnerian role such as Brunnhilde or Isolde someday.
I really enjoyed trying the Liebestod for the first time with the TSO last March. I have been asked before to sing the role but the timing was never right. It’s a terribly long role, a veritable marathon – the first act alone is more than an hour and Isolde never stops singing! Acts 2 and 3 require other vocal requirements and I just don’t know if I am up to that challenge. The role of Isolde also lies on the low/middling side for a soprano. This is why you often find mezzos singing the role, for example. Waltraud Meier or Petra Lang. I have sung so many Wagner heroines (Freia, Eva, Elsa, Elisabeth, Sieglinde, Senta) that I am very content. Just Brunnhilde and Isolde elude me and I am OK with this. I am happy to let things unfold and see what happens in the next few years.
Something I am very excited about it is that I will perform Schubert’s Der Winterreise at the Schubertiade next summer in Austria. It’s a prestigious Lieder Festival and I gave a recital there for the first time in 2014. I have loved Winterreise since I was a student. I lived for six years in Vienna at the beginning of my career and I saw Christa Ludwig and Brigitte Fassbaender perform the cycle often. I was always very moved by the cycle being sung by a woman. I know traditionalists might disagree. I am singing it in the tenor key and it fits my voice very well. The text and melodies also suit my melancholy side. I have that slavic tendency to love things in minor keys. I do hope to perform the cycle in Toronto and elsewhere too.
5) Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?
Yes, I would love to mention the teachers who have been instrumental in my career. Mary Morrison was my teacher when I studied at U of T and for many years after, when I’d return to Canada from Europe. Mary initially enabled me to access the top of my vocal range. It was a thrilling time back then and she is now a dear friend whom I see often. I am full of admiration for her dedication to teaching over the years. I think she’s been teaching for nearly 50 years!! Wow. She continues to shape young aspiring singers at U of T and has worked with many fine artists who are enjoying major careers. She is the Grande Dame of Canadian contemporary music and she did expose me to some modern works as a student.
My next teacher was Hilde Zadek who was a leading soprano at the Vienna State Opera and elsewhere for many years. I moved to Vienna in 1989 and lived there until 1995. I have sung there regularly since then and often had lessons with Hilde when I was in town. Hilde will turn 98 in December and she is still going strong. She attended a performance of Fidelio in Salzburg this summer (she was a very fine Leonore herself) and it was just wonderful to see her again. She too is a dear friend. Hilde shaped many roles I performed in Vienna and elsewhere. She sang many of the same roles as I did – Donna Anna, The Marschallin, Tosca, Ariadne, Desdemona, Elisabetta, etc. It was wonderful that she could give me guidance on, for example, where to take breaths, or where the orchestra might be overly loud in a certain section, etc.
I lived from 1995 to 2005 in London. In London I discovered a teacher called Gita Denise. Gita sadly died about eight years ago. She was a Czech dramatic mezzo and she trained in Italy in the bel canto tradition. This was my first exposure to the bel canto style but it was fantastic for my Verdi roles etc. She gave me a lot of technical assurance and guidance as I progressed from my 30’s to my 40’s.
I now work with my wife, Laura Tucker. Laura is a wonderful mezzo soprano but also a gifted voice teacher at U of T. We started to work together regularly about 18 months ago and it has been hugely helpful. Previously it was not always easy to work together. Tempers or egos would flare and up and it made working together impossible. But, something shifted and now we work together beautifully. She knows my voice inside and out and I trust her ears 100%. It’s quite a special thing to have a professional and private relationship!
September 29, 2015 at 8:00 pm
Koerner Hall, TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, 273 Bloor Street West
Featuring:
Adrianne Pieczonka, soprano;
Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano;
boy soprano; chamber ensemble,
Conducted by Leslie Dala
Repertoire:
George Crumb Selections from American Songbook
George Crumb Ancient Voices of Children
John Lennon, Paul McCartney Beatles Songs, arr. by Luciano Berio
Analia Lludgar Romance de la luna, luna (world premiere)
A pre-show chat with Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney will be held at 7:00 pm before the performance.
Tickets range from $37.50-$67.50 and are available through The Royal Conservatory Box Office at 416-408-0208 or online at soundstreams.ca. This concert will be streamed live at soundstreams.ca. Click image for tickets & further information.
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