Friday night’s Toronto Summer Music concert at Walter Hall titled “Affairs of the Heart” lived up to its name.
Three chamber works in a diverse assortment of styles brought the sold out audience to its feet each time.
We started with Mozart’s Duo for Violin and Viola in B-flat Major, K. 424, representing something of a masquerade. I saw in the program note that Mozart composed the piece in a style of Michael Haydn to fulfill a commission for his gravely ill friend.
Min-Jeong Koh, violin, Chamber Music Institute Mentor
Rémi Pelletier, viola, Chamber Music Institute Mentor and Community Program Mentor
I don’t know the specifics well enough to understand if this represented a departure from what Mozart might have usually written, but the performance from Min-Jeong Koh, violin and Rémi Pelletier, viola, was played with theatrical flair. In the final passages the back and forth between the two instruments was offered complete with an over the top vaudevillian challenge played out between the two, as their charming comedy underlined what was already clear on the pages of the composition.
The revelation of the night came next, namely Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata in D minor, Op. 40. I heard others afterwards marvelling at a work that was as new to them as it was to me.
Efe Baltacıgil, Cello, Chamber Music Institute Mentor
Efe Baltacıgil, cello and TSM regular Philip Chiu, piano, took us for a wild journey in four movements.
Philip Chiu, Piano, Chamber Music Institute Mentor
While the work was identified for us in the program as a sonata for cello, the work gives a great deal of work to both soloists. I will have to go get the score to see what the composer was doing. The first movement is sometimes tranquil, very lyrical, a kind of friendly conversation between two moody souls, collaborators who are mostly friends and definitely on the same page. While Baltacıgil’s cello was often a powerful sound filling Walter Hall with a rich tone, I was awed by the way Chiu held back so often, very quick yet soft. I was put in mind of a word we’re not supposed to use anymore, namely “accompaniment”, given that Chiu’s role is fully collaborative, the title of the sonata notwithstanding.
The second movement infected me with a need to tap my toes, making me worry i was bothering my neighbours in the hall, infectious rhythms in triple meter and mercurial, quicksilver emotions prompted out of nothing and then gone with the ending of the phrase. The repeated little phrases suggest dance although, hmm, whose tune are they dancing to? I have to wonder, as we ponder authoritarians lurking in the wings for our possible future, whether the one tiny consolation is to be found in the way oppression triggers brilliance in the artists responding to tyranny. Yes I may be reading too much into the surreal shifts of tone Shostakovich throws at his artists and the listeners. As I wonder whether the composer wants to tease us or scare us, at the very least this is challenging for the artists, who pull us all back to safety with something orderly in the simple solid cadence, like the ground under our feet (and hopefully we didn’t face-plant). The solemn & troubled largo that follows allowed Baltacıgil to show off his superb tone as though it were Shostakovich’s protagonist, Chiu’s underscoring like a softly menacing reminder that the world isn’t always as you think it to be.
After the internalized Largo, Shostakovich concludes with something more extroverted, dancing us out the door with a brief & energetic Allegro. The tune that begins on the piano & then taken up by the cello is a bit wacky, even morbid. It would work as a theme for the Addams Family franchise or a horror film, complete with the requisite humour that the genre often includes nowadays. We erupted in appreciation after a flamboyant but flawless reading from Baltacıgil & Chiu. I wish they would record this, as their chemistry together is quite beautiful.
It was intermission, as I was asking myself what I could properly remember, what I could record here. Memory and its absence haunts me, now a little over two weeks past the celebration of life for my mom, and the performance of Missing Thursday that I couldn’t help experiencing as a celebration of life for the missing girls & women. I remember how I spoke at a festival at the U of T in 2005, observing the bias our institutions lend towards print & books & buildings, while festivals celebrate people and happenings in the present. Jonathan Crow in his last year as Artistic Director of this festival is still a tall presence, a young – looking violinist we’ve been lucky to see with the Toronto Symphony and at the TSM Festival. He would perform in the last work tonight, and is back next week to play on Monday & Wednesday, as well as whatever other appearances he makes as a host & presenter speaking into the microphone. He has curated a superb & unforgettable festival, even as I write this, aware of how memory fades.
Jonathan Crow, Violin, Chamber Music Institute Mentor
After intermission we went on another sort of journey with Brahms’ piano quartet #1 in G minor, four movements sometimes very gently musical, sometimes elaborately virtuosic in the demands made upon all four players, namely Crow, Pelletier, Baltacıgil, and Chiu. I was grateful for the programming, as the combination of pieces was suggestive, Shostakovich’s Slavic grotesquerie making a perfect preparation for Brahms’ flirtation with musics suggestive of ethnicities to the east such as the Roma or the Magyar, although Brahms makes art music with allusions.
Festivals may make for strange bed-fellows (speaking of “Affairs of the heart”). Baltacıgil is principal cellist in Seattle, Crow is concertmaster alongside Pelletier in the Toronto Symphony, and Crow has played a great deal alongside Chiu in recent TSM festivals. The cohesion between these players suggests a longer term connection, a lovely chemistry. Chiu regularly allowed the piece to breath, while all three string players stepped up for key solos but otherwise blended rather than sticking out. I wonder if they will ever get the chance to play together? There is a special magic in the encounter between musicians from different cities, coming together as teachers & mentors, sharing their gifts.
Speaking of gifts Toronto Summer Music Festival is a growing feature of our city and could use your support. I will quote from their website which asks “Why TSM?” Support access to classical music for first-time concertgoers, young people, and students. Support musical excellence through some of the world’s top classical musicians. Support opportunities for emerging artists as they launch their careers. Support new music and ensure the exciting future of the art form. Support a thriving community of music-lovers brought together by shared enthusiasm.
Toronto Summer Music presented a single concert performance of the opera Missing, from a libretto by Marie Clements and a score by Brian Current, to a full Koerner Hall. This was its first appearance in Eastern Canada after having been co-commissioned and co-produced by Pacific Opera Victoria and City Opera Vancouver in 2017, and it was rapturously received by the audience.
The original production website says “Set in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and along the Highway of Tears, Missing is a poetic expression of loss and hope, its creation led by aboriginal theatre and opera artists.”
The title of the opera is wonderfully ambiguous, suggesting both the thousands of women and girls who have vanished and their extended community of family members upset, bereft, heart-broken, hurt by the disappearances.
Librettist Marie Clements
Composer Brian Current
Although presented in concert the presentation included elaborate projections designed by Andy Moro, the TSM Technical Director, perhaps from the original production. I was sad that Andy didn’t come out to accept applause; the person running the sound board at the back told me he was upstairs in the booth, working anonymously in the background. What he created is like a beautiful film to accompany the opera’s performance.
Andy Moro, TSM technical director
The screen displayed animations of animals (real & totem images), nature, and sometimes live video in stunning combinations complementing and enlarging the text being sung, as well as displaying the words in English & Gitxsan. Yes Andy was a busy man so I shouldn’t be surprised he didn’t (or couldn’t) easily come down.
A glimpse of the Koerner Hall stage with one of the simplest of Andy Moro’s projected images (photo: Lucky Tang). I’m guessing the complex layered images were hard to capture in a photograph.
What we saw tonight was an opera that worked really well in this static concert presentation, given its resemblance to an oratorio, as full of ideas and the contemplation of spirit as anything by Bach or Handel. I did not expect such a positive life affirming work, reminding us again and again of motherhood, birth and especially rebirth.
The singers and the Continuum Ensemble were conducted by Timothy Long, who led the 2017 world premiere in Vancouver and the American premiere in Alaska in 2023.
Conductor Timothy Long
I kept wondering: when the work was conceived and created, who did they have in mind as an audience, who did they expect to watch & listen? Opera is expensive and challenging both to the artists creating it and the audience seeing & hearing it. Next month Capitol Theatre in Port Hope premiere the new musical Rez Gas with a hip-hop-infused score from Indigenous musician Cale Crowe, likely aimed at a younger audience to tell a happier tale. When I heard of Missing, concerning the missing and murdered indigenous girls & women, I wondered: how could something so darkly powerful be brought to the stage? But maybe that’s why it’s an opera, rather than a musical, because it’s such a big challenging topic. Opera can be solemn, and choosing that idiom proclaims a seriousness of purpose.
And maybe the audience is meant to include those whose hearts needed changing.
The opera begins as follows (from the synopsis): “Ava, a young white woman, is thrown from her car and badly injured in a crash on Highway 16. She sees another body – a young native girl – lying on the ground. Their eyes meet.”
We see Ava (Caitlin Wood) living her life after the accident, haunted by memories of what she saw and felt. There’s a sentence in the synopsis that describes a number of moments in the opera, namely “each sees the other in herself and herself in the other.” There’s a delightful sort of ambiguity to many scenes, where we are watching two people singing at one another, whether it’s Ava & the native girl (Melody Courage), her mother (Michelle Lafferty) with her son (Evan Korbut), Ava with her boyfriend and eventual husband Devon (Asitha Tennekoon), Ava in class with her professor (Marion Newman), a back and forth as though at times they’re talking to another version of them self. The approach to duets / dialogue is beautifully original, and captured brilliantly in Brian Current’s setting. The singing is never of the sort we had in much romantic opera, designed to show off the singer’s high notes, but rather coming from a place articulating pain or love or connection. There are a few bold painful moments articulated yet on the whole I was (against my expectations) comforted and inspired.
At times we’re in a realm beyond life & death, where spirits communicate with the living and vice versa. For me those were the most vivid and powerful scenes. I experienced the opera as a ritual celebration of her life (allowing that she is also a kind of every-woman, embodying all the different missing women & girls), to permit the release of the spirit(s) of the native girl(s). Perhaps this is what Marie Clements sought to achieve, a kind of community release for the missing ones, a beautiful and even therapeutic objective.
The part of Jess (Andrea Ludwig) was perhaps the most challenging role of the entire opera, written to be the one person in opposition to the direction of the story and therefore tasked with the least sympathetic lines of the work. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be rehearsing and then presenting her part. I have to think librettist Marie Clements believed some in the audience shared such views. I don’t know if Toronto is different from BC (where the piece originated), but I do know some people who are blatantly racist, and wonder whether they’d avoid coming to hear such an opera. It’s a horrible additional layer, but a necessary & troubling part of the story. If they sought to change minds & hearts this kind of language, however disturbing, was a necessary component.
I’m sorry there was only the single performance in Toronto, as I’m sure there’s an interests in the work and its challenging subject, and I agree (quoting from the TSM website) that Missing is “something every Canadian should see.” To learn more about the missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, visit the National Inquiry page found at: https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/
There’s a CD of the opera that I obtained at the concert performance, that will allow me to have a closer listen / look at the text of this fascinating work, from “ATOM” (Artists of The Opera Missing: the same people we heard at Koerner Hall).
On August 8th Guild Festival Theatre will be giving the world premiere performance of Heratio, a re-imagining of Hamlet that picks up the story where Shakespeare left off, giving voice to the women and servants who are left to clean up the mess created by the intrigues of princes and kings.
Heratio is the latest play from acclaimed playwright Genevieve Adam, who has made an impact with several new works over the past decade, since returning from UK where she made a name for herself as an actor. Genevieve is part of the Creator’s Units at the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope (where her new musical Rez Gas opens August 22nd) and the Guild Festival Theatre in Toronto.
Heratio was developed through In Conversation With Classics, Guild Festival Theatre’s program for new plays.
I asked Genevieve a few questions.
Playwright and actor Genevieve Adam
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Barczablog: Are you more like your father or mother?
Genevieve Adam: My father is British and likes to leave the butter out on the counter to get nice and rancid – I’ve noticed I’m guilty of this more and more. He also used to force us to go on long walks with him, which we hated and complained loudly about at the time….and which, sure enough, I now force my own children to go on.
My mother has watched every Agatha Christie adaptation ever made and can crack a suspicious death in 60 minutes or less. She worked in a male dominated field and took absolutely no shit from anyone. She comes from a long line of women with spines of steel who took their knocks and kept on going, and I hope I continue their legacy.
BB: What is the best or worst thing about what you do?
The best part is being in control of my own writing output, and the worst part is being in control of my own writing output. There is no surer way to guarantee that my bathroom will be sparkling clean than to give me a writing deadline.
BB: Who do you like to listen to or watch?
Genevieve Adam: My kids are really into manga, and they’ve gotten me into it. I also love bardcore i.e. contemporary songs remixed with ancient instruments. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard the harp n’ bagpipes version of “Pink Pony Club”.
BB: What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
Genevieve Adam: Reading music.
BB: When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?
Genevieve Adam: Drink coffee (I am very committed to good coffee!), go on long walks with friends, get lost in a new city.
BB: Who do you think of first, when I ask you to name the best actor ?
Genevieve Adam: I’m loving evil Hugh Grant. Alicia Vikander. The whole ensemble of We Are Lady Parts and What We Do In The Shadows. So many wonderful actors out there.
BB: What was your first experience of drama?
Genevieve Adam: Seeing a community theatre production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at 6 years old and deciding, that’s for me baby!
BB: What’s your favourite play?
Genevieve Adam: Right now I’m really interested in exploring whether a theatre play experience can actually scare an audience, so I’m obsessed with “2.22 – A Ghost Story” by Danny Robins. But I also want to shout out some Canadian playwrights I love and respect who are creating amazing work: Michael Ross Albert, Pamela Sinha, Frances Koncan, Steven Elliott Jackson, Makram Ayache, Marcia Johnson, Lili Robinson and Philip Dwight Morgan.
BB: You have been prolific, as your bio shows several new works over the past decade. Could you talk a bit about your development and how to see Heratio in context with your writing?
Genevieve Adam:Heratio is a bit of a departure from my previous works in that there are no eff-bombs and no one having sex on a table! People do still die though, so any fans out there can take comfort that at least some things never change!
Genevieve Adam (photo: Dahlia Katz)
My previous works deal a lot with reframing traditionally white, male narratives from a female and First Nations perspective. Heratio is a continuation of my interest in reframing well-known classics, only this time from the point of view of women and servants. So we’re playing more with a class and gender lens: not so much obsessed with what the rich dudes are up to, but more with what the people cleaning up all the blood and making the sandwiches are scheming and dreaming about.
I also love writing period pieces, because I have a lot of fun being anachronistic and undercutting the sometimes stuffy nature of Ye Olde Shakespeare Summer Play.
BB: You’re an award-winning playwright who received accolades for your writing. How do you feel about the way writing is received and presented in Canada, especially in Ontario?
Genevieve Adam: I had a weird experience of this early on in my writing career. I’d been to theatre school in Ontario, did the rounds on the circuit for a few years, and then went on to do my master’s in the UK. I ended up working there pretty consistently as an artist for many years, with some big internationally known companies, and when I did decide to come back to Toronto, I naively thought this experience would be respected and would open some doors for me. Instead I got a lot of feedback like: “Oh, who are you? We don’t know you. Who do you know that we know?” and “Wow, you missed out on some really formative years. You didn’t make those contacts.” And meanwhile I was also being told my work was great, exciting….but to come back in 10 years when I “knew more people.” There’s always an element of this in any hiring process, of course – but it felt cliquey and exclusionary in a very Toronto way. This scarcity mindset. In the UK – and obviously it’s a very different market, with a different history and much more government funding – artistic directors would want to meet with you if they didn’t know your work, would actively seek you out to see if you could pool resources and make a bigger pie. In Toronto it was more like: “get away, this is MY pie, I’m not sharing.”
BB: In August Guild Festival Theatre present the world premiere of Heratio, described in the press release as “a bold re-imagining of Hamlet that picks up the story after Shakespeare’s ending.” Please tell us more
Genevieve Adam:Heratio is what happens if you took Game of Thrones but made it Downton Abbey. We pick up right where Hamlet left off, only this time, the action doesn’t concern the princes and kings. We focus on two servants, mopping blood off the floor, worried about their job security now that there’s been a regime change, jockeying to manoeuvre themselves to better advantage in a changing world. Throw in some political scheming, a murder mystery, a broken heart, and a ghost or two, and you get a funny, whimsical, but hopefully moving story about navigating grief, loss and identity.
Our log line is “What if nothing you thought you knew about Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” was true?”, but we’ve crafted the show so that you don’t need to be a Hamlet scholar to understand the action (although there are some juicy easter eggs in there for the real Hamlet aficionados!)
BB: As I recall Hamlet ends with a lots of bodies on the stage. Is Heratio as bloody as Shakespeare?
Genevieve Adam: There may be some mirroring of that original high body count, yes……
BB: What characters will we see in Heratio?
Genevieve Adam: You’ll get to meet a lot of behind the scenes folks at Elsinore: the servants, the kitchen staff, the “below stairs” who lived through Hamlet and had to clean up its aftermath. In terms of OG Hamlet characters, I can definitely confirm the presence of Horatio and Fortinbras, and some other fan favourites may make an appearance as well!
BB: I see in the press release that Heratio was developed through In Conversation With Classics, Guild Festival Theatre’s program for new plays. Please talk about that experience.
Genevieve Adam: I knew the ADs of the Guild Helen and Tyler through having worked with them before. They approached me about joining the inaugural playwrights unit and of course I said yes! I really love working with both of them, and they’re doing incredibly fun, high-quality work at the Guild, so it was really a no-brainer. And then when I found out who the other members of the unit were – Keith Barker, Thomas Morgan Jones, and Azeem Nathoo – I doubled down every harder. These are all folks with impressive playwriting and theatre experiences under their collective belts, and I jumped at the chance to work with them. We would meet at regularly scheduled times via zoom, read each other’s works in progress, offer our thoughts and encouragement. Writing is such a solitary business, so it was incredible to feel that there were other pilgrims along on my writing journey, walking the same road, cheering each other on to keep going.
BB: Tell us about the GFT production of Heratio.
Janelle Hanna
Genevieve Adam: It is literally a dream cast: Janelle Hanna, Phoenix Fire, Rashaana Cumberbatch, Philippa Domville, Jack Davidson, and Siobhan Richardson.
Phoenix Fire
Rashaana Cumberbatch
Philippa Domville
Jack Davidson
Siobhan Richardson
Nancy Anne Perrin is making everyone look gorgeous on beautiful sets, while Sean Meldrum is creating an original soundtrack and Adam Walters is lighting the team. Helen Juvonen is directing, and Hamlet is one of her subjects of special expertise, so I am doubly blessed!
Director Helen Juvonen
And it all takes place in the beautiful Greek Theatre in the Guild Park and Gardens.
BB: In 2025 Canadian culture seems precarious. We hear “elbows up”. I want to thank you and GFT for doing your part, although we may forget the importance of local culture, employing local talent.
Genevieve Adam: I really see an appetite for this – people want to see local talents creating stories made here on these lands, telling our stories, in all the diversity and scope that this implies. Audiences are no longer content to let other countries and cultures dictate what “good” theatre is and what they should be watching (although I enjoyed Hamilton as much as anybody!) We may not always be sure who we are as a nation and as a culture, but we’re exploring and discovering and redefining this identity constantly through our arts, and that’s something to celebrate.
BB: Could you offer any advice to Canadians writing for the stage?
Genevieve Adam: Be persistent! Submit to every festival and competition and writing retreat you can. Go to openings and meet people. You need people to get to know your work and want to work with you. Until they do, apply for all the grants and self-produce. Repeat for 10 to 15 years (kidding not kidding!)
Genevieve Adam (photo: John Gundy)
BB Do you have any influences / teachers you want to acknowledge
Genevieve Adam: All the amazing people who have encouraged me and cheered me on throughout the years. Special shout out to my dear friend Patrick Conner, whose tireless friendship and faith in me led me to become a playwright in the first place.
Guild Festival Theatre present the world premiere of Heratio, preview August 7th, running August 8- 24 at the Guild Festival Theatre. For tickets & info click here.
Tonight I had the pleasure of making my first acquaintance with pianist George Li, courtesy the Toronto Summer Music Festival, in an excellent concert at Koerner Hall.
Pianist George Li
The four big works on the program plus the pair of encores all showed us the stunning technique of a young pianist (coming up on his 30th birthday next month), but always employed towards a display of excellent taste.
Perhaps the programmer (possibly the pianist himself) aimed at suggesting something pictorial, given the pair of Beethoven sonatas with epithet names before intermission, followed by Debussy’s first set of Images and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Yes we saw pictures, the imagination stirred by the way the pieces were played.
We began with the Op 31 #2 that’s associated with Shakespeare’s play The Tempest thanks to comments the composer made to his friend Anton Schindler. The only connection I see to the play is that both the first and last movements remind me of stormy weather and waves: but it’s great for the piece to have the suggestive name. In Li’s reading the first movement offers something melodramatic, his use of the pedal boldly modern underlining some of the unexpected dissonances. In the slow second movement Li is understated, the deep passion in the melody clearly articulated but soft & gentle. For the third he is exquisite, so delicate in his touch and lighter than what I’m accustomed to, a reading smooth & subtle.
That delicate touch was featured in everything we heard tonight. Li’s next offering was the Op 27 #2 aka the Moonlight Sonata. The second movement was another example of understatement, setting up a last movement that was super quick without the percussive moments one sometimes gets. I think it helped the piece build to the explosive cadenzas at the end which felt more climactic because of Li’s restraint earlier in the sonata.
While I loved the first movement I was stunned by one of the longest examples of phone noise I’ve ever encountered and at surely the most inappropriate moment possible. That Li didn’t seem to respond to the provocation was to his credit (I half expected him to stop and start over), while my jaw was practically dislocated in shock, as the sound went on and on.
After intermission we went in a different direction, first with the Debussy Images series 1. I was in heaven for the Reflets dans l’eau, mostly soft and appropriately fluid, the music dripping from Li’s fingers. We then had a suitably solemn Hommage a Rameau, and a madcap playful Mouvement to bring this part of the concert to its conclusion. I may be wrong but I believe this 3rd of the Images is the most technically demanding part of the concert: that Li tossed off as though it were a lark or a race around the park. If my jaw was down, this time it was in awe of the pianist’s technical prowess.
Then came Pictures at an Exhibition, a piece we usually hear with orchestration (usually by Ravel), even if in my opinion it’s far more interesting in the original for piano. When I spoke in the headline of technique in the service of good taste I was thinking about the whole concert, but it was particularly true for the Mussorgsky, technical wizardry at its most cinematic. The cute unhatched chicks have never been so balletic, the marketplace at Limoges wildly frenetic, the Hut on Fowl’s Legs demonic. In the slower passages, we heard melodies that sang soulfully, as in the old castle. The climactic Great Gate of Kyiv (is this the first time I call it that? educated alas by ongoing news reports of the invasion & endless bombardments) had the most wonderful sense of scale, between the suggestion of pious choruses and bells.
After lots of applause Li honoured us with a pair of encores. First it was a peaceful shift away from the wild energies of Mussorgsky with Chopin’s raindrop prelude in D-flat Op. 28, #15, offered in a sweet meditation. Li then gave us fireworks with Liszt’s la Campanella etude, this time holding nothing back.
As I left I took a picture of the statue of Franz Liszt, who surely would have been pleased at how his music was being interpreted.
A statue of Franz Liszt, that avatar of virtuosity
It was another great TSM concert. I hope to hear Li again sometime.
I love ambitious concerts, and that’s certainly what we heard tonight at Walter Hall from Calidore String Quartet, comprised of violinists Jeffrey Myers & Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry and cellist Estelle Choi.
Calidore String Quartet: (l-r) Ryan Meehan, Jeremy Berry, Estelle Choi and Jeffrey Myers
In one of his brief introductory talks violinist Ryan Meehan told us that the concert aimed to show us varieties of American culture. And my goodness they truly did so, in this program:
Samuel Barber: String Quartet op 11 Wynton Marsalis: excerpts from String Quartet No. 1 — intermission — John Williams “With Malice Toward None” from Lincoln Erich Wolfgang Korngold String Quartet No. 3
I am sometimes the luckiest guy in the world. This year I picked a few concerts from the Toronto Summer Music Festival’s many offerings.
A larger than life-size picture of TSM Artistic Director Jonathan Crow, displaying TSM swag. Yes I bought the T-shirt
No I was unable to attend the opening night due to a conflict with the celebration of my mom’s life last week (July 10th).
Tonight’s concert was my first, and is right up my alley. Three of the four items have a connection to film. You may recall my obsession with film music. I used to teach a couple of courses on the topic at the Conservatory & at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.
The 2nd movement molto adagio of the Barber Quartet is well-known in its string orchestra arrangement “Adagio for Strings” heard in Platoon, and as Ryan reminded us, also regularly employed as solemn music for funerals (I’ve seen it arranged for keyboard). We heard too about the Quartet’s meeting with composer John Williams, who agreed to arrange music fromthe film Lincoln for them to play (wow what a cool story). Korngold’s 3rd Quartet includes themes the composer repurposed / recycled from films.
The extraordinary thing about the Calidore Quartet is something I hadn’t thought about in a very long time. I recall a violinist I knew from the TSO explaining to me the difference between the way an orchestral section leader plays, a sound necessary for the others who hear that person & follow the leader’s sound, as opposed to the ideal of a quartet. While I heard the theory explained tonight I heard it properly enacted, when the quartet plays as though they are a single instrument, rather than four soloists. I am reminded of something my brother told me awhile ago about choral singing, that is similar, that you don’t want to hear voices popping out of the texture of the ensemble, unless they are singing solos. Just as a chorus needs to have a blended sound, so too even more so with a quartet, although I swear I rarely hear it done as well as tonight.
For example in our encore –the second movement of Beethoven’s Op 74 — there are places where the melody seems to be handed between parts, from the cello to the viola (or maybe it’s the other way around..?).
I found a performance of this piece that they put onto YouTube, that you can hear. My my what a generous piece to play as an encore!
The point is, they made it sound like a single voice, a continuous thought rather than call & response, which is something we encountered quite deliberately in the Marsalis, where it’s a normal thing to find in gospel or blues or even jazz. The quartet found the right way to play each piece, apt for the idiom of that composer.
There’s so much I would like to say, stimulated by this wonderful concert.
Let’s start by thinking a bit about the broad topic we call “film music”. The Barber Adagio is in the category of music that is a pre-existing piece that has been pressed into service in a film. Think of the music Kubrick used in 2001 or Clockwork Orange (although there he transforms it via Wendy Carlos’ Moog-magic), or the way Coppola grabs the Ride of the Valkyries for Apocalypse Now. In each case it’s a piece many of us already knew, even if the film retrospectively alters how we experience the music, so long as we saw that film. For those of you who never saw those films, naturally, that music isn’t really film music.
And then there’s a piece such as John Williams’s lovely little quartet we heard tonight, featuring a stunning cello melody redolent of a church, suggestive of Gospel or Americana: yet the melody is original. I must confess that while I like what the Calidore quartet did with the piece, it’s a classic example of film music, meaning music that I believe is probably stronger in its original context, where we see the images onscreen. Williams has so many of these pieces that one may encounter on the radio or in a pops concert (the Toronto Symphony regularly programs music from Williams’s films). Yet the best music Williams ever wrote is always missing. In Hook the piece that makes me cry is when Tinkerbell is saying goodbye accompanied by a stunning little passage for orchestra, that can’t really be excerpted because it’s less than a minute long and absolute perfection in context. The music Williams made to accompany Donald Sutherland’s powerful speech in JFK always gets me. There’s that amazing moment from Williams in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda shows Luke that he can raise the ship out of the water, fabulous music that isn’t quite as good if it’s played without the magical visuals. That doesn’t mean the music is no good. I also dislike it when an orchestra plays the Liebestod without the soprano: as that’s a similar case of an orchestra playing something out of context. Concert programming is the attempt to capture magic that we felt in the movie theatre, and for that reason your mileage may vary.
The final piece on the program, is a funny piece in the way Korngold has it both ways. He is both a film music composer and a classical composer, with credibility in both realms. While some look down upon film music as inferior I don’t subscribe to such a philosophy. But while some composers expressed their own misgivings (Bernard Herrmann or Ennio Morricone), seeing film music as a lesser form, even seeming to under value their own creations, Korngold managed to dodge such concerns, seemingly effortless in his compositions for film. We get four very different movements, modernity in the outer movements, lyricism in the middle movements (although the scherzo gives us a huge contrast when we get to a lovely trio).
And then, there was something completely different, the excerpts from Marsalis’s Quartet. OMG I loved it and wished to have heard the whole thing, although when I chatted with a couple of friends in the lobby they thought it was more than enough. Yes it’s dissonant and edgy.
To each their own of course.
I was blown away by the astonishing variety of timbres Marsalis –a classical & jazz trumpeter please note!– was able to get out of the four string players we watched tonight. If it weren’t so much fun I might have called it torture because it was seriously hard work. I didn’t want it to end. This movement –and thank goodness I found an example on YouTube again to show you what I’m talking about– makes the strings emulate a train, in the rhythms and screeching sounds. This is like nothing I’ve ever heard, although maybe its willingness to imitate the noises of a train remind me of the traffic sounds in American in Paris. Yes it’s a true variant of the theme of American culture. Wow it’s beautiful.
I guess it should be clear that I really liked this concert. I admire the ambitions of the programmer, whoever it was, finishing all the modernity with Beethoven in the encore.
I hope someone will invite the Calidore String Quartet to Toronto again sometime soon. They’re remarkable and they are very good. As far as Toronto Summer Music Festival in their 20th season and Jonathan Crow’s final year as their artistic director: so far so good.
July 10th would have been my mother’s 104th birthday, so it seemed like the perfect day to do a Celebration of Life. I want to share the moment here on the blog, largely because this event was my focus, if not my actual obsession over the past few weeks. We had a small gathering of family as a moment to share our memories.
I just wanted to share some simple concrete images. In my eulogy I did a kind of “show and tell” about my mother. I will mention a few things from that day as I seek to preserve this moment, already a few days ago. I have been obsessed, as I have anxiety about remembrance, fearing that so much of her life is long ago, that I shall forget, even as I recognize there are huge parts of her life that I never knew.
*******
At one time (when the family used to go to a cottage) my mom used to collect heart-shaped stones she found on the beach.
A rock I found recently that reminds me of the rocks my mother used to collect
Sometimes the resemblance to a heart was not very strong. As a kid I thought it was funny. But I see now that SHE could see the heart. It suggests the strength of her moral imagination: that she saw the resemblance to a heart, on the beach. She could see the heart in others.
My mom crocheted finger-less gloves in multiple colours.
I put the blue ones on because blue was her favourite colour.
I showed a photocopy of a school assignment that my daughter Zoe wrote long ago. The title is “A Person That Has Influenced Me” and you see she’s talking about my mother’s resilience. You can’t read it easily, but that’s not the point. It matters to me because it mattered to my mom, who kept this copy by her desk as a keepsake, among her own most precious items.
It reminds me that my mother used to babysit Zoe half days during kindergarten (with my brother Peter’s help making the pickups). My mom who was an artist would do art with Zoe from an early age.
And of course now Zoe is an adult artist influenced by my mom. At the far end of the room from the grand piano where I stood delivering my eulogy I have the huge painting by Zoe that I use as my Facebook profile pic.
Impressive as it appears here, in person it is even more breath-taking.
In my 2025 eulogy I only said this book was a prize possession of my mom, a book rescued from a bombed out Budapest bookstore back in 1944, that she had given to me. I mused on the way memory works, how romantic that she would re-read poems that long ago my father Jozsef had read to her. This book serves as a pathway to remember both of them, even if my grasp of the subtleties is weak.
I realize now that I’ve photographed the book and also my mother’s hands, holding this book in 2020.
I finished my talk, as other family members took their turns speaking: Zoe via smartphone from USA, my sisters Katherine & Margaret, my brother Peter and my cousin Larry.
Peter spoke while I held my phone, playing music from YouTube that my mother loved, Jussi Björling singing Ack Värmeland du sköna, a song associated with a place and a time in her life.
Peter was the one born in Sweden, and the one who was to become the opera singer.
Peter held up a cartoon for us to see, a little piece of comic art my mother created upon her graduation in 1967 from the Ontario College of Education (as it was then known). She showed this (or handed it out? I am guessing) to prospective employers, school principals who might want to employ her, saying the following in her cartoon self-portrait:
“Sewing Teacher Young, Talented, Enthusiastic Dependable, Versatile Shy Modest Requires employment goes anywhere in Town
Have Needle Will Travel”
The drawing is signed “KayBee” which would be her Canadian nom de plume, in cartoons & rhyme. And it worked. She met her future boss from Humbergrove Vocational School (as it was then called) in the northern part of Etobicoke, teaching until her retirement.
My sister Margaret brought a cake including a picture of my mom, and decorated with tiny candy ladybugs in the icing. My mother often included the ladybug one way or another as a kind of alias in her signature or in drawings she made, a lifetime association coming from the Hungarian name for ladybug (“katicabogár“, where “bogár” is the Magyar word for bug) and of course her name was Katalin or Kati for short.
It occurs to me now that she switched from the ladybug to “KayBee” in recognition that Canadians wouldn’t understand the significance of the ladybug the way we did.
Once again it raises a question that I wish I could discuss with her: but it’s just one more topic that will have to end with speculation rather than a conclusive answer.
My mother’s picture decorating the top of the cake
We drank a toast to my mother on her 104th birthday.
Yes we’re all doing our part doing the elbows up thing, shopping local as a way to support Canadian business.
Right?
But here’s another huge reason.
Google “amazon injury rate”.
You will see a series of concerns raised. In 2023 A senate investigation showed a 30% higher rate of injury.
I noticed this reading a post from Dan Price on Twitter/X.
On Prime Day, the rate is even higher.
Alas Amazon doesn’t seem to be doing enough to prevent injury, particularly when their volume goes up on Prime Day.
Amazon Management can protect workers, if they choose to do so. I have a bit of experience with this, having been a Mail Services manager from 1990-2020 at the University of Toronto. We worked to protect our staff with regulations. Customers adjusted their behaviours, understanding that they needed to call us when there were larger than usual pickups. People are really nice when you give them a good reason, when you explain your concerns.
We set up runs so that workers did the heaviest deliveries earlier in the day, when they were fresh. And when necessary staff had assistance, a second person ready to assist.
But the bottom line has to be a concern for staff, rather than a concern for the financial bottom line. If profits are a higher priority than health & safety of staff, workers will get hurt.
I’ve been watching the passionate responses to the concert at Roy Thomson Hall last week when Mandle Cheung conducted the Toronto Symphony in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony.
The Globe & Mail contacted me the day before, asking me if I’d be willing to review the concert.
I was aware of controversy, having seen the piece in the Globe by Josh O’Kane titled “Amateur conductor pays Toronto Symphony Orchestra to lead Mahler performance, shocking some musicians.”
I wanted to sit as close as possible. If any TSO players were resisting their new conductor I wanted to see facial expressions, although even then I would be guessing. And I wanted to have a good close-up look at Mireille Lebel, a singer I admire, who was singing Urlicht. I found a single seat in the front row, allowing me a good view of players and soloists.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, alto Mireille Lebel (left) conductor Mandle Cheung, soprano Kirsten LeBlanc (photo: Allan Cabral)
In the hours before the concert I did two things in preparation: 1) I pulled out my Gilbert Kaplan recording of Mahler’s 2nd, 2) I went to YouTube to see whether I could hear Mandle conducting.
We’ve been treating Kaplan as the precedent for Mandle, the wealthy man who paid an orchestra to play and record Mahler’s 2nd. But Kaplan only knew the one piece, conducting Mahler’s 2nd several times with different orchestras.
Kaplan’s recording is conventional, nothing unorthodox. And it has amazing liner notes concerning the creation of Mahler’s 2nd. Re-reading them I remembered an offertory rendition of Urlicht (the same song we hear as the fourth movement of Mahler’s 2nd) that I accompanied in church, as we adjusted to a partially disabled singer who was forced to sing from an awkward location in the choir pews, blocked by her physical limitations. I had a revelation about the piece. As I said on Facebook two days ago, “In this symphony an officious Angel tries to block the path to heaven (Urlicht). Whether you’re a Jew being told you must Christianize to be permitted to conduct (as Mahler was), or a Chinese tech mogul (Mandle), mocked even as he paid for the privilege, it shocked me how the drama was re-enacted in Toronto complete with officious angels blocking the path. When Mireille Lebel sang her song I was ugly crying. The tears were also for a TSO sounding wonderful. I’m sad for those who don’t get it.”
At the TSO concert reviewing Mandle for the Globe I had two purposes, listening to his interpretation while looking for evidence of the alleged conflict behind the scenes. I wonder if we can address that indirectly in this blog via the Mandle Philharmonic channel on YouTube.
They describe themselves this way on YouTube: “𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜, Canada’s newest orchestra, is the initiative of 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐮𝐧𝐠, a tech entrepreneur who took up the baton. The self-taught conductor, leading an orchestra of world-class musicians, has created an upstart ensemble that forges a new space in orchestral music, through which he can express his lifelong enthusiasm, passion and support of music.”
I have so far listened to a couple of live symphonic performances on YouTube that suggest Mandle is at least a talented amateur.
I only had time last Wednesday to listen to portions of the first thing I found, namely a live video recording of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Here’s what the page says: “A performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 by the Mandle Philharmonic Orchestra on Nov 29, 2024 at Koerner Hall in Toronto.“
There are a couple of traits or habits we see in Mandle’s reading of the Beethoven that I also saw in the Mahler 2nd with the TSO. Perhaps I should think of it as a tendency to maximize the moments of drama in the music. In the last moments of the trio in the Beethoven’s 9th scherzo, as Beethoven is teasing us for a moment before the recapitulation, Mandle maximizes that teasing-torture. I can’t decide if it’s brilliant or silly, but it’s unique. He did precisely the same thing with those agonized moments before the recapitulation in the first movement of the Mahler 2nd, drawing out that climactic discord maximizing the suspenseful agony. It’s very stagey, very theatrical. Whether you like it or not, and whether or not anyone else does this, you have to admit: this is an interpretation. It’s unique. It’s musical, it’s dramatic, and he’s no mere copy-cat: which is what I felt when I encountered Gilbert Kaplan’s Mahler. Kaplan is not terribly unique, he’s conservative, he’s safe.
Not so with Mandle.
There’s another characteristic he sometimes displays. At times he encourages the orchestra to go fast, playing up tempo contrasts. It’s not so evident in the Beethoven as in the other video I encountered, namely Mahler’s 4th Symphony. I wish I had heard it before hearing him lead the TSO.
It’s described this way: “Mandle Cheung directs the Mandle Philharmonic at Koerner Hall, Toronto, September 20, 2024.” The video was posted in May of 2025.
When I wrote about the Mahler 2nd with TSO I said something in the Globe review that might sound disparaging: “I’m not sure if what I heard was entirely Cheung’s interpretation, as there were times that the orchestra seemed to take over, going so fast that I wondered whether Cheung was more like a rider trying to stay on his horse rather than the controlling force behind the piece.“
Mandle Cheung leading the Mandle Philharmonic
Now of course had I heard the Mahler 4th I would have recognized this as a regular trait of Mandle’s interpretations, a flamboyant enjoyment of the drama built into the composition. Sometimes he speeds the orchestra up, going very fast, sometimes allowing the schmaltz to slow things right down, as in the 2nd movement of the Mahler 4th. I think it’s a bit over the top, full of excitement, and perhaps the TSO players were following his direction when they went so fast as to seem to be controlling the piece. But again, this is evidence that Mandle is an original interpreter. Whether you share his taste or not, he’s very musical. This orchestra plays very well, a talented and capable group.
The fact that the TSO concert was almost totally sold out, and given a rapturous reception by the audience? Yes the TSO and the soloists were brilliant. Maybe the tickets were sold largely out of love of Mahler. But maybe the “amateur” has a following.
I will have to hear more of Mandle’s interpretations. Mandle Philharmonic are back October 2nd at Koerner Hall playing Brahms’ 1st and Beethoven’s 7th symphonies. For further information or tickets, click here.
I have just seen Jesse Eisenberg’s film A Real Pain (2024). I call it his, in the sense that Eisenberg wrote & directed and also stars as David opposite Kieran Culkin who is David’s cousin Benji. They are on a modern-day trip to Poland exploring their family background, especially their grandmother who survived the camps & the war, and who just passed away in the past year.
While I’ve heard lots about Culkin, who won the Oscar in the “supporting actor” category, I have heard next to nothing about the soundtrack for the film. Erick Eiser has the Music Supervisor credit for the film. For most of the film we are listening to solo piano pieces by Frederic Chopin coming from the soundtrack, as we watch the travels of David & Benji. I’m trying to understand whether that means anything more than just pretty background music for a film that flits back and forth between glib joy and concealed pain bursting forth into the open. Maybe it’s a Holocaust film, maybe it’s a road movie, maybe it’s absurd to think it fits into any recognizable genre.
A Real Pain is very different from the last movie I saw that combined a story about Poland with Chopin’s music, namely The Pianist (2002), Adrien Brody’s portrayal of Wladyslaw Szpilman.
While the Pianist takes place in the wartime period, showing us more brutality & cruel violence than any film I can recall, don’t let the title of A Real Pain fool you, as this film is precisely the opposite of the Pianist, with pain as a remote topic for discussion and reflection. We hear of a famous slap from years ago, when Benji was struck by the grandmother who has deceased and is remembered fondly for this moment of direct commentary on her grandson. David will also strike Benji (it’s in the trailer so I hope I can be forgiven for this tiny spoiler), one of the few moments when there is pain in this film: and Benji laughs it off. The title is provocative in positioning pain in the foreground of a film where we are mostly remote from the Holocaust horror being remembered by the members of the tour-group.
It’s not just my obsession with film music that makes me want to locate the difference between the two movies in the way they use piano music.
For me the most magical moment in The Pianist comes when Szpilman comes upon a piano and begins to play, silently.
I wasn’t kidding when I said The Pianist seems to be the opposite to A Real Pain, a film featuring the gentle tinkling of Chopin coming from the soundtrack for almost its entirety. For this scene of The Pianist suddenly we’re getting something like that as Adrien Brody as Szpilman mimes playing without touching the keys, while we hear the music as though in his head. Near the end of the film balance is restored as Szpilman gets to play again on Polish Radio, rather than being forced to deny himself. When we see that the pianist actually plays the instrument (or at least simulates it in a film) we are reconciled to reality, not forced to hide anymore.
Let’s compare that to a powerful moment in A Real Pain, that I would consider the heart of the film. Almost exactly halfway through the film, we hear and see diegetic piano music: meaning that we actually see the hands of the player and hear their music, the first time in the film that we don’t just get the remote sounds of the soundtrack. It’s not Chopin by the way, but the song Hava Nagila from a piano in a restaurant, in the scene after the trip to an ancient grave-yard. While I don’t want to disparage Chopin let’s be clear that his piano music is art music, quite different from a folk song that people might dance to, that is strongly associated with a race & their culture.
There is an awkward moment, when David tells a story quoting the words of his grandmother.
David: “First generation immigrants work some menial job, like they drive cabs, they deliver food,… Second generation they go to good schools, like they become a doctor or lawyer or whatever… Third generation lives in their mother’s basement and smokes pot all day.”
There’s laughter around the table, but Benji looks intently at David and asks “she said that?”
David looks a bit abashed realizing what he’s implied. “I think she was just speaking generally about the immigrant experience.”
Benji is already interrupting before he finishes, saying “I lived in my mom’s basement.” And we know he smokes pot and has arranged to get marijuana to Poland. We will see Benji and David smoke joints a couple of times in the film.
David nods, now a bit less reticent, saying “she was just talking about immigrants, that’s all.”
But Benji is visibly upset, finishes his beer, slams his empty beer glass down, burps hugely, propels his fork across the room and abruptly leaves the table, trying to play it cool, while clearly everyone around the table is disturbed by the exchange. David apologizes, not for the first time in the film that he’s apologizing for Benji or for himself.
For the next three and a half minutes we hear David talk about pain, including Benji’s failed suicide attempt, apologizing again for what he calls “over-sharing”, while the others in the group comment.
And then we hear piano playing of a different sort, “Tea for Two” coming from the piano. It’s an American popular tune that’s a century old and accident or not, is a song lyric composed by Irving Caesar: meaning it’s again Jewish music but with a familiar American sound.
Irving Caesar (1895-1996), born on the 4th of July(!)
I was pretty sure it would be Jewish recalling Making Americans, a beautiful 2004 book from U of T professor Andrea Most exploring the ways Broadway musicals shaped Jewish identity in America.
And we discover that now it’s Benji who is playing as we see his back, while he plays the piano. Not for the first time, we see Benji bounce back and forth between emotional extremes, where his strategy for balance takes us by surprise, even as it seems to bother and even infuriate David. David explains that both he and Benji took lessons as children, and then it’s his turn to leave. As he goes out of the restaurant we hear the piano music in our heads long after it should be audible, right up to the moment David closes the door en route to bed.
The pain of the title is not just Benji’s or David’s.
I want to call attention to something that could be funny, could be disturbing. Take it the way I offer it, recognizing that cinema is a business at least as much as it is an art-form.
I have spoken only a little bit about the pain of the title. Let me share one of the trailers for the film, as I ask you to notice the music for this trailer, that sounds nothing like the film.
Notice how cheerful and upbeat this sounds for its entire two minutes and twenty seconds. Okay maybe I’m wrong, but I think some people, watching this trailer, might be surprised at what they will get when they go see A Real Pain in the theatre.
This other trailer includes the one painful Chopin piece we hear in the film, the Op 10 #4 (and note, it’s at the very end of the film). This trailer seems like better advertising because it felt much closer to the experience I had. It’s shorter and very powerful.
Either way (with either trailer) , I think this is a fascinating film.
I can’t decide how to reconcile the film to Chopin, who was after all, not Jewish, only half Polish, and himself a composer who wrote some very painful music: that is not heard in this film. We’re listening to the charming parlour music throughout the film, as though Chopin is the musical equivalent of the Poland that lives with the cognitive dissonance only briefly alluded to in the film, when on the visit to a death camp we’re told that the town was only a short distance away. How can one be so close to these murderous camps, we’re asked? We see showers, ovens, piles of shoes. And the music will continue to tinkle happily, melodious and so so very polite. It is ultimately disturbing, but credits the viewer with sufficient intelligence to process this. We don’t get the Wagnerian load of pain in the sound-track. We get something calmer, reflective and from a distance of decades.
Stephen Bell is an award winning filmmaker and visual designer based in Toronto. Videographer by day and opera singer by night, Stephen is the Founder of Coffeeshop Film & Creative.
Stephen Bell
And on May 25th Stephen posted on Facebook that after 19 seasons performing as a Canadian Opera Company Chorus tenor, along with understudies and supporting roles that he would “step away to focus on family.”
It seemed the perfect time for an interview, looking back and looking ahead.
*******
Barczablog: Are you more like your father or mother?
Stephen Bell: This is a hard one to answer. I believe all of us are a combination of the love, time and memories each family member has touched us with. Mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, cousin aunt or uncle each of them has given us a part of the talents and personalities. Many of my family are no longer here and I would like to say I have the love of music my grandfather who played on the guitars he used to build. The voice of my grandmother who used to sing along with me to Lawrence Welk, the love of the stage and screen of my cousin who was Miss Canada in 67 and tv host for decades, the dedication to family of both my Mother and Father, and the stubborn determination of my uncles.
BB: What is the best or worst thing about what you do?
Stephen Bell:The best thing about what I do is having the chance to make a living story telling on stage or behind the camera with loved ones, friends, colleagues and industry leaders. Working in opera has influenced how I create visual storytelling in video production, and subsequently working in media capture has altered how I looked at work on the stage. The rush of energy of the stage or the excitement of capturing a moment in video both have their unique highs.
Worst thing about I do is having to say goodbye to a project when it’s done. There is always something I want to perfect after watching a past show or video. Knowing that unique moment in time is over and can’t be recreated is sometimes hard to accept.
BB: Who do you like to listen to or watch?
Stephen Bell:Maybe I am getting old, but American and Canadian rock/folk music, America, Crosby Stills & Nash, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, Don McLean, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash. It’s the first thing I turn on Saturday mornings with Angie and Isla as we wake up. There is something magical about playing “In the Early morning Rain” as your daughter munches Cheerios. The simple beauty of a voice and guitar combined has a power that the mightiest of orchestras and voices can’t match.
Watching? I love to watch and absorb the cinematography of Roger Deakins, Wes Anderson, Ridley Scott and Benicio Del Toro. Incredible story telling, and incredible visuals. Each film is a masterclass in framing the narrative through their work of lighting/framing and choice of film/digital/lens styling and composition.
BB: When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?
Stephen Bell:Spending time with my wife Angie and our daughter Isla and seeing dear friends. Hiking, road tripping, antique store browsing, dinner making. One thing about working in media and the arts is you cherish the time you have with family, as scheduling can be very demanding. Softball is another love of mine, and I have played in a local Toronto league for almost 10 years as an outfielder/first baseman and a poor replacement at Third base.
Although it’s working(ish) I love creating narratives or film projects. From features, music videos to short films – I have been lucky to create film with my wife in a couple of occasions. Creating a film and entering into festivals and seeing it screened is a real thrill. I am lucky as I own a studio of gear, but passion projects allow you to practice your craft and apply skills to working scenarios.
BB: What was your first experience of music ?
Stephen Bell:I remember I used to fall asleep to Pachelbel’s Canon. My parents used to play this at bed time. It still hits me now when I hear it.
BB: Who/what was your first experience with a camera, and how did you feel?
Stephen Bell:My grandmother’s brother, Alex Saarejarv used to bring a super 8 camcorder over to my parents house when he visited me. He would film everything. I was mystified by this magical box that captured pictures. Instead of just using it and putting it away, he would show me how it worked, and also how to pull the image from the tapes to transfer to cassette and show on the TV. I guess you could say at 8 or 9, my fascination with cameras began. I am forever grateful to him for showing me and teaching this tool. The art of passing on a skill to a child is priceless to inspire a love of a craft.
BB: What is your favourite opera?
Stephen Bell:Eugene Onegin – I have sung Lensky on tour with companies in the Czech Republic and Poland, and I have sung the opera twice at the COC in chorus. All of the characters in this opera feel close to me. From Filipyevna to Lensky and Olga, Onegin, Tatiana, Larina, the bumbling lines of Triquet and yes even to the long winded nostalgic aria of Gremin. Each character is real, and the story is timeless. It’s like a cinematic narrative, and Pushkin’s novella/libretto is timeless. The opera is long, but always feels fresh. There is something about the opening chords of the work which send a shiver down my spine.
A close second would be Nixon in China. I studied this while completing my masters at UBC. Adam’s composition is almost cinematic in its style. For a film lover the setting gives a unique perspective into a recent timeline of political missteps. “News has a kind of mystery” sung by Nixon always hit, night after night. We performed this at the COC back in 2011, and I will never forget the opening staging of the chorus walking onto stage performing Tai Chi as the audience took their places. It was powerful, grounding and different. One by one, each chorus member entered the stage to begin the movement long before the orchestra warmed up and the lights came down. Finding peace on stage is something all artists look for to settle stage nerves, centre their breathing and alignment and this show gave us a unique warm up each night.
BB: Do choristers need to know how to act?
Stephen Bell:Answering a blunt question with a blunt answer. Of course. If you step on a professional stage, you need to know to act, move, react and emote, otherwise you shouldn’t be on the stage.
Stephen Bell
The audience doesn’t just watch the leads, their attention goes to multiple points on stage. They should see story telling both adding to and supporting the narrative.
Each chorister I have had the privilege of working with at the COC are, or have been professional soloists at some point in their careers, and subsequently each know to emote. I can recall at numerous receptions at the COC, patrons and supporters of the opera coming up to me and saying how much they enjoyed “my” performance, and look forward to seeing me in the next show. In many cases audiences become attached to the chorus.
Stephen Bell, in Costume for Verdi’s Rigoletto
We are the life blood of the scene. We are the village, court, army, family etc that completes scene.
COC Chorus (photo: Michael Cooper)
A scene from Canadian Opera Company’s presentation of La Reine-Garçon (photo: Michael Cooper)
Lucas Meachem as Escamillo among his admirers, in the COC’s 2022 production of Carmen (photo: Michael Cooper)
The chorus needs to know how to lead in acting just as much as they lead with their collective voices.
BB: What directors did you enjoy most?
Stephen Bell:For the operatic stage I would have to say Robert Carsen, Atom Egoyan, and Christopher Alden. Their productions have been innovative, exciting but also all different, They have shown care to working with each artist (each member of the chorus) in rehearsal something that goes so far in creating lasting impressions.
Joel Ivany
One dear friend I have had the joy to collaborate with both on stage as well as behind the camera is Joel Ivany.
Working with Joel on projects like Messiah Complex, Toronto Symphony Orchestra features and the CBC Governor Generals performing arts awards has opened doors to other projects I never thought possible. Working as Joel’s DP on these projects during the pandemic was a joy, and I look forward to working again with him in the future.
BB: Please talk about your best experiences as a performer.
Stephen Bell: 1. I was blessed to collaborate and record with a dear friend and mentor, the late Estonian Pianist and conductor Charles Kipper. We toured Estonian art song in recital in Canada/US and in Europe also in collaboration with mezzo soprano Kristina Agur, who now sings as a full time chorister at Vienna State Opera.
2. Stepping onto a professional opera stage after school, and making my main stage role debut as Spoletta at Calgary Opera. Touring as Lensky/Tamino/Don Ottavio and Ferrando in Czech Republic and Poland.
3. The first opening night I did with the COC in 2007 – Don Carlos. The lighting of the stage illuminated the theatre and seeing the 4 rings full and the swell of the music is something I will never forget.
Looking out from the stage at the Four Seasons Centre
I remember the chorus had to run on stage and I was young guard along side fellow singer Marcus Wilson who had to lead the 60+ singers on. We had to run down the full length upstage to edge of pit and break off on either side, running straight at the conductor singing with a mighty Verdi orchestra. I remember saying to myself “wow I am here!” Even 19 years later, on opening nights, the rush was always there.
4. Meeting my wife Angela on stage who was acting in the 2012 production of the Tales Of Hoffmann.
5. Singing the role of Giuseppe in Verdi’s La Traviata at the COC in 2023. Although a small role, the opening line he sings rushing from offstage is one of the most challenging and exciting to time with the orchestra for a fast stage entrance.
Filming Catherine O’Hara
6. In film having the chance to lead camera and session directing Catherine O’Haraor steady cam operating walking around the string and wind sections of the Toronto Symphony as Gustavo Gimeno leads Beethoven’s 7th symphony after the pandemic restrictions lifted.
Filming Gustavo Gimeno in downtown Toronto
BB: Tell us your history with the Canadian Opera Company.
Stephen Bell: From the thrill of the audience response in sharing the stage with Sondra Radvanovsky as a tenor chorus member during one of her encore arias in Roberto Devereux, or hearing the crowd erupt into endless applause at Lawrence Brownlee in La Cenerentola, to the quiet peace of performing Tai Chi in Nixon in China at the COC or hearing the faint echos of humming chorus in butterfly bounce off the walls of the backstage at the Four Seasons Centre. I have sung in 124 productions over 19 seasons. Over a thousand nights of show. I have understudied 14 times. Sung 5 supporting roles.
I first auditioned for the COC in 2007, and never would have guessed it gave me everything I have today. My wife, my daughter, friends and family members. I’ll never forget walking into that audition at the Imperial Oil Theatre at 227 Front street to sing for a panel of Sandra Horst, Sandra Gavinchuk, Philip Boswell and Wayne Vogan. I remember it was a very snowy day and the taxi had a hard time getting to the building with me humming along to an early iPod. The first face I saw was the smile of dear friend Karen Olinyk, who must have had a smile as she saw this nervous young tenor arrive. I remember her saying, and what do you want to start with today? The opening line of Il Mio Tesoro started on the piano, and the rest is history, I guess.
So many memories – from being painted at the foot of the stage in blood in Verdi’s Aida, to stage solo sword fighting with tenor Eric Cutler in Maria Stuarda. There have been horses, dogs and donkeys and eagles onstage, costume mishaps, early and missed stage entrances. We have had celebrities and dignitaries both in the house and back stage. Chatting with Angelina Jolie while dropping off music at the stage office, or bumping into Meryl Streep and Christoff Waltz walking the halls by the green room. So many stories. It is live theatre after all. As I mentioned in a post on Facebook, I could write a book. Another note about the chorus, is that each of us have unique stories different from the rest. Although the production is the same, each route on stage and back stage is unique and the interactions, roles, and stories are all individual.
Over the 19 years, there have been incredible productions. There have been major political moments, a pandemic, industry shifts, administration changes, but the one thing that remained the same was the shot of adrenaline you get when a new show opens and the audience leans in to the first chords. Another feeling which is hard to describe is the sound of the reverb of 60+ operatic voices supported by our incredible COC orchestra when an ensemble finishes.
The sound floats up and is suspended for a brief second in the fly areas only those on stage can hear. It’s like a moment in time we will never get back, almost like sending up a prayer.
BB: What singers impressed most?
Stephen Bell:Sondra Radvanovsky, Lawrence Brownlee, Amina Edris, Evan LeRoy Johnson, Ambur Braid, Wallis Giunta, Russell Braun, Pene Pati, Quinn Kelsey. Adrianne Pieczonka
BB: do you think the COC should try to employ more Canadians?
Stephen Bell:I think the right person should always be hired for the right role regardless of nationality.
BB: Your work as a chorister meant you were at times observing complex action onstage, both as a singing participant & actor. Talk about how this work trained you for what you do as a videographer.
Stephen Bell:Working on stage and having a chance to observe the directors, lighting technicians, set designers, costume department, hair and makeup, talent and administration has all given me invaluable experience to how I work in film and media.
Chorus Men backstage during COC’s 2019 production of Turandot
For my media company Coffeeshop Film Creative, it gave me insight in creating production teams, working to employ the right people, and ultimately creating shows from a perspective where each department is fundamental to the success of the production. In many cases I have employed artisans and support team from the opera for my film projects. Everything from the opera budget and pre production planning, to production and post production work flow, edit and marketing has influenced my filmmaking and running a media company into creating Coffeeshop.
From my role now as a digital content director – I direct a content department of 12 and utilize all aspects of my opera experience. From creative story board design to shot listing and production design, I will always return to my stage routes for a guideline to success.
Soap box moment: I am a passionate advocate for digital arts in opera. The Pandemic gave us an opportunity to create digital story telling of operatic stories. We had a renaissance where artists and companies could add digital offerings to their seasons. Amazing works were being created around the world. Now, opera companies no longer put priority on digital offerings. They lean into the model of ticket sales and productions as the sole direction for their seasons. It would be exciting if companies could do one digital offering per year. Work with local production companies (large or small) to create work. Give their artists and staff film experience and vice versa. Sadly this time seems to be in the rear view mirror, as most grants for this support have long since ended. I hope in future funds become more available for opera companies to start this again.
BB: Please talk about your life with Coffee Shop Collective, and how that started.
Stephen Bell: Coffeeshop began as an idea for creating artist websites (online portfolios) I started this with a good friend of mine, full stack developer, Bardia Doust. We created 14 sites together and then we began to grow the company. Next operatic bass and also coding friend, Michael Uloth came aboard and we grew to 40 clients quickly both in the arts and in other sectors. As our sites became more and more advanced we started to explore video for web effects. Coffeeshop started to capture social media feature video for real estate companies/ construction companies and orchestras, music videos, corporate features. In 2019 we moved into a studio in liberty village. I partnered with friend and fellow videographer Eric Moniz. From 2019-2023 Coffeeshop shot all over Canada, the US and Europe both for online, film and television. Now in 2025 Coffeeshop is still quite active in creating productions, with a sub contracted team of over 10 depending on the required project.
BB: you’re an award-winning videographer, known for projects such as Messiah / Complex with Against the Grain Theatre.
Through the pandemic AtG have established a significant online presence. Occasionally the COC (who received significant funding from the government) offer high def broadcasts as well. Do you believe the COC can change their business model, to offer more virtual & video content?
Stephen Bell: I would hope all companies continue to diversify their seasons and offer digital programming – see soap box moment above. They don’t need to change the full season, just add one digital offering per year.
Production Broadcasts are incredibly expensive and the modelling is difficult with different union outlines. The COC is the premiere flag ship opera company of the country and one of the largest in North America, and maybe one day streaming services and or broadcast of audio or potentially archival footage may be a potential tool we could use to encourage the next generation of audience to discover opera.
BB:What opera has the best choruses, and do you have a wish-list of operas you would like to see?
Stephen Bell:Each opera with a chorus is special. Whether it’s a small ensemble in Entführung aus dem Serail or a grand Verdi Don Carlo Chorus- there are countless chorus numbers, or supporting ensembles. Depending on my taste or mood at the time, it’s hard to pick. From the energetic tempos of La Cenerentola, the heavily characterized chorus of Peter Grimes to the modern touch of Adams of Nixon in China, its hard to pick just one, as each fits a time and an emotion.
One opera I would love to see which I have sung in Europe but not here in Canada is Manon by Massenet. Combining ballet, acting arias, action and story, Manon is a beautiful piece which can appeal to many audiences. It could bring in audience from the National Ballet to see the many dance numbers featured in this grand French style, to the characterized scenes of the choruses, similar to the audience favourite La Traviata. I have a love of French grand opera, and I would also like to see Les Troyens. Another opera I would love to see is Billy Budd or Weber’s Der Freischutz.
It might sound a bit light hearted, but I do think there is a potential to discover Gilbert and Sullivan at the opera in Canada. Its timeless, often 2 hours or less (opera can be long) has broad appeal, does have challenging music in its own right and can be adapted into multiple themes or styles of staging both traditional and in modern political stature. It’s also a fun breath of fresh air during these troubled times.
BB: A breath of fresh air. And G & S would surely be a great way to sell tickets. Did you ever go back for further lessons / adjustments to your voiceOR for other skill-sets?
Stephen Bell: A singer in the chorus has to produce at the same level as the leads in a show. In many cases, as I have had, the chorus of the COC performs covers and small roles. You need to maintain your voice. To be able to switch gears in the voice (chorus to lead) you need to maintain the instrument. On contract the chorus sings almost every day and in same cases on the weekend may rehearse two separate shows on the same day. Tenors for example often have some of the most challenging singing to perform as many composers write the line in the passagio or opera range for prolonged periods. If you don’t have a solid technique, your voice will tire.
Brahm Goldhamer at the piano with tenor Stephen Bell (photo: Karen Runge)
To keep this in top form I have worked regularly with my coach Brahm Goldhamer. Brahm is a master coach to give not only styling and performance practice, but also has a seasoned ear to help in suggestion. There is always a debate about going to a teacher and coach, or going to a coach. I agree a teacher is paramount, but having a coach know your voice inside and out is key. Brahm has been both a coach/teacher and dear friend and is someone who KNOWS my voice. He understands the shape it is in after 6 months of singing every night in the chorus. He can tell the condition of my vocal line, the support status of the breathing and also can observe ideas on how to exercise the sound. It’s not always about singing the aria, it’s also about singing the art song or lieder that can massage the voice and align it after the demands of singing on the stage. Having this invaluable coaching has allowed me to maintain my vocal health and has grown my voice to be stronger, year after year. A dear friend and past teacher, conductor Bruce Pullan once said, if you can sing healthy at 40, you can sing for the rest of your life. I often laugh, the voice I have now at 43, I wish I had as a young artist auditioning around at 28-30. With what I have learned, who knows where else I may have sung.
Yoga has also been a key form of vocal conditioning, in addition to working with Candace Cox and Alexander Technique in the past. Also running, rowing, cycling and even softball are all forms or excercise where the mind can relax, the body can recharge and your voice and breathing can rest and reset.
BB: If you could advise young students going into a career in opera /theatre / film: what advice might you give?
Stephen Bell:There are many ways one can answer this, and everyone has different invaluable advice. As I have had a second career I have fostered in addition to music My advice would be To diversify yourself and study how you can be your own business. Singers today must learn the fundamentals of business practice. Investing and financial planning, tax preparation, marketing, social media and current trends, portfolio creation, schedule and planning, networking. As a singer you are a business. Being an efficient business that invests in itself will prove to be an incredible asset that will both allow you more time to focus being on that stage rather than worrying about the day to day of just getting the opportunity to get to the stage.
Having a second vocation is also key. The arts industry today is tough, regardless if you are in Europe or North America. Company budgets are tighter, productions are more and more streamlined both at home and abroad and opportunities are growing more challenging. The industry I was singing in when I left UBC opera in 2006, is very different today. Knowing you have secondary skill is key to allow for supporting the drive to be an artist. As a faculty member of Manitoba’s digital young artist program I always support the young artists with advice in learning skills that support the art of singing. Studying marketing and marketing strategies, learning computer development (a fantastic skill to have when you are on the road singing as you can work remotely) learning project management, after all you are a business. All of these are potential options that allow a singer to invest in themselves to succeed.
BB: Do you want to mention any particular mentors or teachers, whotaught you / influenced you the most?
Stephen Bell:There are many people who I owe so much and have been mentors to me and have helped me along my journey as an artist. From my teachers at UBC Opera, Roelof Oostwoud, Bruce Pullan and Nancy Hermiston to the Mel Kirby and Bob McPhee at Calgary Opera, to my coaches Brahm Goldhamer and Charles Kipper and of course, Sandra Horst.
Jason Nedecky, Vanya Abrahams, Stephen Bell, Jan Vaculik, – past and present chorus members: Sandra Horst
Sandra has been both a mentor, leader and also teacher. What many don’t know is that not only is Sandra our chorus master, but she is also an invaluable teacher while we are in rehearsal. She conducts the chorus in music direction and also in styling and singing methodology. Across each section, from 4 part to 16 part and more, Sandra’s ear has shaped each section year after year. She knows every single voice in her chorus and how it elevates the music from baroque to modern operas. She knows how to move the sound and styling of ensembles, from diction and vocal colouring to movement in multiple positions in the theatre to get the best sound. Her tireless dedication to consistently refining and elevating the world class chorus of the COC has enabled our ensemble to be one of the best in the industry. Countless conductors have mentioned in show and rehearsal how impressed they are when they work with us. It might sound a bit silly and film themed, but I look at the chorus like a group of spartan or roman warriors. We are combined a powerful voice. We move as one. We form the line as one. We are often the first on stage and the front line. We can adapt to any opera.
Sandra Horst: COC Chorus Master
I have learned so much from Sandra and through her leadership, she has also enabled my voice to be stronger, year after year allowing my instrument to perform and always be ready regardless if we are acting/moving/dancing or stage fighting.
BB: And for the future?
Although I am stepping away from the stage for a bit, I hope in the future I will come back for a COC production. In the meantime, there is much on the horizon. I will be working to film some opera in the fall. The Coffeeshop Film & Creative team is filming the Canadian and Ontario Arts Council granted opera film “La Maupin” for OperaQ in September.
We had the pleasure of filming Medusa’s Children with them during the Pandemic which was nominated for a 2024 Opera America Digital Award. I am also on faculty with Manitoba Opera for their Digital Young Artist Program. Working with incredible talent such as Tracy Dahl, Marion Newman, Monica Huisman, John Tessier, and Anne Hodges. I look forward to the 2026 season!
Currently I work as a digital content director for Dalstrong, a culinary tools company. We have numerous product launches and collaborations with some very exciting brands such as Game of Thrones, DC Comics, Beetlejuice and couple of other film and TV series I can’t quite reveal yet. We are also creating numerous chef documentaries featuring Michelin starred and recommended locations both in Canada, the US and abroad in our Dalstrong – Heart of a Chef Series. Recently we were the sponsor of team Canada who competed at the culinary Olympics in Lyon France, Bocuse D’Or. The styles and tools I have learned in opera have been incredibly helpful in working in the culinary space.
Stephen Bell backstage with wife Angela Bell in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux
Aside from work, I am also looking forward to being a Dad and sharing this incredible journey with my wife Angela. Although she is only 18 months old, we are finding our daughter Isla has a love of music, particularly percussion. She loves drumming, especially Scottish bag pipe bands. She also loves singing. Who knows, maybe one day she might join the CCOC and we can watch her in a production on the same stage where Angie and I first met, and all of this began.
There are so many memories, the more I look over this, the more I think I should write that book.
BB: Please do so! And thank you for answering my questions.
Some relaxed COC Choristers, ready for their next undertaking
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