Love, Remixed House Program
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2018-2019: The Colours of Early Music LOVE, REMIXED FEBRUARY 15 & 16, 2019 2018-2019 Artistic Direction by David Fallis Season Sponsor & Katherine Hill THANK YOU! It is with sincere appreciation and gratitude that we salute The Spem in Alium Fund for its leadership and support of this production. JOIN US for our All-New Intermission Café! The Toronto Consort is happy to offer a completely refreshed intermission experience. Choose from a broader menu of: BEVERAGES SNACKS PREMIUM ($2) ($2) BAKED GOODS ($2.50) Coffee Assortment of Chips Assortment by Tea Assortment of Candy Bars Harbord Bakery Coke Breathsavers Diet Coke Halls San Pellegrino Apple Juice Pre-order in the lobby! Back by popular demand, pre-order your refreshments in the lobby and skip the line at intermission! PROGRAM Love Remixed Breathe Patricia Ahern, violin Music by James Rolfe Michele DeBoer, soprano David Fallis, conductor Words by Hildegard of Bingen, Ben Grossman, percussion Anna Chatterton and Antonio Scandello Katherine Hill, soprano Paul Jenkins, organ Terry McKenna, lute Alison Melville, recorder Laura Pudwell, alto Modern Takes Je requier a tous Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474)/McKenna/Hill So ys emprentid Walter Frye (d. 1474?)/Toronto Consort Se la face ay pale Dufay/Buxheimer Organ book (c. 1460)/Toronto Consort Triste plaisir Gilles de Binchois (c. 1400-1460)/Toronto Consort Adew William Cornysh the Younger (1465-1523)/Melville Intermission Join us for the Intermission Café, located in the gym. Eurydice Variations Music by David Fallis Michele DeBoer, soprano and Claudio Monteverdi Felix Deak, cello David Fallis, organ English text by Bridget Bryant Ben Grossman, percussion, hurdy-gurdy Lucas Harris, theorbo Italian text by Alessandro Striggio Katherine Hill, soprano Paul Jenkins, tenor, harpsichord Cory Knight, tenor Terry McKenna, lute Alison Melville, recorder, flute John Pepper, bass Laura Pudwell, alto Tonight’s Performers are: Staff & Administration Michelle Knight, Managing Director David Fallis - Artistic Director, organ Adam Thomas Smith, Director of Katherine HIll - Artistic Director, soprano Audience Engagement and Education Nellie Austin, Bookkeeper Chris Abbott, Graphic Designer THE TORONTO CONSORT Romina Julian, Marketing and Development Assistant Michele DeBoer, soprano Yara Jakymiw, Season Brochure Graphic Designer Martin Reis, Derek Haukenfreres, Box Office Ben Grossman, hurdy-gurdy Peter Smurlick, Database Consultant Gordon Baker, Stage Manager Paul Jenkins, tenor, piano, harpsichord Cecilia Booth, Front of House, Volunteer Coordinator Terry McKenna, lute Gordon Peck, Technical Director Pradeep Gade, CD Sales and Event Assistant Alison Melville, flute, recorder John Pepper, bass Laura Pudwell, alto Board of Directors Heather Turnbull, President WITH SPECIAL GUESTS Ann Posen, Past President Patricia Ahern, violin Harry Deeg, Treasurer Frances Campbell, Secretary Felix Deak, cello Jason Bernardon Jennifer Bryan Lucas Harris, theorbo Anita Nador Cory Knight, tenor Tiffany Grace Tobias Andrea Whitehead The Toronto Consort is a Proud Member of Follow us on Facebook and Instagram! @TorontoConsort 427 Bloor Street West, Toronto ON M5S 1X7 Box Office 416-964-6337 Admin 416-966-1045 | [email protected] bloorstculturecorridor.com TorontoConsort.org ABOUT US Top Row: David Fallis, Alison Melville, Michele DeBoer, John Pepper, Paul Jenkins Bottom Row: Katherine Hill, Terry McKenna, Laura Pudwell, Ben Grossman Photo Credit: Paul Orenstein Since its founding in 1972, The Toronto Consort to Europe and Great Britain four times, and has become internationally recognized for its frequently across Canada and into the US. excellence in the performance of medieval, The Toronto Consort has made recordings renaissance and early baroque music. Collectively for the CBC Collection, Berandol, SRI, Dorian, led by eight Artistic Associates, some of Canada’s and currently Marquis Classics, with 10 CDs to leading early music specialists have come together to its credit, two of which have been nominated form The Toronto Consort, whose members include for Juno awards. The most recent recording both singers and instrumentalists (lute, recorder, (The Italian Queen of France) was released in 2017. guitar, flute, early keyboards and percussion). Recently, the ensemble has been called Each year The Toronto Consort offers a upon to produce music for historical-drama subscription series in Toronto, presented in the TV series, including The Tudors, The Borgias and beautiful acoustic of the recently-renovated The Vikings, all produced by the cable network 700-seat Jeanne Lamon Hall, at the Trinity- Showtime. The Toronto Consort recorded St. Paul’s Centre in downtown Toronto. The the soundtrack for Atom Egoyan’s award- ensemble also tours regularly, having been winning film The Sweet Hereafter. PROGRAM NOTES Notes on Breathe connect us to each other and to the divine. Mediaeval music moves me. In the right hands The music flows from the words and images. and voices, it comes alive, as fresh and relevant The voices often lie very close together, a kind of to our modern ears as the day it was created. musical metaphor for intimacy. Some sections With its clarity of expression and purity of line, are highly transparent and symmetrical, such as it becomes a living and breathing organism, a the opening, which begins with a lone voice, and stream of beautiful sounds praising the divine. unfolds using the simplest of means: four-bar Naturally I was thrilled when Lawrence phrases, tonic-dominant harmony, plain motives. Cherney asked me in 2010 to write a work for A dense, active passage follows, establishing an Norway’s Trio Mediaeval with The Toronto ebb and flow of tension and release—a pattern Consort. What a joy for a composer to work with which flows through to the end, where the such gifted musicians! I dreamed of creating opening is restated, though in reversed order. music which would connect to the Consort and It has been my great fortune to work with to the Trio’s mix of mediaeval, contemporary, and groups such as The Toronto Consort, the Toronto folk repertoire. For this, I needed the right words. I Masque Theatre, and Tafelmusik, among others, found them in the lyrics of 12th-century composer and to experience just how much early musicians Hildegard von Bingen, with their intense and love their music. And just how fanatical they are visceral expressions of heavenly love. I added about tuning! They have access to many shades to the mix these beautiful lyrics by 16th-century of just intonation, with its pure intervals which Italian-German composer Antonio Scandello: resonate in our bodies and souls. For them, music “Shine on us, beloved sun, / your brightest light is a labour of love, about making something / Melt us in love together, / we who cannot live which glows from within. To them—and in apart”. And I asked the writer Anna Chatterton, particular to David Fallis and the musicians of a frequent collaborator of mine, to knit the The Toronto Consort, who premiered Breathe, older texts together with verses of her own. and later recorded it for CD—my deep thanks. A text took shape which spoke of earthly – James Rolfe, Composer and divine love, as embodied by the elements: Credits: air, earth, fire, and water. Water runs through Breathe (2011). Music by James Rolfe, with the lyrical, flowing opening (“love overflows...”); words by Hildegard von Bingen (Germany, air follows, quick and restless (breathing, 1098-1179), Anna Chatterton (Canada, b. sighing, rising, falling); then fire and earth, in 1975), and Antonio Scandello (Italy-Germany, warm, close intervals (“Most noble greenness, 1517-1580). Commissioned by Soundstreams rooted in the sun, you shine bright and Canada (Lawrence Cherney, Artistic Director) serene...”). These threads are metaphors for Trio Mediaeval and The Toronto Consort, for human closeness, desire, love, spirit— with the assistance of The Canada Council those invisible threads that sustain us, that for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Notes on “Modern Takes on Medieval Music” for saxophone quartet; having them remixed While visiting the Vatican library in by a DJ; deconstructing them into a Steve 1770, English traveller, composer and proto- Reich - style minimalism, to name a very musicologist Dr Charles Burney uncovered few. For this evening, our main gateway into a manuscript containing a medieval lament working with these special pieces has been on the death of Richard the Lionheart, by somewhat akin to Dr Burney’s: to take old troubadour Gaucelm Faidit (ca. 1156 - ca. 1219). music that excites us, and to draw it nearer to Greatly excited by this discovery, he eventually our experience of music in the here and now. published the song in 1782, translating the On this occasion, we have done this Old Occitan (Provençal) text into English, and through re-harmonization, addition of furnishing the original, single melody with a modern instrumental colours, improvisation bass line and harmony. This very 18th-century and references to contemporary styles. arrangement is the earliest example we have of Guillaume Dufay’s chanson “Je requier a tous a published “modern take” on medieval music. amoureux” presents the original melody with While those of us involved in historical a jazz harmonization, whereas Walter Frye’s performance today make more of an attempt spellbinding “So is emprentid” takes a more than Dr Burney did to meet the music of the minimal treatment, retaining the original three- past on its own terms, rather than ours, it is part polyphony, but blending voice and piano. only reasonable to state that all our “takes” A mixture of original material and improvisation on medieval music today are, to some degree, re-frames Dufay’s famous “Se la face ay pale”, and “modern takes”: no matter what we do, we can our set will come to a close with reworkings and never dissociate ourselves from our own era, reharmonizations of two very poignant melodies and we can never know what unwritten elements about the loss of love, Binchois’ “Triste plaisir” and influenced and informed performances of the William Cornysh’s “Adew, adew”.