How May Is & What May Be Even the Skeptics Have Upped Their Zoom Game: People I Thought Would Never Turn on Their Web Cams Have Finally Done So
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25TH SEASON! Vol 25 No 8 MAY AND JUNE 2020 Next season will see the first of our regional runout concerts attached to our main Sudbury season. We COMMUNITY VOICES would love for any Northern Ontarians interested in bringing top-level classical music and musicians to their communities to contact us. How May is & what may be Even the skeptics have upped their Zoom game: people I thought would never turn on their web cams have finally done so. COVID-19 has brought forward the tipping point, hastening the creation of new structures to support the creation and production of the arts in a different way than has been the case through the latter half of the 20th century to now. Strong developments and innovation arise in hard times as we So in the meanwhile, I have been playing Beethoven and focus on what matters. Debussy on the piano daily. … Witnessing how opera companies across Canada are dealing with the crisis and planning for the future. Advocating for inclusion of more artist voices so that our new reality on the other side of this works for administrators, as well as for creators and performers. No longer bound by geography, we have engaged Canadian I miss the magic when the lights go down We’re optimistic that things solo artists who live abroad and the curtain rises. I miss the symbiotical will eventually return, but it’s and wouldn’t normally be able flow of energy between us performers going to take a long while … to perform with us. We have and our audiences, and yes I even miss the Right now, this all kind of feels also set up a Patreon page so stress of preparation before. like jazz: we’re improvising … that people can support us with small monthly contributions. 2508_MayCover.indd 3 2020-04-27 1:31 PM “Throughout history, music has accompanied important chapters of human existence. Each sound, each tone, each timbre immerses the human spirit in different states while also soothing the soul.” — Elisa Citterio, Music Director HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE Mozart Cornetto Bach’s Friends Party Freestyle & Rivals SEP 24–29, 2020 NOV 5–8, 2020 JAN 21–24, 2021 Merrymaking Mozart with guest Featuring guest conductor and Tafelmusik favourite, guest conductor soloists, harpist Masumi Nagasawa cornetto soloist Doron Sherwin and oboist Alfredo Bernardini, returns and flutist Emi Ferguson Beethoven Birth of Vivaldi’s Symphony no. 4 a Symphony Choral Colours FEB 11–14, 2021 APR 8–11, 2021 MAY 13–16, 2021 A Beethoven 250th celebration with The whole universe is a symphony: Featuring guest conductor keyboard virtuoso Kristian Bezuidenhout explore music through the narrative Rinaldo Alessandrini, one of Italy’s of chaos theory leading baroque specialists PLUS Bach Christmas Oratorio, Brandenburg Concertos and more at tafelmusik.org/subscribe Subscribers save 15% on the best seats at the Handel Messiah and best price to Toronto’s favourite holiday tradition! Sing-Along Messiah Handel Messiah features soprano Emöke Baráth, countertenor return Christopher Lowrey, bass Philippe Sky, and tenor Charles Daniels. The more you see, the more you save! ORDER NOW SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscriptions for every taste and budget. Tafelmusik Box Office Order or renew at Starting at just $105. (416) 964-6337 tafelmusik.org/subscribe GREAT CHAMBER MUSIC DOWNTOWN STRINGS Oct. 22 St. Lawrence Quartet Nov. 12 Castalian Quartet St. Lawrence Quartet Dec. 10 Borealis Quartet Jan. 7 Tesla Quartet Feb. 4 Miro Quartet Feb. 25 Hagen Quartet Mar. 18 Gryphon Trio Apr. 8 Quatuor Van Kuijk Hagen Quartet PIANO Nov. 3 Vadym Kholodenko Nov. 24 Vanessa Benelli Mosell Jan. 19 Stephen Hough Mar. 9 Saleem Abboud Ashkar Apr. 27 Janina Fialkowska FULL SEASON OF 13 CONCERTS $500, $459. Other combinations available. Subscription prices include Vanessa Benelli Mosell Stephen Hough Handling Charges and HST. All concerts at 8pm TICKETS: 416.366.7723, option 2 | www.music-toronto.com 27 Front Street East, Toronto Volume 25 No 8 | May and June 2020 FEATURES LISTINGS 6 OPENER | The Next Piece of 32 What May/June would have the Puzzle | DAVID PERLMAN been 8 COVER STORY | Community 33 Online, Livestream, ETCetera Voices | DAVID PERLMAN DISCOVERIES: 20 ART OF SONG | Sojourn in the ACD2 2804 Deep Shade – The Only Way is RECORDINGS REVIEWED Through | LYDIA PEROVIĆ 35 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS Saints inouïs Lost and found sacred songs 21 CLASSICAL AND BEYOND | 37 Strings Attached | of the 12th century Virtual Concerts Offer Some TERRY ROBBINS Consolation | PAUL ENNIS Ensemble Scholastica 39 Keyed In 23 WORLD VIEW | When Your Rebecca Bain & Pascale Duhamel Instrument is a Collective Vocal direction Noun | ANDREW TIMAR 41 43 Classical and Beyond 24 CHORAL AND MORE | Maybe Soon? Or Maybe Not | Modern and Contemporary BRIAN CHANG 44 46 Jazz and Improvised Music 26 MAINLY MOSTLY | Mundane Musings of a cheese-counter Pot Pourri flâneur | COLIN STORY 49 Something in the Air | 27 JAZZ NOTES | Don’t Get 50 Around Much Anymore | KEN WAXMAN STEVE WALLACE 52 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES ACD2 2816 28 NEW MUSIC | Personal POV on the Pandemic | DAVID JAEGER MORE SCHUMANN Waldszenen | Nachtstücke | Humoreske Contact Information 29 MUSIC & DANCE | Quarantine- 6 Fuelled Recalibration | JENNIFER NICHOLS 7 Upcoming dates and deadlines ZOLTÁN FEJÉRVÁRI piano 30 BANDSTAND | Digitally Aided 34 Classified Ads Rehearsals and Reminiscences | JACK MACQUARRIE UPCOMING SPECIAL JUST RELEASED! PRINT SECTION 54 REARVIEW MIRROR | Listening Habits Blighted by IN SEPTEMBER 2020 | COVID’s Curse | THE CANARY PAGES All things choral in ROBERT HARRIS southern Ontario. 2508_Features.indd 5 2020-04-30 1:11 PM The WholeNote™ FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN VOLUME 25 NO 8 | MAY & JUNE 2020 Centre for Social Innovation 720 Bathurst St., Suite 503, Toronto ON M5S 2R4 PHONE 416-323-2232 | FAX 416-603-4791 Publisher/Editor in Chief | David Perlman [email protected] The Next Piece Chairman of the Board | Allan Pulker [email protected] EDITORIAL of the Puzzle Managing Editor | Paul Ennis [email protected] Recordings Editor | David Olds couple of hours from now, as my final action in the extraordinary [email protected] roller coaster ride of putting together this second last magazine of Digital Media Editor | Sara Constant A [email protected] The WholeNote’s 25th season, I will call up our designer and ask her to Social Media Editor | Danial Jazaeri [email protected] place the final missing piece of the puzzle, on page 5, so we can go to Listings Editor | John Sharpe press. After that, I will shut down my computer, shed a few tears of one [email protected] [email protected] kind or another, and wander out into the early morning light for the SALES, MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP one-mile walk home. The street will be unsettlingly unpeopled. Even Concert & Event Advertising / Membership | Karen Ages if I do encounter someone, we will (how quickly we learn) gravitate to [email protected] Advertising Art /Production Support / Operations opposite edges of the sidewalk, as though we were oppositely charged Jack Buell | [email protected] magnets, or wearing invisible hoops skirts designed to make physical Classified Ads | [email protected] Website/Systems Support | Kevin King separation fashionable. [email protected] Upon receiving my phonecall, Susan will replace the line in the table of contents which Circulation/Subscriptions | Chris Malcolm [email protected] presently reads OPENER: ?????? ?????? with whatever it is that actually appears as the title at the top of this page. But at this moment, just before sunrise, I truly do not yet know what SUBSCRIPTIONS that title is going to be. $45 per year + HST (9 issues)* The problem is not a lack of possibilities but too many: COVID’s Metamorphoses; Bums *international subscriptions: additional in Seats; Duck-Billed Platitudes; In the Blink of a Dystopian Eye; Three-Legged Stools postage applies THANKS TO THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS and Shooting Sticks; Something’s Got to Give; There’s Always Time (Until Suddenly There Brian Chang, Paul Ennis, Robert Harris, Jack Isn’t); The Writing On the Wall; … and (far and away my favourite if it didn’t take so long to MacQuarrie, Jennifer Nichols, David Perlman, Lydia explain) The Initiative Code-Named Breve. Perović, Colin Story, Andrew Timar, Steve Wallace, I’ve been carrying the latter around in a corner of my brain for at least 15 years now, and everyone contributing to “Community Voices” always aware that one day, in the implausible combination of elements, masquerading as CD Reviewers a business plan, that has sustained this magazine for two and a half decades, something Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Sam Dickinson, would snap. Daniel Foley, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard I always liked it as a title, mostly for its aura of geekily swashbuckling mystery. “The Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Barry Livingston, Initiative Code-Named Breve!” I would say (air quotes included) to whomever I was Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Ivana Popovich, Allan Pulker, Terry Robbins, replying that, yes, we do have a plan for long-term sustainability. And if their eyes didn’t Michael Schwartz, Adam Scime, Sharna Searle, light up in instant appreciation at the ingenuity of the phrase, I would explain: “in that Adam Sherkin, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, far-away land where musical time is counted in minims, crochets, quavers, semi-quavers Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield and so on, the thing we call a wholenote is called a semibreve; so a breve is a double