Canadian Opera Company turns final auditions for Ensemble Studio into a public vocal competition

The Canadian Opera Company announced that it is opening the doors to its final-selection auditions for its Ensemble Studio apprenticeship program, turning it into a de facto voice competition.

According to a press release on Tuesday, the company expects to provide the public with the opportunity to hear 10 to 15 finalists for the following season's Ensemble Studio openings on Nov. 28, starting at 5:30 p.m., at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.

"With the creation of the Ensemble Studio Competition, the public is invited to be a part of the singers’ professional journeys from the very beginning as it shines a spotlight onemerging artists in a substantial and significant way,” stated company general director Alexander Neef in the release.

Further details, including ticket information, will come later.

The Ensemble Studio has been around since 1980. There is hardly a prominent Canadian singer in the world who has not, in some way, been touched by this apprenticeship program, which was the brainchild of former general director Lotfi Mansouri.

Alexander Neef has, since becoming general director three years ago, done everything he can to further provide opportunities in Toronto for talented Canadian singers. This competition is a significant -- if symbolic -- addition to that effort, because it helps further draw public attention to the exciting talents this country is producing.

CD Review: No one does musical melancholy better than Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor

DANIEL TAYLOR & THE THEATRE OF EARLY MUSIC
Shakespeare, Come Again, Sweet Love (RCA Red Seal)
*** (out of 4) 

As François Filiatrault eloquently points out in the accompanying booklet, music was an integral part of Shakespeare's plays -- as references, as actual songs to be performed and as background music played by an offstage consort. In this new album, Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor brings together his favourite collaborators in his Theatre of Early Music for a rich, 21-track sampler of all things musically Shakespearean.

Of course, we get the title song -- performed this time by tenor Charles Daniels instead of Taylor. Also present is veteran soprano Emma Kirkby in this beautiful-sounding recording made in London's Henry Wood Hall last June. Taylor sings solo for eight of the songs, including the gorgeous opener, "By Beauteous Softness," set by Henry Purcell and accompanied by Elizabeth Kenny on lute.

Taylor's voice, still lush, has darkened over the past few years, adding an even deeper lustre to the melancholy he clearly cherishes. Although the selection of songs covers all moods and occasions, the preponderance is for introspection, if not outright lament. And no one does this as well as Taylor these days.

Kenny is a pleasure in a solo Galliard by John Dowland. Fabulous soprano Carolyn Sampson brings a powerful, lithe delicacy to "If Music be the Food of Love," in another Purcell setting. Baritone Neal Davies does well in the ensemble songs as well as in his one solo: John Dowland's "If My Complaints Could Passions Move."

Taylor has ceded one song -- Robert Johnson's setting of "Where the Bee Sucks" -- to fellow countertenor Michael Chance, if for no other reason than to show how rare is the depth of a voice like Taylor's.

My only wish from the booklet, which includes all the lyrics, would have been to give a little bit of context or history for each song.

Overall, this is a carefully crafted, nicely performed outing that could, ideally, have used a bit more variation in tempo and mood. That said, there could hardly be finer accompaniment to a rainy summer afternoon.

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There isn't a video available to go with the new disc, so here is a diversionary treat both upbeat and humorous featuring Carolyn Sampson, singing "I Myself Shall Adore" from Handel's Semele at the BBC Proms last year with Harry Christophers and the Sixteen:

Chamber music played by Toronto Symphony winds an excellent option for a Monday night

The Associates of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra present the last of their Five Small Concerts of the season at Trinity-St. Paul's Church (427 Bloor St. W.) this evening at 7:30 p.m. Even the regular adult tickets are a bargain, at $18. There are usually plenty available for sale at the door.

It's a great programme tonight. Here are details:

 

“Symphony Winds”

Franz Ignaz Danzi     Quintet in G Minor Op. 56 no. 7                
Samuel Barber          Summer Music for Woodwind Quintet            
Maurice Ravel           Mother Goose arr. For Woodwind Quintet        
Antonia Vivaldi         Concerto in G Minor for Flute, Oboe and Bassoon    

Paquita D’Rivera      Aires Tropicates for Woodwind Quintet    

Eric Ewazen              Roaring Fork Quintet for Wind Instruments

Julie Ranti,                   Flute
Keith Atkinson,            Oboe

Joseph Orlowski,        Clarinet
Christopher Gongos,  French Horn
Kathleen Mc Lean       Bassoon

 

Why is BlackCreek Festival relying on stars of the 1980s to sell tickets to inaugural season?

We're less than a week away from the opening of the inaugural BlackCreek Festival and, with each announcement of a new act for the summer-long concert series at the Rexall Centre tennis stadium, I hear Pierre Elliott Trudeau smugly saying "Welcome to the 1980s" in the background.

Yes, there are artists coming to BlackCreek whose parents had barely reached adulthood in 1980, but the vast majority of the marquee acts are people whose names and reputations were made during the last heyday of the shoulder pad.

To the credit of festival organizers, all were and continue to be great artists. But I'm wondering about the preponderance of older names. Are these the only names that can draw people out to a 10,000-plus-seat venue? Are these the only names that can attract an audience from outside the 416/647 area codes?

Is this festival lineup the single clearest indication we've seen in these parts that the mainstream, middlebrow, middle-of-the-road world of adult-contemporary pop, jazz standards and light classical is aging its way into an eventual grave?

Of course there are younger performers on the bill, but they come in packages, not as standalones. Take Diana Krall with Tony Bennett, or Jesse Cook with Chris Botti and Pink Martini, as examples.

I'm very eager to see what the audiences will look like. And, for everyone's sake, praying that this season's weather patterns change soon.

Keep yourself entertained with Cliburn amateur piano competition until I return on May 30

I'm away until May 30, and don't expect to be blogging until then.

In the meantime, there's the sixth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which is going to be webcast in its entirety, starting May 23.

There are three Canadians in the competition, including Jun Fujimoto, who works for Yamaha Canada, in their piano department.

Here are details, courtesy of the Cliburn press office:

or the first time ever, all performances and awards ceremonies for the Van Cliburn Foundation’s International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs™ will be streamed live over the Internet. Viewers can visit Cliburn.org to witness live events, as well as to access on-demand videos for past performances and special behind-the-scenes footage. Viewers can also participate in a live chat with other fans, share the video with friends on Facebook or Twitter, and embed the video player on their own Web site.
 
The webcast and on-demand videos will also be accessible on mobile phones by using browsers to visit Cliburn.org or, for enhanced content, by downloading the free Livestream app available for iPhones and iPads at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/livestream-viewer/id379623629?mt=8. Patrons can visit livestream.com/vancliburnfoundation now to sign up to receive email reminders before the start of each broadcast.
 
The Cliburn Web site will feature an active blog, with regular updates from official competition blogger Kevin Salfen, acting chair of music history at Southern Methodist University, as well as from Cliburn staff.

Salon des oubliés: Romantic piano gems from German mystery composer Louise Adolpha Le Beau

CDs for review arrive faster than I can listen to them, so many end up forgotten in the monthly jumble. One overlooked recent release I slipped into the player yesterday contained the first complete recording of the piano music of Luise Adolphe Le Beau by Croatian-born pianist Ana-Marija Markovina, who is virtually unknown in North America.

The 25 pieces by Le Beau (1850-1927) turned out to be a fine listen. Judging from the opus numbers, the disc is arranged chronologically. The earliest pieces could be forgotten works by Franz Schubert. The composer gets harmonically and texturally more adventurous as time passes. Markovina plays with an easy technique and restrained elegance in this recording made in Belefeld, Germany last May.

For details, click here.

Liking what I heard, I pulled out the CD booklet to find out more about Le Beau. In its 20 pages (in standard European style, there are three languages represented), all I could find in the pseudo-learned gobbledygook and meanderings of Dr. Helmut Reuter of Bremen University was that Le Beau was born into a music-loving family in Baden-Baden, and counted the Clara Schumann, Brahms and Liszt among her composer friends.

I scanned YouTube for something helpful, and found a couple of Lieder and this lovely piece for cello and piano that is entirely representative of Le Beau's style:

Montreal Symphony and pianist Angela Hewitt lay out history of the symphony at Carnegie Hall

Montreal Symphony Orchestra music director Kent Nagano presented a programme he billed as the history of the symphony to close Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music festival this past Saturday. It would have been more appropriate to turn to Montreal playwright Michel Tremblay for the programme's title: The Symphony in Five Times.

We get Gabrielli, Bach, Beethoven,Webern and Stravinsky. Ok, more like The Symphony in Four Times.

Helping out was pianist Angela Hewitt, working her trademark magic with the music of J.S. Bach. It's a fine program, and a great antidote to the fourth straight day of rain in this normally more sunny part of the world.

You can hear it via National Public Radio, here.

Here's something not on the programme: Hewitt playing one of Wilhelm Kempff's excellent transcriptions of music by J.S. Bach. This Sicilienne has a wonderfully rain-droppy quality:

My big realization from New Music 101 is how musicians should talk more to their audiences

I attended the last of four New Music 101 lecture-concerts yesterday by the Toronto Reference Library and the Canadian Music Centre. They had asked me to host the series and wouldn't take no for an answer when I said I didn't feel like I knew enough to stand up in front of everybody.

I'm glad I ended up hosting, because it taught me that, having made the effort to make plans and leave home, an audience arrives open and expectant.

Over the four sessions, which contained far more music than words, I was also struck by how difficult it is for many musicians to speak about what they do.

Anyone who seriously pursues music is taught to express themselves through their instrument. But throwing out some words is often just as valuable. As one audience member pointed out after the event last night, it helps humanize the performance as well as the music itself.

Non-classical musicians seem to understand this better. Pop, roots and jazz concerts usually feature quite a bit of banter between performer(s) and audience.

I think every music school should offer a half course that has nothing to do with history, theory or performance practice, and everything to do with how to talk to an audience. it might do wonders for all genres of art music -- from Early to as-yet-unnamed.

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Among the replies I received on yesterday's blog question was Bill McBirnie's suggestion of American composer Morten Lauridsen's 1994 setting of "O Magnum Mysterium" (O Wonderful Mystery). It's a sublime piece of contemporary a cappella choral writing, performed herre by the Brussels Chamber Choir under director Helen Cassano:

Live music performances really do ease our journey into that great good night

My colleague Susan Pigg has an excellent article in today's Star on the benefits of music therapy for the dying.

The beauty of the evidence is that it's based on 371 patients, and the musicians were members of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. The article on the study was written by Sandi Curtis of Concordia University, and is published in Music and Medicine.

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This made me wonder about what I would like to hear on my deathbed.

Most of us have thought about music for a particular fastive occasion, like an anniversary or birthday or wedding. Some of us have thought about music for a funeral -- in some cases, our own.

But how many of us have thought about what we would like to hear in our final hour or two?

My guess is that it would have to be something very familiar and very dear. It would also, as the article describes, need to be able to reconnect us with a better time and place somewhere earlier in our lives.

It may sound like a bit of a depressing thing to do, but I put on one of Schubert's Op. 90 Impromptus, with which I have a long connection, and it felt really nice.

So, here is Alfred Brendel, playing the Op. 90 Impromptu in G-flat Major, D. 899. I've also added Marie-Nicole Lemieux singing A Chloris, by Reynaldo Hahn (the poem, by Théophide di Viau, dates back to the 17th century).

Let me know what your candidates would be, either here or via email: jterauds@thestar.ca

Violinist Janine Jansen revels in Ravel, Debussy & Messiaen, in free stream of Salle Pleyel recital

Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, no stranger to Toronto, and piano accompanist Itamar Golan presented an recital at Salle Pleyel in Paris on Thursday night. It's a largely French programme that offers something for everyone: Sonatas by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel (the jazzy second one) and Franz Schubert (the "Grand Duo") as well as Olivier Messiaen's Theme and Variations and a clutch of encore bonbons. (The photo is from a recital at Wigmore Hall.)

The Schubert doesn't really fit the rest of the prorgamme. Jansen isn't the warmest of interpreters, but she plays with incredible assurance and Golan is a wonderful accompanist.

The sound was fine but the video went all wonky on me for the encores, which included the Paris premiere of a Ravel-inspried work -- Retour à Montfort-L'Amaury (the historic town in the outer suburbs of Paris where Ravel's house, Le Belvedère, is located) -- that Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon wrote for Jansen and Golan.

The recital was part of the free live streaming series on www.medici.tv. They now have more than 600 concerts and operas available for streaming on their (very reasonably priced) subscription service.