Review: These muses are missing their masquey mojo

My print review of Toronto Masque Theatre's Masque of the Muses in today's Star is missing online, so here it is:

Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière dances while Teri Dunn sings La Muse de l'opéra by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault in Toronto Masque Theatre's Masque of the Muses. Photo: Tara McMullen

Masque of the Muses
**1/2 (out of 4)
Toronto Masque Theatre. To Nov. 27. Winchester Street Theatre, 80 Winchester St. 416-410-4561 (www.torontomasquetheatre.com)

For the past seven years, Toronto violinist and singer Larry Beckwith and his merry band of musical accomplices at Toronto Masque Theatre have been mixing things up a bit.

They opened their 2010-11 season at the Winchester Street Theatre on Thursday night with a show called The Masque of the Muses. This compilation of poetry, instrumental pieces and song is less of a masque than a salon. Better yet, call it a pan-historical tableau vivant with accompaniment.

Even though the evening timed out at a snappy, intermission-free 80 minutes, it felt long. The performances weren’t bad; they lacked the party energy that is the essence of masque.

When Beckwith founded the group, he reached back to the original English masque genre, mixing 17th century singing, dancing, spoken word and instrumental revelry that would eventually be distilled into opera. 

The original masques – most lost in the sands of time -- were grand variety shows for aristocratic audiences who were probably just as interested in food, drink and catching up on the latest juicy gossip with fellow guests as they were in the entertainment.

Toronto Masque Theatre devoted its first seasons to going through the semi-operas Henry Purcell left behind, doing a fine job of balancing the theatre, music and movement into entertaining, low-budget productions.

Beckwith has commissioned new work along the way, too, creatively reaching out to the 21st century as he follows the spirit of the past.

The Masque of the Muses looked good on paper: An actor declaims poetry drawn from the stories of the nine muses from Greek antiquity as the gathered musicians and dancer provide entertaining segues in front of  images projected on a big screen.

The bits and pieces were fine, too.

Actor Derek Boyes was poised and polished in his readings. Soprano Teri Dunn brought an uncommon warmth and expressiveness to three vocal pieces – “Mon bien-aimé siffle si bien” (My Beloved Whistles So Well) by 20th century French composer Jacques Ibert, an aria from George Frideric Handel’s Parnasso in festa (Party on Parnassus) and the long dramatic vocal monologue La Muse de l’opéra (The Opera Muse) by Handel contemporary Louis-Nicolas Clérambault.

Flute player Alison Melville drew impressively from her vast repertoire and great technical skill, while the other four members of the ensemble – Larry Beckwith and Kathleen Kajioka on violin, cellist Margaret Gay and keyboard player Noam Krieger – were okay.

Even dancer Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, blending her own ideas with Baroque dance practice, rarely set a foot wrong.

Gabriel Cropley’s lighting always provided the right focus and mood.

But these ingredients didn’t coalesce into a sense of occasion that transcended the individual performances. Perhaps the subject of the muses was too diffuse to generate a focused presentation. Also, there were times when the music begged for more instruments in the ensemble.

Here’s hoping that the group will recover their masquey mojo in time for the next production.

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Here are the first five minutes of La Muse de l'opéra ou Les Caractères lyriques by a group that hasn't identified itself  (Teri Dunn is much more pleasant to listen to):

Tonight in Toronto, you won't find a crazier head trip than Myra Davies' 50-Minute Ring at Music Gallery

Some artists are meant to live on the fringe; their aesthetic, their view of seeing the world, filters and re-interprets and creates in a way that will rarely connect with an audience that doesn't want to be provoked or teased. And if the artist can't ruffle any plumage, they feel they haven't done their job.

Myra Davies is one of those people. In 2006, the sometime alt-musician and spoken-word artist spent some time in an alternative venue presenting her own twisted, 50-minute take on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung cycle. She returns for one performance tonight, at the Music Gallery, with a group of like-minded provocateurs: sound artist Christopher Willes, pianist Gregory Oh and visual artist Lee Henderson.

What's intriguing about this mutant show is that it's more about the relationship between us and the Ring, than it is about the operas themselves. There's no crazier head trip available for $20 tonight in Toronto.

For all the details, click here.

Here are a few pictures from four years ago, compiled into a video clip. The Walt Disney song is, erm, an extra, I guess:

Screening tonight: Music therapy is a gift that keeps on giving, and there are no nasty side-effects

Nancy McMaster, a Vancouver music therapist, says "music organizes us." That appears to be one of the keys to why and how music therapy is able to bring autistic children out of their sensory-overload shell. The organization of sound, of community and tangible result coming out of an effort that involves receiving (listening) and giving (making music) improves the lives of people of all ages with other cognitive or emotional challenges.

When I was researching an article on music therapy a few years ago, I saw, in every visit and interview, how music therapy works. It was powerfully inspirational to see that the tool to reach the minds of people who don't fall into our accepted patterns of cognition and socialization is one that is accessible to all -- and that there are no adverse side-effects.

The Canadian Music Therapy Trust is offering a series of glimpses into this wonderful world this evening, in the screening of The Gift of Music: Stories of Music Therapy, at the Royal cinema, 608 College St., at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10, and there will be a Q&A session afterward.

Filmmaker Scott Rondeau travelled across the country to interview a variety of therapists, academics and researchers. Most powerfully, he was able to catch children and adults in actual music therapy sessions, and the proof is in the viewing.

The gift of music is one that keeps on giving.

To give you an idea, here is a snippet of Paul Lauzon, head of the music therapy programme at Acadia University, working with music therapy group participants at the Wolfville, NS branch of L'Arche (an organization servicing developmentally disabled people):

Five musical suggestions for a brilliant Nuit on the town, or a fruitful fall tour by day

To the anti-social and the early-to-bed crowd, please skip down to the bottom of this post. For everyone else, get a good nap in this afternoon and brace yourself for the city's 5th annual sundown-to-sunrise arts fest.

I think that the best way to experience Nuit Blanche is by randomly stumbling across something interesting, rather than going out with a fixed itinerary. Because crowds can vary widely, having your heart set on one particular location can sometimes become an exercise in crowd-frustration.

You can find everything at the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche website. For instant guidance, the festival is offering an app for iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices.

If you're not into electronic assistance, here are some suggestions for serious music listening that's pretty much guaranteed to be great:

-Between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Ashiq Aziz will lead soprano Dawn Bailey and a very impressive list of period-performance masters assembled as the Classical Music Consort in an all-Handel programme at St. Thomas's Anglican Church, 383 Huron St. The church is host to an all-night show called Pillars of Fire, where performers will riff on the meaning of fire and light.

-There are several great live music options inside at the Royal Conservatory's Telus Centre, 273 Bloor St. W. Outside, in the new square along Bloor St., is a fascinating video-projection duel between a jazz quartet and a classical quartet, where people with a specific kind of smart phone (Telus, natch) can vote on their favourite interpretation of a number of pieces, including the premiere of a new work by Montrealer José Evangelista.

- XXIX, A 6-minute video installation by Laurel MacDonald in the ROM's lobby that picks up on her QUI sound installation (created with John Oswald) from 2007. In this new version, she uses 21 voices, each singing in a different language to music by Josquin des Prez (MacDonald herself sings in Latin).

-Oswald is part of a night of musical fun and experiments at Chalmers House, home of the Canadian Music Centre, at 20 St. Joseph St.

-Erik Satie's Vexations, is a doozie, set to last for the full 12 hours of Nuit Blanche, as the short, strange score is repeated 420 times on two pianos. As it is played each time, the single sheet of paper with notes on it will be passed to someone, who will fold it into something artlike. The notable keyboard conspirators include Eve Egoyan and John Kameel Farah. It takes place in Santiago Calatrava's ever-gorgeous galleria liking Yonge and Bay Sts. in Brookfield Place (formerly BCE Place).
To give you an idea of what to expect to hear, here is a clip from a Vexations marathon organized by London Sinfonietta earlier this year:

 

OUT BY DAY AND OUT OF TOWN

Word is that the trees are already ablaze north of Highway 7, so a different kind of weekend option would be to drive north, check out the fall foliage as well as the final weekend of Barrie's Colours of Music Festival, which attracts a pretty impressive roster of excellent artists. Check out the details here. 

To get us in the mood here are some fall pictures that have nothing to do with Ontario, set to some very familiar music (The photographer and compiler, Rachelle Steinberg, notes that the pictures are from around her home in coastal Oregon, Michigan, New York and Cape Cod):

Vivaldi Autumn from Rachelle Steinberg on Vimeo.

 

 

Review: Powerful fusion of silent film and live music in Passion of Joan of Arc at TIFF Bell Lightbox

Renée Falconetti as Joan of Arc in Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1928 classic silent film.

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
**** (out of 4)
Film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Music by Richard Einhorn. Live music directed by David Fallis. Repeats tonight. TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W. 416-968-3456 or www.tiff.net

Even without any sound at all, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent film of the trial, torture and execution of Joan of Arc makes compelling viewing. Augmented by a live soundtrack by American composer Richard Einhorn, performed by a gang of talented Torontonians conducted by David Fallis at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday night, this is multimedia at its most riveting.

What a fantastic way to launch the four-title Essential Cinema Concerts series at TIFF's chic new home. (The three upcoming film-concerts are either world or Toronto premieres.)

This was the first time I'd seen The Passion of Joan of Arc, so I wasn't prepared for the mesmerising, doe-eyed face of Renée Falconetti (credited simply as Mademoiselle Falconetti onscreen) as Joan. For the story to work, we have to believe that the 19-year-old 15th century martyr was touched by God. Dreyer's in-your-face lens and Falconetti's unflinching intensity don't let us forget her state of grace for a moment.

Joan's angelic features are in sharp contrast to the caricatures of ignorance, pomposity, entitlement and sheer evil that stare down at her with unvarnished masculine contempt. This is Good vs Evil depicted in black and white, both literally and figuratively.

Although there is no room for nuance here, the visual intensity kept me from thinking about it too much. I was swept away.

The soundtrack, an oratorio called Voices of Light, by contemporary American composer Richard Einhorn, is equally polarized, making for an ideal match. Premiered in 1994, after the composer had been inspired by a 1985 remastering of the film (after an intact print of was found in 1981, in a mental hospital in Norway), the score for orchestra and voices has become the definitive accompaniment.

Blending vocal parts inspired by Medieval song and plainsong (and alternating between Latin and French) and instrumental writing based on layered minimalist note-patterns, Voices of Light could become tedious listening after the first 15 minutes. But, matched up seamlessly with the passionate visuals, the music becomes an integral part of the emotional rollercoaster.

There were times that I tried to focus on the music separately, but the faces on screen kept dragging me back to the movie.

Squeezed tightly on a small stage in front of the screen were an orchestra made up of about two-dozen string and woodwind players, as well as members of Choir 21 and the Toronto Consort, all led by David Fallis. They did a fantastic job in a demanding situation: there couldn't be any straying from the moving pictures, and they had to sound balanced with amplification (movie theatres are not designed for acoustic music; without microphones, the sound wouldn't travel past the first two or three rows of seats).

There is a repeat performance tonight, and its well worth experiencing, as it's such a departure from classical concerts where the visuals are an add-on, rather than the main event. (Prepare for cinematic sticker shock, though; a full-price adult ticket is $50.)

My only quibble is with the lack of background information. There were no printed programmes for the screening/concert and TIFF artistic director Noah Cowan's introduction was as brief as the notes on the film venue's website. If you didn't know anything about Dreyer, his masterpiece, Joan of Arc or Voices of Light before you entered the theatre, you wouldn't know any more on your way out.

You'd simply leave with the conviction that you'd just experienced something very special.

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The Criterion Collection released The Passion of Joan of Arc together with Einhorn's oratorio, performed by Anonymous 4 and the Radio Netherlands Philharmonic and Choir, not too long ago. The DVD comes with several background extras, and the booklet includes the full vocal text.

To give you a taste, here are the opening 10 minutes. (Incidentally, one thing that surprised me was the frequency of the camera-angle cuts; they feel right at home in the 21st century):

Tonight, genre bushwhacker John Kameel Farah shows off his compelling work as a composer-pianist

One of Toronto's most fascinating musicians is John Kameel Farah, a man with impeccable credentials as a classical pianist, who has been bushwhacking his own path across a number of aesthetic thickets as a 21st century composer-pianist. The full digital arsenal (from laptop to electronic keyboard) sits alongside the traditional piano as he loops, mixes and distorts and noodles.

He is the gifted spawn of piano nerd and computer geek, mixed with a lively, inquiring, skeptical mind.

Farah has been travelling a lot in recent months, having found a ready outlet for his talents at music festivals in the U.K., Europe and the other Americas. Before his next escape, he has landed a residency at experimental Little Portugal arts venue, Mackenzie Post Digital.

As part of that residency, he is performing live at Unit Bar, next door to the Gladstone Hotel, just east of Dufferin St. He is down to play two sets between 9 p.m. and midnight.

There are several more performances of various kinds before the end of the month. You can find the schedule here.

Farah is doing a couple of things during Nuit Blanche. If I didn't have to be conscious for church duty in the morning, I wouldn't want to miss him playing Erik Satie's Vexations at Brookfield Place (the former BCE Place -- and one of my favourite pedestrian passages in the world) on Oct. 3 between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.

Here's a clip of Farah improvising on acoustic piano at the Church of the Holy Cross in Berlin this summer:

Bayreuth Festival offering worldwide web a Wagnerian afternoon at the opera today

Bayreuth Festival photo 

From looking at the press materials, it might think that German industrial giant Siemens has taken over from Katharina Wagner as the name-brand behind the Bayreuth Festival today.

There's a children's opera already underway in a day of live transmissions from inside Festspielhaus, which include a live presentation of Tankred Dorst's 2006 production of Die Walküre that starts at 11 a.m., EDST (4 p.m. in Bayreuth).

It looks like a strong international cast, led by the stolid Johan Botha as Siegmund. The conductor is Christian Thielemann.

There have been public screening areas set out in the Volksfestplatz. The rest of the world can watch a high-definition live-streaming broadcast on a site set up by Siemens. The opera will be made available for on-demand viewing tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., EDST.

To set yourself up, click here.

Unlike many other web offerings, you have to pay for this one. The admission charge is 14.90 euros, which entitles the customer to view live, view once on demand, and grants access to a variety of backstage featurettes, much like what the Metropolitan Opera has been doing.

For a sneak sample of today's music, here's a pirate recording of Botha singing "Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond," from Act 1, on July 28. Edith Haller is in the role of Sieglinde:

Individual redemption through the power of music rings loud and true in remarkable Palestinian phenomenon

Chicago Palestine Film Festival photo

Never, ever underestimate the power of mentorship.

Thanks to helping hands, a boy raised among the nearly 1 million Palestinians living in refugee camps in the Middle East, grew up with a love of classical music. He learned to play the viola and, since 2003, continues to mobilize every interested person and spare musical instrument so that Palestinian children can have access to the multi-faceted benefits of music.

You can read and listen to a condensed version of the story of 31-year-old Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan on NPR. 

Aburedwan and his music organization were the subject of a 2006 French documentary film, It's Not a Gun. Much of his success is due to the French connection, which began at the Conservatoire in Paris. Every June since 2002, there has been a music festival in Angers, which initially gave Aburedwan a voice, and helped him launch his massive project with donated instruments and volunteer musical visitors only a year later.

The first harpsichord in Palestine arrived thanks to him. He inspired the creation of the first festival of Baroque music in his native land, in 2004. Now, more than 500 children have access to music instruments and teachers in safe schools.

Because there is such a heavy French connection in all this, most of the stories about the project and Aburedwan have, so far, been written in French. If you can read it, you can visit the Al Kamandjati website for much more information.

What I find most inspirational in all this is the long chain of helping hands that helped replace the stone in an angry 8-year-old's hand with a viola, that helped that viola become part of an orchestra, that linked up to interested people around the world, and then reached back to where it started, finding more lost 8-year-olds, whose lives will be forever changed for the better.

Here is a short video profile of Al Kamandjati school life made last year by Saed Karzoun:

Now, a jazz combo from one of the Al Kamandjati schools tackling some Miles Davis last month:

xxx

World's biggest and most eclectic summer music festival lays itself bare online

BBC Radio 3 has unveiled its electronic archive of the Proms, the London-based summer concert series that runs from mid-July to early September every year. The archive begins with the first Promenade Concert in 1895 and runs, unbroken, to the current season, which kicks off on Sunday.

You can search the database by composer, by work, by performer and, when you reach each entry, it neatly cross-references everyone involved. It's nothing short of amazing, 

I entered the name of every prominent 20th century Canadian composer I could think of and came up blank, but that's not surprising, given how new music is a national -- and nationalist -- enterprise, much of the time.

So I tried a conductor who composes, Andrew Davis, onetime music director (now music director emeritus) of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He co-arranged (with Gordon Jacob) the National Anthem, to be sung at the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 2003. The arrangement had a repeat performance in 2006.

Davis also led two performances by his Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the Proms in 1986.

I looked up the vocal legends and saw that Maureen Forrester first sang at the Proms in 1957 (in Verdi's Requiem, with conductor Malcolm Sargent) and again in 1961 (Mahler's Rückert Lieder, again with Sargent, the first time this cycle had been performed at the Proms).

Other legendary singers: Lois Marshall, Joseph Rouleau, John Vickers (three times -- the last with Jessye Norman in 1985, in Mahler's Lied von der Erde), Catherine Robbin (seven times), Victor Braun and son Russell (for the first time in 1999, in Rameau's Boréades, the second in a performance of Fauré's Requiem in 2007).

Speaking of Toronto's current crop of golden voices, Michael Schade has been invited four times, Adrianne Pieczonka sang an opera aria there in 1994, Brett Polegato has visited three times (the first with fellow Ontarians Meredith Hall and Laura Pudwell in a 1995 performance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1995 with Les Musiciens du Louvre).

You get the picture.

And that doesn't count all the instrumental performers.

The site offers broadcasts of this year's concerts -- 76 concerts at Royal Albert Hall and 13 performances at the more intimate Cadogan Hall. The full schedule is here. The broadcasts are supposed to be available online for seven days after the concert date.

The site offers a neat-but-weird "Maestro cam" which shows conductors from the 2009 season at work, augmented by spoken commentary. I'd love to see how that works (I can't help but think of Peter Schickele's play-by-play commentary of Beethoven's Fifth), but visitors from outside the U.K. are not allowed to watch.

With no alterior motive (aside from having noticed that Richard Bradshaw never conducted anything at the Proms), here is Davis conducting (a slghtly-past-her-prime) Welsh soprano Gwyneth Jones in the final scene of Wagner's Götterdämmerung at Albert Hall in 1991:

Jacquie Thomas uses cross-disciplinary theatre skills to bring kids on margins into Toronto's cultural dialogue

Here is a short article of mine that ran in Saturday's Star, but which disappeared before making it onto the paper's website.

The front lines of Toronto culture

Whether it’s championing arts education, celebrating the city in books, bringing theatre to teens or starting a new radio station, our critics present five people who are making a difference

Even before the curtain went up on the premiere of Voices With inReach, a high school show at the Factory Studio Theatre on May 13, the teenage audience was already engaged with the stage.

The producers, Theatre Gargantua, had set up a large whiteboard that showed a projection of live instant-messaging commentary. The texts, sent from cellphones in the audience, were getting the same sort of intense scrutiny, amusement, shock and ridicule as a note being surreptitiously passed around a classroom. This audience was primed for the main show, put together by their peers.

This stroke of genius came out of a process that Theatre Gargantua has been nurturing in its professional productions since founding artistic director Jacquie P.A. Thomas helped launch the company back in 1992.

Unlike most theatre companies, Gargantua develops its shows with resident artists over a period of two or three years. For a bit more than a decade, its artists have mentored high-school grads looking to better prepared for professional theatre.

In a pilot project this year, designed to give something back to Toronto youth, Gargantua added students from two of the city's priority neighbourhoods to its creative umbrella. The project culminated in four public performances by "Chaotic Cohesion," a band of teen actors from Winston Churchill Collegiate in Scarborough and Rexdale's Burnamthorpe Collegiate.

These nine talented youth were not from arts backgrounds. Nonetheless, through four months of twice-weekly after-school workshops, each found a voice through speaking, dancing, rapping and creating their own music and accompanying videos.

Thomas and her team, which included the schools' drama teachers, initially found the project heavy going.

"The biggest task was to instill a sense of discipline: this is what you're responsible for as an artist, " Thomas explained. "It's not just an after-school club."

Unlike their elders, these kids "send hundreds of texts a day; it was part of the frustration of working with them, " Thomas said. When she found an Argentinean computer geek who could project those text messages onto a video screen in real time, the show's warm-up sequence was born. So was a place for nine unlikely teens amidst Toronto's cultural dialogue.