Volume 13 - Issue 10 - July/August 2008

Leapfrogging ahead to next year, if you could conjure up a concertcollaboration for the 08-09 season between someone usuallycovered in your "beat" and artists in any one or two of our otherWholeNote "beats", what would it be?Karen Ages: This past season, Tafelmusik joined forces with CantorGershon Silins, Arabic vocalist Maryem Tollar (who also playedqanun) and other arabic instrumentalists in a gourgeous programtitled "In the Garden of Delights: Music from the Song of Songs."Not such a stretch when it comes to Baroque music. So, how aboutsomething a little more wacky, like, Toca Loca meets Trichy Sankaran.The latter's virtuosity on mrdangam as well as his extraordinaryability to vocalise Indian drum syllables at alarming rapidity suggestsOver 60 acts and 200 performers from a dozen countries, featuring:A~RAHAM INC. !US/Canada!*Jewish Funk SupergroupZULLY ~OLUFAU !Argentina!*Yiddish fango frotM &uenos AiresFLORY JMOUA IUSI*Judeo-Spanish Songs frotM &osniaJOSHUA NELSON IUSIKosher l>ospel MusicUI FIUL KAPELYE !Holland!KleztMer string quartetANUY Sf ATMAN IUSI*!Mandolin/clarinet !MaestroKONSONANS RETRO !Ukraine!Moldavian brass !MastersNAYEKHOVICHI !KussialKleztMer l>arage &andPHARAOH'S UAU~HHR IUSlMideast Psychedelic FusionTHE KLEZ UISPENSERS IUSlSophisticated &ig-&and KleztMerPlus ho111egrowtt Cattadiatt Favourites:Sisters of Sheynville, ShtreitMI, &eyond the Pale, fheresa fova*,fhe Flying &ulgars, &atsheva, Marilyn Lerner, Mitch S1t1olkin*,Allan Merovitz*, Michael Wex, fhe Huppah Project, Aviva Chernick,fhe Lithuanian EtMpire, Pave Wall e. Ken Whiteley, and !Many tMore~~(ill)D@~@d~~lilli1i©~lti:ili>d4l'i!~@li'~~~I.I":,r·1·111 ,l'l',!"olJ",111 TH~0""" ••o J. l..aro .. o•T•o,. ~~TIUlLIV'1 t., T .. U.LIUN IlO[l'llll!t'> ll'Plle!fjl,dl•• ro .. ,.., • .,,..,. J ,.,.,0.,,. ... .,,., l _ I~, • .' _i'.',.Canad,an Palr,momo torontcarts~ounc,I ,:-.ff b. f t tHati!iigC canad1cn , ~ al' Ollr l'On CCn 1'0Karen 's collaboration idea for 08-09: Trichy Sankaran meets Toca Loca.to me some sort of kinship with virtuoso contemporary pianists GregOh and Simon Docking and star percussionist Aiyun Huang ... maybenot such a stretch after all. As for the repertoire they'd play, I haveconfidence in the imaginative programming abilities of the folks concerned!Richard Marsella: I'd love to hear a collaboration between the AIMToronto Orchestra, Tafelmusik, and Dr. Steve Mann's States ofMatter Quintet!Jack MacQuarrie: My collaborator "beat" would be Early Music. Iwould hope to program a series of concerts tracing the history ofcommunity instrumental ensembles in Canada. There are sufficientrecords of band concerts in Ontario from the 1850s that would providea guide for programming. Would we be able to locate all partsof the proposed music? That could require some ingenuity. As forinstrumentation, we might find that more challenging. Did they havesuch instruments as ophicieides, helicons, sacbutts, serpents andsarrusaphones to go with their cornets, and saxhorns? If they did,where would we locate instruments in playable condition? PerhapsProfessor Henry Meredith could help us there.Jim Galloway: It might be interesting to put a horn player, let's saysaxophonist Mike Murley, with Nagata Shachu, the wonderful groupof traditional Japanese drummers, and let them go wherever the musicwould take them, although I refuse to admit that I have a yen tohear such a performance!Chris Haile: In 2003 I reviewed the premiere of a jazz opera calledQuebecite by D.D. Jackson and George Elliott Clarke that attemptedto tell a modern story using various modes of jazz and world musicas its medium. While it was not entirely successful, it did show howexciting such a combination could be. A jazz/world music operawould be particularly appropriate for a modern retelling of a classicstory set in such a multicultural country as Canada.Allan Pulker: A couple of months ago I saw the film I recommendedin my column, The Singing Revolution, about the role choral musicplayed in the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet domination. Theliberation happened largely because about 140 years ago a huge annualchoral singing festival involving around 20,000 people all singingtogether was organized. I'd love to see us do something like thisin Canada, maybe at the Rogers Centre!Frank Nakashima: I think a collaboration between the Opera Divisionof the Faculty of Music at U of T and the Toronto ContinuaCollective could do something for the advancement of vocal art. Itwould also be great to assemble several local choirs to perform Striggio'sgigantic Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno in 40 and 60 parts.Any exchange of musical ideas can be a healthy thing!22 WWW. THEWHOLENOTE.COM ] ULY 1 - S EP T 7 2008