Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015
Paul Ennis's annual TIFF TIPS (27 festival films of potential particular musical interest); Wu Man, Yo-Yo Ma and Jeffrey Beecher on the Silk Road; David Jaeger on CBC Radio Music in the days it was committed to commissioning; the LISTENING ROOM continues to grow on line; DISCoveries is back, bigger than ever; and Mary Lou Fallis says Trinity-St. Paul's is Just the Spot (especially this coming Sept 25!).
Paul Ennis's annual TIFF TIPS (27 festival films of potential particular musical interest); Wu Man, Yo-Yo Ma and Jeffrey Beecher on the Silk Road; David Jaeger on CBC Radio Music in the days it was committed to commissioning; the LISTENING ROOM continues to grow on line; DISCoveries is back, bigger than ever; and Mary Lou Fallis says Trinity-St. Paul's is Just the Spot (especially this coming Sept 25!).
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TIFF TIPS<br />
<strong>2015</strong><br />
The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble<br />
PAUL ENNIS<br />
Welcome to The WholeNote’s fourth annual guide to the<br />
<strong>2015</strong> Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), shining a<br />
light on films in which music plays an intriguing role. This<br />
year’s selection includes a film version of one of the most compelling<br />
musicals of the new century, several titles documenting musicians<br />
and their work – from two biopics and movies whose characters<br />
revolve around music – to those featuring soundtracks integral to their<br />
films’ artistic success. With 289 feature films from 71 countries, the<br />
following 27 choices are not the product of an exact science, only a<br />
loose guide for music-loving readers with a cinematic appetite.<br />
Rufus Norris’ London Road is a film adaptation of The National<br />
Theatre’s groundbreaking musical by Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork<br />
about the “Suffolk Strangler” murders in Ipswich in 2006.<br />
London Road uses the townspeople’s own descriptions of the events<br />
they lived through as the basis for the show’s lyrics, creating a fresh<br />
and arresting re-imagining of the form. The emotionally empathetic<br />
Tom Hardy is one of the townspeople. CanStage brought London Road<br />
to Toronto last winter in one of the<br />
highlights of the past season. It was<br />
a mesmerizing evening, a musical<br />
hybrid, as satisfying as it was<br />
innovative. After TIFF announced<br />
its selection, Rebecca Caine<br />
tweeted that she had seen both the<br />
stage and film versions, and that<br />
the film version was better.<br />
Director Andrew Cividino<br />
describes his well-crafted Sleeping<br />
Giant as a cross between Lord of<br />
the Flies and Stand By Me. The<br />
Ryerson grad wanted to capture the<br />
energy of being a boy growing up<br />
near Lake Superior. He succeeds<br />
in doing so in this slick character<br />
study of a cottage boy and<br />
two locals hanging out over one<br />
summer of awkward adolescence. Their bullying and braggadocio are<br />
as wild as the setting itself. Toy Piano Composers co-founder Chris<br />
Thornborrow wrote the evocative score which is further underpinned<br />
by a handful of songs by indie rock band Bruce Peninsula.<br />
Twenty Feet from Stardom director Morgan Neville follows up his<br />
Oscar winner with The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk<br />
Road Ensemble, a documentary about the international musical<br />
collective created by legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The film tracks this<br />
group of diverse instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers,<br />
visual artists and storytellers as they explore the power of music to<br />
preserve tradition, shape cultural evolution and inspire hope. The<br />
world premiere of the movie at TIFF <strong>September</strong> 13 (2:45pm at the<br />
Elgin) is just days ahead of the Silk Road with Yo-Yo Ma’s concert<br />
appearance at Massey Hall <strong>September</strong> 15. There are additional screenings<br />
<strong>September</strong> 15 (8:45am at TIFF Bell Lightbox 3) and <strong>September</strong> 18<br />
(5pm at Isabel Bader).<br />
In Al Purdy Was Here dozens of literary talking heads led by<br />
Margaret Atwood bring the charismatic Canadian poet to life with<br />
anecdotes, reminiscences and first-hand history but it’s the copious<br />
video evidence of Purdy himself that makes the best case for his<br />
unique voice. The fate of Purdy’s Roblin Lake A-frame house in<br />
Prince Edward County is the starting point for this thorough documentary<br />
directed by former Maclean’s magazine film critic Brian D.<br />
Johnson and written by Johnson<br />
and his writer/editor wife Marni<br />
Jackson.. Elevating the proceedings<br />
are a number of songs inspired by<br />
Purdy’s poetry that mainly succeed<br />
in their genre cross-pollination.<br />
Standouts include “Say the Names”<br />
performed by violinist Jesse<br />
Zubot, Giller Prize-winning writer<br />
Joseph Boyden and the extraordinary<br />
Tanya Tagaq, who internalized<br />
Purdy’s words (as spoken<br />
by Boyden) and transformed them<br />
into raw emotional energy. Bruce<br />
Cockburn’s “3 Al Purdys” ends the<br />
London Road<br />
film, offering the singer-songwriter’s<br />
own inimitable take on the<br />
poet, summing up the previous 90<br />
minutes in a song.<br />
Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog is a personal essay film exploring<br />
themes of love, death and language. The director’s unmistakable<br />
musical voice is a constant presence as stories of her dog Lolabelle, her<br />
mother, her husband Lou Reed, childhood fantasies and political and<br />
12 | Sept 1 - Oct 7, <strong>2015</strong> thewholenote.com
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