Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

Barbara Croall
one percent to personally own such a waterfront property.
This year’s 18 concerts have been carefully curated by longtime
Summer Music in the Garden artistic director Tamara Bernstein.
They include outstanding local and touring artists performing in a
wide range of music genres. Here are just three picks from the Music
Garden’s abundant 2018 crop.
July 1. Kontiwennenhá:wi and Barbara Croall: “Songs for
the Women.”
It’s very fitting that Bernstein booked Kontiwennenhá:wi and
Barbara Croall for Canada Day. Kontiwennenhá:wi (Carriers of
the Words) have performed at the Toronto Music Garden as The
Akwesasne Women Singers in the past. They return performing both
received songs that are an integral part of Haudenosaunee life, as well
as original repertoire.
Odawa First Nations composer and musician Barbara Croall was
(from 1998 to 2000) resident composer with the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra. Her Summer Music in the Garden set features a performance
of her Lullaby (2008) for pipigwan (traditional Anishinaabe
cedar flute) and voice. The work is dedicated to the many Indigenous
mothers whose children died at residential schools.
July 5. Kongero: “Scandinavian Songlines.”
Formed in 2005, the popular Swedish a cappella group Kongero
consists of four women folk music singers, Lotta Andersson, Emma
Björling, Anna Larsson and Anna Wikénius. They have performed at
major folk music, a cappella and chamber music festivals in Europe,
Asia and the Americas. Their repertoire consists of a mix of traditional
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Alain Pérez y
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July 5- 8, 2018
Victoria Park, London, Ontario
More than 35 International & Canadian World Music & Jazz Groups
225 Food, Craft & Visual Art Exhibitors
For a complete list of performers, visit sunfest.on.ca
Celebrating the Music of the Caribbean
ROOTS, RIDDIMS & REGGAE
Canada’s Premier
Celebration of
World Cultures
Gato Preto
and original songs characterized by tight harmonies, lively
rhythms and vocal clarity. They playfully call their genre,
“Swedish Folk’appella.”
Summer and beer go together for many Canadians,
but how many a cappella groups can boast a beer named
after them? This quartet can. Kongero is a bottled Saison/
Farmhouse Ale-style brewed by Jackdaw Brewery in
Sweden. Audiences can expect to hear excerpts from
Kongero’s four full-length albums, though sadly I saw no
mention of samples of their eponymous ale.
August 9. Bageshree Vaze, Vineet Vyas and Rajib
Karmakar: Satyam (Truth).
The Indo-Canadian dancer and musician Bageshree Vaze
and tabla soloist Vineet Vyas both studied their respective
art forms with the best in India. They have been part of
the Ontario performing arts scene for over two decades.
Currently based in LA, Rajib Karmakar is an awardwinning
electric sitar musician, educator and digital artist
with ample international touring credentials.
Last year these three artists were commissioned by Opera Nova
Scotia to create Satyam (Truth). Their opera is based on the love story
of Savitri and Satyavan, first found in the Mahabharata, one of the two
major Sanskrit epics of ancient India.
Small World Festival at Harbourfront Centre, August 17 to 19.
Harbourfront Centre is the venue for several other festivals this
summer. For three days in August, this year’s Small World Festival
takes over Harbourfront’s facilities for the first time. Placing its 17th
annual festival at the height of the summer season in one of the
city’s premier summer cultural and tourist destinations is a bold and
perhaps even risky move for Small World Music. On the other hand,
the fit feels organic. The weekend celebration of “diversity through
music” suits the mandates of both organizations well.
In a recent telephone interview with Alan Davis, SWM’s executive
director, he told me that this year’s Small World Festival is inspired
by the 30th anniversary of WOMAD. Founded by Peter Gabriel in the
UK 36 years ago, World of Music Art and Dance was first produced
in Canada at Harbourfront Centre in 1988. (I recall that WOMAD
particularly well. I performed a concert there with Evergreen Club
Gamelan on the outdoor Tindall stage, a stone’s throw from busy
Queens Quay.)
Davis noted that the “inspiration [WOMAD] provided created a
direct line to the formation of Small World ten years later. Three
decades on, this festival explores its legacy and how it resonates in
multicultural 21st-century Toronto.”
Small World’s annual signature concert series is known for its
“eclectic mix of top artists from around the globe and around the
corner, representing the state of the-art in global sound,” continued
Davis. “Taking place on multiple stages, the mostly free program will
attract a wide range of demographics, ranging from audiences that
identify culturally with the music onstage, to mainstream music fans,
families and tourists seeking a global cultural experience.”
Davis makes a case for providing “a predominately free program
in one of Toronto’s premier summer locales helping to reduce the
barriers in celebrating multiculturalism and enriching the cultural
tapestry of our city.” He projects the weekend will “draw over 25,000
participants from markets beyond the GTA, including Southern
Ontario, Montreal and American border-states.”
What will audiences see and hear? Davis aims “to continue to
feature the high-quality presentations that the festival is renowned
for. This includes international and Canadian artists from a diverse
range of cultures, including but not limited to Korean, South
Asian, Iranian, Latin American, Portuguese and Afro-Caribbean.”
Given that the Small World Festival will be held in the middle of
August, Davis was reluctant to nail down programming months prior
to the festival. When pressed, however, he revealed to The WholeNote
readers the acts booked at press time.
The wide-ranging mix includes Daraa Tribes (Morocco), which
present a fusion of the ancestral tribal music at the heart of the
24 | June | July | August 2018 thewholenote.com