Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

Beat by Beat | Art of Song
MARCO BORGGREVE
When Better Than
the Dog Days to
Dive Right In?
LYDIA PEROVIĆ
In the dog days of Toronto’s musical summer, while the halls are
lying dormant and musicians gigging on the Ontario festival circuit,
two weeks of intense art song training will take place at the Toronto
Summer Music Festival (TSM). Out of 90 applicants this year, eight
singers and four pianists chosen by video auditions will work on all
aspects of art song with international mentors, Christoph Prégardien
and Julius Drake, and the head of Collaborative Piano at U of T and
Canadian Art Song Project co-artistic
director Steven Philcox. Tuition fees are
covered by scholarships, which in turn are
underwritten by TSM donors. Each week of
work will be crowned with a group recital,
in a program that will emerge organically
from the training repertoire tackled.
There will also be the opportunity for the
Art of Song Institute singers and pianists to
join forces with the fellows of the Chamber
Music Institute, the other arm of the
Toronto Summer Music Academy. A lucky
precedent was set last year, explains Steven
Philcox when I phone him on an early
morning in May; song students enjoyed
working with string players and TSM
artistic director Jonathan Crow so much
that a repeat was in order. This year, two
pieces that call for inter-Institute collaboration
will be in the final concert: a Menotti
number and Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle
for soprano, piano and string quartet.
Each of the international mentors is
here for one week, though their time will
overlap enough to allow for a Prégardien-
Drake recital on July 17. Their young
mentees will be required to prepare eight
songs for each week of the program, 16
songs total. “There will be daily sessions
with Christoph, Julius and myself, and a lot
of focused diction and language study,” says
Christoph Prégardien
Philcox. “Michael Albano, resident stage director at the U of T Opera,
will give a full session on recitation of poetry, away from the music –
getting back to the words – and this is both for singers and pianists.
They’re all required to prepare a piece of poetry from memory.”
What songs exactly the singers end up working on during those
two weeks of close collaboration with Drake, Prégardien and Philcox
depends in part on their own interests. The repertoire is discussed
early on in the selection process. “We audition everybody through the
Young Artist Program tracker, and singers can upload their videos and
submit their repertoire online. That way we can audition internationally.”
The TSM artistic panel then looks at the applications and makes
the selection.
Both the Festival and its Academy are loosely programmed around
a theme each year, and this time it’s Reflections of Wartime. “At least
some of the songs that the singers bring will be required to fit the
festival theme. I ask the singers for 16 to 20 songs and out of those I
am able to assemble the rep,” says Philcox. The final list of songs will
also depend on who the mentors are and what their area of specialization
is. “Christoph Prégardien’s wish was to focus on German
lieder and we’ll have quite a bit of Schubert and Schumann – and a
lot of students really wanted to work on Schubert with him.” There
are two tenors, two sopranos and four mezzos, and in the self-generated
repertoire there wasn’t much overlap. “Even within the same
voice type,” he adds. “One mezzo happens to be closer to alto and
she’s looking at some of the Mahler Kindertotenlieder and Debussy’s
Chansons de Bilitis.”
Here is the class of 2018: pianists Frances Armstrong, Leona
Cheung, Pierre-André Doucet and Jinhee Park, sopranos Maeve
Palmer and Karen Schriesheim, tenors Joey Jang and Asitha
Tennekoon, and mezzos Lyndsay Promane, Danielle Vaillancourt,
Renee Fajardo and Florence Bourget. A couple of the local names will
be familiar to Torontonians – Promane and Palmer certainly, as well
as tenor Asitha Tennekoon, who has just wrapped up in the first run
of the newly composed The Overcoat at Canadian Stage here and in
Vancouver.
The young tenor moved to Toronto only four years ago, but since
then we’ve seen him in roles in just
about all the core companies of the
indie scene: Tapestry, Against the Grain
Theatre, MY Opera, Opera Five and
Bicycle Opera Project. I caught up with
him over Skype while he was travelling
through BC to ask him about
his interest in the art of song and the
kind of detailed work that the TSM
Academy offers.
“My first TSM Academy was two years
ago, actually,” he says. “This year when I
found out who the mentors are going to
be, I decided to apply again. I’ve listened
to Prégardien for a long time, and know
his work. Whenever I have to work on
Bach cantatas and passions, I look for his
versions. As a tenor, I think I might end
up doing a lot of rep that he’s done.”
Tennekoon’s rep this year will be
British songs and a lot of Schubert lieder.
“I’ve done Schumann, I’ve done Wolf,
but somehow never taken the time to
study Schubert.” And since working
Steven Philcox
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