Volume 26 Issue 6 - March and April 2021
96 recordings (count’em) reviewed in this issue – the most ever – with 25 new titles added to the DISCoveries Online Listening Room (also a new high). And up front: Women From Space deliver a festival by holograph; Morgan Paige Melbourne’s one-take pianism; New Orleans’ Music Box Village as inspiration for musical playground building; the “from limbo to grey zone” inconsistencies of live arts lockdowns; all this and more here and in print commencing March 19 2021.
96 recordings (count’em) reviewed in this issue – the most ever – with 25 new titles added to the DISCoveries Online Listening Room (also a new high). And up front: Women From Space deliver a festival by holograph; Morgan Paige Melbourne’s one-take pianism; New Orleans’ Music Box Village as inspiration for musical playground building; the “from limbo to grey zone” inconsistencies of live arts lockdowns; all this and more here and in print commencing March 19 2021.
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Vol 25 No 9<br />
PRICELESS<br />
Vol <strong>26</strong> No 1<br />
PRICELESS<br />
Vol <strong>26</strong> No 2<br />
SAM GAETZ<br />
HANA HISAMA-VISHIO<br />
Ellie Hisama<br />
Alex<strong>and</strong>er Neef<br />
Well, if you’ve read any of the “new” musicology over the past 30 or 40<br />
years, you’ll know the answer is: quite a lot. Hidden deep within what<br />
we think are socially <strong>and</strong> musically neutral aspects of classical music<br />
are many, many structures <strong>and</strong> ways of thinking about the art that are<br />
highly political <strong>and</strong> socially distinct, very much of their own time, not<br />
of all time.<br />
Exposing these taken-for-granted ideas about music to the light of<br />
contemporary analysis does many things at once – <strong>and</strong> one of them is to<br />
produce fresher, more animated, better performances. Better by current<br />
st<strong>and</strong>ards. Sort of what happened when the fresh wind of period<br />
performance practice blew the cobwebs off the previously stultifying<br />
conventions of Baroque music-making back in the 1970s <strong>and</strong> 80s.<br />
That is to say, the main reason to make diversity, equity <strong>and</strong> inclusion<br />
the goals for a music faculty – other than the obvious moral<br />
worth of the undertaking in <strong>and</strong> of itself – is to exp<strong>and</strong> the range <strong>and</strong><br />
breadth of what is considered valuable <strong>and</strong> beautiful in music. It’s<br />
an aesthetic argument in the end, not a social one. Or both equally.<br />
Art will die if excellence isn’t its watchword, but excellence is not<br />
a singular, uniform concept. Excellence dies if dancers or players<br />
or composers are denied opportunities to exhibit their excellence<br />
because they have the wrong skin colour or gender. Excellence dies<br />
when creators are not encouraged to express themselves because their<br />
means of expression fall outside a very narrowly defined universe of<br />
acceptable creative avenues. The social <strong>and</strong> the aesthetic are powerfully<br />
linked, <strong>and</strong> always have been.<br />
When we resist the socially new in art, we don’t call it revolutionary.<br />
We call it ugly. That’s what they called Beethoven’s music in his day,<br />
repeatedly. That’s what they called Debussy’s. It’s true that art has its<br />
origins in ritual, so we love the things we know, need the things we<br />
know. But that shouldn’t blind us to the possibilities of renewal <strong>and</strong><br />
the value of the future in artistic enterprise. And there are few better<br />
ways to engage that future in art than by exp<strong>and</strong>ing the range of<br />
people who make it. That’s especially true of classical music, which,<br />
let’s face it, hasn’t cared much for the future for quite a while. It’s<br />
time to free up an art form which has been tightly <strong>and</strong> determinedly<br />
clenched-closed for a long time, to its detriment.<br />
I can’t say I envy Dean Hisama’s position. I’m guessing she will<br />
have many battles to fight as she tries to reorient her new Faculty,<br />
although, to be fair, I may be underestimating the desire for the<br />
new at U of T. But I’m with Anthony Tommasini about the importance<br />
of using the p<strong>and</strong>emic to force a reset in classical music. (Our<br />
own Tricia Baldwin, director of the Isabel Bader Centre for the<br />
Performing Arts at Queen’s University, outlined many of the same<br />
thoughts in a fascinating article she wrote for International Arts<br />
Manager magazine in December.)<br />
Making classical music more inclusive, <strong>and</strong> thus more relevant,<br />
isn’t the only thing on the table in that enterprise, but it’s an important<br />
component. So it will be interesting to see how Ellie Hisama, on<br />
our smallish local stage, <strong>and</strong> Alex<strong>and</strong>er Neef, on quite literally, tout<br />
le monde’s stage, manage in their efforts. Personally, I wish them the<br />
best. I think they’re waging a battle on behalf of us all.<br />
Robert Harris is a writer <strong>and</strong> broadcaster on music in all its forms.<br />
He is the former classical music critic of The Globe <strong>and</strong> Mail <strong>and</strong> the<br />
author of the Stratford Lectures <strong>and</strong> Song of a Nation: The Untold<br />
Story of O Canada.<br />
25<br />
th SEASON!<br />
Vol 25 No 8<br />
25<br />
th SEASON!<br />
25<br />
th SEASON!<br />
Vol 25 No 7<br />
JULY | AUGUST 2020<br />
PRICELESS<br />
APRIL 2020<br />
CONCERT LISTINGS<br />
FEATURES | REVIEWS<br />
MAY AND JUNE 2020<br />
Cancelled/Postponed/TBA<br />
APRIL 2020<br />
Next season wi l see the first of our regional runout<br />
concerts attached to our main Sudbury season. We<br />
would love for any Northern Ontarians interested in<br />
bringing top-level classical music <strong>and</strong> musicians<br />
to their communities to contact us.<br />
Even the skeptics have upped their<br />
Zoom game: people I thought<br />
would never turn on their web<br />
cams have fina ly done so.<br />
So in the meanwhile, I have been playing Beethoven <strong>and</strong><br />
Debussy on the piano daily. … Witnessing how opera<br />
companies across Canada are dealing with the crisis <strong>and</strong><br />
planning for the future. Advocating for inclusion of more artist<br />
voices so that our new reality on the other side of this works for<br />
administrators, as well as for creators <strong>and</strong> performers.<br />
THE MONTH<br />
THAT WOULD<br />
HAVE BEEN<br />
I miss the magic when the lights go down<br />
<strong>and</strong> the curtain rises. I miss the symbiotical<br />
flow of energy between us performers<br />
<strong>and</strong> our audiences, <strong>and</strong> yes I even miss the<br />
stress of preparation before.<br />
No longer bound by geography,<br />
we have engaged Canadian<br />
solo artists who live abroad<br />
<strong>and</strong> wouldn’t norma ly be able<br />
to perform with us. We have<br />
also set up a Patreon page so<br />
that people can support us with<br />
sma l monthly contributions.<br />
COMMUNITY VOICES<br />
How May is<br />
& what may be<br />
COVID-19 has brought forward the<br />
tipping point, hastening the creation of<br />
new structures to support the creation<br />
<strong>and</strong> production of the arts in a different<br />
way than has been the case through<br />
the latter half of the 20th century<br />
to now. Strong developments <strong>and</strong><br />
innovation arise in hard times as we<br />
focus on what matters.<br />
We’re optimistic that things<br />
wi l eventua ly return, but it’s<br />
going to take a long while …<br />
Right now, this a l kind of feels<br />
like jazz: we’re improvising …<br />
THE<br />
BEAT<br />
GOES<br />
ON<br />
9 TH Annual TIFF Tips<br />
MUSIC THEATRE Loose Tea on the boil<br />
Once COVID’s in the rearview mirror …<br />
Jazz Studies: the struggle for equity<br />
SUMMER 2020<br />
Concerts, live & livestreamed<br />
Listening Room & record reviews<br />
Columns, stories & interviews<br />
ON THE FLY<br />
18th annual choral<br />
Canary Pages<br />
BLUE<br />
21st Annual<br />
SEPTEMBER 2020<br />
Concerts, live & livestreamed<br />
Listening Room & record reviews<br />
Stories & interviews<br />
PAGES<br />
PRESENTER<br />
PROFILES<br />
2020/21<br />
PIVOTAL TIMES<br />
Discoveries along<br />
the Goldberg trail<br />
The intimacy challenge:<br />
falling for dance<br />
In with the new:<br />
adventures in sound art<br />
Choral scene:<br />
lessons from Skagit Valley<br />
OCTOBER 2020<br />
Vol <strong>26</strong> No 3<br />
Concerts, live & livestreamed<br />
December & January 2020 / 21<br />
Concerts, live <strong>and</strong> livestreamed<br />
Record reviews & Listening Room<br />
Stories <strong>and</strong> interviews<br />
Alanis Obomsawin<br />
Beautiful Exceptions Sing-Alone Messiahs<br />
Livingston’s Vocal Pleasures Chamber Beethoven<br />
Online Opera (Plexiglass & All) Playlist for the<br />
Winter of our Discontent The Oud & the Fuzz<br />
Who is Alex Trebek?<br />
<strong>and</strong> more<br />
2020 Glenn Gould Prize Laureate<br />
SO, how much ground<br />
<strong>Volume</strong> <strong>26</strong> No 5<br />
FEBRUARY 5 TO MARCH 19 <strong>2021</strong><br />
Music by date, live <strong>and</strong> livestreamed<br />
Recordings - 81 recent DISCoveries<br />
Stories & Interviews<br />
Vol <strong>26</strong> No 4<br />
Need a back issue?<br />
circulation@thewholenote.com<br />
or call 416-323-2232 ext 33.<br />
2508_MayCover.in d 3 2020-04-28 1:36 PM<br />
2507_<strong>April</strong>20_Cover.in d 1 2020-03-20 12:52 PM<br />
<strong>26</strong>01_Sept20_Cover.in d 1 2020-08-25 1:07 PM<br />
2409_JulyCover.in d 1 2020-06-28 6:32 PM<br />
Record reviews & Listening Room<br />
Stories <strong>and</strong> interviews<br />
<strong>26</strong>02_OctCover.in d 1 2020-09-23 7:<strong>26</strong> PM<br />
would a groundhog hog?<br />
NOVEMBER 2020<br />
Concerts, live & livestreamed<br />
Record reviews & Listening Room<br />
Stories <strong>and</strong> interviews<br />
<strong>26</strong>02_NovCover.indd 1 2020-10-27 8:10 PM<br />
Judith Yan, conductor<br />
<strong>26</strong>04_DecCover.in d 1 2020-12-01 1:42 PM<br />
<strong>26</strong>05_Feb_cover.in d 1 <strong>2021</strong>-02-03 6:14 PM<br />
thewholenote.com <strong>March</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>April</strong> <strong>2021</strong> | 55