Volume 27 Issue 2 - November 2021

EARLY MUSIC
The Toronto
Consort
From their
home to yours
MATTHEW WHITFIELD
Alison Melville and
Rene Meshake
COLIN SAVAGE
For almost anyone with an internet connection,
streaming services are a hugely popular source for
entertainment, requiring only a compatible device to
access a near-infinite variety of entertainment. Classical
music occupies a miniscule slice of the market, but
medici.tv and a few other, smaller services, nevertheless
present a wide range of performances and documentaries
for enthusiasts everywhere, performed by an equally wide
range of musicians, orchestras and ensembles.
and his labours resulted in the first English biblical translation
(completed by Myles Coverdale) that was mass-produced as a result of
new advances in the art of printing. These dramatic readings will be
interspersed with masterpieces of sacred polyphony, festive dances,
and carols, taking that familiar Christmas story and making it into a
uniquely heartfelt and engaging experience. Blankets and cocoa are
recommended, but not required!
The textual mastery of Tyndale’s translations is replaced by more
worldly (and, alas, entirely topica)l fare in March 2022 with Escape
from Florence, centred around excerpts from Giovanni Boccaccio’s
In December last year in this column, I wrote that early music
specialists, The Toronto Consort, had joined the party by launching
Early Music TV (earlymusic.tv) – the Consort’s response to external
circumstances, as the global pandemic ravaged performing arts organizations
around the world.
Now, almost a full year later, the ensemble has announced that Early
Music TV will continue to be the primary vehicle for all new Consort
material, for the duration of the 2021/22 concert season. The consolation,
for The Consort’s devotees, hungry for live music in familiar
surroundings, is that all performances are being staged and recorded
at Jeanne Lamon Hall in the Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, the ensemble’s
home for as long as most of us can remember.
The Consort’s 2021/22 season features four concerts, each with a
clear focus. On November 17, Fellowship of Creatures, described as a
new contextualization of ancient works, will be released, featuring storytelling,
traditional songs, and vocal and instrumental works by Josquin,
Gibbons, Ravenscroft and Palestrina. Curated by Consort artistic associate
Alison Melville, the program is a special collaboration with Cree-
Métis baritone Jonathon Adams, Ojibwe singer-drummer Marilyn
George, and award-winning visual and performing artist Rene Meshake,
who describes himself as “an Ojibwe funky elder, … author, storyteller,
flute player, and new media artist.” Subtitled as “An offering to
our nation’s conversation”, Fellowship of Creatures is described by the
Consort as “a reflection on the living community of our shared world”
and should provide for a fascinating, mind-opening approach to works
that are embedded in the Western classical music tradition.
The spirit of the season then takes over in December with A
Christmas Story, which goes into production in early November. It
will be a narrated concert incorporating William Tyndale’s biblical
translations, read in historical dialect by Consort founding member
David Klausner. Tyndale, who lived from 1494-1536, was the first
English translator to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts,
12 | November and December 2021 thewholenote.com