Volume 28 Issue 1 | September 20 - November 8, 2022

He stressed how important clear and accurate notation is when
writing orchestral music due to limited rehearsal time. He firmly
believes that this is the composer’s responsibility and he has learned
to write everything into the parts that will help the orchestra work
things out as fast as possible. An earlier work of Lindberg’s, Arena II,
composed in 1995, is being performed on October 25 by the University
of Toronto’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, a concert that includes
other contemporary work by Finnish composer Sampo Haapamaki
and American composer Mason Bates.
Chin’s longtime champions
Returning to the music of Unsuk Chin, Esprit Orchestra will be
programming SPIRA, her Concerto for orchestra in their October 27
concert. Esprit are longtime champions of Chin’s music, introducing
Toronto audiences to her compositional language that is steeped in
strong gestures, clear musical ideas, shimmering colours and a range
of cultural perspectives. The earliest Esprit performance of a work by
Unsuk Chin that we could locate was February 6, 2009 when Esprit
played her Double Concerto for piano and percussion in a program
titled Breathless. SPIRA, composed in 2019 and premiered by the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, is inspired by the mathematical “spira mirabilis”
or growth spiral seen in various natural forms such as a snail
shell. True to the image, the music begins with the sounds of two
bowed vibraphones that unleash a series of overtones picked up by the
other instruments in an unfurling of explosive and shimmering detail,
resulting in textures of both robust energy and quiet stillness.
Upcoming concerts by the U of T Wind Ensemble and Wind
Symphony, October 14 and 15 respectively, are also signs of healthy
change: very few of the 12 composers listed were familiar to me.
Digging deeper, I discovered a wide range of new voices, ranging from
Waterloo-based Cait Nishimura, a prominent voice in the concert band
community, to composers from Australia, the USA, Russia, Belgium
and Spain. Can we more confidently say that contemporary music is
establishing a more natural place in the life of concert music?
QUICK PICKS
SEP 24, 3&8PM: Confluence
Concerts. Music Gallery.
Although occurring early
in this cycle, this concert
combining the rich and diverse
voices of Marion Newman,
Patricia O’Callaghan and Suba
Sankaran promises to raise the
roof. They will be performing
various works, including
the world premiere of The
Drawing Room by Ian Cusson
and André Alexis. Cusson, of
Métis and French extraction,
is well known for his operatic
works, having recently
Ian Cusson
been composer-in-residence
for the Canadian Opera Company from 2019 to 2021. After the
successful premiere of Fantasma, his opera for young people, in
March 2022, this new work created with Trinidad-born Canadian
author André Alexis for the voices of Newman, O’Callaghan and
Sankaran promises to be a rich sonic adventure.
OCT 22, 7&9:30PM: Soundstreams. Surface Tension. Universal
Music. This concert presents six world premieres for percussion
composed by participants in Soundstreams’ emerging composer
program who will be mentored by Irish composer Donnacha
Dennehy in the week leading up to the concert. Dennehy’s work,
Surface Tension for percussion ensemble, will be performed
in the second half of the concert. The piece was inspired by the
percussion instruments at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of
Art and the techniques used to play the bodhrán, the traditional
Irish frame drum. TorQ Percussion Quartet will perform all the
works on the program.
OCT 22, 8PM: Sinfonia Toronto. Dvořák & Doubles. George
Weston Recital Hall. Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico will
perform two concertos for piano, violin and string orchestra –
Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Capriccio Ballo and Arabesque by Christos
Hatzis. In recent news, Petrowska received a large grant from
the Canada Council to have composer Frank Horvat create a
solo piano suite, More Rivers, for her to record and tour, and for
further projects relating to music and the environment. Horvat’s
intensely emotional music explores a range of themes including
social justice issues and concern for the environment.
OCT 23, 8PM: Against the Grain Theatre. Identity: A Song Cycle.
ONLINE, streaming October 23–April 23. This streamed film will
showcase the song cycle created by composer Dinuk Wijeratne
and poet Shauntay Grant in its
current state of development.
The work is based on a moving
social media post written in
early June 2020 by baritone
Elliot Madore about his struggles
with how to express his
identity as a biracial person.
Madore, who will perform in
the work, has expressed how
his personal struggles are a
common theme in society that
hasn’t been fully explored. The
film will feature five newly
composed songs woven together
with stories from Elliot’s life.
Elliot Madore
JOHN ARANO
CYRILL MATTER
Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and
electro-vocal sound artist. sounddreaming!@gmail.com.
22 | September 20 - November 8, 2022 thewholenote.com
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