Leonard Turnevicius

Recording the adventures of Lara St. John

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Sony.

Sony who?

So neat if you would do a crossover album for us, Lara. And you’ll make lots of money, too.

And so, when Sony came knocking, classical violinist Lara St. John opened the proverbial door, and signed a record deal. The resulting CD was re: Bach, a crossover album that attempted to meld Bach with world music, pop, and jazz. The result? A misadventure, and artistic flop.

“It seemed kind of interesting at the time,” said St. John over the phone from her New York apartment last week. “When is the next time I’m going to play with tabla? Meet all these Afghani flute players? And, of course, I’d never done multi-track before, so I learned a lot about the recording process.”

So, would she do it again? “Well, hindsight makes everyone smart,” laughed St. John. “And it wouldn’t have been stupid to say no (to Sony)…I didn’t like what they made me do. I’m a very ‘core’ person. What do I mean by core? Pure, absolute classical. I’ve never particularly been into crossover. They wanted another one of those things, and I said no…But whatever. Live and learn.”

And she has. The hard way.

So, St. John has gone back to what she began in 2001--recording on her own label, Ancalagon. “It was the name of my iguana,” explained St. John of the name originally given to the great dragon found in Tolkein’s mythical The Silmarillion.

Her first Ancalagon disc was Bach the Concerto Album. She followed that up with Bach: The Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo, which appeared last October. By December, it was iTunes’s top selling double album for 2007.

St. John went whole hog for her third Ancalagon CD, hiring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Sarah Ioannides, and Air Studios’ Lyndhurst Hall in London, England for three days last June. Incidentally, Lyndhurst Hall has been used by such notables as Murray Perahia, Shlomo Mintz, U2 (All You Can’t Leave Behind), and Joni Mitchell (Travelogue). But this time round, St. John eschewed core repertoire, choosing instead Matthew Hindson’s Violin Concerto, John Corigliano’s Suite from the Red Violin, plus an arrangement for violin and orchestra she’d done with Martin Kennedy of Liszt’s Totentanz.

And what was the price tag for this 5.1 surround sound recording adventure, which also included flying over Hindson from Australia, and her producer, Martha de Francisco from McGill University? St. John would only say “a lot,” and that it was funded by a sponsor. The same anonymous sponsor who’s donated the 1779 ‘Salabue’ Guadagnini violin that she plays? “No, just a sponsor,” answered St. John. And since St. John pointed out she doubts any classical artist, save maybe Yo-Yo Ma, makes money from recordings, just how does she intend to recoup her sponsor’s investment? “I don’t know,” responded St. John. “If it recoups, great. If it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. I wanted to put something brand new out there. It’s very niche. It’s been on iTunes since April 15.”

But why did St. John go to the expense of recording in 5.1 when downloaders end up listening on cheap headphones? “There are a lot of audiophiles out there,” said St. John. “They’re the ones that love surround sound. They’re the ones that actually want the product in their hand.

“I can’t say I prefer digital nor will I ever because I tend to be one of those sound freaks as well,” admitted St. John. “But when it comes to actually having your label and not having to ship 29 boxes of 100 over to the distributors, and they have to ship, and then everybody ships. And Tower Records goes down. And Virgin goes down. That doesn’t happen in digital. You basically sit on your ass, and wait ‘til the cheque comes in. It’s great.” According to St. John, “IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) is the distributor for iTunes. They take 45%. You get 55%.”

On Wednesday, July 16 at 7:30 p.m., St. John will have her Guadagnini in hand on her return to the Brott Festival at the Dofasco Centre for the Arts, 190 King William Street. For her latest Steel City adventure, she’ll be performing core repertoire--Chausson’s Poème, Ravel’s Tzigane, and Kreisler’s sweetmeat, Schön Rosmarin, a piece Kreisler once ventured to pass off as that by the early Viennese waltzmeister, Josef Lanner. Tickets are $25, senior $20, student $10. Call 905-525-7664.

Sophie Milman: From Russia with jazz

The former Soviet Union was known for many things. Jazz wasn’t one of them.

Maxim Gorky wrote disparagingly of it. During the Cold War, saxophones were confiscated as Stalin had some Soviet jazzers arrested and sent to the Gulag. Nikita Khrushchev said that listening to jazz gave him gas.

Had Maxim, Uncle Joe, and Nikita lived long enough—perish the thought, really—they might have changed their minds about jazz after listening to Sophie Milman sing that folk classic, Ochi Chyornye (Dark Eyes).

Milman, 25, was born in Ufa during the final, dying years of the USSR. Together with her father, an industrial engineer, and her mother, a journalist, they immigrated to Israel in 1990. Ten years later, the family came to Canada.

Though she left the USSR at age seven, that country left its mark on her. “It affected my personality for sure,” said Milman last week after a rehearsal with her band for her upcoming US tour that hits venues such as the Hollywood Bowl. “Russians, we’re melancholy. We can be a little bit dark. That affects my preferences when it comes to music. The music I was listening to in Russia, it wasn’t jazz, but it was Russian bards, and great kids’ music. More like Joe Raposo songs than Teletubbies. Pretty heavy, serious stuff. Nobody really dumbed down children over there.”

It was in Israel that her musical tastes were set. There, she listened to her dad’s record collection brought over from the USSR, vinyl largely confiscated from people then sold “under the table.” Ella. Nat ‘King’ Cole. Louis Armstrong. Mahalia Jackson. The Platters. Stevie Wonder. The Beatles. And get this, Russian imprints of Canadian jazz legend Oscar Peterson with Count Basie. “I grew up with Oscar,” reminisced Milman. “So when I moved to Canada, Oscar was this giant celebrity.”

In Toronto, she continued the classical piano lessons she’d begun in Israel, and took her Royal Conservatory Grade 9 exam. “I passed, then quit the next week,” admitted Milman. “I probably shouldn’t have.” If the piano wasn’t her bag, singing certainly was. She never took voice lessons, but signed out recordings from the Toronto Public Library. Carmen McRae. Nancy Wilson. Nina Simone. Cassandra Wilson. “Together, they’re my musical educators,” said Milman, who’s now working with vocal coach Alan Reid and will soon study jazz with her bassist, Kieran Overs.

She enrolled in the commerce program at the University of Toronto (she’s two full credits shy of graduating), and was working as a receptionist at a law firm when, as a lark, she sang at a singers’ series at the Red Devil BBQ and Blues restaurant. The house pianist, Bill King, put her into rotation. Three gigs later, Geoff Kulawick of Linus Entertainment came in for a listen then offered her a contract.

Her eponymous titled first release in 2004 has sold over 100,000 copies. Her second CD, Make Someone Happy, won a Juno this past April for vocal jazz album of the year. She goes into the studio this November to begin work on her third album.

But in a world full of female jazz vocalists with pretty faces and enough cover versions of jazz or pop tunes for every minute of the night, how does Milman differ? “I’m not from North America. I don’t come from that school of singing, that school of music,” responded Milman. “I’m not originally a blues singer. I come at it from a little bit of a European perspective, and my voice is quite, let’s say, Russian-Jewish as opposed to Dianne Reeves. My background juxtaposed with the music I grew up with creates a certain sound.”

Hamilton audiences can hear that sound on Friday, July 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Philpott Memorial Church, 84 York Boulevard when Milman and her band play the Brott Festival. Expect plenty of easy listening covers from her CDs. Fever. My Baby Just Cares for Me. Rocket Love. Bein’ Green (made famous by Kermit the Frog, and a tune Milman says is the story of her life). Plus a newly spruced up version of Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire, among others. Tickets are $25, senior $20, and student $10. Call 905-525-7664.

A prodigy who just wants to have fun

Who: Jan Lisiecki

What: Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto

With: Boris Brott and the National Academy Orchestra

Where: St. Christopher’s Anglican Church, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington

When: Saturday, June 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Cost: $25; senior $20; student $10

Call: 905-525-7664

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a musical prodigy? You know, being able to accomplish things in your youth that old folks can’t even imagine doing.

Look at Mozart. The kid was composing sonatas by the age of six, wrote his first symphony at the age of 8, and his first opera at age 12. And Mozart never went to school. But that didn’t stop him from learning to speak several languages.

But Mozart wasn’t the only musical Wunderkind. Beethoven could play by memory all forty-eight preludes and fugues in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by his early teens. Decades later, an eleven year old Camille Saint-Saëns had committed to memory all of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas. And Felix Mendelssohn was already reading the 5^th book of Euclid when he was 10. Wonder if he understood any of it?

Yes, prodigies have come and gone. After all, they, too, grow up into old folks. Well, except for Mozart and Mendelssohn who died relatively young. Some prodigies have become well known, others not. Some have carved out musical careers, others abandoned music entirely.

Lately, there’s been much talk about a Canadian prodigy named Jan Lisiecki, a thirteen year old pianist from Calgary, Alberta, born to non-musical, Polish immigrants.

Lisiecki has won a pile of awards including first prizes at the Canadian Music Competitions, the Mozart Competition, and this past May, the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition which netted him a performance in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. He’s performed at Rideau Hall for the Governor General, as well as at the Tenth Anniversary National Arts Centre Gala which saw him on the same bill as Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman, and others. And his compositions have won first prize at the CBC Mozart Variations Competition, and the 2006 National Finals of the Canada Music Week Writing Competition. Not bad, eh?

But how does Lisiecki stack up to those Wunderkids of days gone by? Well, he’s got photographic memory and absolute pitch. He speaks Polish, English, French, and Spanish. Unlike Mozart, Lisiecki goes to school, but he’s skipped four grades and is in Grade 11 at Western Canada High School where he’s in the International Baccalaureate program. Like Beethoven, Lisiecki loves Bach. “Bach is the foundation of all,” stated Lisiecki. “I love Bach.” But can he play all of Bach’s 48, or all of Beethoven’s 32? “I haven’t had too much of a chance to play many,” explained Lisiecki. “Competitions really limit your repertoire, unfortunately. But they’re crucial in your development, and the possibilities they open are amazing. My repertoire is limited to what the competitions require. I learn a lot during the year, but I don’t try to finish, let’s say, all the Chopin Etudes, or all of the Well-Tempered Clavier. That’s not my goal.”

And composing? “Composition is very important,” said Lisiecki. “If I had more time, I’d do much more. My teacher (Robert Rosen at Calgary’s Mount Royal College) is very anti-classical so to say. He wants something new every time.” When Lisiecki played Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 21, he eschewed Beethoven’s cadenza, and wrote his own. Lisiecki also loves to improvise, mostly in a harmonic language reminiscent of Chopin and Rakhmaninov with a bit of Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich (who grew up in Hamilton) thrown into the mix.

But ask Lisiecki about being a “prodigy,” and he’ll deflect any of the pressures that come with that word. “Right now, I’m just having a lot of fun with what I’m doing. So I’m not sure if I would classify me as a prodigy because I’m just a kid that works hard, and enjoys what he’s doing. And so, I just have fun, pretty much.”

This Saturday, June 28, Lisiecki will aim to have fun in his Brott Festival début with Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, a work he’s played in Manchester and Calgary, and will perform at the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound next month, and with Sinfonia Varsovia in Poland this August.

“Little O” loving it the Second Time Around

Who: Oliver Jones Trio and Ahmad Jamal

When: Monday, June 23 at 8 p.m.

What: TD Canada Trust Jazz Festival

Where: Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto

Cost: $40

Call: 416-870-8000

Back in the day, they were known as “Big O” and “Little O.” But there was more that linked these two men, who both eventually went on to stellar careers in jazz, than the fact that their first names began with the letter O.

Both of their parents hailed from the West Indies. They both grew up in Montréal’s St. Henri district, no more than twenty house doors apart. As kids, they attended the same church. “Little O” began piano lessons with “Big O’s” sister, Daisy. And he went to the same elementary school, and later followed “Big O” into the same high school. Both were the second youngest in their respective families. Both lost a brother named Fred. If you haven’t guessed by now, “Big O” referred to Oscar Peterson, and “Little O” to Oliver Jones.

“I don’t think I’d have become a jazz player if it wasn’t for the influence Oscar had on my career,” said Jones reminiscing over the phone from his Montréal home. “I’m just wondering if I would have even had a career in music.”

Jones was 4 or 5 years old when he first heard Oscar at the piano. The effect was immediate. But Jones also received encouragement from Big O’s siblings. “Everyone in the Peterson family was, pardon the pun, instrumental in my career,” said Jones.

Even though Peterson, who passed away last year, and Jones were completely different players, in the minds of many, Jones’s name will forever be inextricably linked with OP’s. “That definitely has been a blessing for me. And it may have been a curse for Oscar,” deadpanned Jones.

In 2000, Jones retired from the jazz scene to travel with his wife. That retirement ended five years later when he shared the bandstand at the Montréal Jazz Festival with OP. Ever since, Jones has been loving the resurgence in his career, touring six months of the year, golfing away the remainder in Florida.

On Monday night, Jones and his trio of Montréal homeboys, bassist Eric Lagacé and drummer Jim Doxas, kick off the TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival Grandmasters Series. Jones and his boys will open the bill, Ahmad Jamal will close it.

Jones’s book for the gig will include tunes from his latest CD, Second Time Around, plus a tribute to Oscar. “I want people in Canada to make sure that they don’t forget the greatest jazz musician that we had, and to keep his memory alive.” For more on the festival, log onto www.torontojazz.com.

***

Locally, you can catch NYC saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his Trio at the Corktown, 175 Young St. in Hamilton on Wednesday, June 25. Sets are at 8 and 10 p.m. $10 cover. Call 905-572-9242.

Yi-Jia Susanne Hou: A hair's breadth from forever

How long does it take to build a career in classical music?

Years.

How long could it take for that career to end?

A split-second.

Chinese-Canadian violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou can attest to that after literally coming within a hair’s breadth of ending her career--forever.

She was at her parent’s Mississauga home late one evening last October, cutting a piece of frozen garlic bread with a serrated bread knife. And then, the unthinkable.

“I remember instantaneous pain, and then, nothing,” said Susanne three weeks ago in an interview with The Spectator in Toronto’s Royal York Hotel. “And then I looked at my finger, and I was just in shock.” In fact, she’d almost fainted from the shock and pain of cutting into the forefinger of her playing hand.

Fortunately, her father, Alec, a violinst-teacher-luthier, was at home, having just returned from Shanghai, China. He rushed over to Susanne, applied pressure to her finger, and placed a Chinese herbal powder on the wound to stop the bleeding.

“I’ve never seen him freak out over injuries,” said Susanne of her dad. “I was more scared of his reaction than my own. I was still in shock. I remember having my hand up on our cupboard, and I couldn’t feel it. I touched my first finger, and I couldn’t feel it. My entire life, career…and the only thought that came to my mind was, ‘This can’t be it (the end), this can’t be it?”

In essence, her career had flashed before her eyes: those three unanimous gold medals at violin competitions in France, Italy, and Spain in the late 1990s, appearances with orchestras worldwide, the CDs, the tours with Bowfire, those two consecutive victories at the Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank Competition for the loan of the prized 1729 "ex-Heath" Guarneri del Gesu violin.

But this wasn’t her first ever finger injury. Years ago, she’d practiced with a blue finger after getting it slammed in a storm door. “What if this happens right before a concert?” asked her father rhetorically to her back then. “You have to play.”

Yet, this injury was different. And she was scheduled to head out on a two and a half week Bowfire tour the next morning. Susanne phoned her Bowfire chief, Lenny Solomon, who told her to get to an ER immediately.

The ER doctor on duty at the Credit Valley Hospital recognized her--his son studied violin with Alec--and the seriousness of the cut. He cleaned it up, and did a surface stitch. The cut was a couple of millimetres from her nerve, and within one millimetre of her knuckle. She had literally cut right up to her tendon, but hadn’t severed it. Anything deeper, and it likely would have been curtains for her career. “I kind of had a spiritual moment there where I thought, ‘Somebody’s got to be looking after me because…I was just really thankful,” said Susanne.

Unable to bend her finger, she was nonetheless an enthusiastic mascot on the Bowfire tour. She sent the ER doc a picture of her knuckle everyday for two weeks. He, in turn, sent her daily treatment instructions. After a week and half, she began to play, though avoided using her forefinger. After the tour, the ER doc told her that, “It looks like this will heal up just fine.”

But last November, while she was playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Regina Symphony, she felt a tingling feeling all down her left hand. In the ensuing months, those twinges have, thankfully, disappeared. Anyone who watched Susanne play a snippet of her Bowfire party piece, de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, on NBC’s Today Show in mid-April will know that she’s back to 100% form. Today, she can look at the mild, tiny scar near her knuckle and say, “It’s there just to remind me what I could have lost.”

In February of this year, Susanne was contracted by Solomon to play the violin part in Mychael Danna’s film score to Atom Egoyan’s Adoration. That flick went on to win the Ecumenical jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. Alas, while that was happening on the sunny French Riviera, Susanne was on the road with Bowfire, finishing up the group’s PBS tour. “I missed the première in Cannes. I still don’t know what happens in the middle,” lamented Susanne who’s waiting for the flick to be released this summer so that she can watch it.

A few weeks ago, she released her latest CD, You can never have too many Suites, an indie effort recorded at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studios last September. The disc, the second in a set that’s she recorded with the “ex-Heath” Guarneri, is an East-meets-West affair. In addition to de Falla’s Suite of Spanish Folk Songs arranged by Paul Kochansky, Quinto Maganini’s arrangement of Shostakovich’s Four Preludes from 24 Preludes op. 34, and some bonbons from the pen of Fritz Kreisler, there’s music from her native China, courtesy of Yang Bo Zhi’s Wong Luo Bin Suite of Folk Songs and Dances, Tang Kang Nian’s New Face of My Motherland, and Li Zi Li’s Ci Li Flower. Presenting music from different cultures is where it’s at for Susanne. “I feel that, as a musician, today, that’s my purpose, that’s my calling,” said Susanne.

The title of this east-meets-west disc is a play on words. Chock full of suites, Susanne came up with the CD’s title while uncontrollably munching her way through a box of sweets, specifically gourmet chocolates by Michel Cluizel.

And it just so happens that gourmet food is Susanne’s other passion. “I’ve gone to pretty much every five star restaurant in New York and Paris,” admitted Susanne. “I certainly made my investment into the research of fine cuisine.”

The fruits of that “investment” were seen and tasted at her CD release concert. For that event, Susanne worked with a chef and together they created sweets that complimented the suite she played. For example, during her playing of the Shostakovich pieces, one of which she likened to a depiction of a drunken soldier, patrons could taste a vodka-infused raspberry cheese cake. This combination of food and music is something she’d like to explore further.

But the CD launch was more than just a classical event with gourmet food. The proceeds went to China Earthquake Relief. Susanne admitted that previously, she never personally invited people to her concerts. But this event was different. “It’s for a cause beyond ‘just hear me’, but come and help us,” said Susanne.

Audiences in the Hamilton-Burlington can hear Susanne on Saturday, June 21 at 7:30 p.m., when she returns to the Brott Music Festival to perform one of Canada’s finest violin concertos, Alexander Brott’s opus from 1950. When asked what food would go well while listening to the Brott Concerto, Susanne was stumped. “It’s explosive. It’s very exciting to play,” offered Susanne of the work. “I’ll be honest, I’m still working on it. Boris (Brott) is going to be fantastic.” The concert will be held at St. Christopher’s Anglican Church, 662 Guelph Line, Burlington. Tickets are $25, senior $20, and student $10. Call 905-525-7664 for more info.

Grammy and Juno winner James Ehnes to open 2008 Brott Music Festival

Who: James Ehnes

What: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto

With: Boris Brott and the National Academy Orchestra

Where: Melrose United Church, 86 Homewood Avenue

When: Saturday, June 14 at 7:30 p.m.

Cost: $40; senior $35; student $20; opening season reception including concert $50

Call: 905-525-7664

“You can’t play everything, everywhere, all the time,” says violinist James Ehnes.

So, instead you make recordings of just about everything so you can be heard just about everywhere, almost any time.

And that’s precisely what Ehnes has done. Over the past thirteen years, the Brandon, Manitoba native has built up an impressive discography of over twenty CDs on various labels such as Analekta, CBC Records, Chandos, Black Box, and Telarc. His choice of repertoire has run the gamut from Bach to Adams, from Mozart to Dallapiccola, from Paganini to Prokofiev.

“I love having the opportunity to say what I have to say about these pieces and reach audiences that I normally wouldn’t be able to reach,” said Ehnes about his recordings. Ironically, while others may listen to his CDs, Ehnes rarely does. “Unfortunately, so much work goes into them, they lose the magic for me. I love having them. I like looking at them all lined up.

“I love having the recordings but making them is difficult,” continued Ehnes. “You never have as much time as you ideally like, particularly if it’s with an orchestra because it’s expensive, (and) you just to have to be ‘on’ and at your best, every moment, every take. It’s my responsibility that every take has to be as close to perfect as I can get because you never know if someone’s chair will squeak, or someone will knock a mute off a stand or someone will miss a note here and there…”

His latest CD, a CBC Records release from 2006 of the Barber, Korngold, and Walton Violin Concertos with Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra garnered him a Grammy Award this past February in the Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra category. In April, he scored a Juno with that same disc for Classical Album of the Year: Soloist with Large Ensemble Accompaniment.

Unfortunately, that Barber-Korngold-Walton CD which snagged CBC Records its first ever Grammy, may well be the last new classical orchestral recording from that label. “There’s a lot going on at the CBC right now, with Radio 2 as well, that I’m pretty upset about,” said Ehnes.

“It’s obviously been a divisive angry subject. There’s been a lot of ‘classical music vs. the CBC’ talk, and I think that we should be careful. There are a lot of really good people at the CBC that are trying to do the right thing.”

And what is the ‘right thing’? “That’s where we have our differences,” commented Ehnes. “There are people that very much believe in the changes that they’re going to make to CBC Radio and CBC Records. I just personally disagree with them entirely. I think that one of the major mandates of the CBC is providing Canadians with things that they cannot get through other sources. I wonder if sometimes these decisions are made in place like Toronto, where people have access to everything and anything, they don’t necessarily consider that… if you shut down CBC Records because their records are not making profits, well, it’s the CBC, we pay for it. It’s not a commercial enterprise. I feel bad for some of the people working at CBC Records because I don’t know that it’s ever been all that clear to them what they were expected to be, how they’re expected to operate,” said Ehnes. “There were a lot of fine Canadian musicians that provided their first opportunities to record through CBC Records and it’s an avenue that’s closed. That’s going to make things extremely difficult….

“I think one of the major mandates of the CBC is providing Canadians with things that they cannot get through other sources. It seems to me that if we’re going to have a station that’s going to play the same music that can be heard on all sorts of other stations across the country, then I want my money back. We’re paying for it (the CBC). And if the CBC is just going to be a commercial radio station, then why not just shut it down and give us all our money back, or at least give me my money back so that I can get satellite radio so that I can listen to what I want to listen to.”

Ehnes also laments the CBC’s decision to limit the broadcast of classical music between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays. “That’s when kids are in school, and when adults are in work,” said Ehnes. “But I’m more concerned about the kids. In ninety percent of the country, if you don’t have classical music on Radio 2 before and after school there’s nowhere else to get it, there’s no where else to hear it. I wonder if that point is really considered by people in Toronto where everything and anything is available.” Ehnes admits that as a kid, though he had a lot of music in the house (his father is a professional trumpeter, his mother a ballerina), he listened to a lot of classical music on the radio. “I remember so many pieces, hearing them for the first time, getting to know so much of the repertoire through Radio 2, because it was on everyday before school and after school.

“It seems to me a little bit disingenuous to say that one of the main reasons they have to change the programming is to reflect the broader interest of Canadians and to play--I can’t remember the quote I saw--it was basically to promote the music of lesser known singer-songwriter types and then in the very next sentence talking about how they looked forward to playing more music by Diana Krall and Joni Mitchell. I don’t have anything against Diana Krall and Joni Mitchell. Hey, they’re great, but it’s not like you can’t hear them on all sorts of other stations across the country. And I don’t think that it should be ignored that certain record labels stand to gain a lot by this. This is a decision with major financial implications. Positive for some, and extremely negative for others. And unfortunately, the people for who it’s extremely negative for, are the people that make a lot less money doing it.

“But I’m just concerned what’s going to happen with, we’ll say the Brott Music Festival, when there’s a next generation of children growing up without classical music? They don’t know what it is. They don’t hear it. What’s going happen to the smaller orchestras across the country? Who’s going to buy tickets for an orchestra when they’ve never heard an orchestra?”

While Ehnes’s thoughts may paint a dim picture of classical music in Canada, Ehnes, who currently lives in Bradenton, Florida, is certainly not lacking work. His schedule includes about 90 concerts with some of the best orchestras around. This summer, he’ll be touring Australia and Tasmania. The Boris Brott Summer Festival too, has been going great guns, readying itself for its twentieth season.

As a matter of fact, Ehnes will open the Brott Festival next Saturday in Melrose United with the ever-popular Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. “It’s the first big concerto I played,” stated Ehnes, now 32, but 9 years old when he first performed it.

But the Mendelssohn, like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is so popular, do we really need to listen to it again? "It amazes me that there are people who say, ‘Ah, do we need to hear the Tchaikovsky Concerto again? I’ve just got to blow the whistle on that,” said Ehnes. “Say for example you see a critic in New York or Chicago. And they say, ‘Oh, the Mendelssohn Concerto again.’ If they’ve been working there forty years, and say, the New York Philharmonic were to do the Mendelssohn Concerto every other year--which they don’t--what if they’ve heard twenty performances. If you don’t like the Mendelssohn Concerto after you’ve listened to it twenty times, you’re in the wrong field. I’ve had years where I’ve played it more than that in one season. I like it. Every time I play it, I can guarantee I’ve practiced it more than twenty times. I don’t know what the deal with this is. Even if you’re in one of these cities that considers itself incredibly sophisticated, for at least fifty percent of that audience, they’ve never heard the piece live. And for, I would think, in most places, for fifty percent of the audience, they’ve never heard the piece at all.”

In addition to the Mendelssohn, the bill includes Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and the Fourth Symphony, a continuation of the mini-Beethoven Festival begun at last June’s Brott Festival.

As for new recordings, Ehnes has one in the can that he hopes to have released in the fall. “The man (David Fulton) who owns my violin (Ex-Marsick 1715 Stradivarius) has probably the most important privately owned instrument collection the world,” said Ehnes. “Last year, I went out to Washington State where he lives and made a recording and a film performing on all these different violins and violas. There’s eight violins, and three violas. I’ve been fortunate to have gotten to know these instruments well over the last number of years, I’m out there a lot. So, knowing these instruments, and knowing their individual personalities, I picked out repertoire that I thought would really suit each individual instrument well, and show off particular aspects of their personalities. I recorded two short pieces on each violin, and I had one somewhat more substantial piece on each of the violas, and then recorded comparison tracks as well. For the violins, it was an excerpt from the Scottish Fantasy by Bruch, and then an excerpt from Harold in Italy on all the violas…

“The filming of it was really beautifully done. The footage of the instruments themselves is really spectacular. It’s a big project and I’m really, really excited. It’s just totally unique. The combined value of this collection, I can’t even imagine, it’s somewhere over $70 million dollars. Right now, everything is sort of in flux as to exactly how it’s going to be packaged or indeed, who’s even going to distribute it.

“I think that even if you didn’t know or care that it was these different instruments, and didn’t care at all about that side of things, hopefully, I think that people will feel it’s a really entertaining CD. It’s a lot of my very favourite pieces that I’ve not had the chance to record before.”

Charismatic Hamilton Children's Choir takes top CBC prize

In the words of CBC Radio 2 host Gregory Charles, it was a competition between “the best of the best” amateur choirs in Canada.

This past Sunday afternoon, eleven choirs from across Canada gathered in l’Eglise Ste-Rose in Laval, Québec, with two others participating by direct audio feed, for the Gala Concert of Choral 2008 broadcast live by the CBC and Espace musique. At stake were two $5,000 prizes and a spot as Canada's entry at the Choral Mondial in Laval next May.

Zimfira Poloz and her Hamilton Children’s Choir were there thanks to their victory over Edmonton’s Cantilon Chamber Choir in the children’s choir category at CBC Radio’s National Competition for Amateur Choirs on April 29.

Now the HCC would be up against the winner of every other category from that national final. The HCC sang first at the gala, performing the two pieces they’d sung at the finals, Stephen Hatfield’s Ueberlebensgross, and Javier Busto’s Zai itxoiten, as well as Karl Jenkins’s Adiemus, one of their party pieces honed to perfection over numerous concerts.

Sitting in the balcony were four judges from the Mondial Choral Loto-Québec: musical comedienne Natalie Choquette, her daughter Florence Khoriaty, Catherine Major and Laurie Sinclair. Choquette and company were given the mandate of awarding the $5,000 Cantabile Prize to one of the thirteen choirs. Four other judges, headed by Jonathan Willcocks of Britain, were to choose the winner of the $5,000 Canada Council for the Arts Healy Willan Prize. After every choir had sung, the judges had ten to fifteen minutes to decide the winners.

Shortly before 4 p.m., shrieks of joy were heard as the HCC was named Cantabile Prize winners. When Charles asked the Kazakhstan-born Leningrad-trained Poloz how she felt at the moment, she could only muster, “No words. Not in Russian. Not in English.”

Choquette, however, gushed effusively about the HCC when reached at her Montréal home by The Spectator the following morning. “It was the creativity in the choreography, the stage presence. They have a lot of charisma. We were all very moved by them,” said Choquette adding that the judges’ decision was unanimous. “They have not only beautiful voices, they made sure that it was entertaining also. They were a wind of hope for humanity, a breath of hope…”

After the victory announcement, Charles invited the HCC to sing an encore. The choir fanned out into the audience for Ed Robertson’s Dream a Dream. One of the choristers held Choquette’s hands and sang into her eyes. Soppy? Not for Choquette. “It was so moving, I was just crying,” said Choquette. “There’s something so pure so noble about these young women singing with all their hearts. They were just so gorgeous, so elegant. There was a lot of light coming from them…” That reaction isn’t surprising since Poloz instills into her choristers that, “What comes from your heart goes to the heart. What comes from your mouth goes to the ear.”

On Monday, Poloz revealed the behind-the-scenes adversity the HCC faced. One week earlier, they had had returned from Songbridge, an international by-invitation-only choral festival held in Szczecin, Poland. There, they’d sung six hours a day for a week. Exhausted, and jet lagged, the HCC apologized to Poloz after a Friendship Concert held in Laval on Saturday night, telling her, “We tried so hard, but the sound doesn’t come out.” Also, the HCC’s usual accompanist, Shawn Grenke, was unable to make the trip to Laval. So, Poloz’s accompanist at the High Park Children’s Choir made the trip, learning the music on the train to Québec. The HCC had planned to sing Hatfield’s Tjak! at the gala, but upon learning that another choir was going to sing it, they dropped it at the last minute for the Adiemus, graciously allowing the other choir to sing it. “We not thinking about winning. We just came to sing, and learn, and share our songs,” said Poloz.

So what’s left for the HCC to accomplish now that they, along with Eric Hannan’s Vancouver Cantata Singers who were awarded the Willan Prize, can rightfully call themselves the top amateur choir in Canada? “It’s just beginning,” laughed a gleeful Poloz.

“We are definitely looking for support in Hamilton,” continued Poloz. “I don’t know how to bang the doors in Hamilton to get the support for every child in Hamilton who’s interested to be in this choir and sing. We would really like to have them all. I’m looking for sponsors.” Poloz went on to describe the situation with the other choirs at Songbridge who displayed corporate sponsorship on their T-shirts. In addition, Poloz said that for Songbridge, an Israeli ambassador drove 500 kilometres to hear the performance of the Moran Choir from the Moshav ‘Beit Yitzhak’. “That proudness of country, and songs they bring internationally is very moving,” said Poloz. “We need help in Hamilton. We hope we will get that now.”

If you missed the HCC on radio, you can catch them with the other five choirs of the HCC family at their Spring Concert on Saturday, May 31 at 7:30 p.m. in Burlington’s Wellington Square United Church, 2121 Caroline St. Tickets are $20, senior $15, student $10. Call 905-527-1618.

Hamilton Children's Choir wins "Grand Prize Cantabile" at CBC Choral Gala 2008

The Hamilton Children's Choir direced by Zimfira Poloz was awarded the $5,000 "Grand Prize Cantabile" at Choral Gala 2008, the CBC's National Radio Competition for Amateur Choirs, held in Laval, Quebec and broadcast live over CBC Radio 2 on Sunday afternoon. The prize was awarded by the artistic committee of the Mondial Choral Loto-Québec. The committee chose the HCC as the choir whose overall artistic presentation stood out as the best, taking into account the quality and originality of their visual and/or choreographic presentation, the quality and originality of their choice of repertoire, plus the level of energy, charisma, and stage presence exuded by the choisters and Poloz. The Burnaby, B.C., based Vancouver Cantata Singers under Eric Hannan were awarded the $5,000 Canada Council for the Arts Healy Willan Grand Prize. Both the HCC and the VCS will now represent Canada at the Mondial Choral Competition in Laval, Quebec in May 2009. For more, watch for an article in The Hamilton Spectator sometime this week.

No debating the mystery of Pelléas et Mélisande

Showtime

What: Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande

With: Russell Braun as Pelléas

Where: The Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W., Toronto

When: May 9 to 24

Cost: $60 - $275, young people $30 - $275

Call: 416-363-8231

Time has been on the side of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Though critics were divided at its 1902 première at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, Debussy’s lone completed opera has since become regarded as a masterpiece.

Its opalescent score serves a generic plot taken from Maurice Maeterlinck’s play that moves from love triangle, to jealousy, to murder. In the allegorical medieval kingdom Allemonde, Prince Golaud meets and marries the mysterious Mélisande. She however, falls in love with his half-brother, Pelléas, who Golaud eventually murders. After Mélisande gives birth to a daughter, she tells Golaud that she loved Pelléas though denies any guilt before quietly dying.

One debate that hasn’t been resolved over time is whether Pelléas should be sung by a tenor or a baritone.

If you’re in the tenor’s corner, you’d argue that a lyric tenor would have the octane to handle the high G sharp and A, and that the colour of the tenor voice would contrast better against the bass-baritone of Golaud and the bass of King Arkël. And you’d note that Debussy notated Pelléas’s part in the G clef, customary at that time for a tenor’s music.

If you’re in the opposite camp, you’d counter that a lyric baritone would project better on the low Cs and Ds. You’d point out that not only did a baritone sing the première, but that most conductors today prefer a baritone. And you’d remind everyone of the baryton-martin, a high lying baritone voice with a light top register such as that of the late Jacques Jansen, who had a stranglehold on the role in post-war France.

Over the past decade, German born Canadian baritone Russell Braun has had a stranglehold on Pelléas. Braun spent two-and-a-half years studying the role before appearing in Bob Wilson’s 1997 co-production for Paris’s Palais Garnier and the Salzburg Festival. It was at that Austrian summer festival that Braun first appeared in a production with his father, the late Victor Braun, who sang Golaud. “Rehearsing together was wonderful,” said Braun. “I had just become a father for the first time. I just turned him into a grandfather. Considering that everyone has baggage, it was a harmonious time. He treated me like a colleague from the very first moment we rehearsed together which was very important for me.”

Braun has also bowed as Pelléas at La Scala, Glyndebourne, and Hamburg. Later this spring, he’ll sing the role in concert with the Bochum Symphony in Germany. Currently, Braun is singing Pelléas in a revival of Nicholas Muni’s 2000 production for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto.

Though it’s become one of his calling-card roles, Braun’s answer to whether Pelléas should be sung by a tenor or baritone is startling. “I actually have no opinion vocally,” responded Braun. “I have a pretty strong opinion what type of a person should sing Pelléas.

“What conductors generally prefer these days is a baritone. They want someone who can create maybe a broader palette of colours in the lower range. But most of all I think it’s a personality question. First of all, you have to have a love of poetry. The language, it’s not really written in prose, but the language is exquisite. You have to be a person who doesn’t have a fixed concept of who they are, who’s still searching in a way. You have to be a person who is, well, open-minded for sure. The piece lends itself to being presented in many different modern ways.”

Muni’s production for the COC does away with the dozen scene changes specified in the score. Instead, Muni uses different lighting to suggest the changes of scene and mood. Further, Dany Lyne’s costumes are not of this time, but are a mélange of mythological, contemporary, and Indian influences.

“Most of all,” continued Braun, “I think you have to be a person who loves to communicate in an almost chamber music way of sometimes speaking the text on pitch, sometimes singing full out. It’s not really just a voice type kind of a question.”

When Braun sang Pelléas at Glyndebourne, he spent many a rehearsal during the eight week rehearsal period speaking the text on pitch without the aid of a piano or orchestra. Interesting to note that at the COC, the cast has had barely four weeks of rehearsal.

“Debussy is very misleading in a way because we’re used to Debussy as an impressionistic musician that creates fifty different hues of pastel colours,” continued Braun. “We think that’s what he is, so you get lulled into this blanket of beautiful sound…but then all of a sudden there will be an emotion that Debussy will amplify with forty-five string players playing at the same time as brass in a very, very potent way. So your voice has to be very flexible.”

This COC production re-unites the Canadian ‘dream team’ of Braun and soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian (Mélisande). Not surprisingly, Braun and Bayrakdarian both share the same agent at CAMI, Elizabeth Crittenden. They have appeared together in productions such as Les pêcheurs de perles, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Le nozze di Figaro.

Braun brushes aside the debate whether Mélisande should be sung by a soprano or a mezzo. “The most important aspect for a woman playing Mélisande is that there’s a natural sense of mystery about her, a kind of a depth that you can’t qualify. In my opinion, the character is not one character on stage, but actually plays several archetypes of womanhood. I think it takes a very special singing actor to find that kind of mystery about what it is in man’s eye that makes women so mysterious.” And that’s one more mystery that may never be resolved over time.

A flawed Creation awaits redemption

Showtime

What: Haydn’s The Creation

Who: Howard Dyck and the Bach Elgar Choir

When: Saturday, May 3 at 8 p.m.

Where: Melrose United Church, 86 Homewood Ave.

Cost: $30, senior $25, student $15

Call: 905-527-5995

Howard Dyck can count music history’s greatest chords on the fingers of one hand. There’s the yearning ‘Tristan’ chord in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. There’s Beethoven’s harmonic coup de théâtre at the words “vor Gott” in his Ninth Symphony. And then there’s Haydn’s luminously white C major chord on the last word in the phrase “and there was Light” in his 1798 oratorio, The Creation.

“To the Enlightenment mind, C major was the ultimate Enlightenment key,” explained Dyck. “There was nothing cluttering it. No sharps, no flats. It represented reason, and clarity of thought. That moment is as much a philosophical statement as it is a religious one.”

Yet, Haydn’s philosophical-religious statement isn’t heard as often as it once was. In the first decade of the 1800s, The Creation was a staple during London's Lent oratorio season as well as the Advent and Lent seasons in Vienna where it was sung in German as Die Schöpfung. Since then, its popularity has waxed and waned. From his vantage point as the host of CBC Radio Two’s Choral Concert and announcer of that program’s Choral Billboard, Dyck estimates that The Creation gets all of a dozen Canadian performances per year, a pittance when compared to Handel’s Messiah. Dyck himself has conducted the work about a dozen times over his career, roughly one-tenth the times he’s done Messiah.

Dyck is somewhat baffled why there are relatively so few performances when so many consider The Creation the acme of Haydn’s creative output. “One reason just might be is that it’s pretty challenging for the orchestra,” offered Dyck. “It’s much harder for the orchestra than it is for the choir…The piece is sort of incurably optimistic, and maybe that’s kind of out of step with our time. We have a fairly ‘noir’ outlook on life. But I’m not sure.”

Noir or not, there’s a current flurry of Creations in the Golden Horseshoe. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir sang it last night. The Toronto Classical Singers sing it on Sunday. And Dyck’s Bach Elgar Choir will perform it with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and soloists Charlene Pauls, Mark DuBois, and Bruce Kelly this Saturday at 8 p.m. in Melrose United. For the continuo part, Dyck will use organ and cello. "I'd really love to have a fortepiano for it," said Dyck, who had used this period instrument when he directed the work with the Grand Philharmonic Choir a few years back in Kitchener. "I don't like the haprsichord for it. It's a kind of dated sound." will

“It’s funny to see how these pieces have a kind of a cycle, and how many of us quite unconsciously fit into that cycle,” said Dyck. “A few years ago, everyone was doing (Carl Orff’s) Carmina Burana, and then all of a sudden something else comes along.”

The Creation was the first large-scale musical work to be published with a bilingual text (German and English). Its libretto draws on the creation story found in the Book of Genesis plus Psalms 19 and 104 in the King James Bible, as well as John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It largely skirts the issue of the Fall. Haydn had the original English libretto at hand as he composed, though he worked predominantly with the German translation and adaptation made by his friend, Gottfried van Swieten. No one knows for sure who penned the original English libretto, but it has long been criticized. “It’s a little patchwork in places,” admits Dyck. Patchwork? There are inept epithets such as “dreary, wasteful hail,” "expanded boughs," and “closed wood.” So too, the imitator’s line, “See flashing through the wet, in thronged swarms the fry, on thousand ways around” lacks Milton’s masterly touch when compared to “Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay, with frie innumerable swarme, and shoales of fish that with their finns and shining scales glide under the green wave.” Further, Haydn’s English was sketchy at best, and so, Swieten, whose Endligh was but a bit better, did the English text underlay. But there too, the results were flawed.

In an attempt to redeem that situation, Dyck has made some changes, drawing on Robert Shaw and Alice Parker’s revisions to the English text underlay published in 1957.

Textual dilemmas aside, Dyck lauds the work. “It’s such a terrific piece,” raved Dyck. “Every time I do it, I just love it.”