Patria 8 opens tonight in Haliburton

R. Murray Schafer's Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix opens tonight at the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. Palace is the 8th chapter of a massive 12-part series of music dramas entitled Patria. John Terauds writes in the Toronto Star:

And just as Bavaria's King Ludwig II gave Wagner the means to construct an opera house in Bayreuth, so Haliburton Forest owner Peter Schleifenbaum and Patria Music Projects made it possible to erect a permanent 600-seat amphitheatre this summer.

This has allowed Schafer and company to add to the visual drama. "We're going to have four dragon boats all lit up on the lake," says [producer] Macerollo. "There will also be four archers shooting flaming arrows."

Stagings begin at 6:30 p.m., so the progression from daylight to dusk is part of the experience.

Link to Terauds article in the Toronto Star
Patria home page with more info
Photos and reviews of the 2001 production
Another Patria site
Canada Council artist profile of R. Murray Schafer
Paul Steenhuisen interview with Schafer in Wholenote Magazine (Sept. 2001)
World Soundscape Project article in the Canadian Encyclopedia

Image hosted by Patria.org

Lost and Found

Edvard Munch's The Scream [wiki] has been recovered two years after being stolen from a museum in Oslo, Norway.

Link

Happy BlogDay2006

As the summer winds down to a close, the blogging season heats up again, starting with Blog Day 2006, in which each participant recommends five blogs they frequent. These are my five:

hughsung.com The crossroads of music and technology, with info aplenty both for the novice and the technophile, brought to you by a fine collaborative pianist who knows how to find audiences and bring his music to them.

The Well Tempered Blog The CNN of the keyboard. If it impacts the piano-playing world, you'll probably find it here.

Think Denk Follow pianist Jeremy Denk as he performs around the world and muses on subjects as varied as musical philosophy, FestivaLand, post-performance receptions, fine cuisine, traveling, and buying music from his favorite retailer.

My Other Life soundtrk may be an engineering student at the University of British Columbia, but she has many musical interests, and writes brilliantly about concert life in Toronto and Vancouver as well as her own developmental process as she studies both voice and piano.

Neatorama Because I like weird stuff and Neatorama is some of the best stress relief there is.



More BlogDay2006 festivities

2006 Friends of Canadian Music Call for Nominations

Via the CMC-Ontario mailing list...

The following is excerpted from the Call for Nominations for the 2006 Friends of Canadian Music Award:

Performers, orchestras, administrators, broadcasters, journalists, teachers, composers or others who have demonstrated an outstanding and exceptional dedication to Canadian composers’ and their music are eligible, however an individual’s compositional or educational activity in itself are not eligible.

An individual or group may submit nominations, however self-nomination is not eligible. Also, current staff and members of both the CMC and CLC Board of Directors are not eligible for the award.

Nominators must create a separate entry for each nominee, if they are nominating more than one candidate. The following items must be provided:

• a statement or letter of up to two pages describing what the nominee has achieved and done to support Canadian composers and their music and why the nominee is deserving of the Friends of Canadian Music Award.
• a current one-page biography of the nominee;
• no more than three letters of support

Please forward all materials to:

Steven W. Foster, Development & Communications Administrator
Canadian Music Centre
20 St. Joseph Street,
Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1J9

Applications must be postmarked by September 28, 2006.

The Ultimate Urtext Sale

When wandering the book section this afternoon in the Burlington Costco, I happened upon a sight completely unexpected for such a store: music scores. Not just any old scores, but Urtext editions [wiki] by Koenemann Music Budapest. And at a price that I was astonished to behold: $3.99 each ($1 CDN equals approximately 89 cents US). These are the scores I bought:

Bach WTC I
Bach WTC II
Bach English Suites
Chopin Etudes
Grieg Lyrische Stuecke I
Grieg Lyrische Stuecke II

There were also the Bach French Suites (got it in Henle), a Schumann collection (ditto), and a Mussorgsky collection (should have bought it). These editions might not be the real thing for the Baerenreiter/Peters/Henle/Weiner crowd, but from what I've seen so far, they hold up pretty well in comparison. Looking at the books stacked in piles several feet high in no recognizable order, I couldn't help but reminisce about scores that belonged to my teachers and older colleagues purchased in the 60's and 70's with $3 and $4 price tags still affixed. (A friendly cashier, upon my asking about why the prices were so insanely low, chalked it up to an astute buyer.)

Anyway folks, these books won't last for long. I have no idea which Costco locations in the Toronto area are carrying the Koenemann Urtexts, but it is a deal not to be missed. And with the stamp of Urtext authenticity, correctly executing those articulation markings and exact beginnings and endings of crescendi and rallentandi will mean that performers will impress the Urtext police, who are said to inhabit the auditoriums of major cities across Europe and North America, judging concerts solely on the basis of just how accurate and faithful the performers play according to the original intentions of the composer....

John Weinzweig dies at 93

Composer, teacher, and champion of Canadian culture John Weinzweig passed away on the evening of Thursday, August 24 at the age of 93. He will be remembered for being one of the first composers to bring music written in Canada both into the stream of current musical thought and onto concert programs at a time in Canadian music when there simply wasn't any. Over the ensuing decades, his compositions, teaching, influence, and outspoken opinions paved the way for the musical culture that we enjoy today.

A public memorial service will be held in Toronto at Benjamin's Park Memorial Chapel located at 2401 Steeles Ave. West on Monday, August 28, followed by a reception at the Canadian Music Centre at 20 Joseph St.

Link to article on John Weinzweig in the Canadian Encyclopedia
Link to Cassandra Szklarski's Canadian Press article
Link to article in cbc.ca
Link to "John Weinzweig at 90" by Daniel Foley in the Winter 2003 Ontario Notations
Link to entry in the Canadian Music Centre site, with links to recordings and works
Interview on CMC Audio Gallery

Image hosted by the Canadian Music Centre

The Collaborative Piano Blog Ticket

Via Concert Ticket Generator

Vacation time? No

This is one of the busier months of August that I can remember, and the reason why there haven't been any updates in the last few weeks. In addition to the current filming of the Bathroom Divas second season, I'm also one of the two reps (new hip abbreviation of repetiteur) for Tapestry's 11th Composer/Librettist Laboratory, the other being fellow Eastman grad Jennifer Tung. The writers this year are Leanna Brodie, Dave Carley, Lisa Codrington and Krista Dalby, and the composers are Craig Galbraith, Kevin Morse, David Ogborn and Anthony Young. The liblab's resident ensemble are all veterans of the program and consists of soprano Carla Huhtanen, mezzo-soprano Jessica Lloyd, tenor Keith Klassen, and baritone Alexander Dobson. The program is run by Tapestry Managing Artistic Director Wayne Strongman and Michael Albano of the University of Toronto Faculty of Music.

It is always fascinating to follow the composer/librettist partnerships that form out of the liblab and see the works that germinate, sometimes over the course of many years, from the 16 scenes created each year (each of 4 writers partners with each of 4 composers to write these 16 scenes over only 10 days). Above all, the quality of the process in which all the participants engage results in both an awareness of the key elements of opera-writing--there are many--with a view towards building relationships between composers and librettists that can result in future commissions and works for the opera stage.

This is my fifth year as repetiteur for the liblab, and every year has a different flavor and direction determined by the talents and agendas of the participants and their interactions. Another fascinating aspect of this lab as a performer is that for each musical reading session the singers and pianists arrive without music, rehearse the scores--at sight--that have just been written, and perform them in a dramaturgical master class after only a short period of rehearsal.

Selected works from this workshop will then be selected for Tapestry's Opera Briefs program to be performed in the Distillery District on September 22 and 23, with an additional performance at Toronto's Word on the Street Festival on September 24th.

Needless to say, no holiday this August.