The twelfth version of the Royal Conservatory’s 21C Pageant rings within the new yr with new music, opening in January with a sequence of concert events that culminate in Could. Measha Brueggergosman-Lee and Bruce Hornsby are among the many headliners, with a mixture of Canadian and worldwide artists and works.
Mervon Mehta Government Director, Performing Arts on the RCM, spoke to LvT about this yr’s lineup.
21C Music Pageant
The pageant consists of eight concert events, with 14 premieres (together with two world, one North American, and 11 Canadian), and 21 Canadian composers and artists.
“I all the time work with the artists on programming,” Mehta explains. “However we’re interested in programming that is a bit more adventurous.”
Reserving worldwide acts effectively upfront provides to the complexity. “With new music, generally, you’re reserving one thing a yr upfront, and the music remains to be to be written,” he explains. “We’re all the time searching for attention-grabbing issues which might be off the crushed observe.”
Michelle Cann and the Imani Winds (January 18)
The 2024 Grammy Award-winning Imani Winds carry out with pianist Michelle Cann in a combined program:
- Paquito D’Rivera: A Little Cuban Waltz
- Lalo Schifrin: La Nouvelle Orleans
- Francis Poulenc: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano, FP 43
- Valerie Coleman: Portraits of Langston (Canadian premiere)Francis Poulenc: Sextet, FP 100
Composer Valerie Coleman describes Portraits of Langston, impressed by the poetry of Langston Hughes.
“Portraits of Langston is a set in six quick actions, and is my tackle Hughes’ poetic reminiscences of Harlem and Europe (primarily Paris).” She continues, “I selected Langston not due to who he’s in literature, however as a result of he was in reality, an eye-witness to legends born. His poems are so descriptive of the period, with references to explicit settings and people that influenced him: Josephine Baker, Helen Keller, the nightlife/music of Harlem jazz golf equipment and Parisian cabarets. The imagery that Hughes offers offers me fairly a historic palette that conjures up me as an example a piece actually distinctive to duo repertoire. Stylistically, this work incorporates many alternative components which might be translated into woodwind approach: the stride piano approach, huge band swing, cabaret music, Mambo, African drumming, and even conventional spirituals.”
21C Afterhours: GGS New Music Ensemble (January 18)
Composer/concudtor Brian Present curates an eclectic night of music. Brian is head of GGS’ New Music Ensemble, as Mehta factors out. “These college students are actually excited by increasing the envelope,” he says. Present can be inventive director of Toronto’s New Music Live shows.
The repertoire is a mirrored image of the abilities of the ensemble. “He tends to choose issues as soon as he is aware of the place the present superstars are within the college,” Mehta provides. “It’s a method of bringing our college students into the concert events, which we’ve performed since day 1.” The pageant itself was moved to its present winter/spring time slot, partially, to open the alternatives for pupil involvement.
Soprano McKenzie Warriner, a 2024-25 Rebanks Fellow, will sing Luca Francesconi’s Etymo, which units the poems of Beaudelaire to music. Beaudelaire’s poetry is famous for its mastery of each rhythm and rhyme, and romantic sensibility. College students from the GGS will accompany.
Additionally on the invoice is Alice Ho’s Darkish Waters and C’est Pas Beau?, and a world premiere by Canadian composer Kalaisan Kalaichelvan. Kalaichelvan was not too long ago named as a recipient of the $10,000 Kathleen McMorrow Music Award, which acknowledges up to date classical music by Ontario composers.
The Journal of Hélène Berr with Elena Howard-Scott (January 21, 22, 23)
Solely beforehand carried out in France, the concert events symbolize the North American premiere of Bernard Foccroulle’s work. Foccroulle set the phrases of Parisian Jewish diarist and musician Hélène Berr, who was finally deported to Auschwitz, to music. Her diaries, which she saved from April 7, 1942, till February 15, 1944, simply earlier than she and her household had been taken in a raid and deported, had been rediscovered by a niece in 1994.
“That was delivered to us by the Koffler Centre,” Mehta says. With out the performing house the piece requires, the group thought it could be supreme for 21C. “I learn the guide, I listened to the music.”
Soprano and actress Elena Scott-Howard was a 2023/24 Rebanks Fellow, and also will be performing within the RCM’s manufacturing of Into The Woods in early January. “Her profession is absolutely sort of taking off. She’s a superb, wonderful actress,” Mehta says.
He likens the story of Hélène Berr to that of Anne Frank, though Hélène is in her early 20s versus Anne’s early teenagers. “It’s a really banal journal on some ranges,” he says. It begins with the each day particulars of her life as a librarian, from the mundane trivia of labor to the primary sightings of tanks within the streets, after which the rising horror round her.
As destiny would have it, she was one of many final Jews in Paris to be despatched to a focus camp, and one of many final to die in Bergen-Belsen camp in 1944, not lengthy earlier than it was liberated by Allied troopers. She had given the diary to her boyfriend, who would hold it, overwhelmed for many years by his grief. It lastly noticed the sunshine of day when her niece tracked it down.
Belgian composer Foccroulle was impressed to put in writing a lyrical drama for voice, piano and string quartet, utilizing textual content straight from the journal. Elena might be studying from the guide in an English translation, however singing within the unique French, accompanied by pianist Jialiang Zhu, and The Rebanks Household Fellowship Quartet.
Measha Brueggergosman-Lee: Zombie Blizzard (January 24)
This yr’s programming started with speaking to Measha Brueggergosman-Lee and Aaron Davis. “We knew we had been going to do the Zombie Blizzard work,” he says. “However what else will we placed on this system?”
The brand new tune cycle is a collaboration between band chief/composer Aaron Davis, Margaret Atwood, Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, the Hannaford Road Silver Band, and the Aaron Davis Trio. The artwork tune cycle blends classical and jazz idioms, utilizing textual content primarily based on Margaret Atwood’s 2020 guide of poetry, Dearly. You may try LvT’s interview with Measha and Aaron right here.
The primary half of the live performance will include works by all the artists.
Continuum Modern Music: Spanning (January 25)
A live performance by Continuum Modern Music will highlight flutist and core ensemble member, Leslie Newman. She’ll be performing Terrestre by composer Kaija Saariaho because the soloist. The ensemble may even carry out works by Carolyn Chen, Anna Höstman, Jocelyn Morlock, and Ana Sokolović, together with the world premiere of a bit by Canadian composer Kotoka Suzuki.
“It’s a bit little bit of a special inventive alternative,” Mervon explains. Continuum has appeared at 21C earlier than, as he factors out. “We all the time save one evening for an additional group.” Prior to now that has included Soundstreams, for instance. He says Continuum approached them with the venture.
“It’s their evening.” Proceeds from the live performance may even go to Continuum. “We try this yearly with at the very least as soon as group exterior the RCM,” he explains. “In the long run, these are troublesome concert events to promote, and we need to unfold the wealth with different new music warriors.”
An elevated reluctance to take dangers on unknown artists and works has emerged as a lingering impact of the COVID pandemic. “Cash is tight.” New music concert events really feel the pinch greater than most, with an elevated concentrate on huge acts which might be thought of a positive draw. “It’s onerous to get by the muddle.”
Bruce Hornsby & yMusic current: BrhyM (Could 3)
Three-time Grammy Award winner Bruce Hornsby might be nonetheless greatest identified for his work with the pop band The Vary and their 1986 megahit The Manner It Is. Lately, he’s additionally a musical adventurer with the yMusic ensemble, a New York primarily based sextet made up of trumpet, flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello.
Collectively, they current BrhyM, and can carry out items from Hornsby’s catalogue in addition to new collaborative work. BrhyM has already launched one album, Deep Sea Vents, impressed by Hornsby’s love of the underwater world.
“Bruce Hornsby has been with us a few occasions,” Mehta says. On the final event, they had been socializing again stage, and within the dialog, Bruce occurred to say yMusic. “That’s how that advanced,” Mehta says. “It began with these sort of conversations. It by no means begins with what number of hits have they got on Spotify,” he provides.
The work he likes to program within the pageant has a deeper and extra private reference to its viewers. “Issues that want a dialog with the artist,” he says. “We’ve been doing that for the reason that starting with this pageant,” he provides, with a fluid imaginative and prescient of what “classical” could suggest in the case of music.
“It’s all the time about music that’s newly written, newly minted.” He acknowledges that their mandate goes past the everyday 4 chord pop music. “It’s items which might be written in a classical format, however not essentially classical music.”
Closing Ideas
Mehta can be involved about what occurs to all these world premieres after their preliminary outing. “We do are likely to convey issues again,” he says. It’s simply as essential for brand new works to see their second, and third presentation as it’s for his or her premiere.
He’s holding on to 1 extra want for the pageant. “My one huge dream is that Margaret Atwood will come for Zombie Blizzard and skim her poetry,” he says. It’s a dream that has but to solidify.
- Discover extra info and tickets to all of the performances [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.