Orchestras Canada

March 1-16, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra makes its debut appearances in Australia and New Zealand, with a seven-city, 11-concert tour that takes the orchestra to Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane (Australia) and in Wellington (New Zealand). The featured program is none other than the “globe-trotting multi-media creation”, The Galileo Project.

In addition to performing concerts in every city throughout the Australia/New Zealand tour, Tafelmusik will take part in special events including a masterclass, a school performance, free pre-concert talks, “Meet the Artists” gatherings, and Star Parties: a series of post-concert star-gazing sessions with Australian astronomers.

The Galileo Project was conceived, programmed and scripted by Tafelmusik bassist Alison Mackay, and has been seen in China (in Mandarin), Malaysia, Mexico (in Spanish), Canada and the United States. A co-production with The Banff Centre, The Galileo Project premiered there in 2009 to commemorate the International Year of Astronomy. With narration by actor Shaun Smyth, stage direction by Marshall Pynkoski, and production design by Glenn Davidson, The Galileo Project explores the fusion of arts, science and culture in the 17th and 18th centuries. Tafelmusik musicians perform music by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Lully and Handel from memory against a stunning backdrop of images of the heavens from the Hubble telescope and Canadian astronomers.

This week, February 8-12, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra gives the Toronto premiere of House of Dreams, the latest multi-media project to spring from the brain of Tafelmusik bassist Allison Mackay. The program traces the relationships among Baroque music, the visual art of the era, and five of the European houses where Baroque music and art intersected. Repertoire includes music by Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Purcell, and Marais; and the visuals include images and paintings by Vermeer, Canaletto and Watteau as well as photographs of the houses.

To realize the project, Tafelmusik brokered a range of collaborative relationships. The Banff Centre (where the program had its world premiere on February 3) is co-producer; and the program is presented and is performed under the kind patronage of the Palais-Royal (Paris) and in partnership with the Handel House Museum (London), The Claudio Buziol Foundation (Venice), The Golden ABC (Delft), and the Bach Museum and Archive (Leipzig). Tafelmusik musicians will perform the entire programme from memory, and the stage direction is by Marshall Pynkoski.

“House of Dreams is an evocation of rich and intimate experiences of the arts in the time of Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and Bach,” says creator Alison Mackay. “It’s a virtual visit to London, Venice, Delft, Paris and Leipzig, where great masterpieces by European painters were displayed on the walls of five private homes. These houses were also alive with music, often played by the leading performers and composers of the day.”

To learn more about the Banff residency, you can follow Tafelmusik bassoonist Dominic Teresi’s tour blog here.

And for more information about the program, please visit tafelmusik.org.

Late last week, the Ontario Arts Council announced the winner of the 2012 Oscar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance: Toronto-based cellist Shauna Rolston. The $20,000 award was presented on January 30 at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival, where Ms Rolston performed the world premiere of a new cello concert by WSO resident composer Vincent Ho. Widely recognized as one of Canada’s most unique musical talents, Ms Rolston has commissioned more than 50 new works for cello, performed in many of the world’s major concert halls and was the featured artist at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. In addition to her touring and performance schedule, Shauna is also Professor of Cello and Head of Strings at the University of Toronto and a Visiting Artist for the Music and Sound Programs at The Banff Centre.

Culture Days, a collaborative pan-Canadian volunteer movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement by all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities, is moving forward.  A National Steering Committee, in collaboration with provincial committees, is mobilizing at the grassroots level to collaborate in the implementation of concurrent annual province-wide public participation events each September beginning in 2010. In support of these annual provincial events, Culture Days will drive a major annual national communications & public relations campaign to help re-position arts and culture in the public eye.
 
Culture Days was initiated and is supported by the Canadian Arts Summit in collaboration with Culture pour tous (producer of Quebec’s Journées de la Culture), The Banff Centre and with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
 
Five provinces are lining up their efforts to be part of the Culture Days inaugural event in September 2010. These include Alberta (with Alberta Arts Days), Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario (with spOtlight) and Québec with the Journées de la Culture, which inspired Culture Days. Additional provinces and territories have expressed enthusiastic interest and we are confident others will join the collective effort soon.
 
For more information about the initiative, and to sign up for regular electronic updates, please visit here.