Orchestras Canada

Every year, we are deluged with media releases about orchestras’ holiday programs. And every year, we admire afresh those orchestras that embrace the opportunity to spread holiday cheer while celebrating their communities. Here are some recent examples:

December 14, Orchestra London will team up with the Unity Project for Relief of Homelessness to present the fourth annual performance of Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol at Centennial Hall. The event features a dramatic reading of the classic tale, performed by local legal luminaries, along with sing-along performances of carols by Orchestra London (Alain Trudel, conductor) and the The London Singers & H. B. Beal Secondary School Singers (David B. Weaver, director). Proceeds from the pay-what-you-can, general admission event will support the Unity Project, an organization dedicated to providing shelter and services to the homeless, and Orchestra London.

December 2 and 3, Symphony Nova Scotia presents a one-man production of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol – featuring award-winning actor and playwright Jeremy Webb in all 30 roles! According to the media release, “Webb’s adaptation has already met with overwhelming critical and box office success across Nova Scotia, and has been performed for 80,000 audience members since the beginning of its run in 2003.” The concerts also mark the release of a new recording, featuring Webb and the orchestra in a series of new arrangements by Halifax composer Scott Macmillan.

December 3 and 4, the Windsor Symphony presents a family Christmas pops program that features a performance of Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman (complete with animated short film), along with the WSO Chorus, Windsor Essex Youth Choir, Walkerville Centre for the Creative Arts Chorus, Kylee Phillips, and the Windsor Dance eXperience performing to “Skater’s Waltz” and “La Boutique Fantasque”. WSO Music Director John Morris Russell conducts. As an additional feature, the WSO will be accepting donations during intermission and after the concerts in support of Children’s Aid Society (CAS).

Massive symphonic spectaculars are all very well, but sometimes it’s nice to hear smaller ensemble repertoire performed in an intimate environment. If you agree with this assertion, it’s a good week or so in Canada! Here are some chamber orchestra/chamber ensemble highlights from member orchestras.

The Windsor Symphony wraps up its 63rd concert season today, April 29, with a pair of performances of music by Bach and Telemann at Assumption University Chapel, led by harpsichordist/conductor Jeannette Sorrell of Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire.

The Kamloops Symphony’s chamber music series wraps up tomorrow, April 30, with a program of music by Cesar Franck, Camille Saint-Saens, Vincent d’Indy, and Phillipe Gaubert, performed by KSO core professional musicians Catharine Dochstader (flute), Sally Arai (clarinet), Martin Kratky (cello) and guest Dimiter Terziev (piano).

The Saskatoon Symphony’s Chamber Orchestra series concludes this Saturday, April 30, with a program that celebrates the “spirit of a creative explosion, centred in Paris after the First World War, when traditional views on art, music, and writing were challenged and reshaped.” Works on the program include a pair of Gymnopédies by Erik Satie, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Harry Somers’ Picasso Suite and Respighi’s Gli Uccelli.

On May 5, the chamber orchestra of the Orchestre symphonique de Longueuil (led by Music Director Marc David) performs Boucherville composer Michel Massé’s Requiem pour Roxanne at the Sainte-Famille church in Boucherville. The work, “filled with light and serenity” is dedicated to the memory of the composer’s niece, who died from complications of cystic fibrosis at the age of 11.

On May 6, Musaeus, the core ensemble of the Lethbridge Symphony, presents a program entitled “Life Lessons”, including Britten’s Simple Symphony, Smetana’s String Quartet “From My Life”, and a work by J-P Christopher Jackson, a composer and musicologist long associated with the Department of Music at the University of Lethbridge, entitled Bromptons, An English Rhapsody. This last work features bass baritone John Conlon, and is based on an unfinished pastoral romance written by Brian Tyson, a bittersweet memory of one man’s youth.

The Niagara Symphony and the Windsor Symphony, two of southern Ontario’s professional regional orchestras, are featuring talented members of their own communities on stage this weekend in a pair of imaginatively-programmed concerts, both taking place in their respective cities February 26 and 27.

HEY, NIAGARA, WE’VE GOT YOUR TALENT! features three vocalists, a pianist, five fiddlers and a guitarist – “ranging in age from 13 years to we won’t tell!”, in a program led by the Niagara Symphony’s associate conductor Laura Thomas. The guests are Brian Barber, piano; Amanda Botts, fiddle; Jonathon Dick, baritone; Brennan Doherty, fiddle; Connor Doherty, fiddle; Jocelyn Fralick, soprano; Tara Hart, vocalist and Warren Stirtzinger, guitar and the program includes a piano concerto by Leroy Anderson, a jazz favourite on guitar, a haunting country song, a famous comic duet from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and a toe-tapping “Fiddle Summit” finale that brings together five energetic Celtic fiddlers plus the full Symphony.

In Windsor, meanwhile, the WSO celebrates a decade with its music director (and now, music director designate of the Cincinnati Pops) John Morris Russell in a program entitled JMR’s Greatest Hits, featuring Windsor-area soloists. It’s a wildly eclectic crew that includes returning performers folk singer Marcel Beneteau; Chorale du Tricentenaire; the Windsor Barvinok Ukrainian Dancers; jazz great Shahida Nurulla; the Windsor Light Music Theatre; boxing star Jeannine Garside; the Nupur Jhankar Indian dancers; the Emerald Isle Dancers and the Cincinnati Studio Cloggers. As well, the WSO will introduce Windsor audiences to percussionist Sally Zori; bellydancer Laila Kaushik; writer Ted Shaw and singer Mark Morson. We welcome any insights into just what boxer Jeannine Garside will be doing!

Tonight and tomorrow, comedian Red Green (a.k.a. Steve Smith) makes his orchestral debut with Symphony Nova Scotia, performing on an instrument that he’ll invent and assemble right on stage. And what’s on the list of items he will require in order to perform?
A 16-foot articulating ladder;
An old, rusty, (and empty) 20-pound propane tank;
A bicycle;
A shipping trunk;
A hockey stick;
And, of course, rather a lot of duct tape.

“I’ve always had a great love of music,” says Steve/Red. “Comedy and music are closely related. There’s structure, there’s timing, there are intros, codas, and crescendos. Lots of things in common. I also enjoy the unexpected – and Red Green performing with the symphony has to be in that category.”

He’ll also perform with the Windsor Symphony on October 8 and 9, and you can learn about both sets of concerts
here: symphonynovascotia.ca and
here: windsorsymphony.com

We admit it: in the transition to our summer publication schedule, we missed listing some summer concerts offered by member orchestras and others. Our apologies to the Winnipeg Symphony (which presented a series of free concerts in Winnipeg and Kenora, June 25 to July 4 – culminating in a
performance for Her Majesty the Queen, with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Juno Award-winner Chic Gamine, Sierra Noble and Chantal Kreviazuk); the Windsor Symphony (which kicked off Summerfest Uptown at the Windsor Armouries on June 26 – and will be continuing with its “Quintets and Sunsets” series July 10 and 11); and the Niagara Symphony (which gave a Canada Day performance on – you guessed it – July 1).

Here’s what we can tell you about other upcoming events!

The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra presents the six-concert Symphony Under The Sky festival, September 3 – 6, at the Heritage Amphitheatre in Hawrelak Park. It’s a varied program, with (as the media release says) “everything from Bach to Billy Joel.” Guest conductor Bob Bernhardt will lead the orchestra in five of the six concerts, and soloists include violinist, Karen Gomyo the Knock School of Irish Dance, pianist Jim Witter, and the guns of the Royal Canadian Artillery. For more information, please visit here.

There’s been an encouraging update from the Victoria Symphony about their annual Symphony Splash event, scheduled for August 1, 2010. Absent a major title sponsor this year, the Victoria Symphony team set about to create another kind of giving opportunity for patrons interested in ensuring that Symphony Splash went ahead. In late June, the orchestra announced that its new fundraising initiative, titled Victoria Symphony Splash Band of Heroes, has already generated $50,000 in new support for the marquee event. In response to the loss of its title sponsor, the Victoria Symphony invited numerous companies and individuals to lend their support. The Victoria Symphony Splash Band of Heroes, asks for $1,000 contributions in exchange for specific recognition benefits. According to Mitchell Krieger, executive director of the Victoria Symphony, “It’s wonderful to see these Heroes stepping up to support Victoria Symphony Splash, especially as so many are new to the Symphony family. Making more connections to the community will not only keep Splash vibrant, it will help the Symphony’s long-term sustainability. We are nearly halfway to our goal of 100 Heroes, and we hope that more will step forward between now and August 1st.” Band of Heroes has proven to be a success as 45 businesses and individuals have already joined Band of Heroes, and more are signing up every week. Band of Heroes gives companies of all sizes and individuals the opportunity to support the event in a way not previously available. See here for more information.

For several weeks, we’ve been stalking the Windsor Symphony’s energetic music director, John Morris Russell, via Facebook, as he uses the orchestra’s One Community, One Symphony fan page to update the world on his early morning or late afternoon visits to a total of ten high school bands and choirs throughout the orchestra’s catchment area in Ontario’s Essex-Kent region.  (We even know how he takes his coffee.)  Maestro Russell has been rehearsing these groups in preparation for the 2010 edition of One Community, One Symphony – an event that brings together hundreds of musicians from across the county. Band students will perform together as a special “mass band” at the Windsor Armouries on the first half of the concert. The WSO will perform a suite from The Planets on the second half of the concert, and will be joined by choral students performing John Williams’ Duel of the Fates from Star Wars and the patriotic chorale I Vow To Thee My Country that Holst quoted in Jupiter. The event is free for all participating ensembles and a limited number of tickets will be available for sale as a fund-raiser for school music activities.

The concert takes place Saturday, April 10 at 1 and 3:30 p.m., at the historic Windsor Armouries.  For more information about this, you can visit the WSO website here.

Or check out the One Community, One Symphony fan page on Facebook, here.