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Toronto classical music

Candlemas

Music for Candlemas: free score for you

You’ll know it as “Groundhog Day.” It’s a turning point in the year surrounded with Northern mythology, like the Celtic folk tale of the Blue Hag, or the more down-to-earth Canadian legend of the rodent who sees his shadow and returns to his lair for 40 days. The Church of St. Mary Magdalene celebrates Mary presenting her baby to Simeon in the temple. The service involves a beautiful procession with candles and lovely music like the Nunc Dimittis. It’s sort of the last remnant of the Christmas season, and you have to eat all your left over plum pudding by… Read More »Music for Candlemas: free score for you

blessing the door 2013

Adieu 2013

2013 was a step up from annus horribilis 2012. My annual New Year’s Eve party usually involves Haggis and pagan rituals: a dark stranger, coins, whisky and coal. This year Fr Tay Moss blessed my house with the works, holy water and all. During the infamous Toronto ice storm I lost power for two days. Thank goodness for Bruce Hill’s stubbornness! He insisted on installing a gas stove when we moved here in 1998, not for heating mind you, but for efficient cooking. Boiling up cinnamon spiced water filled the house with Christmas fragrance throughout the dark and chilly episode,… Read More »Adieu 2013

Recipe for collaboration

Up here at York University we are exploring undiscovered territory. In a truly daring and innovative experiment, all of the various departments in our Fine Arts Faculty are collaborating on a production of a theatre piece written three centuries ago – a work so important, so controversial, so wildly popular that it toppled the London theatre giants of the time, bringing the musical genius Georg Frederic Handel to his knees financially and artistically. The work is John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera and it is going to be a wild and wacky show. Our Beggar’s Opera production culminates in a week long… Read More »Recipe for collaboration

The blog days of summer

Out of the blue, while holidaying in the fabulous fresh air of friendly British Columbia, I received an email from England. Tomorrow I’ll be going down to a Toronto studio to be interviewed for a BBC 4 radio show about Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. That’s all because of this blog and my posts about that composer. So, I keep on blogging, even though here, on a weekend break with my parents, the Ontario summer is so hot and humid one can barely summon the strength to lift a cold beer. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to hearing a couple of my… Read More »The blog days of summer

Toronto concert scene

A friend asked me if the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was the only classical group performing a concert series in the GTA. They were surprised to learn about the rich underworld of strange and beautiful music thriving in every corner of our city. One of the chief joys of living in a noisy, diverse, odd smelling, crowded, untidy city is the abundance of imaginative and risk-taking musical activity practiced here, ranging from Palestrina to Poulenc, Schmelzer to Shostakovich, gamelan to Gregorian chant; lively concerts presented not by the five or six major groups, but by smaller organizations that just need a… Read More »Toronto concert scene