If history is written by overdogs, then Tafelmusik should get pride of place in the retelling of Toronto’s art music and opera winners and losers of 2013. Sure, their concerts are consistently fine. But it’s what they’ve done with their home venue that’s the biggest good-news story of the year.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
2013 Winner: Venue
We talk a fine talk about the significant buildings that in our trust while we walk and text this earth, but it is a select few people who seem to be able to figure out how to creatively deal with the manifold burdens of history (including clanking radiators and squirrels in the eaves) while meeting the needs of the day.
Forced by financial necessity eight years ago to stay at Trinity-St Paul’s when the proposed rent at the new Telus Centre proved too high, Tafelmusik shifted gears and undertook a long process of dreaming, planning and fundraising to make the best of the old Methodist church on Bloor St W.*
Not even the most wide-eared optimists among Tafelmusik’s musicians, managers or patrons could have imagined the scope of the improvements.
Knowing how hard it might be to raise even a couple of million dollars in these straitened times, Tafelmusik has taken on the task of adapting Trinity-St Paul’s in phases. The one most important to a satisfying concert experience: fine sound and sightlines, and a reasonably comfortable place to park one’s fanny, are done.
Tafelmusik was lucky to be able to work with the congregation at Trinity-St Paul’s, who graciously allowed their sanctuary to be turned into what is unmistakeably an auditorium named after Jeanne Lamon, the artistic and music director who spent 30 years building a little-noticed group of fringey musical geeks into a notable international force in period performance.
What makes the Trinity-St Paul’s renovation even more significant is how it changes the lives of all the other performers who use the space every week. This is a brilliant example of one act of good creating wide ripples of benefit.
Shiny, golden behind-the-scenes hero medals go to acoustician Bob Essert and venue designer Ann Minors — the same amazing couple responsible for the fine sound at Koerner Hall and Fraser Elliott Hall (at the Four Seasons Centre). It’s one thing to design fine sound from scratch; it’s another to inexpensively and quickly adapt someone else’s structure.
2013 Loser: Venue
Pity the poor Glenn Gould Studio, the unintended, unwanted orphan of a dying CBC.
Less than a quarter-century old, the intimate, acoustically perfect concert space started off as the tiny-perfect jewel in the city’s concert crown. It has hosted dozens of great names as an ideal recording space. But it’s turned out to be nearly impossible to find someone who can program creatively or successfully in the space since the CBC abandoned the task.
The latest people to give up? The formidable Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, which thought it could turn the auditorium into the small venue Arthur Erickson had originally planned for where Roy Thomson Hall’s backstage parking lot sits.
The Glenn Gould Studio has been lobbed back into the lap of the CBC, which clearly has no idea what to do next. (And that doesn’t even begin to address concerns like replacing the resident concert-grand piano, which is well past its best-by date.)
2013 Winner: Classical
Speaking not of concerts but of larger issues, the big winner of 2013 in art music is the alternate concert format — in particular how it has seen the twinking light of night at the hands of Euphonia and Pocket Concerts.
Euphonia, founded by conductor Simon Capet, is a chamber orchestra that calls the dancefloor of Lula Lounge its home. Its musicians are pros. Their programming is, when all is said and done, classic classical. But the vibe is as open and informal as the friendliest of university pub jams.
To start these regular Monday-night concerts with no following and no money, fuelled by conviction, optimism and tireless persuasion, is not something too many sane people would try. Now, with a year’s perspective, it looks more like genius than madness.
The same sort of bold, let’s-do-it pluck is fuelling another group, Pocket Concerts, who are organising concerts in people’s homes. All you need is an open heart and warm hearth (or is it the other way around?). It’s brilliant — the Tupperware Party of classical music.
Shiny, golden behind-the-scenes hero medals go to the folks at Lula Lounge as well as all the ordinary music lovers of Toronto who have said, what the heck, let’s give this a try.
2013 Loser: Classical
It’s too easy to pick on Goliath, but the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is in a pretty weird spot at the close of 2013.
Let’s be clear: this orchestra is fantastic. I’ve been following them as a critic for 12 years now, and they have never sounded more consistently fine. I want to stand out on a limb and proudly proclaim to anyone who will listen that, with the right person on the podium, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra plays as well as the world’s best.
So what’s the problem? The organization has huge fixed costs and shrinking revenues. Its CEO is gone and its (perfectly fine) music director has, without it ever having been stated, begun the process of moving on. Budgets are being slashed. People were let go this year. Longstanding educational outreach programmes with the Toronto Board of Education were cut.
The incoming CEO needs to deal with this, including a recent musicians’ contract that increases rather than decreases the size of the orchestra at a time when smaller, more flexible concert formations are probably the way to go.
To add further bad news into the mix, the number of empty seats has been growing at Roy Thomson Hall — despite the wonderful musicmaking coming from the stage.
In other words, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has spent 2013 baking poisoned welcome cupcakes for whoever is brave or reckless enough to take over as administrative head.
2013 Winner: Opera
The big winner is the genre itself, bubbling up in performances by professionals and amateurs all around the city. Take away the Canadian Opera Company, and Toronto would still have opera on offer nearly every week of the season.
There are the brave newbies like Opera 5, Fawn Opera and Essential Opera as well as established groups like Voicebox/Opera in Concert, Opera by Request and Toronto Opera Repertoire. Each offers something for a slightly different audience looking for a different kind of experience.
The great thing is the field is growing, not shrinking, and the 20somethings are just as keen to be a part of it as veteran opera buffs.
Because opera is alive and well in Toronto, it was sad to see Queen of Puddings lower its curtain for the last time — but John Hess and Dáirine Ní Mheadhra went out winners, with the tour of an internationally loved creation (Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba — Wedding). If you’re going to go, leave with a bouquet of flowers in your hand.
2013 Loser: Opera
How ironic that, amidst all of this vitality, the art of creating big, mainstage opera continues to bypass Toronto because the Canadian Opera Company, the one organisation with the technical, people and financial wherewithal to spearhead the work, says it is too much of a burden.
A lot of ink has been spilled and a lot of pixels darkened over this issue, so I only want to add one sentence as my verdict from 2013:
The future is only a burden to those people who have no idea where they’re headed.
+++
*CLARIFICATION: After posting this, I received an email from Telus Centre programming head Mervon Mehta, who was concerned that this paragraph cast the Royal Conservatory of Music in a bad light or might make people think that there are still disagreements or tensions between the two organisations. That is not the case, as attested by Tafelmusik’s ongoing rental of Koerner Hall for select concerts every season.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
