RCM announces 2016/17 season, with Lang Lang, Daniil Trifonov, Deborah Voigt, Natalie Dessay, Gidon Kremer, Nicola Benedetti, Viktoria Mullova, The Dover Quartet, Charles Richard-Hamelin, Tony Yike Yang, Bramwell Tovey, The King’s Singers and more.
The Royal Conservatory has announced yesterday the full 2016-17 season line-up with new initiatives that show a maturing and dependable venue quickly becoming one of the most eclectic in the city.
RCM will celebrate Canada’s 150 birthday by presenting 97 concerts, 70 of which include Canadian talent.
The announcement includes a new free 75-minute Sunday concert series and the formation of a New Canadian Global Music Orchestra, which ties together Toronto’s diverse music community into a unified symphonic voice. The orchestra will write and rehearse a program of their own works for a special concert at Koerner Hall in June. Also new are pre-concert talks lead by RCM’s Rick Phillips and Mark Micklethwaite.
Launched two years ago, RCM will also expand their free live-streamed concert presence in a bid to build their growing online audience of international viewers.
“Since the opening of Koerner Hall, our mandate has been to showcase the great artists of the world alongside the incredible array of talent we have here at home,” Executive Director of Performing Arts Mervon Mehta said in a statement. “The season has expanded to include a new series of free Sunday Interludes, made possible by a generous music lover, and we offer our sincere thanks to all of our individual and corporate donors, our concert and series sponsors, our loyal subscribers who help us to continually expand the breadth and depth of music that we present, and every person who attends our concerts.”
The season opens with a sold out Gala on October 18 with the charismatic Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Other pianists include favourites Stewart Goodyear, Louis Lortie, Sir András Schiff, as well as Daniil Trifonov. Also returning to Koerner Hall are 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition medal winners Charles Richard-Hamelin and Tony Yike Yang, as well as Alexander Seredenko, the first Canadian to win the Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition in Japan.
The violin figures prominently this season with A-list soloists Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica performing Mussorgsky’s call card Pictures at an Exhibition. Superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti will bring The Four Seasons with the Venice Baroque Orchestra while Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova returns to lead an all-Bach program backed by Accademia Bizantina. Russian-British violinist Alina Ibragimova, winner of several international competitions, will also make her RCM debut.
Vocal season highlights feature appearances by sopranos Deborah Voigt, Natalie Dessay, The King’s Singers, the Kyiv Chamber Choir, and Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, recent winner of the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Finals.
The 21C Music Festival makes its fourth incarnation between May 25-29 2017, with a “decidedly Canadian flavour”. RCM will announce further details in February 2017.
For complete season details, visit: performance.rcmusic.ca.
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