This is a list of concerts we are attending, wishing we could attend, or thinking about attending between March 18 and 24, 2024. For more of what’s happening around Toronto, visit our calendar here.
University of Toronto Percussion Ensemble: SURF & TURF
Monday, Mar. 18, 7:30 p.m.
Walter Hall, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. Free.
U of T Percussion Ensemble presents a program of musical sophistication and human synchronicity. Featuring two brand new works by Fish Yu (b.1999) and Luke Blackmore (b.1999), along with Pascal le Boeuf’s ‘Movements’ (2019), John Cage’s First Construction in Metal (1939), and Aurél Holló’s Gamelan-bound / ‘beFORe JOHN2’ (2008), this is a must for contemporary music connoisseurs and curious minds alike. There is nothing quite like a percussion ensemble for the huge variety in instruments, configurations, and performer interactions- a visual and aural spectacle. Info here.
Canadian Opera Company: Dance Series: The Great Dream
Wednesday, Mar. 20, 12 p.m.
Richard Bernard Shaw Amphitheatre, Four Seasons for the Performing Arts. Free, tickets required.
Choreographer Angela Blumberg has been busy building new contemporary dance repertoire with intense collaborations across disciplines, including working directly with upcoming composers. Angela Blumberg Dance brings a new work, ‘The Great Dream’, with music of Dominic Clark: ‘… what if reality were more porous and permeable, allowing dreams and otherness to enter?’ Info here.
Royal Conservatory of Music: GGS Spring Opera: Dialogues des Carmélites
Wednesday, Mar. 20, 7:30 p.m., Friday Mar. 22, 7:30 p.m.
Koerner Hall. $25+
The tempestuous story of the French Revolution and the condemnation and beheading of the nuns as they refused to renounce their vocation was taken seriously by Poulenc, who faced a lifetime turmoil in connection with his own homosexuality against his deep faith in Catholicism. The Dialogues des Carmélites is an amazing work exploring the parallels in life, and the deep questions it brings: what is faith? Death? Sacrifice? What of redemption? Poulenc’s brilliant composition, full of visceral harmonic changes, the most tender melody, and vulgarity bordering insanity, promises much challenge, and GGS musicians under director Stephen Carr, and conductor Nicolas Ellis, bring this score to life. Info here.
Faculty of Music, University of Toronto: Laureates in Recital: Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song & Gwendolyn Williams Koldofsky Prize in Accompanying
Thursday, Mar. 21, 12 p.m.
Walter Hall, Faculty of Music, Free.
This year, Faculty of Music’s annual concert of winners of the Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song, and the Gwendolyn Williams Koldofsky Prize in Accompanying, will feature Nicole Percifield (mezzo), and Minira Najafzade (piano). Graduate of Yale Opera, Nicole has graced the stages of Minnesota Opera and Santa Fe Opera, and was the finalist at the Metropolitan Opera New England Regionals; she’ll be supported by Minira at the piano, presenting a program of Brahms, Duparc, Elgar, Handel and new folksong arrangements by Peter Tiefenbach. Info here.
RCM: Taylor Academy Concert Series: The Stars of Tomorrow
Thursday, Mar. 21, 7:30 p.m.
Mazzoleni Concert Hall, TELUS Centre. Free, tickets required.
The four winners of this year’s Taylor Academy Junior Division (age 8-13) Concerto Competition: Kevin Chen (Cello), Angela Yuan (violin), Connor Mahon (piano), and Andrew Bao (piano), present Baroque and Classical concerti on the intimate stage of Mazzoleni Hall. Info here.
Canadian Opera Company: Vocal/Instrumental Series: Butterfly Transformation
Friday, Mar. 22, 12 p.m.
Richard Bernard Shaw Amphitheatre, Four Seasons for the Performing Arts. Free, tickets required.
Veronica Johnny is a Cree/Dene multi-disciplinary, Two-Spirit, artist-entrepreneur and arts Educator. Veronica founded The Johnnys, a multi-award nominated band, and they will be focusing on the Butterfly Teaching of Cree Elder Joanne Dallaire, and transmutation from a Two-Spirit perspective, in this noon concert. This interactive performance will be followed by Q&A session. Info here.
Toronto Symphony Orchestra: Prokofiev’s Piano
Friday, Mar. 22, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Mar. 23, 8 p.m., Sunday Mar. 24, 3 p.m.
Roy Thomson Hall. $35+
Brilliant British pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is set to blaze the stage with Prokofiev’s ever-popular Piano Concerto No. 3 with TSO and guest conductor Ryan Bancroft. ‘Within Her Arms’, a string elegy on the death of her mother by Anna Clyne — one of the top ten most performed contemporary composers in the world, and the most performed living female British composer — forms quite an emotional arc into the last piece of the program, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, written on the cusp of the death of Stalin. Info here.
Tafelmusik: Staircases
Friday, Mar. 22, 8 p.m., Saturday, Mar. 23, 8 p.m., Sunday, Mar. 24, 3 p.m.
Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre. $26.50+
Tafelmusik celebrate their 45th anniversary season with this new creation by Alison Mackay exploring a very particular space: staircases. Staircases connect one space to another, and Alison’s programmed Lully, Purcell, Handel, Corelli, Fux, PIatti, Bach and Vivaldi, with two new compositions by Jonathan Woody, in this narrative program. Julia Wedman directs. Read our Preview here. Info here.
Guitar Society of Toronto: Andrea De Vitis
Saturday, Mar. 23, 7:30 p.m.
St. Andrew’s Church, 73 Simcoe St. $15 (advanced ticket)+
Guitar Society of Toronto presents Andrea De Vitis. Recipient of over 40 international competition prizes, and the Golden Guitar Award for the best up-and-coming guitarist at the 18th International Guitar Convention Pittaluga (2013), this D’Addario artist’s Saturday concert will surely impress the classical guitar fans of GTA. Info here.
Royal Conservatory of Music: Ema Nikolovska with Charles Richard-Hamelin
Sunday Mar. 24, 3 p.m.
Koerner Hall. $35+
Ema Nikolovska, alum of the Taylor Academy and the Glenn Gould School, returns to Royal Conservatory of Music as an international mezzo-soprano. Since leaving Toronto, she’s been flourishing in Europe, and we recently saw her at the Canadian Opera Company’s Cunning Little Vixen in the role of the Fox. Her current tour is split between the United States and Canada, and in the Canadian portion, Charles Richard-Hamelin will be at the piano. The two artists will weave a lovely narrative based on Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Medtner, Slonimsky, Margaret Bonds, and end with a Macedonian song. Info here.
Hart House Chorus: Considering Matthew Shepard
Sunday Mar. 24. 3 p.m.
Hart House, Great Hall, 7 Hart House Circle. Free.
Matthew Wayne Shepard was brutally murdered by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson on October 12, 1998. Matthew’s violent death became one of the most well-known anti-gay hate crimes, and it has inspired myriads of emotions ranging from anti-gay protest at his funeral, to LGBT activism and anti-hate crime efforts, including the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a landmarked United States federal Law, passed on October 22, 2009. Since its premiere in February 2016, Craig Hella Johnson’s three-part oratorio ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’, has been performed internationally, and has been made into a PBS feature documentary in 2018. It is difficult to accept that anti-LGBTQ+ hate is still strongly prevalent in our society, including the recent suicide of Nex Benedict, who died on Feb 8, a day after a fight at Owasso High School, Oklahoma, and this concert presents us with a chance to experience the sorrow, and to ask the ultimate question: Why? Info here.
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