North Wind Concerts will step outside the early chamber music box in their next event series, including a concert and improvisation workshop for musicians. Noted hurdy gurdy player Ben Grossman will lead the workshop, and perform as one of the featured musicians.
The concert, titled Pop-Up Pot-Pourri, takes place October 25, with the workshop on October 26.
Pop-Up Pot-Pourri: The Concert
The program features an eclectic mix of music performed in-the-round, where, as North Wind says, the 1590s meet the 1950s in haiku. The concert will feature:
- Works by William Byrd from Lady Nevell’s Book and other sources from the late 16th century;
- Canadian recorder quartets from the mid-20th century by Jean Papineau-Couture and George Fiala;
- Solos for the hurdy gurdy by Ligeti and Matthias Loibner;
- Improvisations on haiku, and more.
Ben Grossman will play the vielle à roue/hurdy gurdy, along with Alison Melville (flutes), Louise Hung (virginal), and recorder players Romina Abadi, Colin Savage and Yasuchika Suzuki.
The audience plays a role too — they’ll be selecting and reading the haiku as the musicians improvise.
The Musicians
Musician and sound artist Ben Grossman has performed on more than 100 recordings, in addition to soundtracks for film and television. He has composed music for theatre and dance, along with radio broadcasts and live performance, and his repertoire includes everything from early medieval music to experimental electronics. He plays percussion and electronic instruments along with the vielle à roue (hurdy gurdy), a contemporary electro-acoustic string instrument based on designs of the European middle ages.
Louise Hung grew up in Taiwan, where she was introduced to Western classical music when she heard Beethoven’s Für Elise playing through the speakers of garbage trucks. She earned a BMus in Piano Performance at the University of Victoria, and followed up with an MMus in Piano Performance and Pedagogy program at the University of Toronto, and another MMus in Harpsichord Performance. Louise performs regularly with a number of ensembles and organizations in Ontario.
Alison Melville is a native of Toronto, but she began playing the recorder at school in the UK. As a specialist in the recorder and historical flutes of various kinds, she has performed and toured across North America and Europe, to Iceland and Japan. She is a frequent performer with Tafelmusik, and a former Artistic Associate of the Toronto Consort.
Colin Savage, principal clarinetist with the Mississauga Symphony for over 30 years, is also a regular performer on the recorder and other historical instruments in a number of chamber and orchestral ensembles throughout Southern Ontario, including Tafelmusik, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Canadian Opera Company, and he has performed with Opera Atelier in their productions at the Royal Opera House at Versailles.
Yasuchika Suzuki, a native of Japan, is visiting the city to conduct electron microscope research at the University of Toronto. It was a club at university in Japan where he first started to play the recorded, and began to take lessons to study it seriously. He met Alison and others by chance while searching for other recorder enthusiasts to play with while he’s in the city.
The Workshop
Ben Grossman will lead a workshop for musicians who are new to free improvisation. It’s not a question of learning jazz, or playing over cover tunes and chord changes, but to explore your instruments and voices in a way that creates new sonic possibilities.
You’ll shake off old habits as you gain new understanding, and you can attend as a participant or simply to audit and observe.
- Find tickets and information for the October 25 concert at Heliconian Hall [HERE], and the October 26 workshop [HERE].
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