Five conductors from across North America have been selected to participate in the TMC’s sixth annual Choral Conductors’ Symposium (Jan 26-30, 2016), led by conductor and artistic director Noel Edison. Conductors will work with Noel and with the Elora Festival Singers and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir on a variety of choral music for chamber and large-scale ensembles, including works by composers from Palestrina, Mendelssohn and Elgar to Britten, Pärt and Corlis.
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir launched a new Choral Composition Competition for emerging Canadian composers in August 2015. This competition called on unpublished Canadian composers to submit a work, not more than five minutes in length, for SATB or double choir, either a cappella or accompanied by piano or organ. The Choir received 28 submissions from composers across the country.
In December a jury of four leading choral musicians met to discuss the compositions and awarded the Debbie Fleming Prize for Choral Composition to Stuart Beatch of Regina, Saskatchewan for his work Psalm 100. Beatch receives the cash prize of $1000 and his work will be premiered at the TMC’s Choral Conductors’ Symposium free concert at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church on Saturday, January 30, 2016 (www.tmchoir.org/FreeConcert).
Christmas may not yet be white, but at least we’re starting the season right A New Ears review by Helen Androlia. It’s an unfortunate truth that when you work in advertising (as I do) that Christmas actually starts in July, as that’s really when you begin planning for the season. So, as December finally rolls...
Michael Vincent, Musical Toronto and The Toronto Star. Toronto boasts over 30 Messiah’s performed across the city, and perhaps with the exception of New York City, makes Toronto Messiah Central.
While there are a wide variety of offerings, The Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Tafelmusik remain the two standbys. Without being too competitive, it’s always fun to compare them.
John Gilks, operaramblings. Sir Andrew Davis is in town conducting his own orchestration of Handel’s Messiah. In the modern world this is probably as close as it gets to Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Huddersfield Choral Society. He conducts the TSO with brass and woodwinds that Handel never saw and lots of percussion including snare drum, sleigh bells, tambourines and marimba. He also has the not inconsiderable heft of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
Robert Harris, The Globe and Mail. Davis’s Messiah will be one of three quite different versions of the perennial favourite presented in Toronto next week, a bit shy of the 20 or so in the New York metropolitan area that the unfortunate junior critic for the New York Times is routinely assigned to review every season, but quite a bouquet nonetheless. The three Messiahs show the extreme versatility and adaptability of this amazing work, which has been pushed and pulled into innumerable, sometimes unrecognizable shapes over its two-and-a-half-century existence, but which manages to escape whole and healthy every time.
Michael Johnson, concertonet. This program by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was doubly unusual in that it presented a number of short choral works that rarely get the “big choir” treatment, plus the evening’s guest soloist was a pianist, in this case André Laplante, whose deeply thoughtful performance of six pieces helped fullfil the evening’s title German Romantics.
Noel Edison, now in his 19th season as TMC Artistic Director and Conductor, instigated the annual TMC Festival of Carols in the early years of his tenure. His goal has not wavered – to present a festive evening of celebration containing a wide variety of seasonal music from around the world, old and new, original compositions as well as arrangements.
TMC Artistic Director and Conductor Noel Edison has long loved the music of the German Romantics, believing that the heart is reached through the mind. He says, “Granted that some of this music was meant for the parlour rather than the concert hall, but it is all very melodic, well-constructed and was never denigrated by performance circumstances or location.” He believes that this rich, German Romantic choral repertoire should be performed by more of today’s choral ensembles.