Media

July 1, 2018

Peter Oundjian’s triumphant finale to his fourteen-year tenure with Toronto Symphony!

2017-18 Season

David Richards, Toronto Concert Reviews. Not many people get a goodbye celebration at Roy Thomson Hall.  Such was the case last night for Peter Oundjian with the hall filled to the choir lofts with an adoring public including the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell (Lieutenant Governor of Ontario), the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian ended his remarkable fourteen years at the orchestra’s helm as the TSO closed out its 2017/18 season. The sustained standing ovation by the sold-out hall was just the beginning of the show of love and appreciation for the music he has given and for what he has done for the orchestra, the city and the province.

June 30, 2018

Oundjian Ode to Joy

2017-18 Season

Leslie Barcza, Barczablog. We heard Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  The piece is ideal for this sort of occasion, an instant happening. For three movements the orchestra plays while a crowd of brooding faces watch and listen from the stage. It was almost like three different symphonies, totally unlike one another, each in the presence of the 150 formally attired singers of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, waiting their turn. The dissonance that opens the last movement might almost sum up the shock we feel when oh my they’re standing up, perfectly synchronized. Something is going to happen!  Of course it won’t be a surprise when they also sing in perfect synchronization.

June 3, 2018

TMC announces 2018-19 Season and appointment of David Fallis as Interim Conductor

2018-19 Season

Acclaimed Toronto conductor David Fallis has been named as Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Interim Conductor and Artistic Advisor for the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons. “David brings to the TMC a life-long passion for choral music, incredible conducting experience, and a wide-ranging knowledge of choral repertoire and creative programming,” commented TMC Executive Director Cynthia Hawkins.  “We are thrilled to work under the leadership of such an accomplished musician over the next two seasons while the TMC carries out an international search for our new artistic director.”  

The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s 2018/19 season starts with performances with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the Fall, including Benjamin Britten’s compelling War Requiem in a concert that commemorates 100 years since the conclusion of the First World War. The TMC’s own concert season begins in early December with Festival of Carols, the Choir’s annual joyous welcome to the season.  Then in January, a Free Community Concert will focus on the music of great composers from Canada and the United States. In February the TMC, with orchestra, will perform two great 18th century choral-orchestral masterpieces by Handel and Haydn. The season concludes with Sacred Music for a Sacred Space in April with a program that brings together two rich choral traditions: the French subtlety of Messiaen, Poulenc and Martin, and the mystical traditions of Eastern Europe and Russia.

April 30, 2018

CANDIDE at TSO Gives You Permission to Laugh

2017-18 Season

Taylor Long, Broadway World.

Conductor Bramwell Tovey began the evening by saying, “in light of the way things are… I want to give you permission to laugh.” It didn’t take very long before the audience was in stitches with laughter. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra performed Leonard Bernstein’s CANDIDE last weekend, accompanied by some of the country’s greatest classical voices – Judith Forst and Tracy Dahl – and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. The evening was a spectacular display of fine music, drama, and comedy.

April 27, 2018

Candide with the Toronto Symphony: using our imaginations

2017-18 Season

Leslie Barcza, barczablog. This felt like a very authentic performance to me, Bramwell Tovey kicking the TSO, chorus & soloists along at a wonderful pace.  Tovey even got into the act, singing & dancing himself, but he was having a great time.

April 27, 2018

TSO’s Candide Pushes Bernstein’s Wordplay A Little Too Far

2017-18 Season

Arthur Kaptainis, Ludwig Van Toronto. While the score brims with good tunes and snappy rhythms, Candide’s travels never really acquire anything like dramatic momentum. Characters inexplicably return to life (as the duet “You Were Dead, You Know” explicitly acknowledges) and the unpleasant misadventures are essentially random.

April 23, 2018

Noel Edison resigns as artistic director of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir

2017-18 Season

The Board of Directors of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (TMC) has received and accepted the resignation of artistic director Noel Edison,

April 20, 2018

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Board reviewing results of investigation into complaints against Noel Edison

2017-18 Season

In February of this year, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (TMC) Board of Directors, along with the Board of Directors of the Elora Festival and The Elora Singers, retained an independent…

March 31, 2018

Sacred Music for a Sacred Space: a special concert for a special day!

2017-18 Season

David Richards, Toronto Concert Reviews. The lights dimmed at St. Paul’s Basilica bringing a hush over the capacity audience and suddenly heavenly a cappella sounds began wafting down from the balcony in the rear of the church. Since 2007, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir has made it a tradition to present a concert of music appropriate for Holy Week in one of the most beautiful churches in Toronto on one of the Christian church’s holiest days, Good Friday. As the choir began to sing, I squelched the temptation to look back; looking upward at the colourful ceiling paintings of the life of Paul was as far as I dared turn my head. I was transfixed in the moment. The words of Behold the Tabernacle of God reinforced the feeling that I was in a ‘sacred’ space.