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PERFORMANCE
MAGA Z I N E
jazz
maestro
Amazingly versatile
Don Thompson makes jaws drop
CLASSICAL BASS PLAYER
JOEL QUARRINGTON’S
IN A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN
CHOREOGRAPHER
DANNY GROSSMAN
PUTS UP HIS DUKES
WI NTE R 2005
PERFORMANCE
in this issue
in this issue...
GM
ad
10
4
16
4
32 FRONT AND CENTRE
A WALKING MIRACLE
The Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble
a launching pad for international stars
Jazz maestro Don Thompson’s versatility
makes even veteran jazz musicians’ jaws drop
38 A THEATRICAL LIFE
10 A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN
For Seana McKenna and Miles Potter,
working together is the easy part
Joel Quarrington just might be
the best bass player in the world
42 LET THE PARTY BEGIN
16 GOING FOR BAROQUE
Simplify the menu for your holiday soirée
by choosing a theme with a foreign accent
The Tafelmusik Orchestra and Choir ensure
everyone can enjoy their musical feast
47 MORE, PLEASE
22 FIRED UP
Niagara’s best bubblies are worth celebrating
as subs for the heavy hitters from France
Choreographer Danny Grossman fights
to find a way not to disappear
51 WHAT’S ON
28 LEAVING A LEGACY
Here’s a guide to great entertainment bets
in Toronto, London and New York City
Superlatives roll out for the stunning new
$100-million National Ballet School
28
32
38
22
PERFORMANCE
M AG A Z I N E
• •
•
•
EDITOR: Shelley Robertson
PHOTO EDITOR: Peter Robertson
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GRAPHIC ARTIST: Glenda Moniz
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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Vince Carlin, Geoff Chapman, Michael Crabb, Stewart Hoffman, D’Arcy Jenish, Stephen Knight, Kathleen Sloan-McIntosh
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER: Ken Kerr
PERFORMANCE INC.: PRESIDENT: Joe Marino
•
COO: Marty Tenenbaum
•
•
FINANCE: Gina Zicari
•
VICE PRESIDENT: Peter Cosentino
Performance Magazine is published quarterly by Performance Inc., 2800 Skymark Avenue, Suite 10A, Mississauga, Ontario, L4W 5A6.
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Cover: Don Thompson plays the vibraphone. Photo: Gary Taylor
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WINTER 2005
PAGE 1
PERFORMANCE
jazz
JAZZ MAESTRO DON THOMPSON’S VERSATILITY
MAKES EVEN VETERAN MUSICIANS’ JAWS DROP
a walking miracle
STORY BY STEWART HOFFMAN
AT HOME ON THE PIANO, VIBRAPHONE, DRUMS AND BASS, DON
THOMPSON SAYS PLAYING BASS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT. IT’S
“LIKE YOU’RE SOLOING ALL THE TIME. YOU’RE TRYING TO MAKE
THE BASS LINE AS MELODIC, CREATIVE AND PRETTY AS CAN BE.”
PAGE 4
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
•
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GARY TAYLOR
“Instruments, to a degree, dictate what you can play,” says Don Thompson, who’s sitting in a music room filled
with them. Along with his baby grand piano, there is a vibraphone, a set of drums and a
pair of double basses — a blond French one and a dark German one. “I hear a musical
sound, a melody, in my head, but as soon as I touch the bass, I realize the limitations of
the instrument. I can play stuff on the piano in my sleep that I can’t come close to on the
vibes, and the bass is so much harder than either one of them, that to play anything at all
on it is a miracle.”
Few can speak with greater authority on the challenges of playing musical instruments
than Don Thompson, a fixture on the Toronto club scene for the past 35 years.
He was a good enough drummer to play in the late guitarist Lenny Breau’s band in
the early 1970s, but his most extraordinary accomplishments are on bass, piano and
vibraphone. He could have had a stellar career playing any one of them.
To illustrate that point, you need look no further than a few recent performances, at
which he played bass at Toronto’s Montreal Bistro with pianist Junior Mance, bass and
piano at the Monterey Jazz Festival with the John Handy Quintet, vibraphone at the
Salzburg Jazz Festival — the lone Canadian featured in a sextet of stellar European
jazzmen — and vibraphone again at a concert titled Good Vibes, which showcased the
country’s best performers on that instrument.
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 5
jazz
a walking miracle
•••
GOOD ENOUGH ON THE PIANO AND
VIBRAPHONE, OPPOSITE, AS WELL
AS THE BASS, TO HAVE A STELLAR
CAREER PLAYING ANY ONE OF
THEM, DON THOMPSON ALSO
WRITES MUSIC AND TEACHES.
AT HUMBER COLLEGE, BESIDES
HIS COMPOSITION CLASS, HE
DIRECTS A “KILLER” ENSEMBLE.
PAGE 6
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
When Thompson moves effortlessly from one instrument to the other — a feat he
performed regularly on bass and piano for the five years he toured with pianist George
Shearing — even musicians’ jaws drop. Saxophonist Paul Desmond, best known for his
work with Dave Brubeck’s quartet, referred to Thompson as “a walking miracle.”
His recent CD, Ask Me Later, is a marvellous recording of Thompson originals on
which he performs on piano and vibraphone — producing the most opulent sound you’ll
ever hear on that instrument.
Not to suggest that performing feats is of any interest to him. Soft spoken and selfeffacing, Thompson frequently points out his perceived limitations — that his playing
“falls short in all kinds of areas,” and that working with Shearing was ”like being in school.”
For 65-year-old Thompson, the learning never stops and the music is all that counts.
His instruments provide an entry into the music from very different vantage points.
“Piano is a whole orchestra,” he says. “Here are the saxophones, this is a trombone section,
these are trumpets, these are woodwinds — in my mind I hear all the sounds when I’m
playing piano.
“With vibes, I can be a pretend horn player. I have a vibrato, and I can hold my notes.”
Playing bass gives him “an opportunity to create the bottom melody, a counterpoint
to the one on top. It’s like you’re soloing all the time. You’re trying to make the bass line
as melodic, creative and pretty as can be.”
Which is exactly what Thompson does in his duo with guitarist Reg Schwager.
At Mezzetta Café Restaurant on St. Clair Avenue West, an intimate venue where they’ve
performed frequently over the years, the small, after-dinner crowd is there to listen. The
musicians never discuss what they’ll play before stepping onto the bandstand; while
Thompson sometimes introduces a tune, more often than not one of them simply tosses
off a few introductory notes, leaving the other to slide his way in. Thompson occasionally
closes his eyes when he plays, but mostly he gazes straight ahead, focused on a horizon
line just above the heads at the back of the room. Indeed, if you were to zoom in on his
face, you might not think he was playing at all — but for the fact that his hands are flying
up and down the fingerboard spinning melodic solos that wouldn’t sound out of place
pouring out of a trumpet. “When he solos,” says drummer Terry Clarke, Thompson’s friend
and close musical partner for more than 40 years, “he’s continuously playing melodies.
There’s an overabundance of ideas.”
It seems Thompson has forever been spinning melodies. His older brother, who
played excellent classical piano, taught him little tunes “for as long as I can remember,”
he says. Thompson took some formal lessons, but got hooked on jazz in high school
listening to friends’ records. “I’d just put on a record and play along on the piano. I’d figure
out exactly what Oscar (Peterson) was playing — as best I could, at least — and then
just play along as though I was in the band with him. If the tempos weren’t too fast
I was okay.”
He learned every instrument he could get his hands on at school, then, after hearing
Terry Gibbs play vibraphone on a recording, ordered one from a store in Vancouver.
By the time Thompson got around to playing bass, it didn’t appear to be much of a
challenge. “I thought, ‘This is so easy. It’s almost like cheating. If all you have to do is play
four notes to the bar, I couldn’t possibly miss.’”
His move to Vancouver in 1960 provided lots of opportunities to hone his musical
skills. That’s also where he met Clarke, who credits Thompson with broadening his own
musical development. “Don is such a listening player,” he says. “He was the one who
taught me to start listening to the piano, to learn the relationship to all the parts. I became
a more musical player.”
When saxophonist John Handy, who had played with Thompson and Clarke at The
Cellar in Vancouver, invited them to join his band in San Francisco in 1965, “all of a sudden
we were in the big time,” says Thompson. “To be 24 years old and playing with one of the
WHEN THOMPSON
SOLOS, SAYS DRUMMER
TERRY CLARKE, “THERE’S
AN OVERABUNDANCE
OF IDEAS.”
•••
WINTER 2005
PAGE 7
jazz
a walking miracle
•••
DON THOMPSON IS
“SUCH A LISTENING
PLAYER,” SAYS DRUMMER TERRY
CLARKE, THOMPSON’S FRIEND AND
CLOSE MUSICAL PARTNER FOR MORE
“HE WAS THE
ONE WHO TAUGHT ME
TO START LISTENING TO
THE PIANO, TO LEARN
THE RELATIONSHIP OF
ALL THE PARTS.
I BECAME A MORE
MUSICAL PLAYER.”
THAN 40 YEARS.
PAGE 8
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
greatest musicians in the world was ridiculous.” Plus, Haight-Ashbury in the heyday of
protests, hippies and flower power was “jazz heaven. One had 24-hour jazz, six bands
playing four hours each, non-stop!”
Not to mention the fact that he was playing in one of the hottest jazz bands in the
country. Their live recording at the Monterey Jazz Festival quickly became a jazz classic.
In 1969, Thompson finally moved to Toronto. He became a fixture in the studios and
jazz clubs of the day, and a regular in the Boss Brass and the bands of Moe Koffman,
Sonny Greenwich and Lennie Breau. At such clubs as Queen Street West’s Bourbon
Street, which paired the biggest names in jazz with local rhythm sections, he performed with
the likes of saxophonists Lee Konitz and James Moody — and especially vibraphonist Milt
Jackson, an enormous influence on Thompson’s own vibraphone playing. “When he plays,”
says Thompson, “it’s like you’re in church. Every night was probably the most perfectly
beautiful music you ever heard.”
He met guitarist Jim Hall at a party thrown by fellow guitarist Ed Bickert. “We took
our instruments,” says Thompson, “and had a big (jam) session. It was like I’d been playing
with him for about 30 years. His harmony, his choice of tunes, his time feel, the spaces he
leaves — every aspect of his playing was absolutely perfect for me.” They remained a
band for the next seven or eight years. For Clarke, their music represented the essence
of jazz, “a three-way conversation” rather than bass and drum support for a star soloist.
The trio can still be heard on the luminous Jim Hall Live!, the 1975 recording engineered
by Thompson himself at Bourbon Street.
After five years with Shearing in the ’80s, Thompson decided to take on a variety of
endeavours that would keep him closer to the mid-town Toronto bungalow that he shares
with his wife of 39 years, Norma.
Writing is one of them. He’s working on arrangements for a 27-piece orchestra-plusjazz-band headed by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and singer Norma Winstone that will be
performing at the Glenn Gould Studio in March.
And teaching is another. At Humber College, in addition to teaching composition, he
directs a “killer” ensemble. But Thompson notes that while students never tire of talking
about scales, chords and practice routines, the deeper questions related to their art
remain unexplored. “They never ask, ‘Why is this music beautiful to me?’ I try to get across
that they have to decide what they like and what they don’t like and why they like it and
why they don’t and what they perceive to be beautiful. If a John Coltrane solo is really
beautiful, what makes it beautiful? I think this is the most important part, and it’s never
addressed. You can teach polyrhythms and metric modulations, but you can’t teach how
you play a beautiful melody.”
Maybe so, but listening to Thompson and Schwager play duets together, as they did
at Mezzetta, is about as close as you’ll get to attending a master class on the subject.
Schwager weaves intricate lines with a warm tone and gentle forcefulness, and
Thompson responds to every musical nuance. His rhythmic, walking bass both anchors
and propels the music forward, though sometimes, when he plays in the upper register,
you might imagine a pair of guitars is playing melodies in counterpoint. Their music is
thoughtful, subtle, inventive and eloquent — and it swings like crazy. As you step out into
the midnight air, its warmth lingers like a fine cognac.
And it just doesn’t get much more beautiful than that. P
•
EMI Music
PERFORMANCE
classical
JOEL QUARRINGTON JUST MIGHT BE
THE BEST BASS PLAYER IN THE WORLD
a leagueof his own
STORY BY STEWART HOFFMAN
BASSIST JOEL QUARRINGTON PRODUCES A SOUND
THAT’S “LIKE VELVET,” SAYS CELLIST ROLF GJELSTEN. “HE
HAS FANTASTIC ARTICULATION. AND HIS PLAYING HAS SO
MUCH RHYTHMIC IMPETUS.”
PAGE 10
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
•
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEN KERR/CLIXPIX
It’s a brilliant afternoon, and at Parry Sound’s Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts, bassist
Joel Quarrington is performing a Dvorák quintet as if his life depended on it. Which is nothing
unusual for Quarrington. That’s just the way he plays — absolutely focused, breathing along
with each phrase as he digs his bow deep down into the thick strings of his instrument. The
rich sound Quarrington produces provides a musical foundation that’s as solid as the hall’s
exposed stone and timber.
The Dvorák is being performed with the New Zealand String Quartet, a collaboration
forged by Festival Of The Sound director James Campbell. The quartet’s cellist, Rolf
Gjelsten, recalls that when Campbell first called him in Wellington, he asked: ‘‘How would
you like to play with the best bass player in the world?” There’s no indication that Gjelsten
feels he was misled.
“His sound is like velvet,” says the cellist. “He has fantastic articulation. And his playing
has so much rhythmic impetus. It feels like he is running the show. At the same time, you
feel you can be as flexible as possible. We played Dvorák with another bass player who
was fine. This is a different league.”
It’s a league, in this country at least, that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s principal
bassist occupies on his own. Ask Quarrington’s longtime friend Chas Elliott, another TSO
bassist, what Quarrington was like as a student, and he readily admits “he was leaps and
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 11
classical
a league of his own
•••
WITH HIS QUESTIONING MIND,
SINGULARITY OF PURPOSE AND
VIRTUOSO TECHNIQUE, JOEL
QUARRINGTON IS CONSIDERED AN
INNOVATOR ON HIS INSTRUMENT .
PAGE 12
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
bounds ahead of all of us. He had a level of virtuosity beyond where any of us were. Tom
(Monohan, the TSO’s former principal bass and Quarrington’s teacher) recognized it early
on. Joel was working on things I’ve never worked on.”
At 50 years old, Quarrington’s still working on things — apparently all the time. Walking
along the Parry Sound Harbour to grab a quick lunch before his afternoon rehearsal, he’s
on his cell phone, still talking bass, excited about a recent discovery.
“I’ve been doing something new when playing with a large piano,” he announces
enthusiastically into the phone, “leaving the lid open, but turning the piano around.”
Balancing the deep, resonant tones of the bass with those of a grand piano has always
been a problem, one traditionally solved by adjusting the height of the piano lid. But
Quarrington has never blindly followed tradition. “It has to do with the sound reflecting off
the piano lid,” he explains, then asks, utterly baffled: “Why has no one ever done this?”
Why, indeed. It’s this constant questioning that has led Quarrington along musical
paths never taken before — though you can be forgiven if at first you don’t recognize the
seriousness with which he takes his art. There’s the look of an overgrown boy about
Quarrington, something in his eyes that suggest he’s planning some sort of mischief. And
his sense of humour can be totally off the wall.
He plays the erhu, the traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument, but admits his playing
is “truly terrible” — which hasn’t dissuaded him from producing seven CDs with titles such
as Everybody Digs The Erhu, Erhu From Beyond The Galaxy and Country Erhu ’98.
He has a reputation as a prankster, though that might be a holdover from his youth.
Once, for example, during a session with the National Youth Orchestra, Quarrington hid
under his dormitory bed, determined to scare the living daylights out of his roommate. When
his victim returned to the room and shuffled over to within striking distance, Quarrington’s
hand darted out from under the bed and latched onto an ankle. His colleague instinctively
executed a leap worthy of an Olympic gold medal. It’s unclear just how long Quarrington
had lain in wait under the bed, maybe 10 minutes, maybe 20 — though Quarrington pegs
it at 45. What it comes down to is that Quarrington is serious and single-minded about
everything, even about being funny.
So it may not come as too much of a surprise that Quarrington, with his questioning
mind, singularity of purpose and virtuoso technique, is considered an innovator on his
instrument. Indeed, Britain’s Double Bassist magazine says he “expanded the boundaries
of bass playing.” That was back in 1998. In 2005, his stated goal is nothing short of
“revolutionizing” the art of bass playing.
The household in which Quarrington grew up seems to have been a breeding ground
for nonconformists, original thinkers — and funny people. He has two brothers. Paul is a
novelist and humourist, author of Whale Music, Galveston and King Leary, for which he
won the Stephen Leacock Humour Award. Tony is a prominent jazz guitarist and songwriter. Sister Christine is a research manager at the University Health Network.
They were the children of psychologists, who, Quarrington concedes, were a little offbeat. “They weren’t into housecleaning, for instance. They were into free thought, ridiculing
religion, stuff like that.” And they encouraged individualism. “They encouraged us to be
suspicious of anything that was popular.” Creativity was encouraged, and there was
always music in their north Toronto home. The brothers played together in bands. Joel
RTH
•••
classi cal
a league of his own
•••
PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE LOBBY OF
ROY THOMSON HALL, WHERE HE
PERFORMS WITH THE TORONTO
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, JOEL
QUARRINGTON IS THE MOST
IN-DEMAND BASSIST IN CANADA.
experimented with guitar, drums and piano. Tony played a mean banjo, as well as bass
guitar — until Joel picked up the instrument when he was about 10.
He discovered the double bass in Grade 7 at Don Mills Collegiate. Only four-and-a-half
feet tall, he was dwarfed by the instrument. Nevertheless, when the teacher demonstrated
it, “it made the skylight rattle.” That, along with the fact that it was “the least geeky of all the
string instruments,” hooked him.
“Once he started playing double bass,” says Paul, “we didn’t really play together anymore.
He was pretty single-minded from the word go.” Quarrington says he practised eight hours a
day in the summers, 16 if he missed a day.
He studied in Toronto with Tom Monohan and Peter Madgett, who was and remains a
member of the TSO’s bass section. But curiosity led him to Europe to study with the foremost bassists there, Ludwig Streicher in Vienna and Franco Petracchi in Rome. “Joel has
always been innovative,” says Chas Elliott. “He was the first student from here to study
with Streicher and Petracchi, and he came back with new ideas. He was always the one
to push the envelope. People don’t like that if they’re comfortable and set in their ways.
But to move forward, you have to change.”
In 1976, Quarrington won first prize in the CBC Talent Festival and took the top medal
in the Geneva International Bass Competition two years later. In 1979 he became principal
bassist of the Hamilton Philharmonic, and assumed that position with the TSO in 1991.
He is the most in-demand bassist in the country, performing as soloist with orchestras
and working with the finest chamber ensembles on the continent. A faculty member of
the Royal Conservatory of Music, he has also conducted master classes at such
renowned institutions as Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute and London’s Royal Academy of
Music. His second disc of the music of 19th-century bass virtuoso/composer Giovanni
Bottesini was recorded in August for the NAXOS label. Next April, Quarrington and the
TSO premiere a bass concerto by the distinguished American composer John Harbison
at the New Creations Festival in Toronto.
Still, as remarkable as his career as a performing artist is, the question remains: Where
is the revolution?
The answer lies in the fact that Quarrington, the day after receiving tenure with the
TSO, changed the tuning of his open bass strings from the way practically everyone tunes
a bass, E-A-D-G, to C-G-D-A — from intervals of fourths to intervals of fifths. This is
where the revolution comes in.
The bass itself, as well as bass-playing techniques, have been standardized for only a
short time, Quarrington explains. The problem, in a nutshell, was developing an instrument
that could best reach the low notes composers wanted to hear — generally speaking, cello
notes sounded an octave lower. Early technologies couldn’t produce bass strings — longer
and thicker than those of any other instrument — that sounded good. Made of thick gut,
they were so difficult to play that bassists wore gloves to avoid burn.
Performers experimented with different tuning systems, while instruments makers
came up with instruments with three, four, five and even six strings. Finally, the fourstringed instrument we see today, tuned in fourths, became the standard. The problem is,
cellos are tuned in fifths. And without getting into a dissertation on musical acoustics, that
disparity throws things out of whack.
Of course, remind Quarrington that he spoke of “revolutionizing bass playing” and his
response is one of mock astonishment. “I did?” he shoots back. “Was I drinking?” But he
immediately settles into an impassioned defence of his cause, and you realize he’s dead
serious.
Type the phrase “double bass tuning fifths” into your computer’s search engine and you’ll
find Quarrington’s name peppered throughout the first few pages. He’s writing a three-part
method book, a “massive tome” detailing technical concepts fully integrated with his tuning
system. “What it’s all about,” he says, “is clearer sound, and perfect intonation with the cellos.
An instrument tuned in fifths is more alive.”
But the movement is still in its infancy. And understandably so. After all, it takes
months, or longer, for a seasoned musician to make the switch. “After years of playing
notes here, here and here,” says Chas Elliott, “suddenly they’re not there anymore.” Think
touch-typing with the keyboard all jumbled up.
Not that Quarrington expects everyone to re-learn how to play bass. “But,” he insists,
“there’s no reason young players can’t learn this. I’m not going to win this battle in my lifetime, but it has to start somewhere.”
It all comes back to lessons learned long ago, about questioning the status quo, and
having the strength of your convictions. Most of what people believe to be true,
Quarrington points out, usually isn’t. “There’s some inaccuracy somewhere. So it makes
sense to make up your own mind about things, doesn’t it?”
And with Quarrington’s mind made up, you know he’ll never give up the battle, no matter
how long it takes. P
JOEL QUARRINGTON
“HAS ALWAYS BEEN
INNOVATIVE,” SAYS TSO BASSIST
CHAS ELLIOTT. HE WAS THE
FIRST STUDENT FROM
TORONTO” TO STUDY
WITH EUROPE’S
FOREMOST BASSISTS
“AND HE CAME BACK
WITH NEW IDEAS.
HE WAS ALWAYS
THE ONE TO PUSH
THE ENVELOPE.
PEOPLE DON’T LIKE
THAT IF THEY’RE
COMFORTABLE AND
SET IN THEIR WAYS.
BUT TO MOVE
FORWARD, YOU HAVE
TO CHANGE.”
•
PAGE 14
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
WINTER 2005
PAGE 15
PERFORMANCE
orchestra
THE TAFELMUSIK ORCHESTRA AND CHOIR ENSURE
EVERYONE CAN ENJOY THEIR MUSICAL FEAST
going for
baroque
STORY BY STEPHEN KNIGHT
JEANNE LAMON LEADS THE
TAFELMUSIK ORCHESTRA
IN ITS EFFORT TO REACH A WIDE
AUDIENCE WITH MUSIC FROM
THE BAROQUE PERIOD.
PAGE 16
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
Jeanne Lamon doesn’t buy the notion that baroque music is élitist. And for almost 25 years, she has been doing
her part to make it accessible to a wide audience. As music director of, and violinist/
conductor for, Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir, Lamon is
charged with what looks like the imposing job of making sure baroque music isn’t only
for discussion among professional musicians, tweedy academics and over-caffeinated,
late-night disc jockeys at obscure radio stations.
By any objective measure, Lamon and her 18 colleagues as well as choirmaster Ivars
Taurins and his group of heavenly voices are doing a whale of a job, despite plying their
trade — playing music created from 1600 to about 1830 on period instruments — in a
cultural landscape often dominated by celebrity “news” and rock videos.
“There’s nothing intrinsically élitist about it,” says Lamon, who joined Tafelmusik in
1981, two years after it was founded. “A lot of people just haven’t been introduced to it.
We make an effort to reach people.”
And how. With 75 recordings, multiple Juno awards, a Grammy nomination and
dozens of other awards of varying prestige levels under its belt, Tafelmusik has arguably
done more for baroque music than anyone since the long-dead composers themselves
created the music.
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 17
orchestra
going for baroque
CHOIRMASTER IVARS TAURINS LEADS A SINGALONG VERSION
OF MESSIAH. BELOW: VIOLINIST JEANNE LAMON, TAFELMUSIK’S
MUSIC DIRECTOR, SAYS ONE OF THE JOYS OF HER JOB “IS THAT
IT MEANS SO MUCH TO SO MANY PEOPLE.”
•••
FIGHTING BY EXAMPLE THE NOTION
THAT BAROQUE MUSIC IS ÉLITIST,
TAFELMUSIK ORCHESTRA
MEMBERS ARE LED BY MUSIC
DIRECTOR JEANNE LAMON, CENTRE,
FROM WITHIN THE ORCHESTRA.
PAGE 18
LEFT: DRESSED AS COMPOSER GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL,
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
“I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I wouldn’t hesitate to say they’re the most
successful baroque orchestra in Canada,” says Mike Duncan, musical director of
Classical 96.3 FM in Toronto.
Tafelmusik has become something of a brand in itself, what with its relentless
touring, prodigious recording and extensive outreach and education programs. The
group has come a long way from its beginnings at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church on
Bloor Street West in Toronto’s trendy, Bohemian Annex neighbourhood — yet it still
performs there several times a year. Trinity-St. Paul’s “is our spiritual home,” says Lamon.
“It has a great vibe.”
Part of the orchestra’s great vibe is the distinctly democratic approach the musicians
have with each other. Lamon says not using a conductor is a nice way to work and was
common during the baroque period. “It’s nice to break down the hierarchy of an orchestra,”
she says. “We’re a smaller group (than many of today’s monster-sized orchestras), so we
have more room for egalitarianism.”
Lamon says she’s always wanted to be a musician. She says her mother told the
story of Lamon as a tiny girl seeing — and hearing — legendary violinist Isaac Stern on TV
and going up to the TV and pointing at his image. Since then, Lamon has been working
on her craft. Early exposure, she contends, is the secret to success. “What you hear as
a child is what you want to hear again as an adult. It’s that simple.”
Tafelmusik’s work ethic and modesty have not gone unnoticed. “They haven’t gone
out and asked to have a giant hall built for themselves,” says Duncan. “They’re right there
where anyone can get to them.” It’s even more difficult to make the élitism case when
Tafelmusik’s home base is situated in the heart of the University of Toronto student
housing ghetto, where ethnic art shops, used CD stores and gritty hipster lounges are
nestled cheek-by-jowl with takeout sushi joints, dusty book stores and that venerable
monument to frat-boy frivolity and beer guzzling, the Brunswick House. Vienna this ain’t,
though Tafelmusik has played there, too.
“One of the joys of this job is that it means so much to so many people,” says Lamon.
“When someone you don’t know comes up and says, ‘I listen to you on the radio every
day,’ it’s pretty special.” For Tafelmusik, says Duncan, “it still seems to be about the music.
They haven’t sold out. It’s really cool.”
They may not have sold out, but Tafelmusik is certainly increasing its reach — and its
sales. In addition to its dozens of recordings for such labels as CBC Records and Sony
Classical, Tafelmusik also exports its expertise. For serious musicians, there’s the
Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, where, for $995, you’ll receive an intense, 14-day
residency in baroque-period performance. Tafelmusik is also the baroque orchestra-inresidence at the University of Toronto. And it recently signed a deal to have action
figures made of its members. Okay, the last one is a lie, but things are good at
Tafelmusik. They work hard, they love their jobs and they’re good at what they do. It’s not
easy trying to recreate music that, in some cases, is more than 400 years old.
“We play the music on the instrument it was written for,” says Lamon, “so we’ll play a
harpsichord instead of a piano because it hadn’t been invented yet. We’re trying to take
the music on its own terms, to have the instrument and the music wedded together.”
Tafelmusik — German for music prepared for a feast or banquet — began in 1979,
when founders Kenneth Solway and Susan Graves established the Toronto Chamber
Music Collective and performed a concert of orchestral music by Bach. The performers
were known as The Festival Baroque Orchestra and were later renamed Tafelmusik.
A tour of North America soon followed and then Europe, then Central and South
America, then Asia, then a residency at the Klang und Raum Festival in Irsee, Bavaria.
TAFELMUSIK HAS
MAINTAINED ITS
VISION AND ENERGY,
SAYS MIKE DUNCAN OF CLASSICAL 96.3 FM.
THERE’S A VIBRANCY
TO THEIR MUSIC AND
A WILLINGNESS “TO
COMMUNICATE HOW
FRESH THE MUSIC
CAN STILL BE.”
WINTER 2005
PAGE 19
orchestra
going for baroque
•••
TAFELMUSIK HASN’T
SOLD OUT, SAYS MIKE DUNCAN
OF CLASSICAL 96.3 FM. UNDER
THE LEADERSHIP OF
JEANNE LAMON, ABOVE,
AND IVARS TAURENS,
“IT STILL SEEMS TO BE
ABOUT THE MUSIC.”
The honorary degrees and other accolades just kept coming. Many tours, recordings,
classes and awards later, things are still hopping for the group.
“It’s an exciting time,” says Lamon. “We’re expanding our creative programming.”
Duncan says Tafelmusik has maintained its vision and energy. “There’s a vibrancy to
their music, and they have a willingness to communicate how fresh the music can still
be.” Duncan also notes that it’s no small feat for a bunch of Canadians to walk into the
most famous concert halls of Europe to play music created there by composers who are
nothing short of mythical figures in their homelands.
With the recent release of the three-CD baroque adventure The Quest For Arundo
Dorax as part of the new Tafelkids imprint, the group seems to have all its bases
covered. There are the old standbys — Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and
Pachelbel’s Canon In D — but Tafelmusik can also throw in new twists, such as 2004’s
Juno-winning Cleopatra, a collection of four arias accompanied by Canadian soprano
Isabel Bayrakdarian.
At a Tafelmusik performance, “you’re completely connected to the music and the
musicians,” says Judith John, vice-president of communications and marketing at Mount
Sinai Hospital and a long-time fan, who, along with her husband, wanted to try an alternative
to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. “It’s almost like you’re in someone’s living room. We
‘discovered’ period composers like (Pietro) Locatelli and (Jan Dismas) Zelenka, who are
marvellous, as well as a number of female composers from the time, who were quite
surprising and wonderful.”
Moving from instruments to voices, Taurins, who for 23 years was Tafelmusik’s
principal violist, now heads the chamber choir and believes voices complete the music.
“Musicians of the time were often told to imagine a text even if words were not present,”
says Taurins, who is active as a guest conductor with orchestras and choirs across
Canada. “The addition of text that adds life has always been intriguing to me.”
He says he has always been fascinated by baroque music. “Hearing the different
quality of sounds coming from the instruments totally blew me away,” says Taurins. “It
went right to the heart. It spoke to me immediately in a way I had never experienced.”
Playing period instruments and trying to remain true to the composer’s intentions is
also known as Historically Informed Performance and has caused a ruckus in certain
music circles, since the composers are long dead and it’s impossible to divine what their
intentions might have been. “We don’t know what the composer intended, but we are
attempting, by immersing ourselves in the ethos of the era, to figure out what it could
be,” he says.
No less a publication than the New York Times had this to say about Tafelmusik:
“Beyond its impeccable discipline and luminous textures, the group displays an expressive
sensibility that transcends the instruments, whether strung with gut or wire.”
It’s appropriate that Tafelmusik often plays in a church, Taurins says, since much of
the music of the time was commissioned by religious leaders, back when church and
state were much more closely aligned.
No matter what accolades come their way, the Tafelmusik orchestra and choir’s sonic
banquet will always sound truest in a musty old Toronto church, where musical salvation
is close at hand.
“It’s a musical feast,” says Lamon. “When you leave, you won’t be hungry.” P
•
PAGE 20
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
Sony
PERFORMANCE
dance
CHOREOGRAPHER DANNY GROSSMAN FIGHTS
TO FIND A WAY NOT TO DISAPPEAR
fired up
STORY BY MICHAEL CRABB
A MAN WHO MARCHES TO HIS OWN DRUMMER, CHOREOGRAPHER
DANNY GROSSMAN HAS NEVER HITCHED HIS ARTISTIC WAGON TO
PASSING FASHIONS. NOW HE PLANS TO REFASHION HIS COMPANY
AS AN INSTITUTION FOR THE PRESERVATION AND PROPAGATION OF
HIS CHOREOGRAPHY.
PAGE 22
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
At age 63, Danny Grossman is not ready to be tossed unceremoniously onto the garbage heap of forgotten
choreographers. In a long career, Grossman has never been one to hitch his artistic
wagon to passing fashions. He is willing to stand up for what he believes in, to buck
trends and make waves. He’s seen other choreographers slip silently into the grim night
of historic oblivion but Grossman is confident enough IN the value of his work that he’s
ready to fight for its survival. “I may only have a touch of genius,” says the bespectacled
Grossman, ponytail protruding from a hallmark woolen cap, “but I’ve really put it to use.”
This fall, Grossman threw down the gauntlet by announcing a plan to refashion the
performing company that bears his name as an institution for the preservation and
propagation of his choreography. When his troupe makes its regular annual appearance
at Toronto’s Premiere Dance Theatre January 25 to 28, it will mark the beginning of the end
of the Danny Grossman Dance Company as audiences have known it for the past 30 years.
It will be the start of what Grossman calls “an evolution” from a permanent company of
dancers focussed on production to an organization concerned with preservation.
Under the banner Greatest Hits, Volume 1, Grossman will present a varied selection
of his work spanning three decades. The performances will be videotaped and notated
for archival purposes so that by next summer, the first crop of fully documented Grossman
dances will become available for licensing worldwide to other performers and professional
dance training institutions.
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 23
d ance
fired up
•••
DANNY GROSSMAN’S WORK
HAS ALWAYS BEEN UNMISTAKABLY
HIS OWN, REFLECTING HIS
IDIOSYNCRATICALLY QUIRKY WAY
OF MOVING.
PAGE 24
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
If all goes according to plan — and a lot depends on financing — this will initiate a
multi-year performance cycle of Grossman classics, with each receiving the same
careful archival treatment to ensure its posterity. The Grossman company’s managing
director, Christina Loewen, says she’s already encouraged by the level of financial
support from individual donors. Connie Putterman, the company’s longtime board chair,
is confident the preservation initiative can be packaged in a way — such as the company’s recently launched Adopt A Dance campaign — that will attract funders.
The ballet world has long appreciated the benefits of retaining an active historic
repertoire while also fostering new work. Modern dance, which sought to break from the
ballet past and explore new approaches to dance, has generally favoured creation over
preservation. Only recently has it turned its mind to preserving modern dance classics.
Compared with such self-recording arts as painting and writing — even the performing
arts of music and drama — dance is notoriously fragile and evanescent, leaving few reliable
traces. Modern video recording technology and notational systems make the task easier,
but first there has to be an acknowledgement of need and commitment of resources.
Grossman’s hand may have been partially forced by a slow but lethally leeching
decline in his company’s public funding base, but now that he’s formulated a new way
forward, he’s fired up with a passion that may have far-reaching implications. Grossman’s
interests are more than personal. He is raising the shamefully neglected issue of how to
preserve Canada’s dance heritage. “We did not want to go down without anyone talking
about it,” says Grossman. “We are really excited about the message. In fact, I’m as
excited as hell about this.”
For the Grossman company’s diehard fans — and, like his long-serving dancers,
they’re a loyal bunch — the big question is: Why is this happening? Why is this company,
which was once so popular and well supported that it could offer its dancers the almost
unheard of luxury of 52-week contracts, now reduced to a shell of its former self? There
is no simple answer, but a little history puts things in context.
Danny Grossman burst on to Canada’s rapidly evolving modern dance scene in 1975,
when he unveiled Higher, a sexy duet to bluesy Ray Charles music at a York University
Dance Department concert. Higher was a kind of mating ritual in which Grossman and
partner Judy Hendin worked their way up, over and through a tall stepladder before
continuing their Kama Sutra-like antics on a pair of chairs. It was an instant hit and
launched Grossman’s choreographic career at a high level.
Grossman, born and raised in San Francisco, had arrived in Canada in 1973 following
a decade as a leading performer — under the stage name Danny Williams — with New
York’s celebrated Paul Taylor Dance Company. He was ready for a big change and, having
met the co-founders of Toronto Dance Theatre, accepted their invitation to perform with
the company while also teaching at York.
Grossman had no immediate plans to form a company, but Higher opened a creative
floodgate that saw astonishingly inventive new works pour rapidly from his fertile imagination.
He had soon assembled an informal troupe drawn from York students and fellow
TDT members and, by 1977, with a repertoire of nine works to his credit, he formally
incorporated the Danny Grossman Dance Company.
From the start, Grossman’s work was unmistakably his own, reflecting his idiosyncratically
quirky way of moving and a personal vision that saw dance not simply as an art but as a
MEMBERS OF THE DANNY GROSSMAN
DANCE COMPANY IN DIVINE AIR.
PHOTO: CYLLA VON TIEDEMANN
positive force for change in society. Standing in a long tradition of 20th-century modern
dance humanists, Grossman believed that dance should be part of a larger world. In contrast
to some of the arcane post-modernist navel gazing going on around him, Grossman —
with a fondness for classic jazz — also wanted his work to be entertaining and accessible,
even when its message was serious. And it often was.
Grossman has made dances that celebrate diversity — sexual, social and racial — and
condemn injustice, ecological neglect, the ills of capitalism and prejudice of all kinds.
National Spirit, an early hit from 1976, was a hilarious send-up of jingoistic patriotism
that got the company banned from Dade County, Florida. In 1981, Grossman played
havoc with conventional gender roles in Nobody’s Business. The same year he created
a searing anti-war piece, Endangered Species, which was later adapted for television
and performed by The National Ballet of Canada. In 1987, La Valse remarkably used
Ravel’s famous score to animate a dance about the cruel indifference of the rich to the
suffering poor.
Grossman’s fiery social conscience was a direct outcome of a heavily left-leaning
upbringing. Grossman’s parents were political activists. He grew up amidst anti-Vietnam
war protests. Grossman was seven when his lawyer father was beaten up in Jackson,
Mississippi, for defending a black man charged with raping a white woman.
Not all of Grossman’s dances have been heavily message-laden. He has always
delighted in the sheer visceral thrill of movement — witness his Scherzi and Magneto
Dynamo, both from 1985 — and he can be as light-hearted as he is serious. But
Grossman’s work is invariably grounded in humanity.
“DANNY’S ALWAYS
BEEN A PIONEER AND
ONCE A PIONEER,
ALWAYS A PIONEER,”
SAYS CAROL ANDERSON, FORMER
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF TORONTO’S
HE’S TRYING
TO FIND A WAY TO
PRESERVE HIS WORK.
“ALL POWER TO HIM.”
DANCEMAKERS.
•••
WINTER 2005
PAGE 25
PAGE 39
d ance
fired up
•••
“I MAY ONLY HAVE A
TOUCH OF GENIUS,”
SAYS DANNY GROSSMAN,
BUT I’VE REALLY PUT IT
TO USE.”
DANNY GROSSMAN’S TROUPE IN
LA VALSE, A GROSSMAN PIECE ABOUT
THE CRUEL INDIFFERENCE OF THE
RICH TO THE SUFFERING POOR.
PHOTO: CYLLA VON TIEDEMANN
PAGE 26
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
His success led to invitations to choreograph for outside companies, including a
notable National Ballet commission, the Charlie Parker drugs-and-bopper ballet Hot
House: Thriving On A Riff, which made it all the way to New York’s Metropolitan Opera
House.
Audiences responded enthusiastically to Grossman’s bold new choreographic voice,
as much as they delighted in his own virtuoso performances. He continued to appear
with his company well into his 50s, even though the onset of arthritis compelled Grossman
to relinquish such physically taxing solos as the poignant Curious Schools Of Theatrical
Dancing and the intensely spiritual Memento Mori.
In retrospect, it’s clear that Grossman’s timing was fortunate. As an art form, dance
was on a roll and the Canada Council for the Arts, with far fewer mouths to feed than
nowadays, was ready to nurture something as dynamically exciting as the Grossman
troupe.
Then, just as he seemed to be riding the crest of a wave, Grossman’s creativity faltered.
His output of new work dried to a trickle and his programs became heavily reliant on
revivals. It was also just at the moment when the public funding purse strings began to
tighten and the economy to sour.
Grossman, with a genuine concern for modern dance heritage and pragmatic understanding that he needed to vary his company’s repertoire, responded by reviving neglected
classics by other choreographers. He began with Canadians, some of whom had once
had companies of their own, such as Patricia Beatty, Paula Ross and Lawrence Gradus.
Later, he introduced masterworks by such notable Americans as Lester Horton, Charles
Weidman and Anna Sokolow.
While critics and audiences generally welcomed this development — there was no
other company with a commitment to modern dance heritage — the funding agencies,
guided by peer-assessment juries, initiated a sequence of grant reductions that have
now made it impossible for the Grossman company to continue as an active producing
organization.
Similar fates have befallen other once-buoyant Canadian troupes, most notably
Toronto’s Desrosiers Dance Theatre in 1999. Were it not for Grossman’s initiative in
reviving at least a sampling of works by the creative figures who inspired these companies,
their significant contributions would largely be forgotten. That’s why Grossman is now
focussed on eluding the same fate and hoping his personal fight for survival will have a
ripple effect that awakens Canadians to the need to preserve a rich dance heritage. As
Grossman points out, the creation of that heritage once entailed a big investment of
taxpayers’ dollars, so why not invest a little more to save the best of it?
Grossman is hoping that a two-day conference titled Endangered Dance, which
his company is convening January 19 and 20, will raise public awareness and create a
momentum for change.
Says Carol Anderson, former artistic director of Toronto’s Dancemakers when it was
an avowedly modern dance repertory troupe: “Danny’s always been a pioneer and once
a pioneer, always a pioneer. He’s finding a way not to disappear. He’s set about creating
a model for dance preservation — and all power to him.”
Says the ever-feisty Grossman: “I’m not ready to have people ask: ‘Whatever happened
to Danny Grossman?’ and get: ‘Oh, he went fishing.’” P
•
PERFORMANCE
dance
SUPERLATIVES ROLL OUT FOR THE STUNNING NEW
$100-MILLION NATIONAL BALLET SCHOOL
leaving a legacy
STORY BY D’ARCY JENISH
Slender students in tights and leotards – girls and boys, teens and pre-teens – are warming up for their
mid-morning dance class. They arch their backs and extend long, graceful limbs this way
and that until the instructor starts the lesson and the pianist begins to play. Then they are
off, performing pirouettes, jumps and arabesques in spacious, high-ceiling studios awash
with sunlight.
These students are members of the first class to study at the National Ballet School’s
stunning, new, $100-million facility on Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto. They’ve been
there since mid-September — honing their skills, pushing growing bodies to the limit and
pursuing dreams of careers as dancers — even as construction workers in hard hats and
steel-toed boots laboured against the clock to apply finishing touches before the grand
opening on November 30. These kids, who spend their days in the studio and the classroom, weren’t the slightest perturbed by the scaffolds, the exposed drywall, the wet paint
and the sounds of drills, hammers and saws.
Quite the contrary. They’re uniformly thrilled with their new surroundings. “I love the
building,” says 14-year-old Grade 9 student Robert Binet, a day student who lives in
Forest Hill. “It’s absolutely amazing.” Adds Philippa Leslie, 17, a Grade 12 student from
Ottawa: “It’s incredible. What I like is the openness.” The youngsters aren’t the only ones
rolling out the superlatives. The National Ballet School’s artistic director, Mavis Staines,
who studied at the school’s old facility on nearby Maitland Street back in the late 1960s
and early ’70s, is almost as giddy as her students.
“I’m still having out-of-body experiences,” says Staines. “Every morning when I come in
I pinch myself and think I’m going to wake up in Maitland Street with the same pressures
and challenges.”
PAGE 28
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 29
d ance
leaving a legacy
•••
NATIONAL BALLET SCHOOL
CO-FOUNDERS BETTY OLIPHANT,
LEFT, AND CELIA FRANCA, WHO
ALSO FOUNDED THE NATIONAL
BALLET OF CANADA, HAVE THEIR
NAMES SIDE BY SIDE AT THE
NEW BALLET SCHOOL COMPLEX —
DESPITE A FALLING OUT THAT
RESULTED IN THEIR NOT SPEAKING
FOR DECADES.
PAGE 30
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
Founded in 1959, the National Ballet School operated for 45 years in a ramshackle,
50,000-square-foot facility that managed to cram studios, classrooms, administrative
offices and students’ residences under one roof. The school’s program, which combines
élite dance training with high-quality academics, is widely recognized as among the best
in the world, Staines says. But the premises were like something out of a Dickens novel.
“We had managers working in converted closets,” she says. “Every time I went to teach
a class, I had three or four colleagues asking to use my office because they didn’t have
offices. It was like a lottery for space.”
Or purgatory, which is why the new facility seems heaven-sent. It occupies part of a
21/2-acre site, which for some 50 years was home to the headquarters of the CBC’s
English-language radio and television networks. It includes four connected buildings and
an arresting mix of old and new.
At the north end of the site is the red-brick, Victorian-era Betty Oliphant Theatre,
which is named for the co-founder of the school and has served as its performance
space since 1988. At the centre is the graceful, three-storey, yellow-brick, Georgian
structure called Northfield House, which Ontario’s first premier, Oliver Mowat, built as his
home in 1856 and which CBC employees later dubbed the Kremlin because that’s
where the network brass worked. At the south end is a four-storey, red-brick structure,
the former Havergal Ladies’ College, which was built in 1898 and has been named the
Margaret McCain Academic Centre after one of the major donors to the school.
Rising above the heritage buildings, and embracing all three, is the brand new, sevenstorey Celia Franca Centre, named for the 84-year-old woman who founded the National
Ballet of Canada in 1951 and served as artistic director until 1976. The centre is really the
heart of the school. From the street, it is an elegant structure of glass and clean, metal lines.
Inside, there’s a learning resource centre (translation: a library), a cafeteria, common rooms,
a meeting room for the student council and 12 dance studios stacked on its seven floors.
There are three medium-sized studios, eight large ones and an extra large space that
measures about 50 by 70 feet — roughly the same size as the stage at the Betty
Oliphant Theatre. Equally important, the studios have cushioned floors, so the dancers
aren’t landing on concrete, 20-foot ceilings and plenty of windows to give each of these
spaces a feeling of lightness and openness.
All told, the four buildings — new and old — contain 180,000 square feet, but the
numbers are only part of the story. “We’re experiencing what students at other dance
schools have experienced when they’ve been released from an unusually confined space,”
says Staines. “It’s like a release of energy.” Bob Sirman, the school’s administrative director,
adds: “We wanted the buildings to send a message about the philosophy and values of the
school and to advance our mission. We wanted it to be light and airy, to be both classical
and contemporary and to make a positive statement about training professional dancers.”
The National Ballet School occupies about half of the former CBC site. The remainder
of the land was sold to Context Development Inc., which built a condominium complex
called Radio City. It includes three-storey townhouses and towers of 25 and 30 storeys.
“What’s wonderful about the project is that it’s as much about city-building as it is about the
school,” says architect Bruce Kuwabara, whose firm Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg
Architects designed the Celia Franca Centre. “It is a mixed-use project that is going to
revitalize Jarvis Street and the surrounding neighbourhood.”
This exercise in urban renewal was a long time in the making. Architect Philip
Goldsmith, principal of Goldsmith Borgal & Company Ltd., who developed the master plan
for the site, has been involved since 1994. “It’s been a marathon,” says Goldsmith.
The National Ballet School began eyeing the CBC lands in the early 1990s, when
the radio and TV networks were preparing to move to the new Broadcast Centre on Front
Street West. The CBC had agreed to sell the land to the city for affordable housing, a plan
that died when Mike Harris’s Conservative government slashed budgets in the mid-1990s.
The CBC and Toronto became embroiled in a legal dispute because the city was unable
to fulfil its commitment to buy the lands, which were then valued at about $12 million. In
June 2000, the CBC and the city reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed
amount, allowing the broadcaster to sell part of the site to the ballet school for $1, while
the remainder went to Context Development for $5 million.
The school then had to launch a capital campaign to raise $100 million — a very
big challenge for an organization with an annual operating budget of $14 million.
Fortunately, its timing was right. The federal and provincial governments were providing
funding for several major cultural projects in the city, including expansions of the Art
Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, as well as construction of a new opera
house. In June 2002, the two governments kicked in $20 million each .
Meanwhile, the school had already assembled a 34-member campaign cabinet
chaired by Margaret McCain and her husband, Wallace, chairman of Maple Leaf Foods
Inc. The cabinet also includes former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, ballet school
grad and former National Ballet dancer Veronica Tennant, former bank presidents John
Cleghorn and Cedric Ritchie, and Ted Newell, a former chairman of DuPont Canada.
Construction began in June 2003 and 13 months later, the school announced two
major gifts. The McCains donated $5 million and an anonymous donor gave $15 million,
with the stipulation that the new, seven-storey studio building be named after Celia
Franca. “I cannot imagine a greater honour being bestowed on anyone, and to happen
in my own lifetime!” said Franca, who now lives in Ottawa. “I still can’t quite believe it.”
Long-time observers of the city’s cultural scene can’t help but note that Franca and
Oliphant, who died last year at age 85, now have their names side by side on a major
cultural institution even though they hadn’t spoken for at least two decades. In the late
1970s, they had a bitter falling out — “the most venomous feud in the cultural history of
Upper Canada,” according to one journalist — that began over who would succeed
Franca as artistic director of the National Ballet.
The campaign cabinet has now raised $43 million of the $60 million it needs to bring
in privately, thanks to thousands of smaller gifts from staff, alumni, companies and
ballet lovers. Fund-raising has gone so well that the school is proceeding with the final
phase of the project — the conversion of the old Maitland Street facility into an up-todate student residence. That piece is scheduled for completion in late 2007 and until
then, some students are bunking in a nearby hotel.
When the doors open on the new residence, Philip Goldsmith, Bob Sirman, Mavis
Staines and many others will be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief. “It’s consumed
12 years of my life,” says 59-year-old Sirman, who has spent his entire career as an
administrator with cultural organizations. “It’s seems extraordinary, but it’s an opportunity to leave a legacy.” P
•
MAVIS STAINES, THE NATIONAL BALLET
SCHOOL’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR,
IS ALMOST AS GIDDY AS HER
STUDENTS ABOUT THEIR SCHOOL’S
NEW HOME. “I’M STILL HAVING
OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES,”
SHE SAYS. “EVERY MORNING WHEN
I COME IN I PINCH MYSELF .”
PHOTO: KEN KERR/CLIXPIX
“I CAN’T IMAGINE A
GREATER HONOUR,”
84-YEAR-OLD CELIA FRANCA SAYS OF THE
NATIONAL BALLET SCHOOL’S NEW
SEVEN-STOREY STUDIO BUILDING BEING
NAMED AFTER HER.
“AND TO HAPPEN IN MY
LIFETIME! I STILL CAN’T
QUITE BELIEVE IT.”
WINTER 2005
PAGE 31
PERFORMANCE
opera
THE CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY’S ENSEMBLE
A LAUNCHING PAD FOR INTERNATIONAL STARS
ENSEMBLE STUDIO GRADUATES
GIDON SAKS AS BORIS AND
SHANNON MERCER AS XENIA IN
THE CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY’S
2002 PRODUCTION OF BORIS
GODUNOV.
PHOTO: MICHAEL COOPER
front
andcentre
STORY BY GEOFF CHAPMAN
The Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio is celebrating 25 years of success this year, the result of a
committed staff, expert instruction, enthusiastic support from COC general director
Richard Bradshaw — and the continuing mystery of how Canada continues to produce
so many great singers, many now major players on the international scene.
The current crop of 13 — first heard in public at last summer’s delightful Altamira
opera-by-the-lake concerts — will be heard this month in three sold-out performances
of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the University of Toronto’s MacMillan Theatre.
Tenor Lawrence Wiliford, who has a master’s degree from the University of Toronto
in music, sings Monostatos in The Magic Flute but in October was concentrating on
improving his Grimoaldi, the villain in the Handel opera Rodelinda, a performance he
never gave. Wiliford understudied Irish-Canadian tenor Michael Colvin, whose thrilling,
emotive singing captured the hearts of Hummingbird Centre audiences at the COC’s six
performances of Handel’s heroic opera.
This is Wiliford’s first year in the ensemble, and one of his jobs was to know the part
of Grimoaldi note for note. Things happen: Just ask Colvin. In Colvin’s first year with the
ensemble, he was understudying the European tenor scheduled to play Count Almaviva
in Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro. The tenor became ill and Colvin, only two months an
ensemble member, ended up singing the role for four of six Hummingbird performances.
The Ensemble Studio “is where it all started for me,” says Colvin. “They don’t coddle you.
You have to keep on top of things to prepare for a stressful career. You can’t appreciate
the business until you learn how to behave in rehearsals, how to treat colleagues, how
to learn. They work you hard and expect you to be good.”
PAGE 32
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 33
opera
front and centre
•••
ABOVE: COC ENSEMBLE STUDIO GRADUATES (COUNTERCLOCKWISE
FROM FRONT) ADRIANNE PIECZONKA, LIESEL FEDKENHJEUER,
ALLYSON MCHARDY, KRISZTINA SZABÓ AND BUFFY BAGGOTT
IN THE 2004 COC PRODUCTION OF DIE WALKÜRE.
PHOTO: GARY BEECHEY
RIGHT: ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN, ANOTHER ENSEMBLE GRADUATE,
IS CLEOPATRA IN THE COC’S 2002 PRODUCTION OF JULIUS CAESAR.
PHOTO: MICHAEL COOPER
PAGE 34
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
To prepare himself to audition for music presenters besides the COC, Wiliford one
day in October arrived at a coaching session in the Vinci Room at COC’s Front Street
East headquarters, ready to work on arias from Britten’s Albert Herring and Mozart’s
Cosi fan tutte in addition to Grimoaldi’s key aria from Rodelinda.
He was coached that day by Liz Upchurch, head of the COC ensemble program. The
atmosphere was intense, but she took the edge off by noting his clean, clear coloratura
before suggesting he needed to conserve energy and look for dynamic shifts. After
another impressive rendering by Wiliford, Upchurch declared the Rodelinda aria “ready
to go.” After more fine-tuned observations, she judged his Mozart aria “gorgeous.”
A knock at the door meant there was no time to work on the Britten. It was soprano
Michèle Bogdanowicz, a second-year ensemble member heard last season in Albert
Herring and The Handmaid’s Tale and this year in Carmen. She’s also in The Magic Flute
but came ready to work on a Rossini passage. Upchurch detailed crucial minutiae, such
as adjusting pressure, changing vowel emphasis, taking care with timing and keeping
edge out of the voice. Another knock. It was time for another ensemble newcomer,
Miriam Khalil.
Ensemble training is clearly hard work — and it’s been that way since former COC
general director Lotfi Mansouri began the program in 1980. In addition to singers, the
COC regularly includes apprentice directors, conductors and coaches — this season, for
example, pianist-vocal coach Susan Black is an ensemble member. With advanced
instruction, hands-on experience and career development opportunities, graduates lay
the foundation of a bright career.
The honour roll is eye-catching — tenor Ben Heppner (class of 1982 and ’83), soprano
Isabel Bayrakdarian (1997), baritone Gidon Saks (1983) and baritone John Fanning
(1983 and ’84), who will sing Gunther in January’s Gotterdammerung, the final part of
Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
More recent graduates of note include Colvin, who has maintained COC ties for eight
straight years and suggests with a chuckle that he’s becoming “the house tenor,” mezzos
Krisztina Szabó, Allyson McHardy and Andrea Ludwig, sopranos Jennie Such, Frédérique
Vézina, Shannon Mercer, tenor Roger Honeywell, bass Alain Coulombe and bass-baritone
Olivier Laquerre.
The first season roster, in 1980, sparkled with names familiar to music lovers today
— Theodore Baerg, Eleanor James, Mark Pedrotti, Roxolana Roslak and Guillermo SilvaMarin. In succeeding years, many other favourites were added, including John Avey,
Gaétan Laperrière, Kimberly Barber, Benoit Boutet, Joel Katz, Norine Burgess, Monica
Whicher, Sally Dibblee, Anita Krause, Nathalie Paulin, James Westman, Andrew Tees and
Liesel Fedkenheuer.
The current COC season features seven returning graduates — Honeywell,
Coulombe, Colvin, Fanning, Szabó, McHardy and tenor Peter Collins.
Upchurch, who has run the program for six years and maintains she has “the best job
in Canada,” says the ensemble receives as many as 500 applications a year. There’s no
pre-screening by way of CD or tape. The preferred age range is mid-20s to mid-30s, but
one notable exception was Toronto bass sensation Robert Gleadow, who joined as an
apprentice at age 17 and now is in the Vilars Young Artists Series program with The
Royal Opera at London’s Covent Garden.
Initial auditions are held in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver by Upchurch, music
administrator Sandra Gavinchuk and Philip Boswell, the artistic administrator in charge
of casting. The first round of Toronto auditions for the 2006-07 season is complete, with
Montreal, Vancouver and the final round to come before Christmas.
Candidates prepare five contrasting arias that vary in language and style. They choose
which aria to perform first, the jury picks the second and occasionally hears a third.
For the final round, about a dozen singers are chosen to perform for the jury and
director Bradshaw in Toronto. They rehearse with an ensemble staff musician, get 30
minutes with Upchurch and the same time with Bradshaw.
ABOVE: THE 2003 COC PRODUCTION
OF THE ITALIAN GIRL IN ALGIERS
FEATURED ENSEMBLE STUDIO
GRADS MICHAEL COLVIN, FAR LEFT,
SHANNON MERCER, SECOND FROM
LEFT, OLIVIER LAQUERRRE, REAR,
AND COLLEEN SKULL, SECOND
FROM RIGHT.
PHOTO: MICHAEL COOPER
RIGHT: LIZ UPCHURCH, HEAD
OF THE CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY
ENSEMBLE PROGRAM
•••
WINTER 2005
PAGE 35
opera
front and centre
•••
“CANADA DOESN’T
KNOW HOW
WONDERFUL ITS
ARTISTS ARE,”
SAYS LIZ UPCHURCH, HEAD OF THE
COC’S ENSEMBLE PROGRAM.
“THERE’S A WEALTH OF
TALENT BUT NOT AS
MANY OPPORTUNITIES
HERE AS IN EUROPE....
IT’S DIFFICULT TO KEEP
THEM HERE.”
“There’s no set number but last year provided a bumper crop of quality finalists, 19,
and that’s one reason (Bradshaw) decided to do The Magic Flute,“ which has a dozen
parts, says Upchurch.
“When we’re auditioning, we want to know the applicants as people as well as knowing
their vocal skills, dramatic quality, responsiveness and versatility. Opera’s a difficult business,
so you need the right type of artist. There’s lots of criticism — or, rather, we should say
‘input.’ We’re good at choosing, however, and we’re generally unanimous.
“We’re pleased, for example, with Luc Robert (class of 2002, ’03 and ’04). He was a
firefighter in Quebec from a music-free background, but he was ready after three years
with the studio. Now he’s having success at concerts in France and will be playing the
Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto in Victoria.”
During the COC’s 40-week season, says Upchurch, ensemble members, who must
belong to the actors’ union Equity, work six-day weeks — “and during productions it’s
actually a nine-day week.” (The COC norm is six six-performance productions a season.)
As well as acting classes, extensive coaching, language and movement sessions,
mainstage roles and the ensemble’s winter production, members take part in school
performances that last 45 minutes to an hour. Obviously, school audiences are future
COC audiences.
Composer Dean Burry had great success in 2001 with The Brothers Grimm, which
is still touring Ontario elementary schools. For this season, the COC commissioned
a new work from him, Isis And The Seven Scorpions, which has an Egyptian theme.
There’s also a travelling production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel And Gretel.
“Canada doesn’t know how wonderful its artists are,” says Upchurch. “There’s a
wealth of talent but not as many opportunities here as in Europe, just not enough work.
Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka has just returned to Canada but she’s spent most of her
career in the U.S. and Europe, which is the engine of opera. Baritone Peter McGillivray,
who was with the ensemble in 2003 and 2004, is now bound for Heidelberg Opera. It’s
difficult to keep them here.”
Upchurch says her first lecture to ensemble members teaches the newcomers how
to be colleagues. Although there’s constant pressure, a heavy first-year workload and
the ever-present possibility of humbling experiences, Upchurch says she believes the
ensemble — she calls it “the flagship of the company” — is the best way to bridge the
gap to the professional opera world.
Upchurch spent her first musical years as a pianist and violinist, attended London’s
Royal Academy of Music, won numerous competitions but was always drawn to working
with singers. Her conversion to opera came after she played piano for a Haydn opera at
Garsington in England at age 22, an experience she describes as a “revelation.”
In 1992 she came to Canada for a lieder course, while still working in the United
Kingdom with companies including the English National Opera, Glyndebourne and
Opera North. Then she was asked to play for a COC presentation of Beethoven’s Fidelio
and soon after took her present post.
As Bradshaw says in the current season souvenir program: “What we want to grow
into now is a company where there is a roster of singers who are at home here…. In the
end, I hope we’ll be able to offer them enough work that they can make their living at
home. The Ensemble is at the front and centre of this company.” P
•
PAGE 36 18
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
PERFORMANCE
couple
FOR SEANA MCKENNA AND MILES POTTER,
WORKING TOGETHER IS THE EASY PART
a theatricallife
STORY BY VINCE CARLIN
PHOTO: JOHN PAUL MOCZULSKI
The actor and the director are sitting in their small breakfast nook overlooking a resplendent garden. They
have a few minutes of quiet, it appears, before the actor is to leave for the theatre for a
long day — two shows, two quite different roles.
The director has some down time. He’s finished his work directing the actor in an
acclaimed Stratford Festival production, and he’s just about wrapped up his duties as
consulting artistic director for the Festival of Classics, a Shakespeare-based summer
theatre in Oakville.
Seana McKenna is talking about her characterization of Lady, in Tennessee Williams’
Orpheus Descending. Her intelligent eyes look into the middle distance as she tries to
summon up the building blocks of her commanding performance. At that moment, a
rambunctious seven-year-old, ignoring instructions not to intrude on the adults, barrels
through the kitchen saying, “I’m not here, I’m not here.”
McKenna and her director husband, Miles Potter, laugh and smile at their son, Cal, as
he finds the stray toy he was searching for underneath the table and he and his friends
tumble out of the kitchen and into the yard.
“I have to do my work in the rehearsal hall now,” McKenna says of her professional
life since the birth of Cal, whose full name is Callan McKenna Potter. “I can’t do what I
did when I was younger — angst about the play all night, get up late and go to rehearsals.”
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
WINTER 2005
MARRIED TO EACH OTHER AND TO THE THEATRE, SEANA MCKENNA AND
MILES POTTER LOVE WORKING TOGETHER — BOTH AS ACTORS OR WITH
HIM DIRECTING HER.
PAGE 38
•••
PAGE 39
couple
a theatrical life
•••
SEANA MCKENNA RELAXES
OUTSIDE THE HOME NEAR
STRATFORD SHE SHARES WITH
HER HUSBAND, MILES POTTER,
AND THEIR SON, CAL.
PHOTO: KEN KERR/CLIXPIX
PAGE 40
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
Her “work” this past season at Stratford has been spectacular: a wonderful doubles
act with Lucy Peacock in Noel Coward’s frothy Fallen Angels (directed by Brian Bedford)
and a searing portrait of the Williams heroine in Orpheus, directed by her husband. Both
productions received rave reviews.
Is working together difficult?
Potter jokes that McKenna makes sure he pays slavish attention to what she has to
say. In fact, Potter, one of Canada’s leading freelance directors, pays attention to actors,
whether he’s married to them or not. “I have enormous respect for actors in general,”
he says. “And I’m aware that people know we are married. So I’m very careful to treat
everyone the same.”
McKenna agrees: “I remember one play we did together with an actor who was difficult...
and I’d think, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I would just fire him.’ That’s just me. He’s much more
patient than I am, much more willing to keep at it with actors.” McKenna has endured the
rigours of some brilliant if brutal directors, including John Hirsh and Michael Langham.
She says Potter achieves the same effects without the brutality. “Miles is just a pussy cat,
no cruelty or indifference to actors’ feelings.”
In fact, in his usual sweater and wire-rimmed glasses, Potter looks like a Mr. Rogers
for grownups. At auditions he appears to be immensely grateful that the nervous actors
have brought him something to see.
Miles Potter knows about the actor’s life, since he started out as a performer after
moving to Canada from the United States in the late 1960s. He worked in theatres
across the country before shifting to directing. He has guided such groundbreaking
Canadian productions as The Farm Show and The Donnellys.
He first spotted McKenna 25 years ago, when they both found themselves in Blythe,
Ontario, for a summer festival of plays. He was directing, she was acting. “I remember
seeing this pathetic-looking girl with crutches, limping up the street, wearing these
orange shorts,” Potter recalls, “and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, she looks like a broken bird.’”
That “broken bird” was actually a fiercely intelligent young woman who gave up her
academic scholarship at the University of Toronto to move to Montreal to attend the
National Theatre School. When she graduated, she passed up an opportunity to bask in
the more protected environment of Stratford to work on Canadian plays at Blythe. “My
opening night I fell off the stage and needed eight stitches,” she recalls.
What did she see in Potter? Well, he seems to have used some Southern charm. “Oh,
the Tennessee Williams lover in (him) was immediately attractive.”
Since then, they’ve been together on and off for a quarter of a century — the “offs”
being those extended periods when he was directing at one end of the country and she
was acting at the other.
From time to time, they were able to contrive to appear on the same stage at the same
time. Potter recalls he was once running a theatre in Victoria when McKenna happened
to be hired by another theatre in Victoria. He used the occasion to cast her in Educating
Rita — opposite himself. He also experienced the full force of her acting skills. Potter
relates the story:
“I had all day to prepare; she was doing another show and only had a few hours. So
I was waiting for her to catch up. She was always in her script and I was always saying,
‘Come on.’ We come to our first preview; it’s a full house. I’m ready to go and I’m hoping
she remembers her lines. The door opens, she comes on the stage. And I remember
grabbing the desk and trying to stay in the play with her, not get blown out the back wall.
She was acting…she smelled the audience. I was a bit angry about that, but I got over
it quickly when I saw how good she was and all I had to do now was keep up.”
McKenna cackles as Potter recounts his story, looking quite satisfied that she had
turned the tables on her erstwhile director.
They appeared together as actors twice more and would love to do it again, but it would
seem that Potter’s directing skills will keep him behind the scenes for the foreseeable
future.
The two do have a home base — an aging cottage they bought 19 years ago in the
small village of Harrington, south of Stratford. “It was cheap…the last affordable house
in Ontario,” according to Potter. They thought they would stay there “for a year or two,”
but they didn’t move. Then, after their son was born, they talked of moving into Stratford,
but decided to stay amid the fields and farms, and out of the industry town. “When you’re
an actor in Stratford, it’s like being in the car business in Detroit,” says McKenna. Adds
Potter: “The interesting thing about living in Harrington (is) I can’t get a newspaper, there
are no reviews. I’ve got the slowest Internet connection in the world. So 90 per cent of
the time I am blessedly ignorant of what people are writing about us.”
With plenty of fields and streams for Cal to roam through and some solitude for their
times together, they decided to add onto the cottage and settle in. Their country neighbours
seem to have adapted well to them, always on hand to help mow or plow, particularly
when one of the pair is on the road. They now figure they’ve put more into the place than
it’s worth and they will never be able to sell it.
As matinee time approaches, McKenna gathers herself for the ride into Stratford to
do the show they had both worked on. “You know,” McKenna says, “someone asked me
if it was hard working together. I said, ‘Oh, no, it’s the living together that’s the hard part!’”
She bursts into her full-throated laugh, joined by Potter’s chuckle.
“Our relationship is by no means perfect,” she says. “In any long-term relationship, you
have to have compromise and sacrifice, give and take between two people.” Potter chimes
in: “But we’ve always admired people like (married actors) Gordon Pinsent and Charmion
King, their integrity and tenacity.” He pauses and looks out over the flowers blooming all
over the lovingly tended yard: “Of course, we could look back and say, ‘By God, we had
integrity and tenacity.’ But what we really had was inertia.” They both laugh.
After a summer spent mostly together, Potter directing Orpheus Descending and
running the Festival of Classics in Oakville and McKenna doing her double act at
Stratford, the theatrical life split them up again. He went to Halifax to work on Macbeth
at Dalhousie University before returning to Toronto, where he’s working on a production
of School For Scandal at George Brown College. Now that Potter’s back in Southern
Ontario, McKenna is in Vancouver to appear in Vincent In Brixton at The Vancouver
Playhouse. She’ll return to Stratford in the spring for another Tennessee Williams play,
The Glass Menagerie.
But she won’t have to rely on the “kindness of strangers.” Miles Potter will be directing.
Since they’ve criss-crossed the country over the last 25 years, more often alone than
together, it would be hard to ascribe their relationship to inertia. A commitment to
theatre and each other speaks more of integrity — and tenacity. P
•
SEANA MCKENNA STARS NEXT
SEASON AT STRATFORD IN
THE GLASS MENAGERIE, WHICH IS
TO BE DIRECTED BY HER HUSBAND,
MILES POTTER.
WHEN HE AND HIS
ACTRESS WIFE WORK
TOGETHER, SAYS DIRECTOR
MILES POTTER,“I’M AWARE
THAT PEOPLE KNOW
WE ARE MARRIED.
SO I’M VERY CAREFUL
TO TREAT EVERYONE
THE SAME.”
WINTER 2005
PAGE 41
PERFORMANCE
Food
SIMPLIFY THE MENU FOR YOUR HOLIDAY SOIRÉE
BY CHOOSING A THEME WITH A FOREIGN ACCENT
let the
partybegin
STORY BY KATHLEEN SLOAN-McINTOSH
ESCALIVADA TOSTADOS
PAGE 42
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
•
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS FREELAND
The late American culinary icon Julia Child once declared that "life is too short to stuff a mushroom," a phrase
that will undoubtedly ring true with special resonance as we plan our holiday soirées. For
many of us, those stuffed caps have become one of the usual party pieces about which
we feel a little weary -- not to mention leery. They keep appearing at parties, even as we
yearn for something better, something more colourful and appetizing, surprising and
thoroughly memorable.
Organize your event around a culinary theme with a foreign accent — Italian, Spanish,
Chinese, East Indian, Caribbean, French or Moroccan, for instance — and it can effortlessly
influence your choices in food, drink and decor. Rely a bit on some store-bought offerings,
too, where it’s practical to do so. Mini tart quiches, as part of a Provence-inspired spread,
are a good example, because they are fiddly to make and the bought ones taste every bit
as good as if you had made them yourself.
A dim sum party might include any one of a dozen different taste treats, some of
which you can easily obtain from Chinese or Asian supermarket freezers. Add a few
appetizers of your own — fresh oysters with a little finely chopped daikon radish and
grilled shrimp with a soy-and-ginger-based dipping sauce, for instance, to round things
out and add a personal touch.
Italophiles have much to choose from, everything from crostini with different toppings
— white bean with sage, chicken liver paté, roasted red pepper purée, roasted garlic or
olivada — to any number of other antipasti. Try baked polenta squares topped with wild
mushrooms, make mini meatballs of veal, pork and lemon zest, or fresh herb and cheese
frittata cut into squares and threaded onto skewers with a grape or cherry tomato. Store-
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 43
Food
let the party begin
•••
bought flatbreads can be sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan cheese and baked
or include warmed focaccia topped with good prosciutto and drizzled with extra virgin
olive oil.
Food and wine from Spain are very popular right now, making a Spanish-themed
tapas party a delightful idea. Include chunks of spicy chorizo in red wine; toasted, spiced
almonds; assorted olives, pieces of manchego cheese in good Spanish olive oil and small
pieces of a hearty, delicious omelette — called a tortilla in Spain — made from cheese,
potato and sausage.
Start exploring the offerings of your own favourite culinary region — or a combination thereof — and let the party begin. Here are three ideas, two from Spain and one
from Ireland, to get you started.
TETILLA AND POTATO TORTILLA WITH CHORIZO
Tetilla is a cheese from Galicia in northwest Spain with an ultrasmooth
texture and a mild, buttery flavour. As its name suggests, the cheese’s
shape is not unlike that of a woman's breast — perhaps a nod to the
fact that it is traditionally made by the women in a fishing village whose
menfolk are away at sea. Tetilla makes this Spanish potato and sausage
omelettte spectacular.
Serve it in small pieces, tapas-style, just warm or at room temperature.
Don't be alarmed by the quantity of olive oil used in this dish; it is
quite traditional and once you have tasted the results you'll understand
why potato tortilla is so revered all over Spain. A true tortilla is flipped
once after one side is cooked, to cook the other side. However, because
of the cheese, I’ve opted to finish the cooking under a hot broiler.
Offer this dish to your guests with a fresh, fruity red wine from
Valdeorras D.O., the easternmost wine region of Galicia.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
3/4 cup (175 mL) approx. olive oil, preferably Spanish
8 oz (225 g) chorizo sausages, thinly sliced
1 lb (500 g) waxy potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
6 eggs
Pinch of saffron combined with 1 tbsp (15 mL) boiling water
8 oz (225 g) Tetilla, finely diced
• Heat 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of the olive oil in
• Return 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of the oil to
a 9-inch (23-centimetre) heavy-based skillet.
Add the chorizo and cook over medium heat
for about five minutes, until browned. Remove
from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain
on paper towels. Let cool.
• Add the remaining oil to the skillet and
place over medium heat. When the oil is
heated (not smoking), add the potato and
onion slices, alternately, and cook for about
10 minutes, turning the potatoes and onions
over now and then. When the potatoes are
tender, pour the contents of the pan into
a colander set over a bowl.
the pan (reserve the remaining oil to use for
frying potatoes or other vegetables). Cool
the potato and onion mixture.
• Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl along
with the saffron mixture. Season with salt
and pepper and whisk together. Add the
cooled potato mixture and chorizo slices
and stir gently to make sure everything
is well coated with egg. Let stand at room
temperature for five minutes.
• Preheat broiler to high.
PAGE 44
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
• Heat the skillet containing the
2
tablespoons (30 mL) of oil over high heat.
When the pan is hot (just before it smokes),
add the egg mixture. Reduce the heat to
medium and cook the egg mixture until it is
beginning to set around the edges. Reduce
the heat again and continue to cook until
it is almost set and brown on the bottom.
• Sprinkle the diced cheese evenly over the
surface of the tortilla, then slip it under the
broiler to melt the cheese and cook the
surface of the tortilla, about three minutes.
• Let the tortilla sit for about 15 minutes
before transferring it to a plate. Serve cut
into thin wedges or squares.
ESCALIVADA TOSTADAS
When they roast vegetables like this in Spain they
call it escalivada, a lovely name for this colourful
mixture of eggplant, peppers, onions and zucchini
that can be roasted in the oven or cooked on a grill.
Use good extra virgin olive oil for this dish. You can
vary this by presenting it in a shallow ceramic bowl
as part of an antipasto spread, tossing it with pasta
or serving it over rice.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1 small eggplant, trimmed
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 medium red onion, peeled, quartered
1 zucchini, trimmed, sliced lengthwise
Juice of 1 small lemon
1/4 cup (60 mL) extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp (30 mL) finely chopped parsley
1 tbsp (15 mL) finely chopped thyme
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 baguette, sliced into 1/2-inch (1-cm)
Additional extra virgin olive oil for brushing
• Preheat oven to 500°F (260°C).
• Place the eggplant, peppers, onion and zucchini in a
shallow roasting pan. Drizzle over about 2 tablespoons
(30 mL) of the olive oil and toss together. Roast in the
hot oven for about 20 minutes, turning vegetables
over a couple of times throughout the roasting time.
Remove the pan from the oven and let the vegetables
cool slightly.
• Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (180°C).
• When cool enough to handle, skin the peppers,
removing the seeds and core. Peel the eggplant, slice
in half and, using a spoon, remove the seeds. Roughly
cut the eggplant, peppers, onion and zucchini and
transfer to a bowl.
• Add the remaining olive oil, lemon juice,
parsley, thyme, salt and pepper and toss together. Let
sit for a few minutes at room temperature to allow
flavours to develop.
• Place the slices of bread on a baking sheet. Lightly
toast in the oven for about five minutes in total,
turning once. Remove from the oven and lightly brush
with a bit of olive oil.
• Spoon a little of the vegetable mixture on each
P Spanish white made
toast and serve. Offer a chilled
from the Albariño grape.
CHÈVRE IN PROSCIUTTO-WRAPPED FIGS
WITH IRISH WILDFLOWER HONEY DRIZZLE
This recipe is inspired by one offered at Shanks,
arguably the finest restaurant experience in Ireland.
If you would like to serve this as a first course,
toss some arugula with a simple vinaigrette as
a foundation for the stuffed figs once they are
ready to serve.
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) warmed wildflower honey
(any fragrant floral honey may be used)
• 8 large, ripe, purple-black mission figs
• 8 oz (250 g) chèvre
• Extra virgin olive oil for brushing
• 8 slices prosciutto
• Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C).
• Slice stems off the figs and cut each fig threequarters of the way through the centre lengthwise.
Drizzle a little of the honey into the centre of each
fig, then place a piece of the cheese in the cavity.
Brush each fig with a bit of olive oil.
• Using tongs, place the figs on a parchment-covered
baking sheet and transfer to the oven for about six
minutes or until the cheese is warmed through and
beginning to colour. Remove from the oven.
• To serve: Place two figs on a serving plate, loosely
arrange the prosciutto around each and drizzle the
figs with the warmed honey.
Recipes from New Celtic Cooking
by Kathleen Sloan-McIntosh & Ted McIntosh
(McArthur & Company)
•
WINTER 2005
PAGE 45
drink
PERFORMANCE
NIAGARA’S BEST BUBBLIES ARE WORTH CELEBRATING
AS SUBS FOR THE HEAVY HITTERS OF FRANCE
CFMX
more, please
STORY BY KATHLEEN SLOAN-MCINTOSH
Fans of Absolutely Fabulous, the British television series that chronicles stuck-in-the-’60s Edina and Patsy, will
remember the refrain that’s heard at least once during every episode: “Open another
bottle of Bollie, dahling.” Bollinger is the champagne of choice for these two ladies, who
lunch, drink, shop, drink and drink some more.
While champagne runs like a river throughout their day-to-day existence, most of us
relative plebeians, unsurprisingly, continue to reserve our intake of big-tag bubblies for
celebratory events and holiday bashes for one very good reason — the expense.
Because, beyond the magic and glam, the down-to-earth making of the product called
champagne involves a great deal of costly labour.
Not for nothing are the French so protective of the name champagne; they have
invested much skill, finesse, time and money in maintaining the quality and reputation of
this unique white wine, which can be made using only Pinot Noir, Chardonnay or Pinot
Meunier grapes.
All of these are high-quality grapes and none is inexpensive to grow, factors not
unknown to the producers of quality sparkling wine produced right here in Ontario.
While some of the bubbly produced in this province may be less than memorable,
there exists a select group of sparkling wines that — while never an out-and-out replacement — are more than a viable alternative to the heavy hitters of France.
Why are some Ontario sparkling wines priced at around $10 a bottle and others at
$25 or more? As Daniel Speck of Niagara’s Henry of Pelham Family Estate Winery
points out, it all comes down to quality, in the grapes and in production.
PAGE 46
PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
WINTER 2005
•••
PAGE 47
drink
more, please
•••
SPARKLING PERFORMERS:
Henry of Pelham
Non-vintage Cuvée Catharine Brut
Henry of Pelham
Non-vintage Cuvée Catharine Rosé Brut
Thirteenth Street
2001 G.H. Funk Vineyard Premium Cuvée
Hillebrand
Trius Label, Methode Classique Brut
Peller Estates Winery
Sparkling Cristalle
Vineland Estates Winery
Cuvée Close Sparkling
Château des Charmes Estate Winery
Methode Tradionelle Brut Sparkling
“The best bubbly uses the three classic grape varieties — Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and,
to a lesser degree, Pinot Meunier, all top quality and expensive to grow,” he says. “Lesser
wines use lesser-quality grapes.”
The grapes are usually grown on a unique trellising system and harvested under
different conditions than table wine grapes, says Speck.
“Harvest time is very important,” he says. “It’s easy to let the grapes over-ripen, which
is often the case in lower-priced sparkling wine. The grapes for the best bubblies are
hand-harvested so as not to bruise the skins. Machine-harvested grapes have bruised
skins and, like a bruised apple, this can lead to oxidative flavours, not a pleasant thing in
sparkling wine.”
For high-quality sparkling wine, only the free-run juice — that is, the best portion from
the meatiest part of the grape, not the juice close to the skins or seeds — is used, Speck
says. This means that the tonne of grapes that would give you 750 litres for lower-grade
sparkling (or still) wine yields only 400 litres of free-run juice for sparkling wine.
“Adding to this cost is the labour,” Speck says. “The best sparkling grapes are even
hand-placed into the presses, then, after a base wine is made, each bottle is filled and
then refermented to trap the carbon dioxide bubbles inside. These wines are typically
labelled Traditional Method or Methode Champenoise, as opposed to those that are tank
fermented (Cuvée Close) or those that are artificially carbonated.”
Speck says that bottle fermenting the best wines means that each bottle is a unique
batch of wine — really, the ultimate in small batch boutique wine-making. “The challenge
to the wine maker is to maintain consistency between bottles when each one is made
separately.”
In a nutshell, then, the best Ontario sparkling wines require the very best quality
grapes, a great deal of skilled attention to detail, excessive hand labour and the time
required to allow the wines to mature for complexity, the final factor that often makes all
the difference between a memorable sparkling wine and a forgettable one.
Wine writer Konrad Ejbich, CBC-Radio’s “resident expert on wine” and author of the
indispensable A Pocket Guide To Ontario Wines, Wineries, Vineyards & Vines
(McClelland & Stewart, $22.95), is an undeniable fan of a number of the province’s best
sparkling wines, with one criticism — he’d like more, please.
“Ontario is seriously under-performing in its production of sparkling wine — not in
terms of quality, which is excellent, but in volume,” Ejbich says. “We should be making
much more bubbly. We have the perfect climate for growing the classic grapes of the
champagne region —especially in the emerging Prince Edward County area — and we
certainly have the luxury market to drink it all. One of my favourite Ontario bubblies is
Henry of Pelham’s Cuvée Catharine Rosé Brut. I love the colour and I enjoy the fruity
taste, with its elegant aroma of red berries and clean, crisp finish.”
At a time when the Liquor Control Board of Ontario reports that Ontario wine
accounts for more than 20 per cent of its wine sales, and with end-of-year celebrations
underway, there’s no better time to take a serious look at these very special, locally
produced wines. P
•
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PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
Marcels
PERFORMANCE
on
h ere
AD
WHAT’S
HERE’S A GUIDE TO GREAT ENTERTAINMENT BETS
IN AND AROUND THE GREATER TORONTO AREA
JULIA SASSO’S DANCE CREATION PULSES WITH RHYTHMS OF THE HEART
Julia Sasso Dances presents the world premiere of the betrayal project, a new
full-length choreographic offering from the creator of the acclaimed Beauty, an
explosive hit in 2003. One of Canada’s foremost dance artists, Sasso, right, has
created more than 50 original dance works for the stage, feature film, television and
theatre. Pulsing with the far-reaching rhythms of the human heart, this potent new
creation for Sasso’s stellar company lays bare the deepest paradoxes of our living,
loving and leaving. the betrayal project features dance artists Michael Trent, Ray Hogg,
Darryl Tracy, Molly Johnson and Neil Sochasky.
January 31 to February 4 at the Premiere Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre,
235 Queens Quay West. $21-$38. 416-973-4000
or online at harbourfrontcentre.com.
PEGGY BAKER PROMISES TO MOVE OUR HEARTS WITH DANCE
Peggy Baker Dance Projects presents an evening of dance titled the heart moves,
which includes Baker’s new work, Krishna’s Mouth, as well as Paul-André Fortier’s
Non Coupable and In Thine Eyes by Doug Varone. Acclaimed as one of the outstanding
contemporary dancers of her generation, Baker, left, dances solo in the first two pieces
and is joined by Larry Hahn in the third. Baker helped found and then led Toronto’s
Dancemakers, for which she participated in more than 50 premieres by Canadian
choreographers and contributed three works. She toured internationally with Lar
Lubovitch’s celebrated New York company throughout the 1980s and joined Mikhail
Baryshnikov and Mark Morris for the inaugural season of their White Oak Dance
Project in 1990, later forging important creative relationships with Montreal’s Fortier
and New York’s Varone.
February 9 to 12 in the Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis Street. $20-$26.
416-504-7529 or online at www.artsboxoffice.ca.
WINTER 2005
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WHAT’S
RICHARD GREENBLATT TAKES ON THE GENIUS OF TOM LEHRER
Richard Greenblatt — half of the genius and two of the hands behind the
hit 2 Pianos 4 Hands — says he’s been fascinated and inspired since he
was eight years old by the work of Tom Lehrer. No wonder. A singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist and mathematician, Lehrer has been described as
the most brilliant creative genius the United States has produced in almost
200 years. His scorching song lineup includes Werner Bon Braun, Vatican
Rag and Poisoning Pigeons In The Park. In Letters From Lehrer,
Greenblatt weaves his own dreams, artistic aspirations and political
questions with Lehrer’s life and songs. The show is written and performed
by Greenblatt and directed by Ross Manson.
January 19 to February 25 at CanStage — Berkeley/Downstairs,
26 Berkeley Street. $36-$51, Monday pay what you can.
416-368-3110 or online at www.canstage.com.
HAMLET’S GHOST HAUNTS A SCIENTIST’S QUEST
Set in an English country garden, Charlotte Jones’s award-winning play Humble Boy is a comic and
contemporary twist on the Hamlet story. A middle-aged scientist, Felix is trying to cope with the death of his
father, when he discovers his mother is having an affair with the father of his cast-off girlfriend. Felix can’t
decide what to do; if only he could understand the world as he does string theory. Love, death and family
come together as Felix tries to uncover the theory of everything. The Toronto premiere is directed by Richard
Rose and stars Fiona Reid, right, Dean Paul Gibson, Nicola Lipman and Colin Fox.
January 10 to February 12 at Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Avenue. $15-$34. 416-531-1827.
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PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
AN INTRIGUING, VERSATILE ARTIST TAKES ON A BELOVED CLASSIC
One of Shakespeare’s most beloved classics gets a unique re-telling in Hamlet (solo), a fresh and
engaging one-man version performed by one of Toronto’s most intriguing artists, Raoul Bhaneja,
right. An accomplished actor and award-winning musician, Bhaneja began developing the project
in 2000 with director Robert Ross Parker while they were members of the Soulpepper Theatre
Company. Hamlet (solo) combines the ancient art of storytelling and the modern invention of the
“one-man show” as it focuses on the three most essential elements of theatre — the actor, the
text and the audience.
January 4 to 15 at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Backspace, 16 Ryerson Avenue. $18,
Sundays pay what you can. 416-504-7529.
© ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM, 2004
A SAD CANADIAN SECRET IS UNVEILED IN HOMECHILD
One of Canada’s most gifted playwrights, Joan MacLeod tells
a quintessential Canadian story in Homechild, which exposes
the secret of the 100,000 Home Children sent to Canada from
Britain from 1860 to 1930. Humourous and poignant,
Homechild is a story about the absence of love and, ultimately,
its power. The play tells the evocative and tender tale of Alistair
MacEachern, a crotchety, funny and fearless farmer who for
70 years has silently longed for the sister he left behind
in Scotland. Directed by Martha Henry, the cast includes
Eric Peterson, Patricia Hamilton and Randy Hughson.
January 5 to 29 in the Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front
Street East. $36-$80, Mondays pay what you can.
416-368-3110 or online at www.canstage.com.
RENÉ LALIQUE’S ART DÉCO GLASS SHIMMERS IN ROM EXHIBIT
The Royal Ontario Museum shows off its collection of Lalique glass —
arguably the largest and most representative in any North American
museum — in an exhibition titled Déco
Lalique.
More than 60 pieces created by the
famed French designer René Lalique
are showcased in the exhibition, which
illustrates the evolution of the Art Déco
style. An array of glass objects by
manufacturers working during Lalique’s
time, and clearly influenced by the
French artist, are also on display.
From December 26 to January 2007
at the Royal Ontario Museum, 100
Queen’s Park. $8-$5. 416-586-5549.
KIDS RAISE THEIR VOICES HIGH TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS
Jean Ashworth Bartle leads her internationally recognized kids’ choir in
their annual Christmas concert, A Chorus Christmas. Founded by the
legendary Bartle 27 years ago, the Toronto Children’s Chorus develops
the skills of more than 300 Toronto-area singers aged seven to 17 in the
chorus and three training choirs, all learning to share one aspiration: choral
excellence. This year’s Christmas concert features guest artists True North
Brass, Judy Loman on harp, Susan Hoeppner on flute and Beverly
Johnston on marimba.
At 2 p.m. Saturday, December 17, in Roy Thomson Hall, 60 Simcoe
Street. $25-$40. 416-872-4255 or online at www.roythomson.com.
SEDUCTION, BETRAYAL, REVENGE WEAVE THROUGH A MYTHIC TALE
A lyrical story about a love affair between a blind man and a dancer, Bombay Black is a tale
of seduction, betrayal, revenge and love that seamlessly weaves realism with myth and magic.
Playwright Anosh Irani, who immigrated to Canada from Bombay in 1998, sets his sensual drama
in present-day Bombay, where the iron-willed Padma takes money from men to watch her
beautiful daughter Apsara perform a mesmerizing dance. When a mysterious blind man visits,
he brings with him a secret from the past that threatens to change their lives forever. Directed
by Brian Quirt, this world premiere stars Deena Aziz, Anita Majumdar, right, and Sanjay Talwar.
January 8 to 22 at The Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen Street West. $15-$20,
Sunday matinees pay what you can. 416-538-0988 or online at www.tapa.ca/totix/.
A HAIR-RAISING POP MUSICAL ICON ROCKS OUR SOCKS OFF – AGAIN
Hair — the show that celebrated the dawning of the Age of Aquarius — is getting its first Toronto revival in 30 years.
The iconic ’60s musical is part pop, part rock and pure nostalgia. The tribe is rebelling. America’s youth
is railing against the Establishment, the war in Vietnam, segregation and sexual rigidity. A spirit of hope rises
in a strife-torn world. And some actors take their clothes off on stage.
March 30 to June 17 at the Bluma Appel Theatre at Canstage, 27 Front Street East. $53 – $80.
416-368-3110 or online at www.canstage.com.
WINTER 2005
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there
on
WHAT’S
HERE’S THE BUZZ ABOUT WHAT’S HOT ON THE STAGES
BY MICHAEL CRABB
OF LONDON AND NEW YORK CITY
POWERFUL VERSION OF PIAZZA
LETS THE POWER OF LOVE SHINE
When does a musical become an opera? When
does entertainment become art? In the multi
Tony Award-winning The Light In The Piazza, the
distinctions are easily blurred.
A Broadway adaptation of Elizabeth Spencer’s
famous 1960 romantic novella of the same title
could easily have been reduced to a soap opera.
Olivia de Havilland barely saved the 1962 movie
version from such a fate. What makes composer
and lyricist Adam Guettel and writer Craig Lucas’s
stage version so powerful is the way it allows
the true subject — the power of love — to shine
through.
Victoria Clark gives the performance of a lifetime
as Margaret Johnson, a wealthy Southerner touring
Italy with Clara (Kelli O’Hara), her beautiful but
mentally challenged daughter. A handsome young
Italian Clara accidentally encounters in Florence
fervently courts her, catapulting the overly protective
Margaret into a bumpy emotional journey as she
tries to snuff out the kindling romance. In effect,
Margaret has to rediscover hope and trust and
come to terms with her own repressed emotions.
Although it has its share of haunting melodies,
The Light In The Piazza does not come with showstopping tunes or hokey plot twists. It is built to
be a coherent music drama. Its poignancy lingers
in the mind.
Until March 26, Vivian Beaumont Theater,
Lincoln Center, New York City.
Tickets: 1-800-432-7250 or www.telecharge.com
BARD'S COMEDIES IN THE SPOTLIGHT AT ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company focuses on the Bard’s comedies for its London
winter season at the Novello Theatre, leading off with RSC artistic director Michael
Boyd’s production of Twelfth Night (until December 31) and moving on through
The Comedy Of Errors (January 6 to 28), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (February 2
to 25) and As You Like It (March 2 to 25).
While every production can be expected to offer the RSC’s high standards of
ensemble acting, in the directing department, the Dream of Gregory Doran, right, is
worth special note. He’s been hailed as one of Britain’s best Shakespearean directors.
Simultaneously, the RSC is presenting what it calls a Gunpowder Season at
Trafalgar Studios 1 (Whitehall Theatre). Explosive dramas in the five-play series —
some new, others recovered treasures — range from a dark Jacobean tragi-comedy
about what happens when lawmakers decree the aged should be “put down” to make
way for the young, to a new play by Frank McGuiness about Guy Fawkes and his plot
to blow up king and parliament in 1605. The Gunpowder Season runs until February 25.
Nearest London Tube station: Charing Cross. Ticketing for both series,
phone 011-44-870-145-1163 or www.ticketmaster.co.uk
A WONDERFUL REVIVAL GIVES FIDDLER NEW LIFE
Not all revivals are made the same. The success of British director David Leveaux’s
long-running, 40th-anniversary remount of Fiddler On The Roof can be attributed
to his willingness, in collaboration with its creators, to infuse it with fresh vitality.
This is Fiddler reborn.
As the lovable milkman Tevye, Harvey Fierstein makes the inevitable comparisons
with role-creator Zero Mostel irrelevant. Fierstein gives Tevye his own stamp of
irresistible charm and Toronto’s Andrea Martin, with Fierstein, right, has a star turn
as Tevye’s wife, Golde. Heart-warming and touching in every best sense, this is the
Broadway revival to see.
Until January 8 at the Minskoff Theater, Broadway and West 45th Street,
New York City. Tickets: www.minskoff-theater.com/boxoffice.html
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PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
PAGE 53
IAN MCKELLEN’S WIDOW TWANKEY
MAKES PANTO YOUR CUP OF TEA
The chance to see Britain’s senior theatrical knight,
Sir Ian McKellen, play Widow Twankey is excuse
enough to visit London’s historic Old Vic before
January 22. If you fear that English pantomime is
not your cup of tea, Bille Brown’s wonderful version
of Aladdin, with original music by Gareth Valentine,
should change your mind.
The Christmastide pantomime is a genuine
indigenous form in Britain and under Sean Mathias’s
direction, this Aladdin is a vaudevillian carnival in the
classic manner with its entire music-hall lineage intact,
yet as up-to-date in its jokes as today’s headlines.
Naturally, Brown allows Widow Twankey plenty
of playful allusions to her distinguished portrayer’s
more familiar theatrical persona. As The Guardian’s
Michael Billington wrote: “Inside McKellen there has
always been a dame struggling to get out; and at
last it’s been joyously released.”
Until January 22 at the Old Vic Theatre, The Cut,
London. Nearest Tube station: Waterloo.
Tickets: 011-44-870-145-1163
or www.ticketmaster.co.uk
NOSTALGIC JOHN DENVER TRIBUTE TOUCHES THE HEARTSTRINGS
Who would have thought that a show that threatens to be more tired old Broadway
jukebox-retro nostalgia could actually touch the heartstrings? Yet, for a certain
generation at least, Almost Heaven, a musical review of 29 John Denver songs,
offers a rewarding, even moving experience. Denver lookalike Jim Newman leads
a six-member cast that takes us through the singer’s canon, linking the man and his
music to the times in which he wrote, with often revelatory comments interpolated
from Denver’s Take Me Home autobiography.
Director Randal Myler’s deft hand lets the songs — from Sunshine On My
Shoulders to Rocky Mountain High — speak their own message, which they do
admirably, often with telling contemporary resonances. Run currently scheduled
to end December 25, but the buzz favours a holdover or transfer.
Promenade Theatre, Broadway at West 76th, New York City.
Tickets: www.telecharge.com.
WINTER 2005
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WHAT’S
HIGH-OCTANE TRIBUTE TO MOTOWN
HAS ’EM DANCING IN THEIR SEATS
Dancing In The Streets hardly thrilled the British critics when it
opened on the West End last July, but London’s theatre-going
public has voted with its feet, crowding toward the recently
spruced-up, 1,300-seat Cambridge Theatre to sing and dance
along to Keith Strachan’s high-octane tribute to Motown.
Conceived by Strachan to mark the 40th anniversary of
the Motown label’s triumphant invasion of Britain, this two-act
musical review features a mostly young but enormously talented
cast of black British performers impersonating all of the
Motown greats — from Martha Reeves to Marvin Gaye —
as they would have appeared in the mid-1960s.
Dancing In The Streets makes no pretense to explore the
origins or significance of the Motown phenomenon, nor is it
routine nostalgia, since many of the songs have endured —
witness all of the young folk in the audience. It’s an unabashed
celebration and none the worse for that.
Extended through late April at the Cambridge Theatre,
Earlham Street, London. Nearest Tube station:
Covent Garden. Tickets: 011-44-870-145-1163
or www.ticketmaster.co.uk.
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PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE
VIA
EAT, DRINK, BE ENTERTAINED AT REBORN ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
In the six years since a massive, almost $400-million renovation and
expansion project was completed, the Royal Opera House has become
one of the most fashionable performing arts venues in London.
Audiences flock to the now ultra-trendy Covent Garden neighbourhood
as much, it seems, for the elegant wining and dining offered in the ROH’s
lavish new public spaces as for the opulent ballets and operas presented
within its gilded main theatre. One disdainful London critic friend, still
grieving the ROH’s old and more socially exclusionary past, recently
described it as “restaurant with cabaret attached.” That’s harsh.
A visit to the ROH is always a magical experience. It’s easy enough
to ignore the social buzz and focus on the art if that’s your sole concern.
And with the ROH’s two resident companies, The Royal Ballet and Royal
Opera playing in rep, it’s possible to sample both great ensembles during
even a brief London visit. Among a roster of 12 productions left in the
current opera season you can catch rising Canadian bass Robert Gleadow
singing Fiorello in Rossini’s The Barber Of Seville (until January 18) or
a new production of The Marriage Of Figaro (January 31 to February 25)
marking Mozart’s 250th birthday.
Interspersed with the operas, The Royal Ballet will be offering a typically
varied range of programming. From the Romantic Era, there’s Giselle (January
10 to February 11). If you can catch the Alina Cojacaru/Johan Kobborg cast
you’ll be especially gratified. Those with a taste for mixed bills can sample
masterworks by Balanchine, Robbins and Fokine (February 4 to March 8).
It’s a rich and complex schedule, so do your research ahead of time
and book online. Opera casting is announced well in advance, ballet
casting closer to the performance dates. And remember to order your
intermission drinks before the curtain goes up. For the full experience,
arrive early and start your supper before the show, reserving dessert and
coffee for intermission. You can even check the start-saving-up-now menu
and wine list online and place your order in advance.
Royal Opera House, Bow Street, London. Nearest Tube station:
Covent Garden. Full details, at www.royaloperahouse.org.
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