Songs we like to listen to include:

• The Long Way Home, by Norah Jones
• Banquet, by Bloc Party
• Levels, by Avicii
• Ghost Division, Into the Fire, and Talvisota, by Sabaton
• Marchin’ On, by OneRepublic
• One Step At A Time, by Jordin Sparks
• Animal, Miike Snow
• Where You’re Coming From, Matt & Kim
• Comme des enfant, Cœur de pirate

Some of us like to listen to certain artists too:

• Yiruma
• Bon Iver
• The Pogues (This UTnian said that you can’t get better than drunk Brits singing!)
• Drake, but only when he mentions Toronto.
• Joe Hisaishi
• Daft Punk
• Epik High
• Chris Botti

If you want previews of any of these songs, you can go look them up on Youtube. Personally, I like to use Grooveshark. It’s a site where you can listen to songs, artists and playlists that are completely customizable or sorted by genre. For those of us that don’t download (which is all of us right? *cough*), this is a better alternative to streaming Youtube videos, since streaming and buffering times are much faster.

We also have our very own CIUT 89.5FM, which features “alternative radio and interesting music.” It’s been on air since 1966, so give it a listen and support our U of T DJs and talk show hosts. Broadcasting out of Hart House, they aim to provide an alternative to mainstream radio and try to reflect the diversity of our community.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. I’m pretty sure our student body has a much more diverse and exotic playlist than what I have here. What do you listen to when you study? Tell us below!

If you listen to music while you study, and you don't jam on your computer... Well, I don't believe you.

I’m hoping to maintain my peace of mind during exam season this year, and while I know those moments of panic are unavoidable, there are certainly a lot of opportunities on campus for students to relax and defeat the stress plague, if only momentarily.

Hart House offers a variety of programs to soothe the stressed student:

• Massage Mondays – Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. Free massages, because U of T knows – you deserve it.
• Lunchtime Crafts – Personally, I find arts and crafts to be really relaxing – though, of course, I have never produced anything presentable. Distract yourself with a little A&C, and who knows, maybe you will produce a great work!
• ThursTeas – Enjoy a warm cup of tea at Hart House while chatting with some new friends or reading a (non-school related, perhaps) book.
• Let Shakespeare distract you with the production of Macbeth playing at Hart House Theatre until November 26.
• Jazz at Oscars – This free event every Friday night brings all sorts of different music to the Hart House Arbor Room. Be entranced by live music to distract yourself from stress. The monthly Sunday concert in the Great Hall might also be of interest.

It’s difficult for students to keep up exercising during exam time, but sometimes going to the gym is exactly what you need to wake you up and keep you studying productively. Both the Athletic centre and Hart House offer a wide variety of drop-in fitness classes. The AC has free yoga among its repertoire, certainly a relaxing pastime.

The Multi-Faith Centre offers a variety of yoga and meditation courses over the term, designed to help you relax and find peace of mind.

The Angela Grauerholz exhibit is still on the University of Toronto Art Centre until November 26, and the centre remains open until December 10, for your perusing pleasure. Take your mind off exams by taking a brief tour through this great U of T resource.

Every Friday night at Innis Café, story tellers come deliver tales for “1001 Friday Nights of Storytelling”, a tradition which has been running since 1978. A well-told story could be just the right thing you need to wind down and distract yourself from the looming stress of exams. Innis Town Hall also has inexpensive movies playing throughout the exam period, which may also serve as a welcome distraction.

Exam period is one I clearly characterize as bleak, but I think there are definitely ways to limit your stress. You do yourself a disservice by climbing under a pile of books in a library for a week and not facing the light of day until you are forced to enter the outside world in order to walk to your exam destination. Taking some time during the exam period to not study for exams will make the time you spend studying all the more productive. It’s always a pleasant feeling to realize that the world is going on when you feel like it’s ending, so allow yourself to bear witness to that comforting truth by taking a break. Whether it’s a yoga class, or just a walk around our beautiful campus, indulge yourself this exam period, if only for a moment.

Oh là là.

For those of you out of the francophone-music-loop, Serge Gainsbourg is often considered to be one of the world’s most influential popular musicians. He experimented with every genre of music, from jazz to reggae, to rock and roll to mambo, to so many more. And he did them all well.

So, basically, we have a ridiculously talented French man who somehow manages to look fierce in a pinstripe suit jacket. I guess it’s true that le français est la langue de l’amour, because I have fallen hard.

Excuse me while I swoon.

blogUT is teaming up with the wonderful members of EFUT (check out their new shirts – sont-ils pas magnifiques?) to give away five double passes to an advanced (subtitled) screening of Gainsbourg: Vie Héroïque at the Cumberland Cinema (159 Cumberland Street) on Wednesday, September 14 at 7pm. The film depicts Serge Gainsbourg’s life, from his childhood in Nazi-occupied France to his rise to fame, as well as his steamy love affairs with Juliette Gréco, Jane Birken and Brigitte Bardot, who’s played by French beauty Letita Casta. César Award-winning actor Eric Elmosnino is featured as the title role.

The perfect movie for date night? I think so.

All you have to do to enter your name into the draw is post a YouTube video of your favourite French song as a comment. Comments will be accepted up until 11:59pm on Sunday, September  11th and we’ll be emailing the contest winners on Monday, September 12th. Please note that we will only accept entries from those who provide us with a utoronto email address.

So post a comment so that you can whip out le champagne, throw on your beret, and marchez on over to the Cumberland Cinema with that quelqu’un de spécial!
Or you can just bring a friend. That works too.

MusicBox Children’s Charity (MBCC) is a youth-run, registered non-profit organization that strives to provide music education opportunities to financially, socially, and/or physically disadvantaged children and youth.

A formal education in music should not be a privilege limited to only those who can afford it. We feel that music is an integral part of a child’s early development, with benefits reaching far beyond the child’s developmental stage. Disadvantaged children should be granted the same opportunities for growth and development that are available to their peers.

Through our partnership with the Yonge Street Mission (YSM), we bring music to the young children who need it the most. We fully subscribe to the concept of music as a developmental tool, and recognize its beneficial effects on a child’s social, academic, and emotional development.

As a youth-driven initiative, the Directors of MBCC are strong proponents of ‘self-help’ within the community. We believe that the needs of a community are best met by those living in it, and who better to enhance our youth programs than the youth themselves? Youth volunteers with significant musical achievement provide mentorship to our participants in group and one-on-one classes.

Our approach is two-tiered. We seek to enhance our children’s educations with the inclusion of music, as well as benefit our volunteer youth who gain self-enrichment and fulfillment from their participation in MBCC’s programs. Furthermore, we end each school year with an ‘End of Year Concert’ to provide the children with an opportunity to showcase the musical skills they have developed throughout the year. At the end of the day, everyone is happy – the students joyfully celebrate their musical achievements and the volunteers proudly celebrate their student’s progress, knowing that they have taken part in helping to make Toronto a better place.

Here at MusicBox, we open our doors to any prospective volunteers who share our goals and enthusiasm. You can learn more about us by checking out our organization’s website, or by calling or emailing us at 416-895-5456 or musicbox.toronto@gmail.com.

Where: The Canon Theatre
When: Tuesdays @ 7PM, Wednesday-Saturday @ 7:30PM, and Wednesday and Sunday @ 1:30PM
More info: See the Billy Elliot in Toronto website

Billy Elliot: the Musical is a musical adapted from the film, about a young boy in a small mining town in Nothern England, who dares to don ballet shoes while all the other boys are decked out in boxing gloves. The film was a moving story of how a boy’s all-consuming love for ballet, allowed him to overcome incredible obstacles – the stigma against men in ballet, his small town upbringings, his mother’s death, and the brutal 1984 British National Union Worker’s strike which was devastating the town – to do what he loves and escape. This particular production downplays the struggles greatly, and in so doing loses our emotional investment, but puts together a wonderful spectacle of lights, dancing, and music, punctuated by slapstick comedy.

The production was directed by Stephen Daldry and choreographed by Peter Darling, who also did the film, the London West End production, as well as the Tony-award winning Broadway rendition. The directing and choreography – if we consider only the blocking, the flow, and the dances – are a triumph. The directing is well crafted enough to cleverly weave together the two interlocking stories: Billy’s discovery of ballet and his town’s destruction during the strike. I particularly liked how the montage of Billy’s initial ballet education happens in the middle of the stage, while the miners and the riot police face off on either side of them: Billy and the other innocent kids are quite literally caught between this conflict and ballet is an escape. It’s a brilliant idea and perhaps with a better cast and better acting, it would have been properly executed in Toronto. But the themes never fully come to fruition in the hands of the Toronto cast.

When it comes to singing and dancing, this cast has talent. Billy Elliot is alternately played by four different boys – Julian Elia, Myles, Erlick, Ty Forhan, and Marcus Pei – and I saw Pei’s performance, which was an amazing feat of singing and dancing. The rest of the cast is equally talented in these areas, even Jake Epstein of Degrassi: the Next Generation holds his own next to the seriously trained dancers. The dance numbers were immensely entertaining, well choreographed, and smooth, smooth, smooth.

The acting, on the other hand, is another question altogether. The entire production was over-acted making all of the dialogue stilted and all of the scenes too over-the-top to be believable or forgivable, even in a musical. There are overdone hand gestures, dialogue delivered without nuance, and physicalization that would better belong in a silent film than in a modern theatre production. And since the production insisted on attempting authentic Northern England accents, all the creative energy went into the accents, which were absolutely terrible anyway, instead of channeling the energy into credible, authentic performances. Since the performances were not very realistic, the obstacles of peer pressure and prejudice that Billy faced in the film, don’t seem very threatening here in the play. Without real obstacles to overcome, it’s hard to have an inspirational tale.

One of the hardest things about being a boy who wanted to do ballet in the 1980s – and to a lesser extent, today – was the overwhelming cultural stigma against it, which would have been strong in a blue collar, working class town. It wasn’t just the fear of being called a ‘faggot’ or a ‘poof’ that would have been terrifying for boys like Billy. There was a very real possibility that this name-calling would quickly turn into physical violence, and you could end up very badly beat up by a group of men. The heightened tension in the mining town during a strike would only make this possibility more likely.

This is why Billy’s friend Michael, who likes to dress up in his mother’s clothing, was such an important character in the film. Because we become aware that his innocent pass time is dangerous, that if anyone were to find out about it, Michael would be at serious risk of being pulverized. But in the Toronto production of Billy Elliot: The Musical, Michael is a fearless, fun-loving kid, unafraid to express himself and his ‘individuality’, becoming the embodiment of one of the nauseating themes of the play: ‘just be yourself’.

Dillon Stevens plays Michael as an over-the-top ham, who loves the spotlight, and the audience loves him; he is undoubtedly charismatic. While it’s nice that the production is so accepting of Michael’s proclivities, treating it as perfectly understandable – which it is, for our modern sensibilities – it’s totally historically inaccurate: if this kid walked out in the street in a tutu, like he does in a later scene, he would have been beaten to a bloody pulp. Without showing us the threat that Michael faces, we can’t understand the cultural prejudice against boys in ballet, so we can’t possibly understand how doing ballet is not an easy decision for Billy, given the social pressures.

The performances of Jake Epstein as Billy’s brother, and David Keeley as Billy’s dad, are equally problematic, because they just aren’t threatening enough. It’s not just that they are unaccepting of Billy’s ‘sissy’ pass time, but that they are genuinely hurt that he’s off in a dreamland while they are living in hell on a daily basis. Part of Billy’s struggle is to overcome his guilt regarding family obligation in order to pursue what he does. Again, this is underplayed in the production. Epstein is so over-the-top that he lacks menace and Keeley’s transformation from the judgemental father to the supportive one comes so suddenly, and without provocation, that his ultimate support is unsatisfying: we don’t get the feeling that supporting his son was hard for him, because of his own prejudices, which he had to overcome for love.

But its not just an unconvincing struggle that prevents Billy Elliot: The Musical from delivering the same disarming emotional punch that the film had. It’s also the fact that Billy’s love of dancing is unconvincing and unmotivated. In the film, ballet to Billy was like oxygen: he breathed it. Everywhere he went – walking to school, climbing up stairs, tucked in his room – he was dancing, practicing, and dancing. Dancing was an all-consuming source of joy. And even more than that, it was an escape. An escape from the misery of the town and an escape from his own personal struggles to cope with his mother’s death.

In the musical, Billy just stumbles into a ballet class accidentally, coerced into it against his will. In the film, he watched the dance lessons longingly from afar during his boxing lessons, until he was invited to and pushed into joining the class, because Mrs Wilkinson, his teacher, could see his longing. In the musical, he gets almost no real direction from Mrs Wilkinson, and in a matter of a few minutes, magically transforms from a clumsy boy to an accomplished ballet dancer. Even after a few lessons, he seems ambivalent about the dancing.

In the film, we believed in Billy’s unwavering devotion to ballet, which is why every obstacle along his path was devastating, and why when he finally did get into the National Ballet School, it was a moving triumph. Part of what made us understand his passion, in the film, was how hard he fought to overcome the obstacles, and how miserable he was if he gave up the fight prematurely. Since he seemed to lack passion in the musical, his triumph in the end seemed like no big deal. So he got into ballet school. That’s great. But it wasn’t the same unbelievable ticket out of prejudice, misery, and a dying town, to something that would bring him joy.

Billy Elliot is a tricky role to play. When on stage, the kid needs to have real dancing chops or the whole story fails and a good voice or all the music fails. But the story is complex enough that the emotional content fails if the performance of Billy isn’t exquisite. The film, Billy Elliot, hit the jackpot with the extremely talented Jamie Bell, who could not only dance, but is one of the very best young actors out there. While Marcus Pei definitely has the dancing and the singing chops, his acting skills leave something to be desired. I’m hesitant to blame Daldry’s direction, since Bell’s performance of Billy in the film was very nuanced and understated; I find it hard to believe Pei would have been instructed to overdo it. I can’t speak for the other three Toronto Billys. Then again, the musical goes for cheap laughs with silly gags which undermine the emotional journey that was so strong and straightforward in the film, lacking these silly crowd-pleasing gags.

The audience was certainly convivial, full of warm laughter for all the gags, and the Toronto staple standing ovation. But they weren’t in tears either. And this story, if done right, should be eliciting well-earned tears from at least some of the audience. I know I was bawling in the film, so moved by Billy’s conviction, his struggles, and his ultimate triumph. The Toronto audience will have to settle for just some darn good dancing.

What is it?

Lori did a post covering the festival 2 years ago, but hopefully it won’t be rainy this year. Enjoy tons of yummy food, games, and shows all weekend!

Food?

Some food you may want to try: spanakopita (spinach pies) and loukoumades (honey balls) from Athens Bakery, kangaroo burgers from The Friendly Butcher, souvlaki, gyros, and backlava.

When is it?

August 5^th – August 7^th.

How do I get there?

The festival is super accessible by TTC. Just take the subway to Broadview, Chester, Pape, Donlands, or Coxwell station.

(If this doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time, or if you’re looking for even more stuff to do this weekend, you can also stop by the Brickworks Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning. You can take the free shuttle bus by Broadview station on Erindale, just north of Danforth.)

For more information, you can visit the Taste of the Danforth’s official website.

Marshall McLuhan, an alumnus of our university, once stated that ‘the medium is the message’. But did you know that he was also a graduate of the same high school as Tian-Yuan Zhao, the founder of Tales of Harmonia? Amongst the many reasons Tian had for starting his own choir, the most important one stemmed from the knowledge that McLuhan had passed down. Tian felt that, because a choir is the medium whereby the message of a song is portrayed, it doesn’t matter if there’s variety within the genres of music that each choir at U of T specializes in. The only thing that matters is the medium – if, for example, jazz is the only genre of music performed by a choir, their performance can become stale. Tales of Harmonia intends on showcasing music from all genres. Its slogan is:

Whether it’s Accompanied or A Cappella, Arranged or Artistic, Occidental or Oriental, Sacred or Secular, as long as there’s a fire burning from deep within the song, we’ll be there to dish it!

Through practicing what they preach, Tales of Harmonia intends to generate a more personal, intimate, and special experience not only for their choral members, but for their audience.

Tales of Harmonia is a mixed 30-voice auditioned choir that aims not only to provide talented musicians with the opportunity to pursue excellence in music within a friendly, focused environment, but to do so alongside others who share the one other commonality that unites us as one – our collective power to geek* out about the various insanities of life.

*’Geek’: A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest. This definition is very broad but, because many of these interests have mainstream endorsement and acceptance, the inclusion of some genres as ‘geeky’ is heavily debated. Persons have been labelled, or have chosen to identify, as physics geeks, mathematics geeks, engineering geeks, sci-fi geeks, computer geeks, various science geeks, movie and film geeks (cinephiles), comic book geeks, theatre geeks, history geeks, music geeks, sport geeks, art geeks, philosophy geeks, literature geeks, historical re-enactment geeks, video game geeks, and role-play geeks. – Wikipedia

The group is built on the following tenets to provide all choral members with:
1) A more holistic musical experience.
2) A more heterogeneous (diverse) musical experience.
3) A geekier musical experience. In this context – ‘geeky’ isn’t a derogatory term as it refers to anything and everything from all mediums whereby art is expressed, such as movies, TV shows, books, anime, video games, math, history, engineering, and so on and so forth. I hope you get the gist.
4) A more ‘underground’ musical experience. While some songs are widely recognizable, most of the showcased songs are less popular amongst the masses. ToH’s repertoire draws from all genres.
5) A more innovative approach to musical groups as a whole. Now what does this mean? ToH not only intends on revolutionizing ‘what’ will be performed at concerts, but ‘how’ they’ll be performed as ToH intends on having multimedia concerts in the future, collaborating with other musical organizations as well as hoping to all ToH to grow into something more than just a choir into an entire musical/artistic experience for all who’s involved with it. Expect great things to come of this.

Tales of Harmonia dares to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life and new Civilizations (I, II, III, IV, V, etc.). They boldly go where no choral ground has gone before. So join them for the ride – I assure you, you won’t ever regret it!

Here’s a sneak peek of the lists of songs ToH will be singing this year:

Star Wars – John Williams is the Man
Baba Yetu, Ipharadisi, and Parismaalase Lauluke
Nintendo A Cappella
Zelda Medley
Still Alive – Basix
I Will Derive
Rent
Pi Song
Avenue Q
5 Chinese Songs songs, including Jasmine Flower, Yellow River Cantata, and The Butterfly Lovers
3 Korean and 3 Japanese Folk songs
I Love the Whole Wide World
The Grand Fonic Hymn
Tshosholotza
The Legendary Sorcerer and Guiding Star
Le Ali Del Principio and To the End of the Journey of Glittering Stars
Zulu Mama
Les Misérables
Engineering Songs

Auditions for Tales of Harmonia will be held in the second or third week of September. One audition time/place has already been confirmed (September  12^th, 3PM, Bickersteth Room at Hart House), and another time/place has yet to be confirmed, but expect it to be in the Engineering Complex a day or two after the first day of auditions.

If you have any questions about the group, please don’t hesitate to email Tian-Yuan, check out their website at http://talesofharmonia.sa.utoronto.ca/ and/or check them out at the UTSU Clubs’ Fair, as well as the Engineering Clubs’ Fair.

I love the way the Quintet puts together a show. They take their time to ease you into their style, starting off with some straightforward compositions with melody, improvisation on bass, improvisation on saxophone, improvisation on drums, melody, etc., just to get us used to the group and each musician’s style. These improvisations, it should be noted, by Potter, Smith, and Holland on the opening numbers “Walking a Walk” and “Cosmosis” are so fantastic that if these were all the concert had to offer, you could leave a very, very contented audience member.

And it gets better. As the concert progresses, so does the music, increasing in complexity. They let us in on what they’re doing though. We might get a complex piece in five parts, but each part gets added in sequentially. Robin Eubanks’s composition, “Pass it On”, was an exercise in perfecting the introduction and layering of five parts. We start with just  Eubanks on trombone and then after a few minutes, Nate Smith joins in on drums, playing off the existing rhythm in the piece. With those two playing, add in Potter on sax who continues to build on the two preceding parts. By the time the fifth part has been added in, which is Holland in this piece, it’s not just a fifth part, but a progression that builds on the other four, carefully piecing together a complex composition , and slowly enough that we know what they’re doing.

The solos are equally well done. First of all, the band makes a point of making sure we know the melody or the key bass line first, so we can really catch watch what they do during the solos. This is not a band where solo time just passes from one musician to another in a disconnected and disjointed way. Instead, each solo builds on the previous one. Those in the background aren’t just keeping the beat or playing the same old bass line. They are also making slight adjustments, responding to the improvisation as it happens, further developing a musical idea that’s been planted by the soloist.

Often, if you want to know where the piece is going, you need not look further than Nate Smith. As another musician develops a solo, Smith listens, and picks up on one of the musical ideas laid out, develops it, and adds it into his percussion part. This drives the piece to further rhythmic complexity so that whenever someone else plays, it will be further responding to Smith’s development, layering on further complexity.

In Nate Smith’s final solo, he gets close to playing in the same league as Jack DeJohnette, an honour not easily bestowed. As Smith starts to take his last solo, everyone but Dave Holland goes silent; Holland keeps faithfully playing the bass line as Smith starts to develop his improvisation and I start to focus on what Smith is doing. He’s playing with not just rhythm but pitch and there’s nothing about it that can be described as “just banging”. Now, a few minutes in, I look over at Holland again, and confused, realise he’s no longer playing. But I can still hear the bass line. It never disappeared. That’s because as Holland phased out playing the bass line, Smith took it on. Smith was hitting the melodic notes of the bass line with his drum kit, while also riffing off of it and soloing on it, simultaneously.

When the Dave Holland Quintet was last in town, I remember remarking that Smith was a particularly good drummer both when I heard him playing with the quintet and with Chris Potter’s Underground band. He was far better than your average drummer, but hadn’t quite hit that melodic touch of DeJohnette or Tony Williams. But in this performance, he hit those heights. He’s a real musician, not just a beat-keeper.

The Enwave Theatre seems to be the perfect space for the concert. It’s an intimate space with good sound, if not quite up there with the Glenn Gould Studio. And in a space where the sound is good enough for us to be able to hear each individual instrument, the Quintet can experiment with complexity and be confident that the audience will be able to appreciate it. In their 2009 performance at the jazz festival, they played the MainStage, which was then at Nathan Phillips Square and the sound was terrible. This meant that we could still get sublime solos from Chris Potter and Dave Holland – two of the very best jazz musicians in the world on the scene today – but the band was going to be limited on their interplay and interactions since we wouldn’t be able to pick it all out. When Potter’s Underground band performed in 2009, it was tight with great interactions between all members of the band, but the Quintet performance wasn’t quite as tight. In the Enwave theatre this year, the Dave Holland Quintet was incredibly tight, incredibly in sync, and just downright, incredible.

Leaving the concert, a friend said to us: “Sometimes I think the Dave Holland Quintet is the best band on earth. This must be the band in heaven”. And you know, that’s really true. These guys are definitely the best of contemporary and progressive jazz. Hearing them play, you indubitably find yourself in paradise.

Wednesday’s concert featured a mix of great standards and original compositions both old and new. The highlights included a wonderful rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek” and Marsalis’s “Eternal”, the title track of his record. Marsalis and Calderzzo are incredibly in tune with one another. Marsalis is, no doubt, the resident master. He seems to effortlessly and intuitively produce fantastic musical solos while Calderazzo works to keep up with his part, much of which is scripted in music he is reading; Marsalis didn’t have any music on stage.

This is not to say that Calderazzo didn’t hold his own; he played quite a lot and very well and many of his compositions were a joy to hear. Perhaps Calderazzo said it best: he doesn’t know how Branford Marsalis does it, but if he hears something once, he has it committed to memory. The one thing he doesn’t know, as Calderazzo pointed out, is the key that any song is in, though he can play them perfectly in any key. Marsalis explained that, as a child, he and his brother would ask their dad to play a song for them. Branford would ask his dad what key the piece was in, before they started, and his father Ellis would respond, ‘son, there are no keys. There are only notes.’’ Eventually Branford stopped asking and just learned to figure it out as they went along.  

Marsalis and Calderazzo performed at the Toronto Jazz festival in 2009 as part of Marsalis’s quartet, on the mainstage at Nathan Phillips Square (reviewed here), but what a departure this show is from that. To begin with, the change of venue to Koerner Hall meant a change from terrible acoustics to fantastic ones where the music can really really shine. Marsalis and Calderazzo make an excellent duo; I’ve been waiting in anticipation for their new album since Jazz Lives in 2010. When playing together, they build on each other’s strengths, harmonizing sometimes and just responding and developing at other times. This is not a duo that feels like they are missing a bass player; they have really made the most of the two instruments, collaborating on solos rather than merely taking turns.

Marsalis and Calderazzo played two encores in response to two very deserving standing ovations. The concert, which, in the end, ran about two hours with no intermission, still felt way too short; I would have been delighted to keep reveling in their talent and performances for at least another hour.

Earlier in the week, I saw The Bad Plus perform at the Enwave theatre and the experience couldn’t have been more different. I saw Ethan Iverson play with Charlie Haden back in 2009, and he was fantastic. So I walked into The Bad Plus concert with high expectations. And Iverson was good. Too good for the band he was playing in. The Bad Plus consists of Ethan Iverson on piano, Ried Anderson on bass, and David King on drums, and they all sound like they are playing in a different band with a different style. Iverson has the light jazz touch of Bill Evans and he’s very good. David King isn’t your average drummer – he tries to provide a rich percussive texture that’s more than just loud banging – but he sounds like he belongs in a rock band. Rather than being unobtrusive support, King’s drumming often takes over the pieces with rhythms that juxtapose so much with the other two parts that it’s often hard to find anything to focus on. This is the point, I suppose. Reid Anderson’s playing is halfway between rock bass and jazz trio acoustic bass.

The sooner you stop listening for a melody – and riffs off that melody – the easier it is to appreciate the three competing parts going on at all times. But I still found it too busy. The trouble isn’t that there are three different parts going on at once but that they aren’t connected at all. The three musicians sound, essentially, like they are playing three different styles in three different bands. Yet they are listening to one another – they start and stop together in perfect unison at multiple intervals throughout each piece – so this is a stylistic choice. It’s just one that happens not to work. Here’s hoping that the next time Iverson finds himself in town, he’ll be playing a solo concert, or a duo with somebody just as good or better (like, say, Charlie Haden, once again).

Where:

Dancap productions brings 9 to 5: The Musical, with songs and scores by Dolly Parton to the North York Centre for the Arts for a short run from June 29 to July 10. This touring Broadway stage production of the 1980 film, Nine to Five, is a solid production of a mediocre play. The target audience for the show is, no doubt, the same crowd that enjoyed the Jersey Boys production that played in Toronto in 2009. I’ll warn you upfront that I don’t belong to that group; I had free tickets to Jersey Boys and just barely managed to sit through the bad music and the horribly sexist plot. 9 to 5: The Musical is orders of magnitude better, with phenomenal sets, great staging and lighting, good acting and singing and music that’s great – if you like that sort of thing – and still fun if you don’t (and I don’t) though ultimately dated.

9 to 5: The Musical is about three feisty secretaries who turn their fantasy of killing their “sexist, egotistical, lying hypocritical bigot” of a boss (Joseph Mahowald) into an almost-reality: they decide to kidnap him instead and reform the office while holding him hostage in his own house for a month. The women, all quite likeable, are Violet (Dee Hoty), the head secretary with enough business acumen to be running the place, if she weren’t a woman in the 1970s; Doralee (Diana DeGarmo) the voluptuous, blond bombshell, and Texan, whose beauty confuses people into forgetting she might have a brain; and Judy (Mamie Parris), the recently divorced ingénue and newcomer to office politics.

The production is quite dazzling with period costumes and very elaborate sets. The stage changes seamlessly and convincingly between an office with many, many desks, to the office of the head honcho, to several different homes, to a women’s bathroom. It’s very possibly one of the best elaborate sets I’ve seen in recent years, which ensures that the stage is used well and never feels too full or too empty. Even though there may be several set pieces and several actors on stage at a time, the lighting cues are well-designed to focus the action. I just wish there were more dancing.

But the production is all spectacle and no substance. Nine to Five may have championed the feminist movement in the early 1980s, but today it is simply dated. That is not to say that musicals from the 60s or 70s should not be performed today; Hair and Hairspray still resonate today when done as period pieces. But 9 to 5: The Musical is no longer inspirational. In fact, it’s somewhat insulting that it suggests that women can only make their way in the workplace by resorting to underhanded crime; it’s supposed to be funny, but in 2011, it’s cringeworthy. The play is simply out of date. The production isn’t blameless either. Violet is probably the most modern of the women – clever, cynical, charming – but in the song-and-dance number where she is living her dream of being the empowered, career woman, it’s the first time we see her show cleavage. What kind of message is this?

Perhaps the production would seem less dated if it had been put together before the days of Mad Men being a commercial success. But we, as a culture, are already so accustomed to biting, clever commentary on the sexist office politics of the 1960s on Mad Men that it would take a lot to impress us here. 9 to 5 fails to deliver the goods. While Mad Men explores the complexities of pushing towards real culture change in business, 9 to 5 reduces these issues to two-dimensional silliness, which may have worked as empowering escapism in the 1980s, but these days, it just seems petty. Surely there are better fictitious role models out there of women changing the workplace realistically. This plays like Revenge of the Secretaries, and sometimes it’s funny but a lot of the times lines that are supposed to make me laugh, like the intentionally sexist running joke “What do you call a woman who has lost 95% of her intelligence? Divorced.”  just make me cringe and feel uncomfortable.

If a feminist musical is the goal, why not remount My Fair Lady? Compare the inspirational number, “Shine Like the Sun” (“I’m gonna shine like the sun when these clouds roll away from my door. I won’t crawl. I can run. I won’t be at your mercy no more. We’ll be singing it loud/so be proud that we’ve finally won.”) from 9 to 5 ,with the still fantastic and timeless lyrics from “Without You” in My Fair Lady (“Art and music will thrive without you. Somehow Keats will survive without you. And there still will be rain on that plain down in Spain, even that will remain without you. I can do without you.”), which is to say, there are better feminist musicals of the past that are still relevant today.

That being said, if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, 9 to 5: The Musical is a highly competent production. The cast can sing, act, and entertain, and it’s a very, very polished production.