The Dave Holland Quintet put on a phenomenal show at the Enwave Theatre at the Toronto Jazz Festival, a show so good that it is almost in the same league as those by the Keith Jarrett trio (which I called the best I’ve ever seen). Jazz concerts are at their best when you get to hear totally original music evolving, with the band in tune, giving you so much more than you can get from an album. The Dave Holland Quintet delivered, especially thanks to the fantastic bandleader Dave Holland on bass, the amazing musician’s musician Chris Potter on saxophone, and the wonderful Nate Smith on percussion, who reached impressive new heights as a percussionist in this show. The quintet also includes vibraphonist Steve Nelson and trombonist Robin Eubanks, who are certainly not slouches, being excellent musicians in their own right, but not quite in the same league as Holland, Potter, and Smith.

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. (more…)

On Wednesday night, Branford Marsalis, on soprano and tenor sax, and Joey Calderazzo, on piano, took the stage at Koerner Hall for the world premiere of their duo collaboration, Songs of Mirth and Melancholy. They did a fantastic preview of this at last year’s Jazz Lives, which you can download (in part) and listen to here. At the Jazz Lives performance, Marsalis explained that when the two of them started this duo project, they sat down and talked about everything they hate about jazz duos. One thing that stood out to them as particularly distasteful was when the piano walks the bass line in the left hand: “If we wanted someone to walk the bass line, we would have hired a bassist”, said Marsalis.

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.   (more…)

Where: Toronto Centre for the Arts
When: June 29-July 10; 7:30 pm Tuesday through Sunday with 2:00 pm matinee performances on Sunday, Wednesday & Saturday
Tickets: $40-65  Here , which is pretty cheap for a Broadway show!

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.

The Canadian Opera Company completes its trio of productions for the spring session with Cristoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The names Orfeo and Euridice may sound familiar to you because the opera is based on the story of Orpheus the lyre player, who literally went to hell and back in an attempt to bring his dead lover, Eurydice, back to life.

Orfeo ed Euridice was memorable for the simplistic sets and costumes that helped set the tone for the tragedy that drives the plot and raison d’être of the show. The cast consisted of very proficient actors who expressed their grief convincingly. However, in song, they were, for the most part, unmemorable.

Maybe my expectations for the opera were too high (my standard Orfeo is, after all, the goddess Maria Callas – the video linked here is one where she sings the most famous aria of the opera, but in French rather than Italian), but I felt that the sadness and the drama of the entire production was only conveyed by the brilliant mise-en-scene. The scene in hell was particularly well done and is perhaps the only thing that I will give special mention for this review. However, even this positive quality seems to have failed Orfeo ed Euridice at the end when Orfeo and the chorus are celebrating Euridice’s return to the land of the mortals. The cast’s black costumes and the barren set overpowered the celebratory song and it felt as if they were at a funeral of someone who wasn’t well-liked in life.

In any case, Orfeo ed Euridice is running from May 8th to May 28th at the Four Seasons Centre for Performing Arts. For those living on a student budget, rush tickets are $20 and are available starting at 11 AM the day of the performance. All rush tickets seats are in the 5th ring. If you are under the age of 30, you are eligible for Opera for a New Age tickets, which cost $22 and will get you seats in the 5th or 3rd ring.

For more information on Orfeo ed Euridice and the Canadian Opera Company, click here.

Since this is my last opera review for blogUT, I would like to end with a brief personal note.

I decided to review productions by the COC purely for the purpose of generating curiosity, in hopes that students will, at least once in their lives, attend an opera production. From reading my reviews, you can probably guess that I’m not an opera expert and I’m still learning the finer details of the art. However, I feel justified in writing the way I do and in expressing the opinions I have expressed because I want to introduce the art of opera to an audience who may initially be turned off by the conception that it’s a kind of art form where one needs a lot of prior knowledge to appreciate it. To some people, that may be true, but I don’t see why the average person can’t enjoy opera for its amusing plots or beautiful music. In the end, I hope that my reviews have generated some interest, because the opera is truly a magnificent experience that everyone can enjoy.

Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos is not an opera about Ariadne and her tale of woe and romance but a whimsical tale of an opera production going… in a way that it doesn’t usually go. The show follows an opera troupe who learns that they have to perform alongside a ‘vulgar’ comedy troupe at a nobleman’s dinner.

The first act, in which the audience follows the two troupes and observes their pre-show nervousness and anxiety about the changes being made to their productions, is wonderfully entertaining. A special mention goes to Alice Coote, who plays the talented but angsty composer of Ariadne auf Naxos (the opera in the opera). Her superb acting and voice brings us the highs and lows as the composer goes into his diva-esque fits at the prospect of having his opera changed.

Another special mention goes to Jane Archibald, who plays the feisty and flirty Zerbinetta. She’s the star of the second act, which shows the result of the mash-up of the two productions, where her voice and spunky personality is the cause of much laughter. When I went to the dress rehearsal, Amber Wagner, Adrianne Pieczonka’s understudy, took the role of Ariadne/the Prima Donna halfway through the production in act II. It seems that fate has been on my side, because Wagner seems to have taken the role for the current productions of the opera (until further notice). Wagner is a powerful singer whose voice should not be forever relegated to being an understudy.

Overall, the direction, set and costumes were appropriate and did not detract from the performance or the libretto of the opera. The show was absolutely brilliant and is sure to draw a few laughs – I highly recommend it. A few opera virgins came with me to this production and were as delighted by it as I was.

Ariadne auf Naxos is running from April 30th to May 29th at the Four Seasons Centre for Performing Arts. For those living on a student budget, rush tickets are $20 and are available starting at 11 AM the day of the performance. All rush tickets seats are in the 5th ring. If you are under the age of 30, you are eligible for Opera for a New Age tickets, which cost $22 and will get you seats in the 5th or 3rd ring.

For more information on Ariadne auf Naxos and the Canadian Opera Company, click here.

Thanks for reading! I will be reviewing Orfeo ed Eurydice in a few days. Enjoy!

La Cenerentola is running from April 23rd to May 25th at the Four Seasons Centre for Performing Arts. For people running on a student budget, rush tickets are $20 and are available starting at 11 AM the day of the performance.  If you are under the age of 30, you are eligible for Opera for a New Age tickets for $22.

After a short hiatus in March, the Canadian Opera Company returns with three new productions: La Cenerentola (Cinderella), Ariadne auf Naxos and Orfeo ed Eurydice. I will be reviewing all three of them over the course of the next few weeks. The first of the operas to start its run is Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, which is an operatic version of the classic fairy tale, Cinderella.

Overall, the COC presents a whimsical production that is sure to draw out a few laughs during the entire performance. The libretto (or lyrics) is clever and humourous and the music, lively and energetic. A special mention goes to the orchestra who played a captivating overture – a delightful piece of music to listen to but I felt that the energy of the piece would have been better conveyed if there was some sort of action on stage. Another special mention belongs to the leading lady, Elizabeth DeShong, who played a vocally enchanting Angelina (Cinderella). There were many times where I felt that her arias were much too short and I wished that they could go on forever.

Clorinda and Tisbe, played by Ileana Montabetti and Rihab Chaieb respectively were well cast as the comical and yet snotty evil stepsisters. Lawrence Brownlee played Prince Ramiro and although he was absolutely enchanting in arias that involved wooing and love, I felt that he was a little weak when playing the role of an authoritative monarch. In one part when he sings on how he is absolutely furious and determined to find the mysterious girl with whom he is in love with, my friend commented, “He was probably the least threatening prince I’ve ever seen.” Perhaps the power behind Brownlee’s voice will reveal itself eventually but in the meantime, I would really like to see him sing in a role with more lyrical arias. Sadly, I also felt that the other male cast members – Cinderella’s stepfather, Don Magnifico, the prince’s valet, Dandini and the prince’s tutor, Alidoro – sounded similar and were a bit forgettable once their songs were over.

(more…)

I am always on the lookout for free and fun events happening around campus. My hunt has led me to join the Facebook group of virtually every Student Union, it’s caused me to mark down every Varsity game and every free commuter pancake breakfast. Recently, however, I have discovered the gem that is the Hart House Orchestra. This past Thursday I went to go see a friend of mine perform; I was told that the event was free and to arrive early as the Grand Hall fills up fast. So, I entered the very formal and beautiful Great Hall about forty minutes early. . . only to find the room pretty much full already! I found a seat, and watched as the men in suit jackets and women dressed in varying degrees of “dressy-ness” funneled in to the room.

It was packed by the time eight o clock rolled around. And by packed, I mean people had pulled in their own chairs, people were crammed against walls—standing—and there were more people hovering in the entrance. The Orchestra finally started up with Tchaikovsky’s Slavonic March, Op. 31. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, I’m more into rock music myself. You don’t need to know the song to enjoy it, and enjoy it I did! It was amazing! I felt like I had fallen into some other century, some other time when music meant hours upon hours of preparation to learn how to play something perfectly; it was a huge contrast to a lot of the music on my iPod, which a kindergartner could produce in about half an hour using the right computer.

The Hart House Orchestra really is an amazing, and relatively secretive, jewel of U of T. Alumni, students,  and faculty at U of T all comprise this magnificently talented group of 80-90 musicians that get together and perform.  Speaking as someone who enjoys most music, and loves concerts in general, this was an amazing experience, and my wallet enjoyed it as well.  I discovered a new love for Russian composers, and also for the Hart House Orchestra. If you are interested in having a fun musical night, check out their website for more information, and also for updates on their next concert. Or, just check out their Facebook group (which just so happens to have this amazing tagline: “Rockin’ the House Since 1976“).