Welcome to 2011-2012
Announcing Continuum’s 27th season
Just when the natural world begins its decline into decay and dormancy (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), the concert season gets into swing – opposing cycles, perhaps opposing worlds. But the last of the hay is in, the carrots and turnips are harvested, and we now turn our attention to Continuum’s 2011–12 season, in which we bring the worlds of music and nature together in concerts featuring animals.
In Fuzzy Logic (November 6, Music Gallery), Alex Eddington’s new work (of the same name) for narrator and ensemble (funded by the Toronto Arts Council) meditates on sheep. Works by Sabrina Schroeder and Alberto Hortiguela, from Continuum’s 2010 Call for Scores, reference or call to mind foxes and cows. Also on the program are Ghosts of Swallows by Anna Höstman, a work written for Continuum’s 2009 local composers’ workshop, and Greeting Music by Claude Vivier, an unusual welcome to the new season.
Later in the season animals completely take over the stage as we present the premiere of the complete Contes pour enfants pas sages, 8 cautionary entertainments by Christopher Butterfield (May 27 and 29, 918 Bathurst Street). Years in preparation and generously funded by the Julie-Jiggs Foundation and Roger D. Moore (and you? Find out how!), this setting of the darkly coloured children’s animal fables by Jacques Prévert (screen writer of Les Enfants du paradis) features acclaimed soprano Anne Grimm and tenor Benjamin Butterfield, with Continuum’s ensemble augmented by mandolin and the twelve-voice Choir 21, with David Fallis conducting. Mise-en-scène is by Laurence Lemieux (of Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie), with the projected images of Sandra Meigs.
Back to Back (December 9, Music Gallery), a concert of works for small ensemble by experimentalist extraordinaire Vinko Globokar, is co-produced with the Music Gallery and Toronto New Music Projects, and, together with the New Music Concerts performance on December 11th, creates a rare concentration of Globokar’s work. The programme includes Dos a Dos, Terres brûlées, and ensuite … , a brilliantly theatrical trio for piano, saxophone and percussion with electronics by Thomas Kessler, as well as a group improvisation led by Globokar on trombone.
ORGANized (February 12, Music Gallery) features mechanical organs of all sorts and four premieres. In this concert, postponed from last season due to mechanical difficulties that have now been overcome, Continuum explores the interface between the rigid renderings of street and barrel organs, with all their cultural associations, and the “classical” ensemble. New works for cabinet-sized organ and Continuum’s ensemble are by Petar Klanac (funded by the Canada Council for the Arts), and Richard Marsella. Michael Oesterle contributes a new Daydream Mechanics VI for a smaller barrel organ playing paper roll, and piccolo, violin, cello and percussion. Strata, by Brian Current (commissioned by the San Francisco Chamber Players and Continuum with funding from the Ontario Arts Council), receives its Canadian premiere, and it too touches on the mechanical vs. human in its writing. And finally, Continuum by Gyorgy Ligeti (originally for harpsichord and here arranged and performed for two marimbas by Ryan Scott with Haruka Fujii) is a work requiring feats of musical coordination that border on the humanly impossible.
We invite you to join us as Continuum explores the worlds both human and animal in an action-packed season. See the full season here, and please consider buying a subscription or making a donation.
