Recent Posts

• Time to look at a new, made-in-Toronto tool for connecting new audiences with the performing arts

  

  The painfully unanswered question on the minds of musicians as well as classical music patrons concerned about the future of the artform is how to connect with new audiences in a world of shrunken newspapers and an underfunded public broadcaster...

  by JohnTerauds - April 15, 2013

• Provocative intersections between visual and sound art via Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

  

  April 6 marks the opening of Lost in the Memory Palace at the AGO. This retrospective of nearly 20 years of installations by B.C.-based artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller is a wonderful opportunity to explore the shifting, uncertain ground...

  by JohnTerauds - April 05, 2013

• British Tippett Quartet goes Psycho for part of Women’s Musical Club concert

  

  The Tippett Quartet makes its Toronto début at Walter Hall as the guests of the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto this afternoon. They’re offering a very serious programme of chamber music that also includes a suite from the movie Psycho...

  by JohnTerauds - March 28, 2013

• Critic’s Picks: Toronto concerts for March 25 to 31

  

  MONDAY The music of Christos Hatzis at Walter Hall, 7 p.m. The well-established Gryphon Trio and the upstart TorQ Percussion Quartet are but two sets of many proponents of University of Toronto composition professor Christos Hatzis’s creations...

  by JohnTerauds - March 25, 2013

• Keyboard Thursday video: I never would have thought of Anton Kuerti as the Underwood type

  

  My quest for great classical music videos turned up “Notes from the Kuerti Keyboard,” a two-year-old Bravo! Fact effort featuring the dean of Toronto pianists, Anton Kuerti. The Beethovenian video is the brainchild of David Eng and Katarina Soukup...

  by JohnTerauds - March 14, 2013

• Zubin Mehta’s rich and satisfying Gurrelieder with Israel Philharmonic

  

  Operatic in scope, Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder cantata scares presenters away because of the cost of the big orchestra, chorus and soloists. The composer’s name scares away those people who don’t realise this is young, tonal Schoenberg...

  by JohnTerauds - March 12, 2013

• News flash: CN Tower to make Toronto Symphony Orchestra début

  

  The big surprise in my final conversation with composer Tod Machover leading up to the premiere of  A Toronto Symphony at the New Creations festival on Saturday night was discovering that the CN Tower will be a part of the performance...

  by JohnTerauds - March 06, 2013

• Concert review: Pianist Gabriela Martinez sparkles fleetingly at Glenn Gould Studio

  

  Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez brought refinement, elegance and a penchant for lyrical expression to her Toronto recital début at the Glenn Gould Studio on Friday night. From every traditional measure, this was a fine occasion: Martinez has techniqu

  by JohnTerauds - February 22, 2013

• Classical Music 101: The fascinating relationship between tone and the method of attack

  

  Stroke a string that plays an A and you get a different sound than if you pluck it or hit it with a hammer. But we rarely think about how our experience of a piece of music changes with each method of attack...

  by JohnTerauds - February 22, 2013

• Piano was the only option for Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez

  

  Five generations of women have played piano in Gabriela Martinez‘s family, but she calls herself a black sheep because, unlike the others, she didn’t earn another degree as professional backup. The 28-year-old Venezuelan pianist makes her Toronto...

  by JohnTerauds - February 20, 2013