Along with the wide variety of musical events throughout the area courtesy the Buffalo Philharmonic, Hamilton Philharmonic and of course, our own Niagara Symphony Orchestra, there are many smaller, more intimate musical events and festivals taking place through the fall/winter/spring months. I thought this week we'd highlight some of the more prominent ones close by or not that far a drive away, should you wish to escape for some exceptional popular or chamber music in a warm, intimate setting.
I started thinking of this week's column after I read John Law's article in the Niagara Falls Review about the long-running Niagara Concerts series falling on hard times as of late. Hard to believe, really, when you consider there was a time every concert was a sellout with a waiting list for subscriptions. Considering the value offered, you can see why: even today, five shows can be yours for the bargain price of only $ 100.00.
But times change and inevitably, their audience has aged and stopped coming to concerts. The younger generation has not been brought up on this sort of thing; going to a subscription series of just about anything must seem foreign to many today, living in a faster-paced time when planning ahead seems almost impossible.
So this year, Niagara Concerts' 40th, could very well be their last. With many older audience members simply unable to attend, finding a new, younger audience to pick up the slack is proving to be a difficult task. As other arts organizations have found out already, the greying of their audiences continues unabated and reaching out for new subscribers of every age group is now the only way for survival in the 21st century.
The situation with Niagara Concerts has been complicated by July flooding of their local home base in Niagara Falls, the aging Niagara Centre for the Arts inside Kingston College, formerly NFCVI. The flooding produced mould, which is still being removed, so the first three concerts of the upcoming season have been moved to the ballroom of the Scotiabank Convention Centre. That turned out to be about all that was available in order to save the current season, so that is where they will be.
The Niagara Concerts season looks like another interesting, varied affair: Louise Pitre kicks things off tonight, in fact. The rest of the season includes the Montreal Guitar Trio with the California Guitar Trio November 30th; Big Band Christmas on December 14th; in the new year the venue changes to the old location for the remainder of the season, including The Sounds of Chicago on April 12th and Jesse Peters Trio on May 10th.
I have attended Niagara Concerts performances in the past and they are usually well-attended and exceptional value, so let's hope they can weather the current storm and live to entertain another day. For tickets and more information, go to www.niagaraconcerts.ca or call 905-358-6174.
Beyond Niagara Concerts, there are plenty of opportunities to hear some great music of almost every description this season, including Gallery Players of Niagara, who perform some of their concerts at the acoustically-perfect St. Barnabas Church on Queenston Street in St. Catharines. Their new season kicks off November 24th with, oddly enough, a concert titled The Spring Sonata. The Spring Sonata by Beethoven will be featured in a transcription by Patrick Jordan, paired with Arensky's String Quartet scored for violin, viola and two celli. The annual Christmas concert, Glissandi Christmas, comes up December 20th at Grace United Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake and December 21st at Rodman Hall Arts Centre in St. Catharines. The Christmas concert will feature Shaw Festival actor Guy Bannerman reading Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales", by the way.
The new year kicks off for Gallery Players with a co-production with Primavera Concerts featuring Brett Polegato and the Eybler Quartet on January 19th at Rodman Hall, with a concert titled A Poet's Voice. There is the annual Movie Night event co-produced with Niagara Artists' Centre at their downtown St. Catharines venue February 15th, with improvised music accompanying the silent film The Crowd from 1928. On April 6th, the Vesuvius Ensemble paints a portrait of Naples in a concert titled In the Shadow of the Volcano at St. Barnabas Church; the season concludes with The Beethoven Cycle Continues on June 8th, also at St. Barnabas, featuring the Beethoven Piano Trio Op. 1, # 3 and Schubert's Trio Op. 100 in E-flat major.
For tickets to any of the Gallery Players concerts, call 905-468-1525 or go to www.galleryplayers .ca.
The aforementioned Primavera Concerts kick off their new season with that co-production with Gallery Players January 19th; it continues with Forbidden Music February 9th with special guest artist Jacques Israelievitch joining soprano Sharon Azrieli and pianist Shoshana Telner; Jayme Stone's Room of Wonders comes up March 23rd and May 25th sees Jacques Israelievitch returning to perform with pianist Christina Petrowska in an all-Mozart program.
With the exception of the first concert at Rodman Hall, all the Primavera Concerts take place at St. Barnabas Church in St. Catharines, long one of my favourite venues for small concerts, and from performances I have attended in the past, they are always of a very high calibre. For tickets, call 905-329-9987 or go to www.primaveraconcerts.ca.
Just over the border in Western New York, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society is now underway with their current season, which kicked off earlier this month with a performance by the Attacca Quartet. The BCMS is celebrating their 90th season this year, with performances held in the Mary Seaton Room at Kleinhans Music Hall on Tuesday evenings at 8 pm.
The rest of the season includes the New York Woodwind Quintet on November 12th; the Jasper String Quartet on December 10th; the Szymanowski Quartet on January 28th; Quatuor Ebene on February 25th; Artemis Quartet March 18th and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio on April 29th. I just discovered this ambitious chamber music series earlier this year when I was visiting Buffalo and stopped by Kleinhans Music Hall and found their brochure in the lobby.
The Buffalo Chamber Music Society is definitely worth discovering for yourself! For tickets, call the box office at 1-716-462-4939 or go to www.bflochambermusic.org.
Back on this side of the border, up in Kitchener-Waterloo, the K-W Chamber Music Society serves up a full year's worth of chamber music concerts, most at the KWCMS Music Room at 57 Young Street in Waterloo. The setting is very intimate, indeed, with only 85 seats, but they boast one of the finest Steinway pianos in Ontario. The concerts go year-round, so I will only highlight the coming month's concerts in this space.
Tomorrow the Penderecki String Quartet performs; November begins with Leslie Ting and Sarah Hagen on violin and piano respectively on the 1st; G8 on November 7th; Janacek Quartet November 13th; the Attacca Quartet November 16th and 17th; pianist Kit Armstrong on the 18th; Boston Trio on the 21st and the Dave Young Trio performing a concert titled "Oscar Peterson Remembered" on the 28th of November. That's all just in the next month!
I really have no idea how they manage to squeeze so many concerts into the season, but they do, and the payoff is some great music for residents of Kitchener-Waterloo. For tickets and more information, call 1-519-886-1673 or go to www.k-wcms.com.
Finally, the Elora Festival kicks off their fall/winter season tomorrow afternoon with a concert I am very much looking forward to attending, as the Elora Festival Singers perform Nine Lessons and Carols for Harvest, a nice seasonal play on the customary Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols concert they are known for. On November 30th they perform Menotti's ever-popular Amahl and the Night Visitors; December 8th the annual presentation of Handel's Messiah; the traditional Festival of Carols concert on December 18th; the winter Soup Concert featuring the Brahms Requiem comes up January 19th and the winter season concludes with Bach's St. John Passion on April 6th.
The December 8th and April 6th concerts will be at St. Joseph's Church in Fergus, with the rest of the concerts held at St. John's Church in Elora, the choir's home base. I have heard the choir at St. John's Church in the summer, and they sound amazing in that intimate setting. If you can make any of their concerts this season, you will be in for a treat, I can assure you!
For tickets and more information, go to www.elorafestival.com, or call 1-519-846-0331.
So there, who says you have to go big or go home? You can go small and go out and have some great entertainment in the bargain!
October 26th, 2013.
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