We're now diving head-first into the month of November, and the busy concert season schedule is upon us. But music is not all that's happening over the next little while. This weekend, in fact, you have your pick of any number of arts-related events in Niagara and beyond, so let's take some time to highlight some of the events you might like to partake in.
The long-awaited official opening of the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre is next weekend, but this weekend you get your first chance to hear what music sounds like in the largest venue, Partridge Hall, as Chorus Niagara and the Niagara Symphony team up for a concert appropriately titled Celebrate!
Artistic Director Robert Cooper will be marshalling the forces of 160 voices on stage tonight at 7:30 for the concert, featuring his own choir, Chorus Niagara, along with the award-winning McMaster University Choir under Rachel Rinsing-Hoff and of course, the Niagara Symphony. Soloists include soprano Leslie Ann Bradley, mezzo-soprano Maria Soulis; tenor Adam Luther and the big voice of Niagara native and lyric baritone Brett Polegato.
Talk about star power. As my esteemed colleague Doug Herod would write, "Yowzers!"
The musical programme includes Finzi's Ode for St. Cecelia, Bruckner's Te Deum, the Coronation Anthem from Handel's Zadok the Priest, and a brand-new commission written especially for the opening of Partridge Hall tonight, Canadian composer Allan Bevan's Bow of Sound.
The rehearsals have been going well at the new venue and so far and everyone is thrilled with the sound, which is important. That's why we have a purpose-built venue just for this type of concert.
If you don't have tickets for tonight's performance you are out of luck, as it is completely sold out. But you can get tickets for the remainder of the Chorus Niagara season by calling the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre box office at 905-688-0722.
In the Cairns Recital Hall at the PAC tonight, East-coast singing duo Fortunate Ones perform at 8 pm, so that will make for a busy evening at the new facility.
On a somewhat smaller scale, next door at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine & Performing Arts, Harvest Time will be presented at 8 pm in Studio A at the new facility at 15 Artists' Common in downtown St. Catharines.
Harvest Time is a collection of four short plays directed by STAC instructor Renee Baillargeon written by local playwrights and scored and performed by Studies in Arts & Culture Students. This free event is part of the Art Is In The City series of events scheduled throughout the season at the beautiful new Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine & Performing Arts.
Although this is not arts-related, the Niagara Ice Dogs host the Peterborough Petes tonight at 7 pm at the Meridian Centre, so this should give us the first test of all three major venues with events the same night. Considering the 406 is closed in both directions due to the final phase of the removal of the old span of the Burgoyne Bridge downtown, traffic promises to be a bit of a nightmare this evening, so all I can say is pack your patience and if at all possible, take public transit. You'll be glad you did.
Outside Niagara but not far we have the next concert for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, a special Remembrance Day concert that welcomes back to the podium former HPO Music Director James Sommerville.
Entitled Remembrance: Songs of Courage & Honour, the HPO presents the Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture and Hamilton Philharmonic Composer-in-Residence Abigail Richardson-Schulte's moving Songs of the Poets. Also featured will be one of my all-time favourite orchestral works, Ralph Vaughan Williams' exquisite The Lark Ascending with Associate Concertmaster Lance Ouellette making his solo debut tonight.
The concert is at 7:30 at the Great Hall of Hamilton Place, and you can call the box office for tickets at 905-526-7756.
A little further up the highway my friends at the Guelph Chamber Choir kick off their new season at the River Run Centre tonight at 7:30 with the ever-popular Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.
Certainly one of the 20th century's most enduring and popular choral works, Carmina Burana is essentially 24 dramatic poems set to music, sometimes rather satirical and bawdy. Quoting the choir's Facebook posting for the concert, the music was "written by 12th and 13th century students and clerics to express the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of spring, and the pleasure and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust."
What more could you want from a concert, eh? Personally, I would like to find out first hand about whether fortune and wealth are indeed fickle, but I digress...
If you want to hear a great chamber choir in a wonderful downtown setting in a city you'll quickly fall in love with, call the River Run Centre box office for tickets at 519-763-3000.
I have enjoyed many a concert with the Guelph Chamber Choir over the years, and their home at the River Run Centre is certainly a model for many other performing arts spaces in the country.
Enjoy your weekend!
November 7th, 2015
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