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Grand Philharmonic Choir

Water

WATER: an environmental oratorio

Wednesday is World Water Day (March 22, 2023) and that’s a good reason to let you know about some new Canadian music that’s all about water. ‘WATER: an environmental oratorio’ imagines two different worlds. In a fantastical world, Water is personified, surrounded by singing spirits. In the everyday world, played out in a fictional Northern Ontario town, a beleaguered Mayor must decide whether to support a developer’s factory, or protect the purest water on the planet. Soloists Katy Clark,  Marion Newman, Jean-Philippe Lazure, and Phillip Addis bring these roles to life on May 28, 2023, at 3pm with the  Grand… Read More »WATER: an environmental oratorio

Xmas cake

Seasonal delights: Frost and fruitcake

Here is all of the very most pressing seasonal news. I finished the epic task of baking a traditional, dark and fruity Christmas Cake on ‘Stir Up’ Sunday with an old friend who is luckily a much more experienced baker than I am. She put me right on several culinary details that averted small disasters. Who knew there were different ways of measuring dry and wet ingredients! I do now. The recipe is a special one, passed on to me by my dear friend Janet, who in turn received it from her Mother. Who knows how far back the recipe… Read More »Seasonal delights: Frost and fruitcake

Winter Nights II

The premiere of a new piece is always an exciting event, but let me tell you, for a “modern” composer, it’s actually more thrilling when your work gets a second performance. It means you were not totally off base when you wrote the thing, and some courageous conductor will risk performing an unknown piece that the audience has never heard of. Mark Vuorinen is the brave conductor who undertakes this task in Kitchener-Waterloo this Sunday afternoon, with the Grand Philharmonic Choir and orchestra, and my old friend Michael Colvin as the tenor soloist. Winter Nights is a four movement cantata… Read More »Winter Nights II