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Articles of Section 'Festival Vancouver'.

Festival Vancouver

Festival insiders’ view on where to queue

By Jessica Werb
 
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Festival Vancouver

A young soprano hits her stride with riotous energy

By Jessica Werb
When soprano Measha Brueggergosman answers the Georgia Straight's phone call to her New York hotel room, it's as though she's greeting an old friend.
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Festival Vancouver

Ancient instruments create new tradition

How's this for community outreach: in 2003, as part of the annual Hong Kong Drum Festival, more than 3,000 amateur musicians met the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra in the world's biggest-ever gathering of percussionists. Two years before that, 1,000 Chinese-violin aficionados brought their erhus to join the ensemble in Music for a Thousand Strings. And in 2005, more than 500 dizi players brought their bamboo flutes to help the HKCO open a festival devoted to Chinese wind instruments.
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Festival Vancouver

Spindel’s sound enchants

By Tony Montague
Norway’s traditional music is inseparable from its myth and legend, the country’s national instrument being a prime case in point. The Hardanger fiddle is a type of violin with four regular strings and four sympathetic strings, producing a ringing, droning, often ethereal sound—the aural equivalent of the northern lights. Long ago, it was known as the devil’s instrument.
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Festival Vancouver

LAGQ invokes guitar gods

By Ken Eisner
Of all the instruments in the classical world that might have appeal, you’d think the guitar would be the easiest to pitch to concertgoers. You’d be wrong.
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Festival Vancouver

Gong bangs out new rhythm

By Alexander Varty
Ever heard Korean percussion music? No? You're not alone: the sounds of the Korean peninsula have not found much of a foothold in North America, withlanguage and distance creating formidable barriers to their wider acceptance. And even if you have heard such instruments as the jing (gong), the janggu (hourglass drum), and the buk (barrel-shaped drum), you've probably encountered them in the hands of SamulNori, the only Korean percussion group to tour this continent with any degree of success.
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Festival Vancouver

Handel to Hendrix, by way of Hong Kong

Our critics comb the festival's program of more than 50 shows for essential viewing and hidden gems
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Festival Vancouver

The Smith Quartet

By Alexander Varty
A Festival Vancouver presentation. At the UBC First Nations Longhouse on Saturday, August 6
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Festival Vancouver

All-star cast is ready to handle rare Handel

By Alexander Varty
If you're not familiar with George Frederick Handel's Acis and Galatea, don't be ashamed. Although the 1718 work prefigured such ever-popular oratorios as the Messiah, it is only rarely played in North America-and, as far as anyone can tell, it's never been presented in Vancouver.
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Festival Vancouver

Church holds no sway in baroque oratorio

By Jessica Werb
It's difficult to imagine how something that now seems as benign and spiritually uplifting as opera could be deemed inappropriate by the church-but that's exactly what happened in 17th-century Italy during Lent. In the weeks of piety and penitence leading up to Easter, there were to be no elaborate costumes, no breathtaking sets, and no tales of romance won and lost. But where there's a will there's a way, and a loophole in this set of rules was quickly exploited.
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Festival Vancouver

Mischa Maisky with Martha Argerich in concert

By Jessica Werb
Deutsche Grammophon
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Festival Vancouver

Der Freischütz (The Marksman)

By Jessica Werb
By Carl Maria von Weber. Directed by Jonathan Darlington. A Festival Vancouver and Vancouver Opera coproduction. At the Orpheum Theatre on Monday, August 1
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Festival Vancouver

Music continues to move Corea

By Alexander Varty
Even as far back as the 1960s, it was readily apparent that Chick Corea has no use for artistic restrictions. The young American pianist got his start playing soulful hard bop with trumpeter Blue Mitchell, jumped to the band of Latin-jazz legend Mongo Santamaria, backed up singer Sarah Vaughan for a while, and then helped Miles Davis invent electric jazz on albums such as Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way. Four decades on, he remains just as busy-and just as hard to pin down.
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Festival Vancouver

Capercaillie makes old Gaelic songs new again

By Tony Montague
It now seems inevitable that accordionist Donald Shaw and singer Karen Matheson would become a couple and create Capercaillie, Scotland's best-known Celtic band. They both grew up and learned their music in the small community of Taynuilt, on the banks of Loch Etive near the west-coast port of Oban. They've known one another for so long that neither can remember when they first met.
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Festival Vancouver

Pianist at home with her range

By Alexander Varty
Listening to Joanna MacGregor's extraordinary Play CD, which incorporates everything from John Dowland and Johann Sebastian Bach to John Cage and Talvin Singh, it struck me that the Scottish pianist must be one of the most formidably well-trained musicians I'd ever encountered.
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Festival Vancouver

Conductor-organist Marshall keys in to B.C. composers

By Jessica Werb
Most classical musicians will tell you that their first music lesson was the joyful resolution of weeks or months of anticipation. Not so for British choral conductor and organist Wayne Marshall.
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Festival Vancouver

Pianist unearths rare English musical pleasures

By Alexander Varty
The program Canadian-born pianist Douglas Finch will present at the UBC First Nations Longhouse next Saturday (August 6) is perhaps the most eclectic collection of music in a festival that is itself so varied as to be almost uncategorizable.
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Festival Vancouver

Kinch and Finch just two of an illustrious U.K. crew

By Ken Eisner
Soweto Kinch has been travelling a lot lately. Places like Morocco, Lithuania, Zimbabwe, Armenia, Bosnia, and even Bracknell, England, have been on his itinerary for the past two years. The A-list alto saxophonist, whose tart, modernist sound adds Lee Konitz cool to Ornette Coleman angles, is growing as he goes-and he was already off to a great start.
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Festival Vancouver

"Freischütz" shoots straight with a timeless theme

By Alexander Varty
In some ways, Jonathan Darlington will have it easy at the Orpheum Theatre on Monday (August 1), when Festival Vancouver and Vancouver Opera join forces to produce a reading of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (The Marksman). The conductor's local reputation is based on his work as Vancouver Opera's music director, in which capacity he's been responsible for staging a variety of wildly theatrical works.
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Festival Vancouver

Discover hidden gems and crystal silences

Our critics offer their carefully considered opinions on the most ambitious and intimate events to look for on an eclectic roster.
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Festival Vancouver

LeBlanc wakes up audiences to early music

By Ken Eisner
Suzie LeBlanc is getting famous. So much so, in fact, that I had to postpone my call to the soprano when one of her recent recordings came on the radio just as I picked up the phone. After playing a George Frederick Handel piece from Portrait, a new compilation CD of her solo work on the Atma label, the CBC host referred to her as "not only one of the best classical singers in Canada, but one of our best singers, period".
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