Tag: Chamber Music

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“MESSIAH” – Ensemble Caprice, Karina Gauvin, Ensemble ArtChoral, Matthias Maute, Jaap Nico Hamburger

(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music is proud to present a new recording of highlights from Handel’s Messiah, featuring soprano Karina Gauvin and bookended by two new choral works by Montreal-based composers, Jaap Nico Hamburger and Matthias Maute. Maute also conducts Ensemble ArtChoral and Ensemble Caprice in these vibrant new choral recordings, which will be available for purchase, download, and on all streaming platforms as of November 5, 2021.

Matthias Maute conducts Ensemble ArtChoral and Ensemble Caprice in performances of Handel’s Messiah throughout the month of December, including Maison symphonique in Montreal (Dec 12) and Palais Montcalm in Quebec (Dec 17). See the complete schedule here

While Handel’s masterpiece has been heard and recorded often, the musicians experienced a feeling of renewal this year: “During the live recording, in an empty hall, it felt like we all were hearing this famous oratorio for the very first time,” says Maute, “After the long drought brought on by the pandemic, this first reunion of choir and orchestra in a wonderful concert hall felt like the rebirth of the spirit of music!”

While sanitary restrictions necessitated a small number of singers – the ensemble has just 12 voices – this is not out of character for the work, though many are used to hearing massive musical forces for the bombastic Hallelujah chorus. Handel himself had a choir of only 16 singers at his disposal when he travelled from London to lead the first performance of his oratorio in 1742 in Dublin. “The flexibility and lightness of a12-voice choir reveals fascinating layers of the work,” comments Maute.

The new recording also includes a short dialogue between Handel and two living composers, with new choral works from the two Mécénat Musica composers in residence, Jaap Nico Hamburger’s Hope and Belief, on a Yiddish text by Isaac Leib Peretz, and Matthias Maute’s O magnum mysterium, which aims to grasp something of the elusive mystery of music. These two works set the theme for the Mécénat Musica Mini-Concerts Santé in the summer of 2020, which delivered music to thousands during lockdown, spreading the magical force of music to help get through the crisis.

Two-time JUNO Award-winning conductor, composer, recorder and flute soloist Matthias Maute has achieved an international reputation. In 2016 he was named artistic director of the Bach Society of Minnesota and in 2019 of Ensemble ArtChoral. Maute is co-artistic director of the Montreal Baroque Festival and artistic director of the Mécénat Musica Concerts Noncerto concert series and has released 20 recordings on various labels.

Maute founded Ensemble Caprice, praised by The New York Times as “imaginative, even powerful; and the playing is topflight.” Known for an innovative and adventuresome approach to an expanding musical repertoire, Ensemble Caprice has performed in 11 festivals, embarked upon its first Latin American tour, and made its third trip to China in addition to an inaugural tour in South Africa. Instigator of the Mini-Concerts Santé, Ensemble Caprice received the Opus Award for Musical Event of the Year 2020 for this project. Through 1,700 musician hires of professional singers and instrumentalists who perform with 184 classical music organizations, $464,000 were paid directly to the artists who were out of work due to COVID-19.

In 2019, Maute was named Artistic Director of Ensemble ArtChoral, a professional choir steeped in the grand tradition of choral music in Quebec. The choir’s director, Maute, received one of his two JUNO awards for his album with choir, entitled Vivaldi and His Angels, From 2021 to 2023, Ensemble ArtChoral is embarking upon a unique project: Art Choral, the history of choral singing through six centuries.

Renowned for her performances of Baroque repertoire, Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin sings the music of the 20th and 21st-centuries with equal success. She has received many prestigious distinctions, including “Soloist of the Year,” awarded by the Communauté internationale des radios publiques de langue française, the Virginia Parker Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Maggie Teyte Memorial Prize in London. Performing in opera and with symphony orchestras throughout the world, Gauvin boasts a discography of over 50 titles, garnering three Grammy nominations, and multiple JUNOs and Opus Prizes.

Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.

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MEDIA CONTACT: 

For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).

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New Music Video from Saint John String Quartet

For over 30 years the Saint John String Quartet [SJSQ] has stood among Canada’s leading chamber music ensembles. The stylistic and energetic troupe is highly sought after for special collaborations within different musical genres – a reflection of their versatility and flexibility. From their sixth recording Canadian Hits: Unplugged, the ensemble takes us on a visual journey through Stan Rogers iconic “Northwest Passage”.

Through the depths of a lush forest canopy to the cliffs overlooking the Bay of Fundy, video director – Lauchlan Ough highlights the beauty of New Brunswick, Canada perfectly while SJSQ effortlessly serenades us with one of Canada’s best-known folk songs. The music is fittingly paired with the dramatic nature landscape filmed at Minister’s Face Nature Reserve overlooking the Kennebecasis River and the wide-open coastline of the Bay of Fundy. All being captured at dawn and dusk and creatively paralleled with the dense harmonic climaxes and expressions of the music.

WATCH AND SHARE “NORTHWEST PASSAGE” HERE

 Saint John String Quartet (violinists David Adams and Danielle Sametz, violist Christopher Buckley and cellist Sonja Adams) has stood among Canada’s leading chamber music ensembles for over 30 years. Renowned for their flexibility, SJSQ is equally comfortable collaborating with blues artists and rock superstars as with its own performances of Classical masterworks.

SJSQ performs over 125 concerts annually and serves as musicians-in-residence for Symphony New Brunswick and the University of New Brunswick. They have performed for many heads of state and at prestigious venues in Canada, the United States, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and in October 2019, South America.

Credited with numerous recordings including their sixth and most recent Canadian Hits: Unplugged. Previous albums have earned a Juno nomination (Classical Composition of the Year) and won an East Coast Music Award (Best Classical Album of the Year) and a Music NB award (Best Album of the Year). Their albums feature innovative works and under-appreciated classical gems.

Recognized for many ground-breaking achievements, including their profound contributions to musical development in New Brunswick, the SJSQ presented the first chamber music concert ever broadcast online.

SAINT JOHN STRING QUARTET
Follow SJSQ on FACEBOOK
WATCH AND SHARE “NORTHWEST PASSAGE”HERE

www.sjsq.ca

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Stick&Bow Release “Resonance”

Marimba and cello form a vibrant and compelling – if unconventional – duo in the hands of Stick&Bow, comprised of Canadian marimba player Krystina Marcoux and Argentinian cellist Juan Sebastian Delgado. Resonance, the debut recording from the Montreal-based award-winning musicians, explores a wide palette of repertoire and styles, transcending tradition with new arrangements of music from Bach to Boccherini, and from Nina Simone to Radiohead. Performing Baroque or tango, rock or gypsy-jazz, Stick&Bow brings unique passion, wit, and technical mastery to eclectic and powerful arrangements of some of the most celebrated music in history, presenting the infinite potential of their combined instruments in refreshing and unexpected ways. Resonance is released on the Canadian label Leaf Music on November 1st, 2019.

The new album – with its bilingual liner notes, in true montréalais style – opens with a captivating mélange of works by J.S. Bach, with a transcription of the Adagio from the Sonata for viola da gamba in D Major swinging into the Prelude in D Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Also taking inspiration from Bach is American singer-songwriter Nina Simone, who adopts the composer’s contrapuntal style for the 1928 tune Love Me or Leave Me, here in an irresistible new arrangement. The album features not one but two fandangos, with Boccherini’s take on the traditional Spanish folk dance from his Quintet No. 4, and Paco de Lucia’s Entre Arrayanes, in one of Stick&Bow’s most technically challenging and creative arrangements, capturing the colour and essence of flamenco guitars.

A range of characters and moods emerge in three settings for marimba and cello of Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, while the gypsy-jazz style of Stéphane Grappelli explodes in Tzigane, with idiomatic embellishments and virtuosic cadence-like runs. The revolutionary Argentine composer and virtuoso bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla is represented with his lyrical and nostalgic Invierno porteño, winter in Buenos Aires.

More illuminating performances from the classical repertoire include two movements from Schumann’s Fünf Stücke im Volkston and the second movement of Shostakovitch’s cello sonata. The complex harmonies and instrumental textures of Radiohead’s Paranoid Android is a surprisingly convincing element of the album, with marimba and cello exploring a range of timbres, including electric guitar sounds.

Also dedicated to working closely with contemporary composers on daring yet accessible works, Stick&Bow includes two new works on Resonance: Jason Noble’s (b. 1980) Folk Suite, a set of miniatures inspired by the rich folk traditions of his home province of Newfoundland and Labrador; and Parisian composer and bandoneon player Louise Jallu’s (b. 1994) À Gennevilliers, injected with fresh, jazzy harmonies and a freely improvised rhythmic section.

First-prize winner at the Latin-American cello competition (2008), Juan Sebastian Delgado holds a Doctoral degree in cello performance from McGill University and Krystina Marcoux, first-prize winner of the OSM competition (2012), holds her PhD from the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Lyon. Their music has brought them to share magical moments from Banff to Colombia, passing by Armenia, Italy, the USA, Ecuador, France and two extensive Canadian tours in 2019 & 2020 as “Emerging Artists” of Jeunesses Musicales du Canada.

leaf-music.ca stickandbow.com


This project is funded in part by FACTOR, the government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Ce projet est financé en partie par FACTOR, le gouvernement du Canada et les radiodiffuseurs privés du Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Nous remercions le Conseil des Arts du Canada de son soutien.

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Duo Kalysta Release Debut Album: “Origins”

Leaf Music is proud to present Origins, the debut album from Duo Kalysta, the acclaimed flute and harp duo comprised of Lara Deutsch and Emily Belvedere. Origins, featuring entrancing music – both familiar and new – by Canadian and French composers, will be released on September 6, 2019 and celebrated in album launch events in Toronto (September 9), Ottawa (September 22), and in Montreal (September 23).

Belvedere, praised for her “crystalline technique” (MusicWeb International) and Deutsch, who reveals “new worlds of colour and meaning in every single note” (CBC Music) met at McGill University in Montreal, where they performed Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp under the baton of Alexis Hauser. “Origins” refers to their return to Montreal to record the album and to their beginnings as a chamber ensemble. Given the album’s Canadian and French repertoire, the title also alludes to the musicians’ Canadian heritage, as well as the heritage of their instruments, which were greatly impacted by French musical traditions. Gaining attention nationwide as a young duo with an exceptional musical connection, Duo Kalysta’s recording projects include a series of music videos for Mécénat Musica Vidéoclips. Following a recent performance by Duo Kalysta in Montreal, Les ArtsZé commented that that the audience enjoyed “the technical breadth of the two virtuosos … revealing a great richness.”

Origins features Claude Debussy’s beloved Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, with its famous, dreamy flute solo, in an intimate arrangement by harpist Judy Loman. Jocelyn Morlock’s Vespertine (2005) utilizes extended techniques to conjure night-blossoming plants and nocturnally-active creatures. Violist Marina Thibeault joins the duo for R. Murray Schafer’s impressionistic Trio for Flute, Viola, and Harp (2011), in which the grounding nature of the viola, the willowy harmonies of the harp, and the fluid motion of the flute combine in an enthralling harmonic atmosphere. Finally, Duo Kalysta is joined by Thibeault, as well violinist Alexander Read and cellist Carmen Bruno, for André Jolivet’s Chant de Linos (1944), evoking Greek timbres in this visceral, spiritual work, dedicated to Linus, the musician son of Apollo.

Named one of 2015’s “Hot 30 Under 30 Canadian Classical Musicians” by CBC Music, flutist Lara Deutsch is a versatile soloist, orchestral, and chamber musician with a passion for connecting with audiences. Lara was a first prize winner of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s 2014 Manulife Competition, at which she was awarded a total of seven prizes, including the Stingray Music Audience Award. She was the Grand Prize Winner of both the National Arts Centre Orchestra Bursary Competition (2014) and the Canadian Music Competition (2010), as well as a laureate of the Concours Prix d’Europe (2016). Lara also offers Performance Psychology Workshops, sharing the skills in optimizing performance that she has learned from her work with renowned Olympic performance psychologist, Jean-François Ménard.

Recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Classical Music Grant for Orchestral Instruments, harpist Emily Belvedere has been praised for her “ease in merging lyrical and dissonant sounds” (MusicWeb International). Emily’s many awards include third prize at the American Harp Society’s 18th National Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah. Emily won the 2013 McGill Classical Concerto Competition as well as the prize for best performance of a Canadian work in the 2013 OSM Standard Life Competition in Montreal. An avid chamber musician, Emily was also a prizewinner in the Glenn Gould School Chamber Music Competition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

leaf-music.ca duokalysta.com

This project is funded in part by FACTOR, the government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.

Ce projet est financé en partie par FACTOR, le gouvernement du Canada et les radiodiffuseurs privés du Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Nous remercions le Conseil des Arts du Canada de son soutien.