Live Life Now, Live Music Again @ Koerner Hall
21C Music Festival continues with Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà
Tickets and subscriptions are available online at www.rcmusic.com/performance,
by calling 416.408.0208, or in person at the Weston Family Box Office
Executive Director, Performing Arts, Mervon Mehta said: “Welcome back to the incomparable concert experience in Koerner Hall! Starting January 31, live music returns to Koerner Hall, and tickets are back on sale for over 35 concerts from February through June. Our audiences will remain fully masked throughout performances and we are vigilant about all COVID-19 protocols for everyone’s safety. Live music is your booster!”
21C Music Festival
The 21C Music Festival continues with the return of Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà, the superb all-female string ensemble featuring some of Canada’s best musicians, on February 25 with a program titled Elle – 25th Anniversary Concert. Dubeau writes: “How can I mark the 25th anniversary of my ensemble, La Pietà? The answer came to me naturally through the music. An album completely thought out, conceived, and played, by women: Elle, in the singular, because each woman is unique. Added to the music of Olafur Arnalds, Armand Amar, Ludovico Einaudi, Alex Baranowski, Philip Glass, and Max Richter will be works from my latest opus, an incursion into the musical world of women, including Rachel Portman, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Rebecca Dale.”
Presented in association with the Bureau du Québec.
Quiet Please, There’s a Lady on Stage
Aretha Franklin truly earned her title “The Queen of Soul.” Multi-genre recording artist and instrumentalist, Damien Sneed, toured with Franklin and, on February 26, he and Valerie Simpson, a six-time Grammy Award nominee (formerly of husband-and-wife songwriting and recording duo Ashford & Simpson), pay homage to Franklin with fresh renditions of her most cherished hits, including “Respect,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Until You Come Back To Me,” “Daydreaming,” “Freeway of Love,” “Natural Woman,” and others.
Classical Music Concerts
Invesco Piano Concerts
“Breathtakingly brilliant pianist” (Gramophone) Víkingur Ólafsson has been called “Iceland’s Glenn Gould” by The New York Times and was named Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards in 2019. His remarkable originality has made an unforgettable impact. His album, Johann Sebastian Bach, on Deutsche Grammophon won Best Instrumental Album and Album of the Year at the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Awards. The program for his Koerner Hall debut on February 24 includes works by Mozart and his contemporaries.
Chamber Music Concerts
Proclaimed “a phenomenon” by the Los Angeles Times, Royal Conservatory’s Artist-in-Residence, Stewart Goodyear, presents the world premiere of his piano quintet based on themes from Beethoven, joined by the Penderecki String Quartet, on February 9. Goodyear then tackles Beethoven’s final monumental work, Symphony No. 9, by paring it down to solo piano and voices. Joining him are the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and soloists soprano Jonelle Sills, mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender, tenor Zachary Rioux, and baritone Korin Thomas-Smith, all current or recent students of The Royal Conservatory.
String Concerts
Jordi Savall is an exceptional figure in today’s music world. Brimming with live emotion and spectacular creative vitality, he is always faithful to historical music of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the whole world. For more than 50 years, he has explored and fashioned universes full of emotions and beauty. A tireless researcher into early music, he interprets and performs the repertory both as a gambist and a conductor. On February 27, he presents a program titled Royal Concerts in the Baroque Versailles, accompanied by Le Concert des Nations. “For sheer opulence, generosity and breadth of repertoire, Jordi Savall … blows the competition away” wrote Gramophone.
RCO Concerts
Part of the Temerty Orchestral Program at The Glenn Gould School, the Royal Conservatory Orchestra is widely regarded as an outstanding ensemble and one of the best training orchestras in North America. On February 11, the orchestra is conducted by frequent guest Tania Miller in a program of the orchestral version of Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Jean-Luc Therrien.
Mazzoleni Masters
Pianist Robert McDonald has appeared with major orchestras in the United States, was recital partner for many years to Isaac Stern and other distinguished instrumentalists, and has played with the Takács, Vermeer, Juilliard, Brentano, Borromeo, American, Shanghai, and St. Lawrence string quartets, as well as Music From Marlboro. In the concert on February 20, he will be joined by pianist and Dean of The Glenn Gould School James Anagnoson, Alexandra Koerner Yeo Chair in Cello Andrés Díaz, Associate Dean Barry Shiffman, and violinist Erika Raum. The program consist of works by Beethoven and Brahms.
Free Concerts
The Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists presents the third Taylor Academy Showcase Concert on February 5, featuring leading young classical musicians in Canada aged 8-18.
Music on Film
For the 10th year, The Royal Conservatory co-presents music documentaries with our Bloor Street Culture Corridor partner, Hot Docs. The Music on Film series continues on February 22 with the critically acclaimed Amazing Grace, a 2018 concert film realized and produced by Alan Elliott. It stars Aretha Franklin recording her 1972 live album of the same name, co-stars James Cleveland, Alexander Hamilton, and the Southern California Community Choir, and features her father, C. L. Franklin.