April Concerts Announced At The Royal Conservatory Of Music

The Royal Conservatory Of Music has announced its April lineup of concerts including Live Life Now, Live Music Again @ Koerner Hall and classical concerts with Ivo Pogorelić, Joyce DiDonato, Sir Bryn Terfel, Eve Egoyan and more!

The popular concert series, inspired by Australian songwriter Peter Allen's song, "Quiet Please, There's a Lady on Stage," which he wrote for his mother-in-law, Judy Garland, returns for the seventh season to celebrate extraordinary female voices, concludes on April 9 with Dianne Reeves. The five-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist's timeless voice and enthralling performances have made her the "most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday" according to The New York Times.

Celebrated tenor saxophonist and composer Joshua Redman's 1994 album MoodSwing introduced his first permanent band, an astonishing collection by four precociously talented musicians who would rapidly establish themselves as creative beacons. After years of individual triumphs, Redman reunites the original group, all Koerner Hall regulars - pianist Brad Mehldau, who won the 2020 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade - for an unforgettable performance on April 22. The evening includes brand new material alongside signature work that showcases Redman's "musical breadth, emotional depth and intellectual savvy" (Chicago Tribune). Their reunion has resulted in the brilliant new album, RoundAgain.

The Royal Conservatory teams up once again with The Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival to present The Canadian Jazz Master Awards Presentation and Performance on April 23 in Temerty Theatre. This event and presentation of the awards celebrates the 2022 Canadian Jazz Master Award

recipients, Pat LaBarbera and the late Paul Bley, and features special performances by musicians dear to Oscar who have also worked with Mr. LaBarbera for many years, plus some very special surprise guests.

In the SongBird North concert on April 30 in Temerty Theatre, top Canadian songwriters come together with host Blair Packham to perform their music and tell us about the inspiration, the songwriting process, and the stories behind the songs. Presented in partnership with the Songwriters Association of Canada (S.A.C.)

All Music Guide wrote: "The beauty of Miles from India is how the players from different cultures and backgrounds meet on Miles' turf with their individual voices completely intact. Miles from India is not only an amazing celebration of the music of Miles Davis, it's also a tribute to the way Miles and Teo Macero changed the way jazz music can be made." The Miles from India - A Celebration of the Music of Miles Davis on April 2 musicians include world-renowned percussion virtuoso, Indian music scholar and composer, and the founding director of Indian music studies at York University, Trichy Sankaran (mridangam & khanjira), American jazz tenor saxophonist, bandleader, and educator Javon Jackson (saxophones), nephew of late jazz icon Miles Davis Vince Wilburn, Jr. (drums), Rez Abbasi (guitar & sitar-guitar) who was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021 for composition and has appeared in Koerner Hall on a number of occasions, as well as Adam Holzman (keyboards), Alphonso Johnson (bass), Raman Kalyan (flute), Salar Nader (tabla), Taku Hirano (percussion), and Tim Hagans (trumpet).

Makoto Ozone, who performed with Chick Corea, Branford Marsalis, and was a favourite of Oscar Peterson, founded the group No Name Horses, hosts a jazz radio program, and writes music for live theatre and TV. The Japanese jazz and classical pianist is making his Koerner Hall debut on April 23, with his trio. They share the evening with Youn Sun Nah, whom The Guardian called "astonishing ... [and] a discreet, diminutive vocal giant." Her special guest is the great Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius, who was a member of Oscar's quartet for over a decade. Presented in partnership with The Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival.

Legendary Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelić is one of the most original music minds of today with 40+ years on the concert stages. Known for innovative and highly suggestive interpretations that have served to broaden the understanding and experience of pianistic literature, he makes his Koerner Hall debut on April 24 with an all Chopin program.

Following her ground-breaking and award-winning global project, In War & Peace: Harmony Through Music, which reached over three million viewers worldwide, American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato now presents her next great passion. Eden explores the majesty, might, and mystery of nature through both arresting and evocative music and theatrical effects. On April 19, DiDonato takes the audience on an emotional journey to reconnect to the power and fragility of nature, exploring our place within the kaleidoscopic, wondrous world around us. Joined by the original instrument ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro and Maxim Emelyanychev, as well as the French stage director Marie Lambert, she performs a wide-ranging program cycling from Handel to Ives and Glück to Mahler, inviting the audience to consider their own place in the world, and perhaps to even change it.

A Grammy, Classical Brit, and Gramophone award winner, Welsh bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel has established an extraordinary career, having performed regularly on prestigious concert stages and opera houses of the world. In his return to Koerner Hall on April 30, accompanied by pianist Annabel Thwaite, he performs works by Beethoven, Brahms, Gerald Finzi, Roger Quilter, Schubert, and Vaughan Williams.

Re-scheduled from January, Eve Egoyan performs the world premieres of Works for Augmented and Acoustic Piano on April 8. She created these pieces for a newly imagined instrument that delves into the space between what a piano can do and what Eve has always wished a piano could do. The core of these works is the live acoustic sound of the physical piano she is playing, but through the delicate intervention of technology, she tests (teases) the edges of the piano's natural sound, ultimately pushing it beyond the familiar, through the impossible, and into the extraordinary.

On April 29, Johannes Debus conducts the Royal Conservatory Orchestra in a program of Haydn's Symphony No. 88, Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin, and Brahms's Symphony No. 1.

The extraordinary pianists of The Ihnatowycz Piano Program at GGS take centre stage in The Glenn Gould School Piano Showcase on April 23 in a showcase for duo piano compositions. Composers range from Brahms to Rachmaninov, and the program will conclude with the popular and virtuosic Rachmaninov Suite No 2.

Free Concerts

Artists on the cusp of major careers perform in Rebanks Family Fellowship Concert on April 13. These concerts feature solo and chamber works performed by Rebanks Fellows currently enrolled in the one-year Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Performance Residency Program at The Glenn Gould School.

As part of the Discovery Series, The Robert W. and G. Ann Corcoran Concerto Competition (formerly The Glenn Gould School Concerto Competition) on April 14 offers the chance to hear the talented solo performers of The Glenn Gould School compete for the opportunity to perform a concerto with the Royal Conservatory Orchestra during the 2022-23 concert season.

The Royal Conservatory is livestreaming numerous concerts this season and audiences are encouraged to check the website 30 days prior to each concert if interested in this option. Single livestreams are available for $20 per household. The Conservatory is also offering new streaming "for pick your own" passes - $99 for 5 concerts, $130 for 10 concerts, and $199 for the full season per household. Each concert will be available for viewing for seven days. Please visit The Royal Conservatory's new digital channel www.RoyalConservatory.Live. This month, Eve Egoyan on April 8 and Sir Bryn Terfel with Annabel Thwaite on April 30 will be offered as paid livestreams and Johannes Debus conducts the Royal Conservatory Orchestra on April 29 will be free.

Koerner Hall has been awarded a #SafeTravels Stamp by World Travel & Tourism Council for adopting health and hygiene global standardized protocols. Click here to learn more about our safety protocols.

To post a comment, you must register and login.