The RCM Announces Spring/Summer Concerts Lineup

The RCM has announced its lineup of concerts from May through August, including Live Life Now, Live Music Again @ Koerner Hall, two formidable cellists with two formidable pianists in one weekend Sheku Kanneh Mason with Isata Kanneh Mason Gautier Capuçon with Jean-Yves Thibaudet/ Other classical concerts include Joshua Bell with Peter Dugan Anne Sofie Von Otter with Christoph Berner

World Music concerts feature Las Cafeteras and Patricia Cano. Jazz From Around the World series concludes with Ivan Lins Quintet and Supergenerous featuring Cyro Baptista and Kevin Breit Joey Alexander Quartet and Selçuk Suna Quartet, Marcus Roberts with the Modern Jazz Generation, Maple Blues Awards, and the world premiere of Gould's Wall and Marc Neikrug's A Song by Mahler as part of 21C Music Festival.

In case you think that you have heard every interpretation of Beethoven's music, Marcus Roberts with the Modern Jazz Generation present jazz improvisations on Beethoven's "Moonlight" and "Waldstein" sonatas on May 11. This "only in Koerner Hall" concert will also include variations on Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story and On the Town. As the Philadelphia Inquirer remarked, "Pianist Marcus Roberts is known for many things: a genius skill that makes him the logical successor to Thelonious Monk's wild style (with a lot of Fats Waller in his stride), an immense love of the blues, technological innovations in regard to composing for the blind, and a soulful sense of tradition and invention." This concert concludes the Beethoven@250 Festival, begun in 2020 but interrupted by COVID-19.

Maple Blues Awards, Canada's blues music all-star concert and annual awards return on June 20, Hosted by Angelique Francis, the 2022 edition features performances by some of the hottest blues musicians from across the country, including Sue Foley, Crystal Shawanda, Kat Danser, and Bobby Dean Blackburn, all backed by the illustrious Maple Blues Band.

Presented in partnership with the Toronto Blues Society

Las Cafeteras is a "uniquely Angeleno mishmash of punk, hip-hop, beat music, cumbia and rock ... Live, they're magnetic" according to the Los Angeles Times. The Chicano band from East LA that fuses spoken word and folk music with traditional son jarocho, Afro-Mexican music, and zapateado dancing shares the evening of May 13 with Patricia Cano, an award-winning Peruvian-Canadian singer-songwriter, actor, and "a supremely talented songwriter and vocalist" (JazzdaGama).

Presented in association with Small World Music, in celebration of SWM's 25th anniversary.

Ivan Lins is a Brazilian superstar and a Latin Grammy Award-winning songwriter, vocalist, and pianist, whose songs have been performed by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, George Benson, Michel Legrand, Sting, Diana Krall, and Quincy Jones. He shares the May 14 evening with Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista and Toronto guitarist Kevin Breit, who teamed up to create Supergenerous. Billboard called Supergenerous "pure aural pleasure" and Dallas Morning News "weird, frightening and funny, but never remotely predictable."

Turkish-Canadian clarinetist and saxophonist Selçuk Suna, a member of KUNE and the Istanbul Trio, opens on June 4 for jazz pianist Joey Alexander. Alexander became the first Indonesian musician to chart on Billboard 200 with his album, My Favorite Things, released when he was 11 years old - in 2015. He is one of the youngest musicians ever nominated for a Grammy Award in a jazz category.

Making their Toronto debuts on May 6, British brother and sister duo, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, will perform works by Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Britten. Isata Kanneh-Mason's debut album, Romance, entered the UK classical charts at No. 1 when it was released in 2019. Gramophone described the recording of Clara Schumann compositions as "one of the most charming and engaging debuts." Sheku Kanneh-Mason won the 2016 BBC Young Musician award - the first Black musician to ever win the competition. He played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018 and has performed with symphonies around the world. He was appointed a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours.

Just two days later, on May 8, French cellist Gautier Capuçon returns to the Koerner Hall stage with French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet after his two previous sold out concerts with Yuja Wang and Jérôme Ducros. On this occasion, the powerhouse duo performs works by Brahms, Debussy, Schumann, and Shostakovich.

With a career spanning over 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, conductor, and director, Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era. He returns to Koerner Hall after his sold-out concert in 2017 with a program of Bach, Beethoven, Ravel, and Schubert on May 24, accompanied on the piano by Peter Dugan.

With a career spanning more than three decades at the very top of her profession in opera, concert, and recital, internationally acclaimed Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter "possesses one of the most flexible and natural vocal instruments of any living artist" according to Opera Now. On May 15, accompanied by Austrian pianist Christoph Berner, whose enormous stylistic spectrum and musical versatility is shown to audiences and critics alike in his impressive discography over the past few years, she presents works by Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, Erik Gustaf Geijer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Schubert.

Interrupted by pandemic restrictions, the 21C Music Festival picks up with the Canadian premiere of Marc Neikrug's A Song by Mahler, featuring The Royal Conservatory's cultural ambassadors, ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory), on May 5. A celebrated soprano, famous for her rendition of Mahler's love song, Liebst du um Schönheit, develops early onset Alzheimer's. The drama follows her (mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert) and her pianist/husband (baritone Kelly Markgraf) as they confront their new reality in this touching account of love and loss.

The world premiere of Gould's Wall, presented in partnership with Tapestry Opera, will be performed as part of Toronto Summer Music on August 4, 5, 9, 10, and 12. Gould's Wall is a re-imagining of the life of Canadian icon and classical pianist Glenn Gould and features singers climbing along the wall of The Royal Conservatory's atrium. This daring new opera echoes Gould's constant striving for artistic perfection and the inherent climb and fall in the artist's journey. Composed and conducted by the award-winning Brian Current, with libretto by Dora Award-winning actor, director, and writer Liza Balkan, this production will be directed by the multiple Dora Award-winning Philip Akin. The all-Canadian cast features interdisciplinary artist Lauren Pearl as Louise, a young talented musician striving for perfection in her art; beloved tenor Roger Honeywell as the Canadian icon and classical pianist Glenn Gould, Alberta-born soprano Caitlin Wood as The Housewife, and Saskatchewan-born Juno and Dora award-winning mezzo-soprano Andrea Ludwig as The Mother. Tenor Keith Klassen plays The Celebrity, baritone Justin Welsh plays Gould's famous mentor The Teacher, and Alice Malakhov plays The Girl, presented in partnership with the Canadian Children's Opera Company. For this site-specific work, audiences will watch from the RCM's café area and the orchestra will feature students from The Glenn Gould School, The Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists, as well as from the Toronto Summer Music Academy.

The Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists presents the Academy Chamber Orchestra on May 1, featuring leading young classical strings students in Canada aged 14-18.

Curated and conducted by Brian Current, The Glenn Gould School New Music Ensemble performs the world premiere of Paul Frehner's Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra on May 2 in Temerty Theatre. As part of the Discovery Series, the program also includes works by visiting composer Sandeep Bhagwati.

Meow Meow, scheduled for May 7, will be re-booked for 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. The Maple Blues Awards will be livestreamed on June 20, 2022.

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