After slogging my way through the enjoyable but lengthy Bleak House, I decided to pick up a new book that Amazon’s algorithm recommended to me: Jack Gatland’s Silver and the Sunday Cypher. It turned out to be the perfect follow-up to a relatively dark Victorian masterpiece.
Silver and the Sunday Cypher is a fun and fast-paced thriller that features 64-year-old widow, Laura Carlyle, who is thrust into a cloak and dagger world of secret societies, murder, espionage, and international diplomacy. It begins with the assassination by poisoning of Harry Farrell in broad daylight in front of a London church. Farrell has been compiling a dossier on a shadowy group that is called The Calendar. Its members go by days of the week (shades of G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday), with a mysterious “Mr. Sunday” at the top of The Calendar’s hierarchy.
Sublime, noun or adj. 9. Of a feature of nature or art: that fills the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; that inspires awe, great reverence, or other high emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.
– Oxford English Dictionary
Since 2019, my wife and I have made biennial efforts to route our long vacation toward one of the USA’s national parks. (She saw the Ken Burns film; I read Neil Peart’s travel books.) For this year’s trip, we ended up circling the Great Lakes, with a side quest to visit college friends in upstate New York. And while our trek had plenty of normal vacation fun — and even a few proggy moments — it struck me looking back how much time we spent in the presence of the sublime. (It cropped up on our 2024 vacation, too!)
The core destination on our eastward journey was Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. A unlooked-for haven of forests, rivers, byways and trails situated between Cleveland and Akron, entering the park cast us back to the era when mule-drawn shipping plied the Ohio & Erie Canal, passing settlements and small towns on the way to the Mississippi River. But our initial destination within Cuyahoga Valley, Blossom Music Center, casts a distinctly modern silhouette on this pastoral scene.
The Cleveland Orchestra has long been considered one of America’s top five symphony organizations, alongside New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Since the late 1960s, they’ve played summer concerts on Blossom’s 800-acre grounds. On the Saturday night we attended, 4,000 folks filled the pavilion and dotted the expansive lawn as a remarkably youthful orchestra took to the faux-rustic stage for a challenging program.
With young Czech conductor Petr Popelka on the podium, German violin phenom Veronika Eberle tackled one of the monuments of her instrument’s repertoire, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Twice as long as any similar work of the period, the Concerto stands out for its focus on cooperation between soloist and orchestra instead of contention. Eberle proved more than equal to the broad, lyrical span of the work, graciously in tune with her colleagues through the Allegro’s subtle, sonorous build, the Larghetto’s placid thematic variations and the vivacious, folksy Rondo. A well-deserved standing ovation led to Eberle dashing off a Bartok duet with concertmaster Joel Link. Then Popelka proved himself a maestro to watch and hear with a sprightly, energetic reading of Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony. Music, audience and surroundings came together for a thoroughly delightful evening. The rain that had threatened throughout even held off until after the concert!
After an evening’s rest, the park called and we answered, hiking to and around the breathtaking Brandywine Falls (a hop, skip and jump from our B&B):
On our outbound journey the next day, we hiked The Ledges, a massive rock outcropping with its own ecosystem, actual bat caves, and a spectacular overlook of the Valley’s forests.
Following time with our friends, we tackled the sublimest of the Sublime for our wedding anniversary: the American side of Niagara Falls, experienced from multiple angles via New York’s expansive state park (the oldest in the country), a boat trip on the Maid of the Mist, and a river-level viewing platform where the now-obliterated Cave of the Winds once beckoned.
And it’ll surprise no one that, cutting back through Canada to head home, we stopped at the annual Stratford Festival for a taut, spellbinding production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. One of the Bard’s late tragicomic romances, this one’s got it all: just in the first half, there’s jealousy and skullduggery, messages from the gods, false accusations with fatal results, plus the most notorious stage direction in theatrical history, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” How Shakespeare fashions a happy ending from of these tangled threads (hint: a flash-forward of 16 years is involved) is a marvel in and of itself, but a company that can pull off such a drastic vibe shift is even greater cause for wonder. As usual, Stratford was up to the task, with veterans (Graham Abbey’s hapless Leontes, Sara Topham’s noble Hermione, Yonna McIntosh’s searing Paulina, Tom McCamus’ country clod facing off with Geraint Wyn Davies’ citified rogue Autolycus) and new recruits (an enthusiastic Marissa Orjalo and a passionate Austin Eckert as young lovers Perdita and Florizel, Christo Graham’s show-stealing Clown) giving it their all under Antoni Cimolino’s sure-footed direction. If there’s finer theater on this continent, I’d be hard-pressed to find it. (The Winter’s Tale runs through September 27 at Stratford; see it for yourself!)
Daddy wants to win the lottery, Mommy is still bitter about getting knocked up at twenty, Simeon has war-related PTSD, and Rachel just wants to get out of her parents’ place and have a home of her own, but first there are a few things she’s got to get off her chest. It’s Jamaica’s Independence Day, Toronto is sweltering, and everyone is on edge–then the air-conditioner breaks.
— publishers’ blurb for Get That Hope
If the above sounds like a downer — well, on stage it didn’t turn out that way! While playwright/screenwriter Andrea Scott explicitly claims Eugene O’Neill’s famously depressing Long Day’s Journey into Night as inspiration for Get That Hope, her new play (currently in previews for its world premiere next month) has too much of the milk of human kindness to leave its audience shattered. There’s misapprehension and conflict shot throughout her bittersweet portrait of the Jamaican-Canadian Whyte family, but as individuals’ secrets are revealed and each character gathers the courage to be honest, the play becomes an affirmation of how the ties that seem to confine can also bind together — in love (however clumsily and reluctantly expressed), in sympathy, in mutual support.
With only five characters, each actor has to make their portrayal count — and each steps up to the challenge. Conrad Coates’ Richard Whyte works hard to be carefree as the head of the family– maybe a little too hard, as he dismissively tries to keep the lid on everyone’s tensions and just have a party. Kim Roberts (a pioneer in Canadian stage, film and TV) vividly portrays the challenges Richard’s wife Margaret faces, both to recover her health and to relate to the household’s adult children. Celia Aloma as Richard’s daughter Rachel bears the brunt of the Whytes’ situation; providing most of the family income, she longs for respect and independence. And son Simeon, sketched with quiet intensity by Savion Roach, wrestles with demons acquired while serving overseas, locked into inaction by his suppressed pain, fear and frustration. Jennifer Villaverde’s Millicent Flores — the family’s Filipino neighbor, Margaret’s care worker, everybody’s confidant — seems to be the glue holding the Whytes together; but a secret that’s only revealed as Act II begins threatens to blow all these tense relationships completely apart.
Misunderstanding between generations and cultures breaks out in the open; Rachel slams into her parents for not living up to her expectations, Richard and Margaret react with disbelief and defensiveness, Millicent has to stand up for herself while Simeon confronts his own emotional paralysis. What’s true to life here — what Scott, director Andre Sills and the company bring home powerfully — is that none of these problems are solved with a pat therapeutic answer, or even a melodramatic apology. Everyone in this circle stands their ground — but everyone also realizes that all they have is each other. And as painful as their vulnerabilities are, leaning on each other, letting go of built-up resentment, is how they’ll get through whatever might come their way, with the play’s final moments hinting at both further suffering and (just perhaps) reasons to hang on.
I found Get That Hope to be a solid slice-of-life drama, resonant in its forthright assertion of how we need each other in the face of adversity — whether it’s eaten at you for years or comes at you from out of nowhere. Come to this new play with an open mind and heart; you won’t be disappointed.
This is why my wife and I return to Stratford. The bells and whistles of featured musicals like Something Rotten are typically engaging, farcical fun; our mileage will vary on time-travel takes on classics (like the current “Summer of Love” production of Twelfth Night) and unsubtly Urgent Cultural Message plays (looking at you, La Cage aux Folles). But what draws us here again and again is what Sam White’s production of Romeo and Juliet provides in plenty: Shakespeare’s archetypal tragedy, presented with unwavering commitment, designed with minimalist period flair, expertly staged and acted. This is a refreshingly down and dirty exploration of a play that resonates down the centuries, not only in its high-spirited vision of young love, but in its taut portrayal of the fears and passions that ultimately thwart its star-crossed lovers.
Members of the company in Romeo and Juliet. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
A sung prologue sets the table for a whirlwind first half, with White’s deft command of the intimate, surprisingly bare Festival Theatre stage was powerfully evident. Whether in the opening scene’s street brawl or at the masquerade where Romeo meets Juliet, crowd movements are vibrant, organic, purposeful, frequently cued by Graham Hargrove & Jasmine Jones-Ball’s thrusting onstage percussion. Individuals’ speeches fluently unpack each character’s motivation and reactions: a blustering Tybalt (Emilio Vieria), a cautious Benvolio (Steven Hao), the exasperation of Prince Escalus (Nick Dolan), the defensive crouch of the senior Capulets and Montagues — all establish the underlying powder keg of anger and resentment, ready to go off at an antagonist’s tiniest slight to personal honor.
Jonathan Mason as Romeo and Vanessa Sears as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
Which is the reason Jonathan Martin’s lovesick Romeo and Vanessa Sears’ passionate Juliet stand out; in clans obsessed with judgment and rejection of the other, their soliloquies mark how they crave hope, yearn for a lasting acceptance. And when they find each other, the attraction is immediate, magnetic, unstoppable. The inspired duet of their balcony scene exhilarates; their capricious browbeating of Friar Laurence (consummate Festival veteran Scott Wentworth) into a clandestine wedding feels inevitable in the sweep of their mounting passion. But then, the explosion: with the hair-trigger murders of Andrew Iles’ Mercutio by Tybalt and Tybalt by Romeo — tumbling over each other in a brutal, riveting flash of violence — fear wins out, tragedy gathers momentum. Blackout!
From left: Emilio Vieira as Tybalt, Andrew Iles as Mercutio and Derek Kwan as Tybalt Follower in Romeo and Juliet. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
This was the moment when my stomach knotted — and even though I’ve known this play since high school, as the second half slammed one door after another and the lovers’ scheming grew more desperate, it refused to untwist. When Graham Abbey’s Capulet compels Juliet’s consent to marry Austin Eckert’s Paris by callous words and physical force; when Juliet threatens suicide, then grasps at the straw of Friar Laurence’s stupefying potion; when Glynnis Ranney’s Nurse keens an anachronistic snatch of Henry Purcell (testimony to White’s love for opera) over Juliet’s grave; when Romeo’s turbulent emotions solidify around his own suicide mission, the tension ratchets up and up, to unbearable heights.
Scott Wentworth as Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
Which is why the final bloodbath in the Capulet vault — as Paris, then Romeo, then Juliet die at the hands of misdirected honor and folly under pressure, to the belated horror of Capulets, Montagues and Prince alike — ultimately feels inescapable, and remarkably universal. In White’s sure, determined hands, this tragedy could be playing out anywhere at anytime, be it Renaissance Mantua or 21st-century Detroit (where her mother kickstarted her passion for Shakespeare at the age of 8, as a disciplinary consequence for catching her listening to Salt’n’Pepa). As she tosses out to close her program notes: “Remember what happens when we don’t love our neighbor as ourselves. Just saying.”
I’m deeply grateful for this production of Romeo & Juliet — its primal commitment to Shakespeare as an artist speaking across and into multiple cultures, its understated opulence and fleet pace, its vivid characterizations and exuberant performances, its cataclysmic clash of the deepest forces at work in our fallen, idealistic, conflicted psyches and societies. For those with ears to hear and eyes to see, it’s a thrill, a warning, and maybe even a necessary passage from heights of joy through depths of despair to chastened, repentant grief. Above all, it’s well worth your time and travel to experience.
I thought there were three genuinely great things about the Tony Award-winning musical Something Rotten, as currently playing at the Stratford Festival:
1. Mark Uhre’s frenetic take on struggling Elizabethean playwright Nick Bottom. Between his oversized desire for fame, his strained interactions with enterprising wife Bea (a confident Starr Dominque) and poetic little brother Nigel (Henry Firmston in the boy-next-door role), and his obsessive drive to take down William Shakespeare and win the Renaissance fame game, Nick is desperation personified, thoroughly uncomfortable in his own skin and all the funnier for it. Uhre plays him as a live-action version of Daffy Duck, spluttering with unbounded rage at his situation, and thus completely susceptible to any bizarre idea that crosses his path – like inventing the musical – and thus totally willing, no matter how insane the consequences that follow, to “commit to the bit”.
2. The thing is, in this universe, Nick’s right! Framing Shakespeare as a vain, manipulative rock star (continuing the parallel, think Bugs Bunny without redeeming qualities) is Something Rotten’s masterstroke. Trailed by his own theme song and a crew of dancing Bard Boys, basking in the adulation of a solo stadium gig (with hilariously low-tech special effects), scheming against Nick to the point of donning a fatsuit disguise and a Northern accent, stealing Nigel’s best lines and passing them off as his own, Jeff Lillico is a utter hoot, England’s greatest dramatist as an egotistical, over-the-top pantomime villain. Even when he lets his guard down in his big solo “Hard to Be the Bard”(“I know writing made me famous, but being famous is just so much more fun”) , this is a Shakespeare you can love to hate.
3. Speaking of over-the-top, director Donna Feore and her creative team absolutely chose the right path by leaning into the Broadway musical’s inherent absurdities, as foreseen by cut-rate soothsayer Nostradamus (Festival veteran Dan Chameroy in a giddy, disheveled supporting turn):
You could go see a musical A musical A puppy piece, releasing all your blues-ical Where crude is cool A catchy tune And limber-legged ladies thrill you ’til you swoon Oohs, ahhs, big applause, and a standing ovation The future is bright If you could just write a musical
Dan Chameroy as Nostradamus with members of the company in Something Rotten!. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
Every possible cliché you can think of is there onstage for those six minutes: Sung recitatives (with self-mocking asides)! Bawdy double-entendres and suggestive choreography! Costume changes (including nonsensical hats and wigs)! Jazz hands! Synchronized high-kicking (with callbacks goofing on Feore’s 2016 Festival production of A Chorus Line)! It all worked to perfection at this matinee, the capacity audience (including your scribe) yelling and applauding for more (which the company obligingly provided) as if Pavlov had just rung his biggest, shiniest bell. And the places Nick and Nostradamus find themselves going in the second act’s big number scale even zanier heights. Complete the sentence yourself: “When life gives you eggs . . .” Then imagine the costumes!
Where Something Rotten falls short? Compared to the sublime ridiculousness of the main story, the supporting characters’ arcs bog down in vapid sentimentality and already-stale contemporary memes. Bea’s occasional empowerment shoutouts pale in comparison to what she actually does out of love for her husband and his brother, subtly undercutting her role as the true hero of the piece. Nigel’s emergence from Nick’s shadow is a bit of a damp squib; his main solo turn “To Thine Own Self Be True” proves an shallow, unearned manifesto of self-actualization instead of a rite of passage. And the meet-cute romance between Nigel and Portia (Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane, winningly portraying a budding poetry fangirl under the thumb of Juan Chioran, a Puritan father given to pre-Freudian slips) sputters, toggling between aren’t-we-transgressive smuttiness and, in “We See the Light”, a Big Message about tolerance, tediously staged as a clumsy cross between Sister Act and Rent — Feore’s only directorial misfire.
But that said, Something Rotten’s full-on commitment to farce and totally bonkers energy (with Feore, Uhre, Lillico and Chameroy setting the pace for a young, frisky cast) carries the day. Productions about Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival are typically on or about at the same level as their productions of Shakespeare, and this delightfully nutty escape into a toe-tapping alternate version of the Renaissance is no exception.
Members of the company in Something Rotten!. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo: David Hou.
— Rick Krueger
Something Rotten continues at Stratford Festival’s Theatre, with its run now extended through November 17th. Click here for ticket availability.
Back in the 1990s, I began collecting CDs of J.S. Bach’s keyboard works, played by young Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, The winner of 1985’s Toronto International Bach Competition, her playing was worlds away from the True North’s previous Bach-on-piano champion, the willfully eccentric Glenn Gould; dancing rhythmic vitality, crystal-clear delineation of melody and counterpoint, and a constantly spinning, singing line have always been Hewitt’s hallmarks. Even before she brought her Bach series to a culmination with an utterly dazzling take on the Goldberg Variations, I was long past fandom into near-adoration.
Since then, Hewitt has re-recorded key Bach works (including an even more impressive 2nd take on the Goldbergs), while moving on to Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas, selected Mozart sonatas and concertos, and a wide sweep of the keyboard and piano repertoire spanning centuries and continents, from Domenico Scarlatti to Olivier Messiaen. With more than 50 consistently superb albums and 40 years of international concerts to her credit, I’d argue that Angela Hewitt is the equal or better of any concert pianist active today (and I’m confident I’d win that argument). So hearing her in concert for the third time as part of our current Canadian odyssey was an absolute must.
This past Sunday, under the auspices of Stratford Summer Music, Hewitt filled the austerely midmod Avondale United Church with both an uncommonly focused audience and a involving, joyous program of serious fun. Playing her calling card right at the start, Hewitt hit the keyboard running with Bach’s Partita No. 6 in E Minor; its elevated Toccata and Fugue, poignant Sarabande, remarkable Corrente, genial Air, lilting Gavotte and surprisingly angular Gigue all unfurled with grace, clarity and strength. But the profound Sarabande — which Hewitt has referred to as Bach “alone in communion with his maker in a dialogue that is at once sorrowful, hopeful, passionate and at times exalted” — was the hushed essence of the work; you could hear a pin drop and feel the listeners breathing with Hewitt as she delved deeply into that movement’s grave, elegant mystery and wonder.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata proved both a logical follow-up to the Bach and a welcome change of pace; as Hewitt brought delicacy and sympathetic spirit to the famous opening movement, you could hear both the musical DNA Beethoven inherited from Bach and how he developed it in his own dramatic fashion. And in Hewitt’s hands, the wistful Allegretto and the wildly spiraling climax of the Presto agitato were logical extensions of the opening, but also vivid declarations of Beethoven’s determination to “seize Fate by the throat”. From the prolonged blast of applause that followed, you would have thought that there was nothing more than Hewitt could show an audience already under her spell.
Which is why the sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti that opened the second half of Hewitt’s program were such a refreshing breather. The simple charm of Scarlatti’s D Major Sonata K. 430, the K. 380’s courtly E Major trumpetings and the gyrating tarantella of K. 159 in C Major turned out to be consummate palette-cleansers — substantive yet easily digested appetizers before the daunting final course of Johannes Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel.
My 2nd Brahms variation set in 24 hours, the Handels are not for the faint of heart, whether you’re hearing or performing them — in her brief pre-concert introduction, Hewitt mentioned how she had been discouraged from learning the piece when younger because “women can’t play it.” The next half-hour proved how totally wrong such a stupid comment could be: working from memory as she had throughout the recital, Hewitt dealt out Brahms’ 25-plus takes on the theme from Handel’s Keyboard Suite No. 1 with utter commitment and total command. Such lucid structural thinking, such immediately evident dedication to the work, such finely graded touch, and tone, and rubato, and dynamics! What a powerful musician Hewitt is, and how completely she inhabited the moment! It was a performance to revel in, even while looking forward to hearing her promised recording of the piece (scheduled this fall for a future release).
This time, when the music ended, the crowd leapt immediately to their feet, and the applause simply didn’t stop — at least until Hewitt provided a brief, lyrical encore from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. In all probability, this concert will be firmly lodged in the “all-time Top Ten” I keep in my head; it’s hard to beat two hours of total connection between a thrillingly communicative artist & a raptly attentive audience. Brava!
The Elora Singers had me at “hello” when, saluting a sell-out crowd in the town’s Gambrel Barn, they kicked off their 45th festival’s closing night gala with this:
Quick and bright yet wonderfully poignant, Gerald Finzi’s partsong has been the Singers’ unofficial theme tune since they returned to the post-pandemic concert stage. It deftly conveys their genuine delight in making music, made manifest even in the boilerplate welcome speeches of artistic director Mark Vuorinen and festival manager/alto Christine Stelmachovich. As the duo powered through the now-ubiquitous Land Acknowledgment, sponsorship recognitions, dad jokes, etc., their gratitude and glee at seeing an audience literally unable to fit inside the Barn’s walls was impossible to fake.
Then the stage was turned over to piano duo James Anagnoson & Leslie Kinton for a sweeping version of Johannes’ Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Kicking off with an exalted statement of the St. Anthony Chorale, Anagnoson & Kinton teased out Brahms’ imaginative shifts of tempo, texture and tonality throughout the variations, his accomplished use of counterpoint brought firmly to the fore. And when the duo built up the work’s finale (variations on a ground bass leading into a grandly restated chorale) to its tumultuous climax, they received an ovation not only well-deserved, but essential as a response to their first-rate performance.
Next came Toronto’s Elmer Iseler Singers, celebrating their 45th year as Canada’s premier professional vocal ensemble. Conducted by artistic director Lydia Adams (wonderfully gracious when we chatted briefly at intermission), the EIS exhibited their rich tone in a brief set on the lyrical theme of “rising” — bookended by seminal choral classics (James MacMillan’s O Radiant Dawn, Healey Willan’s Rise Up, My Love), investigating the compositional possibilities inherent in Hindu, Islamic and First Nations texts — and unleashing a devastatingly gorgeous, wordless take on Ukranian composer Myroslav Skoryk’s Melodia.
Finally, an hour of everything but the kitchen sink; how else to describe Carl Orff’s gargantuan cantata Carmina Burana, with all the previous forces plus five percussionists and three vocal soloists jammed onstage? Based on a medieval manuscript of secular poems (by disaffected monks?), Orff’s 1936 masterwork is a rhythm-dominated hour of songs about — well, sex and drink and the Middle Ages equivalent of rock’n’roll! Soprano Leslie Fagan as “the girl in the red dress”, tenor Andrew Haij in an infamously difficult cameo (as a swan roasting on a spit) and baritone Russell Braun as a variety of ne’er-do-wells played their parts to the hilt, flirting shamelessly with the front rows; the massed choir lamented the woes of Fortune (“Empress of the World”), raised way too many toasts in the tavern and egged on young lovers with a will. And even in this cut-down orchestration, the pianos and percussion slammed out one driving, kaleidoscopic groove after another. Having performed it multiple times with the Grand Rapids Symphony & Chorus, I can tell you that few classical works build up the momentum or bring the sonic spectacle this work does; with Vuorinen focusing Orff’s inventions to full intensity, the Eloras, Iselers and companions brought down the house, wild applause erupting almost before the final crescendo died away.
In short, this past Saturday proved a grand night for singing. What the Elora Festival accomplished this past weekend (and throughout the past month) is not just another set of rousing performances, but a lasting testimony to music’s ability to move, shake and thrill its creators, performers and listeners. Long may this choral festival bring the best of what’s sung and said to this beautiful village!
Park your car in the biggest paved lot you can find in Elora, Ontario — the one adjoining the horse racing track & casino just southwest of downtown. Then, cross the road to the municipal Gambrel Barn — transformed into an unlikely concert hall for three weekends in July.
Filing onstage: Constantinople, an instrumental quartet from Montreal that plays medieval, Renaissance and Baroque instruments from Persia, Turkey, Japan, Europe and Ireland; A Filetta, a male vocal sextet from Corsica, an island ruled by France (Napoleon came from there) where the native language developed from Italian and Greek roots; and The Elora Singers, a impeccably polished, 21-voice Canadian choir. How, you might think, is this all gonna come together?
As it turns out, the answer last night was: in an exceptionally intense, immersive way. Introducing the program Clair-obscur, Constantinople’s music director Kiya Tabassin noted its title and content came into being just before 2020’s worldwide pandemic. After its first performances, in Tabassin’s words, its purpose became “to bring light (clair) to darkness (obscur)“. And over the next 90 minutes, the assembled forces proceeded to do just that, crossing a continent to meld the sounds of disparate times and places into a satisfying whole.
The music, mainly assembled by Tabassin and A Filetta’s leader Jean-Claude Acquaviva, proved thoroughly cosmopolitan and eclectic. The sextet’s singing was the obvious heart of the evening; their sturdy blend of dominant bass drones, fleet interweaving lines stacking up into glancing consonances and luxuriant melodic melismas were consistently riveting, whether voices were raised in a show of strength or hushed in breathtaking tenderness. Tabassin’s 3-stringed setar and Didem Basar’s kanun (a 78-stringed Turkish zither) danced lithely around and about the rugged vocal base, with forthright support from Tanya LaPerriere’s Baroque violin & viola and supple grounding in Patrick Graham’s ten-fingered, two-footed percussion; each player had their evocative solo moment and earned delighted applause from the crowd.
Atop this entrancing musical scaffold, the sung texts unfurled a dizzying collage of Senecan drama, Renaissance epic, Near Eastern poetry from Rumi and Hafez, traditional ponderings on the passion of Christ and Primo Levi’s meditation on the memory of the Holocaust. Here was history stripped of its timeline, collapsed into its component catastrophes and passions — pride, devotion, horror, absurdity, yearning for calm and deliverance – compounded into the moment’s expression and emotions. And when Tabassin raised his reedy voice to cavort over A Filletta’s firm foundations or the Elora Singers enriched the soundscape with supportive reinforcement and embellishments, the chamber effect broadened out to opulent symphonic proportions.
Clair-obscur (the nearest English equivalent would be chiaroscuro, the play of light and shadow in the art of painting) proved a unique mix of folk music and high art, calmly unhurried vocal prowess and upbeat improvisation, a journey through the heart of human life to a resting place of connection, catharsis and celebration. You can check out a sample of this program for yourself below (the complete concert, without The Elora Singers, can be found here):
At first glance, Elora is a typical tourist-oriented village in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe. Its town center sweeps downhill toward a historic mill on the Grand River, now the focus of redevelopment via a luxury hotel/spa complex. It boasts plenty of chichi boutiques, upscale brewpubs and posters about upcoming weekend festivals. A well-stocked local grocery store and the inevitable Shoppers Drug Mart speaks to the place’s practical streak; two enticing bookshops (one stocking new releases, one second-hand treasures) testify that food for the mind and soul are on the menu as well.
But taking the high concentration of limestone buildings in Elora as a clue reveals the true heart of its attraction. Just west of downtown, the Elora Gorge lies downstream from a 25-foot waterfall, its 72-foot cliffs towering over the path of the Grand for more than a mile. Whether viewing it from the village’s pedestrian footbridge, the elevated trails that wind through and around it, or down at the riverbank itself, the cliffs and crannies quickly bring the word sublime to mind.
Of a feature of nature or art: that fills the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; that inspires awe, great reverence, or other high emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.
And that experience chimed perfectly with our day’s next activity – the final Choral Evensong of this year’s Elora Festival, held at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, less than two blocks from the Gorge. The past lies thick within St. John’s walls (constructed in 1875), from the communion set that Florence Nightingale donated to the parish’s first priest (on display behind the organ console) to what a church brochure calls its “strong history of liturgical worship and choral music.”
Led musically by the 21-strong Elora Singers, conductor Mark Vuorinen and guest organist Christopher Dawes, this Evensong unfolded in classic fashion: a long-established liturgical structure augmented with appointed hymns, psalms, readings and prayers. From the opening words of the ancient chant “To You, Before the Close of Day”, the congregation joined in with heart and voice as the choir processed to its stalls; the core texts of Confession, Creed and Lord’s Prayer were spoken with vigor and affection; a whimsical homily on Matthew 26 sharpened to a serious point, tracking remarkably well with Timothy Dudley-Smith’s hymn text on our daily callings “How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord” (the text itself set to a robust tune by arch-British composer Charles Parry).
And throughout the service, we were given multiple tastes of the musical sublime, starting when Dawes’ rendition of Herbert Howells’ Psalm Prelude based on Psalm 33:3 (“Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a loud noise”) roared to life, filling the sanctuary with arresting, rhapsodic melody, thick, juicy chords and supple, flexible rhythms. Howells’ Evening Canticles for King’s College, Cambridge unfurled in similar romantic fashion, the Singers proving exquisitely sensitive to the musical and textual nuances. To quote the composer, in this Magnificat a humble Mary exalted her Son while the mighty were “put down from their seat without a brute force which would deny this canticle’s feminine association”; the Nunc Dimittis’ tenor solo (beautifully voiced by Singer Nicholas Nicolaidis) perfectly “characterize(d) the gentle Simeon” as he held the Christ Child and thanked God for His promised deliverance. So when the chorus and organ ramped up on each canticle’s concluding “Glory be to the Father”, the weight of praise seemed to encompass not just those in attendance, but the whole of creation, landing on “world without end, Amen” with breathtaking depth, substance and impact. But there was more!
Welsh composer William Mathias’ contrasting musical language –cheerful, quicksilver, rooted in a rumbustious sense of the dance — proved equally riveting on the anthem “Let the People Praise Thee, O God” (composed for the wedding of Prince Charles & Lady Diana Spencer and sung with joyous, sympathetic precision) and a closing organ Recessional so vivacious that it set toes tapping, even as the instrument’s festival trumpet echoed around, tumbling down scales like water streaming down the Gorge. It proved an exhilarating coda to the final hymn, “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Has Ended”. As John Ellerton’s stirring invocation of God’s presence in creation and the Church unrolled to Clement Schoefield’s majestic melody, the Elora Singers filled the center aisle with rich harmony and a soaring soprano descant to cap a worship service like few others I’ve experienced in my life.
In his new book Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor explores the roots of what he calls “a language of insight”, a way of exploring “phenomena like value, morality, ethics and the love of art itself” beyond the reductive terms of mechanistic natural science that frame so much of our daily lives. I consider it a gift to have, on the same day, explored the language of Nature and the language of faith, in each instance pulled by the sublime toward a deeper connection with what has been before I was born and, Lord willing, what will continue beyond the hour of my death.
It was late September 2021 and I was driving around Salmo-Priest Wilderness, basic plan was to locate this remote lookout tower. It’s at an altitude of over 6000 Ft, and expected be right around the intersection of Washington, Idaho and Canadian wilderness. Path leading to the tower was rated white-knuckle grade by this book on Wild Roads, so obviously caught my curiosity. Lady GPS who usually guides me was a bit lost, so had to use a map and chase Forest Road markers to identify that last section of the climb.
Entrance to this last leg of the route was flanked by overgrown shrubs. Even though less trodden the road itself looked real. But, few miles into it I encountered that familiar feel of vehicle slipping sideways. Road was quite weathered, otherwise a Wrangler with high clearance and 35” tires wouldn’t lose traction. But once 4WD was engaged it was smooth sailing. Reaching the top, the Jeep and I were greeted with some thrilling hail and snow. This was definitely among those exquisite PNW moments.
Often my approach is to try and explore relatively risky back roads on Jeep before attempting on a motorcycle. But on hindsight, even on a capable machine like Wrangler, this particular road felt a tad unsafe. In general even moderately rugged forest roads could be dicier than difficult 4×4 trails. Because when nature weathers the terrain, it does in unexpected ways, while dedicated 4×4 trails are maintained and hence predictable. But, this risky attempt also gifted a rather remarkable experience. Standing at high altitude with near freezing temperatures, and with both international and state boundaries on the horizon, it was silence and splendid views all around. Finally climbed back into the Jeep, only to hear the rumbling of the light hail landing on the windshield, with a backdrop of dusky autumn hues. Catching some Black Sabbath on the trusty satellite radio made all this even better.
Spirit of Cecilia 
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