Writers
Maja Ardal
Hannah Moscovitch
Michael Pollard
Anusree Roy

Composers
Iman Habibi
Anna Höstman
Norbert Palej
Gareth Williams

Artist Pictured: Composer Gareth Williams in the 2009 International LibLab. Photo courtesy Marjorie Chan.

About the LibLab
For 15 years (!) Tapestry has been introducing writers and composers to the collaborative creation process with the annual LibLab, the beginning of the Tapestry Creative Development Programme and a launching point for operatic projects in Canada and beyond. It is also the model for the English National Opera Studio’s All In Opera, as well as Pacific Opera Victoria’s Composer-Librettist Workshop.

Here’s how it works: 4 composers and 4 writers are brought together for a 10-day period of collaborative discovery through the creation of sixteen 5-minute scenes, each of which are written, composed and performed within a 48 hour cycle that is repeated four times, enabling each writer to work with each composer. Guiding the composers and librettists throughout the process are dramaturg Michael P. Albano and musical dramaturg Wayne Strongman (Tapestry’s Managing Artistic Director). At the disposal of the creative teams for the 2010 LibLab will be some of Canada’s most respected performers, including soprano Carla Huhtanen, mezzo soprano Kimberly Barber, tenor Keith Klassen, baritone Peter McGillivray, as well collaborative pianist Christopher Foley.

The Toronto Star ran a lovely interview last week with Marcus Nance, bass-baritone soloist for Dark Star Requiem.

John Terauds writes:

“Even in music, it is people who help us connect with art. And it’s hard to imagine a more charismatic collection of performers than the one Tapestry New Opera Works has assembled for the world premiere of Dark Star Requiem on Friday and Saturday at Koerner Hall.”

and calls Marcus’ return to Tapestry (for the first time since Elsewhereless by Atom Egoyan & Rodney Sharman in 1999)

“a lucky break for the Luminato festival, as well as Toronto opera lovers.”

Click here for the full interview with Marcus.

Click here for more info. on submission criteria.

Deadline for Applications is May 30, 2010.

For most composers and writers the artistic process is a solitary one. Producers around the world agree that forming workable artistic partnerships between composers and playwrights is the single greatest challenge facing the development of new opera and music theatre. The Composer-Librettist Laboratory is Tapestry’s response to this challenge. Initiated in 1995, the laboratory is an intensive one-week workshop for composers and writers to explore the collaborative process.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0G50lXNvEY

Opera to Go 2010 opens Wednesday! Tickets are selling fast. Click here to purchase your tickets online.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxNpuEAKW7A

Opera to Go 2010 opens next week! Tickets are selling fast. Click here to purchase your tickets online.

Our first video statement is by Jill Battson, librettist for “Ashlike on the Cradle of the Wind” (composed by Andrew Staniland). Enjoy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBaywvX2L5s

“Ashlike” is one of the 5 short operas that are part of  Opera to Go, running March 24, 25 & 26 at the Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery Historic District. We hope to see you at the show!

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s annual New Creations Festival presents the best in contemporary orchestral music, pushing the boundaries of sound with premières from today’s hottest composers. One of the ‘Festival Extras’ is free pre-concert lobby performances and for the Azul concert on Thursday February 25th, Tapestry will be entertaining audience members with three 5-minute Opera Briefs.

Purchase an “$8 ticket to the concert then come to the lobby of Roy Thompson Hall at 7:20pm and enjoy:

What is She? (from Opera Briefs 9)
Anna Chatterton, librettist / John Harris, composer

The Sermon (from Opera Briefs 9)
Bernard MacLaverty, librettist / John Harris, composer

Betty Box Office (from Opera Briefs 8)
Ken Gass, librettist / Jack Perla, composer

These ‘briefs’ will be performed by soprano Carla Huhtanen, tenor Keith Klassen, baritone Peter McGillivray and pianist Christopher Foley.

For $8 Tickets to the New Creations Festival visit:

www.tso.ca/weboffers

Use the Promo. Code : TANGO

Tapestry has just received its largest individual gift to date, $250,000 from an anonymous donor to fund the Leadership Legacy Programme. Over the next three years, 6 mid-career arts professionals will be given the opportunity for a 3-month residency at Tapestry as Associate Managing Artistic Director, a position which is intended to grow the company’s artistic capacity and to provide leadership succession for the future.

“My interest in human resource management is an extension of the deep and trusting relationships I have built with musicians and singers from an early age. By extension, that is how I try to manage my business relationships, beginning with the staff and board and by extension to my colleagues in other companies around the world. Further, the invention of a vocabulary to make the development of new operas practical and successful has been built over 20 years of relationships with playwrights and composers, directors, designers, and of course the performers.  It is truly a collegial world I inhabit.  We hope that through this programme we will identify a future leader who will welcome the rare opportunity to join a well-established organization where they will be enabled to realize both their artistic vision and the business practice that will make it possible.” Wayne Strongman

Read the full media release here.

Photo © Brian Mosoff, 2009

Opera Canada Magazine has just published their 50th Anniversary issue and featured a thoughtful, rave review for The Shadow from Editor Wayne Gooding.

Here are a few quotes:

“…Daniel and Poch-Goldin have fashioned a splendidly theatrical piece, one of the strongest developed by Tapestry.”

“We’re in absurdist territory in this opera, a world of dark impulses and imaginings, where private inner worlds break through public masks. Shakespeare’s Falstaff lightly referes to the inner world as ‘Our Saturday selves,’ but Jung talks of ‘a shadow side…of a positively demonic dynamism.’  The opera impressively exemplifies the same dualism; playfulness and farce animate The Shadow’s external storyline, but hte comic evocation of the dark side leaves you with the disquieting sense that you’re in a room full of dirty little secrets-and wondering whether you’ve let any of your own slip out.”

“Among a very fine ensemble of singers, pride of place must go to baritone Peter McGillivray as Raoul/Hernando. His central role bears the biggest burden, and he negotiated the difllcult and taxing score with great musical skill and all the dramatic chops to create a strong, pivotal character. Countertenor Scott Belluz, resplendent in a long, pleated topcoat and dark glasses, threw himself with evident relish into the diabolical title role, for which composer Daniel made full use of a high singing voice and lower speaking voice to create the Shadow’s other-worldly presence. Soprano Carla Huhtanen created a winsomely lovelorn Allegra, a powerful and eloquent presence in an otherwise all-male ensemble, while the not-inconsiderable supporting roles of the moneylender and the waiter (a  kind of Fawlty Towers Manuel in musical overdrive) were vividly handled by; respectively, baritone Theodore Baerg and tenor Keith Klassen. This is first and foremost an ensemble piece, and it’s for the
excellence of this that the singers and the seven-piece orchestral ensemble conducted by Tapestry Managing Artistic Director Wayne Strongman deserve the greatest kudos.”

Click here to read the full review.

The Shadow

by Alex Poch-Goldin & Omar Daniel
(World Premiere May 2009  in Toronto)
Director: Tom Diamond
Music Director: Wayne Strongman
Set & Costume Design: Camellia Koo
Lighting Design: Robert Thomson
Cast: Carla Huhtanen, Peter McGillivray, Scott Belluz, Keith Klassen & Theodore Baerg

One-act opera of intrigue, desire and deception featuring a countertenor in the title role; premiered at the Berkeley Street Theatre, Downstairs in May 2009.

 

Shelter
Juliet Palmer, composer
Julie Salverson, librettist

Dark Star Requiem
Andrew Staniland, composer
Jill Battson, libretttist

The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G.
Aaron Gervais, composer
Colleen Murphy, librettist