If you want the ultimate in birthday celebrations, you might hire Stratford Summer Music Festival artistic producer John Miller as your party planner. He is whipping up not just a night but also a morning of music in honour of composer R. Murray Schafer’s 80th.
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The celebration starts on Thursday, July 18th at The Church Restaurant and concludes early the next morning on the banks of the Avon — with suitably Canadian morning comestibles supplied by Tim Horton’s.
The main course definitely belongs to Thursday, with the restaurant serving double duty as concert hall.
With soprano Eleanor James, Schafer’s longtime partner, as host, soprano Brooke Dufton, mezzos Patricia Green and Krisztina Szabó, the Annex Quartet, harpist Judy Loman, accordionist Joseph Macerollo and TorQ percussionist Daniel Morphy will present a best-of Schafer selection centred around his monumental Patria opera cycle.
My guess is that the concert portion, which begins at 6:15 p.m., will likely last for nearly two hours before the floor is turned to the restaurant’s wait staff for dinner and the stage is taken over by three speakers well-acquainted with different facets of Schafer’s professional life: former CBC new music producer (and composer) David Jaeger, University of Toronto vocal teacher Mary Morrison (a key interpreter and champion of new Canadian vocal music) and former Toronto Star critic William Littler.
Chef has as much of a sense of humour as Schafer, offering up “Chicken Arkana” as the main dish (“golden roasted thigh and truffle farce”).
After dessert — a “Patria Pavlova” — guests will be sent home by actor Jesse Stewart and clarinetist Rebecca Dannard performing two scenes from The Greatest Show (the third instalment of Patria).
The very next morning, Stratford witnesses the first of three consecutive dawn performances of Music for Wilderness Lake on the banks of the Avon. Miller has hired 12 trombonists as well as Dufton, who will hopefully not be too much of a sonnambula as she sings from a canoe on the river.
That 7 a.m. performance is being repeated on Saturday and Sunday — all for free, including Tim’s coffee and doughuts.
The Avon cannot, except in our imaginations, pass for wilderness, but the package of events definitely makes up what should be one of the finest public birthday celebrations ever held for a living Canadian art musician.
At 11 a.m. on July 18, Miller unveils an exhibit of Schafer’s remarkable visual music scores at Stratford Town Hall — an exhibit that will remain open to the public for the balance of the summer music festival’s six-week run.
All of these events are open to the public. Tickets for Thursday night’s tribute concert and dinner are $125 — with a special discount for members of Schafer’s Wolf Project — because “they will be invited to howl as part of the program,” explains Miller.
The festival can be reached toll-free at 1-866-288-4313, their email is info(at)stratfordsummermusic.ca, and you can find their website here. The festival’s annual music-and-fireworks opening concert takes place on Monday, July 15.
Here is The Crown of Ariadne, from the fifth part of Patria, which will be performed next week by Loman and Morphy:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
