Toronto Area Performances

Hi everyone,

I'm just back from a week in the Toronto area. My first performance was at the University of Guelph. After giving a guest lecture for the Music of the Near and Far East class, Parmela Attariwala and I gave an afternoon performance of a traditional tabla solo and LA, a contemporary piece by Canadian composer Robert Rosen.

Parmela Attariwala and Shawn Mativetsky performing at the University of Guelph. (Photo by Phil Musgrave)

That evening, I accompanied the extremely talented soprano, Zorana Sadiq in her Music-Toronto vocal recital at the Jane Mallet Theatre in Toronto (St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts). We premiered a new arrangement of Shirish Korde's Songs of Ecstacy, which was a big hit with the audience. (No photos, unfortunately.)

The next evening, Parmela and I performed in the Canadian Music Centre's New Music in New Places series, which took place at the Hamilton GO Station. This is the main public transportation hub for Hamilton, serving both bus and train commuters. Many people were quite surprised to see a performance of new music during their evening commute home! Many people sat down for the entire performance, while others stood around for a few minutes, waiting for their bus or train to arrive. It was certainly different to perform in such a milieu, but it was quite a successful event. Many audience members had never seen tabla, or heard contemporary/new music before, and Parmela and I both received many comments from audience members after the performance.

Performing at the Hamilton GO Station

The concert began with Christien Ledroit's Trade Winds, a concerto for tabla with electronics (some of you may remember that I performed the orchestral version of this piece just a couple of weeks ago), followed by Vintal Bolia, an improv-based piece by Parmela and myself. Next, was Parmela's solo violin composition, Piercing Embrace and Payton MacDonald's Alap, for solo tabla. We concluded the programme with two duo pieces - the premiere of Christien Ledroit's Never the Twain Shall Meet, followed by Robert Rosen's LA.

Christien Ledroit, who composed two of the pieces on the program, and who also organised the concert for the CMC, put in an exceptional effort in putting this concert together. He designed the programs, newspaper advertisements, and even built the stage! On the evening of the concert, we rushed to put together the stage, run the wiring for the speakers and mixer, and do the sound-check. In the end, it all came together, and the concert ran very smoothly. Congratulations to Chris for a very successful event!

This week, I'll be premiering Payton MacDonald's Samsara, a new concerto for tabla and wind ensemble with the McGill Chamber Wind Orchestra. More news to come...


Regards,
Shawn