Cicada Woods is a fairly recently formed Toronto based group consisting of Suhashini Arulanandam – violin, Esme Allen-Creighton – viola, Sybil Shanahan – cello and Shannon Wojewoda – double bass. Their first recording titled Seasons is of two works based on the four seasons. The first is an arrangement of Astor Piazolla’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires). This was originally scored for bandonéon, violin, electric guitar, piano, and double bass and the arrangement aims to match Piazolla’s sound world as much as possible through the use of extended technique etc. Of course this four movement piece is tango based and that comes over clearly in the arrangement and I think the four acoustic instruments manage to sound like a tango ensemble. There are some particularly effective percussive effects for example in the third movement “Primavera”.
De Profundis revisited
Gregory Prest’s De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail is currently playing at Soulpepper. It’s the same production (more or less… it may have been shortened by a few minutes) and the same cast as when first performed in February 2024 and I feel pretty much the same about it as I did that first time. It’s a terrific piece of theatre and I’m not sure I can greatly improve on what i wrote back then. There were though a few things that jumped out at me more this time.

The King’s Grief
The King’s Grief is the latest show from the Happenstancers who performed it at Redeemer Lutheran on Friday and Saturday evenings. Like pretty much all Happenstancers’ shows it takes a number of works with multiple acts/movements/etc and combines them in unconventional ways. This programme was built around Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga, Thomas Adès’ Court Studies, from The Tempest and the only three songs that survive by Lady Mary Dering with some Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin, John Dowland and Colin Matthews thrown into the mix.

GGS Fall double bill
This year’s fall opera offering from the Glenn Gould School is a double bill; Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. Both of these were written in the 1950s and satirise bourgeois marriage of the time. Opera goers are absolutely used to seeing the marriage customs of, say, the 1850s or 1790s sent up in opera but some how the 1950s seem weirdly exotic. Director Mario Pacheco seems to have thought so too and sets both works in Dr. Pritchett’s Clinic for Matrimonial Memory Erasure. So the quartet in the Barber are nurses in scrubs; three of whom also form the trio for the Bernstein where Dinah and Sam are played as patients. It actually works pretty well.

Rihab Chaieb’s upcoming Koerner concert
Rihab Chaieb is currently lighting up the stage in Los Angeles as Carmen but she took some time out from her schedule today to talk to me about her upcoming Koerner Hall recital with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz which will be on the afternoon of November 15th.

Time’s Eldest Son
Diapente, with guest Felix Deak on viola da gamba presented a concert of music by John Dowland and some of his contemporaries at St. Thomas’s Anglican on Tuesday evening. It was a generous selection of pieces arranged for various combinations of the musicians available; Jane Fingler (soprano), Peter Koniers (countertenor), Jonathan Stuchberry (tenor and lute), Alexander Capellazzo (tenor), Martin Gomes (bass) and, of course, Felix Deak (viola da gamba).

Theatrical Giulio Cesare from Dmitri Tcherniakov
In 2025 the Salzburg Festival assembled a stellar cast and an exceptional orchestra for Dmitri Tcherniakov’s challenging but compelling production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto. It’s a contemporary setting with all the action taking place in the confines of a bunker, which appears to be sporadically under shell fire. Pretty much all of the issues raised by having all the characters in the small space all the time are cleverly resolved to create a very tightly wrought, tense piece of theatre.

Pursue Peace
Pursue Peace; Contemporary Chamber Music by Canadian Jewish Composers is the first recording by the Jewish Music at York initiative of Toronto’s York University. It features three works by living Canadian Jewish composers; Sid Robinovitch, Noam Lemish and James Rolfe. Full review at La Scena Musicale.
Catalogue information: New Focus Recordings FCR48
Lise Davidsen’s Verdi
Lise Davidsen’s latest CD with Ed Gardner and the LPO features arias from five Verdi operas; Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlo and Aida. It’s pretty good. Full review at La Scena Musicale.
Catalogue information: Decca 4872241
Le Recital des Anges
Le Récital des Anges is a CD of Schubert songs orchestrated by Ian Cusson and Hector Berlioz plus the orchestral version of Ian’s Le Récital des Anges; a setting of six poems by Émile Nelligan. The full review is at La Scena Musicale.
Catalogue information: aparté music AP446