Doos Trio Program

Meridian Arts Centre

and

DoosTrio

Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Man, and

Sandeep Das February 9, 2024

TO Live would like to acknowledge Tkaronto, which is a Mohawk word meaning the place in the water where the trees are standing.

We live and work on the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee-speaking nations, including the Huron-Wendat, Seneca, and Mohawk. Haudenosauneespeaking nations have been here since time immemorial, and were more recently joined by the Mississaugas of the Credit.

This place has many Indigenous ports, including where the Humber and Rouge rivers meet other waterways such as Lake Ontario. Ancient longhouses— typical Haudenosaunee housing structures—have been found along both these rivers and in the north of Toronto near modern-day York University. This territory is covered by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) Confederacy and the Anishnaabe (Ojibwe) and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the lands and the relationships around the Great Lakes.

What this means is that by living and working here, we all have a responsibility to the environment and to each other, to treat each other and the environment with peace and respect. This means we have responsibilities to honour, renew, and consistently uphold the values and relationships outlined in the ancient agreements.

Today, Toronto is home to Indigenous peoples and settlers from around the world. Let us all come together in an atmosphere of respect and peace to do good work together with good minds. Let’s start building stronger and healthier relationships with each other and the spaces we inhabit in Tkaronto, Ontari:io, Kanata.

Let’s hold our minds together in kindness.

Nia:wen. Thank you. © Dawn Maracle

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Welcome letter from TO Live Tonight, you are sitting in one of the best classical music halls in North America.

In our ongoing effort to reinvigorate the program and our audiences at the George Weston Recital Hall, TO Live is proud to present a series of concerts this spring by exciting artists from Canada and around the world.

Launching our program is DoosTrio featuring Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Man, and Sandeep Das. Tonight’s performance is a result of their new collaboration in which each of these virtuoso musicians brings their own musical tradition into a new “super trio”. Performing on kamancheh, pipa and tabla, they will be playing an entirely improvised program that highlights the ancient traditions of Iran, China, and India through a 21st-century lens.

After tonight’s incredible performance, be sure to grab your tickets to: Wild Up (March 27) is described as “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant, exceptionally virtuosic family” by Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times, and lauded as one of classical music’s most exciting groups. Wild Up’s not to be missed performance will celebrate the music of the pioneering Black queer American composer, Julius Eastman.

Jazz at Lincoln Centre Presents concert, Sing & Swing (March 30) celebrates the Great American Songbook in all its playful and sophisticated glory, with songs by George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and many others by two of this generation’s brightest jazz stars, Bria Skonberg and Benny Benack III. Eve Egoyan (May 9) is one of Canada’s most individual and talented pianists.

Egoyan’s personal and engaging performance of Longing and Belonging, features all Armenian music from its folkloric roots to contemporary compositions by Armenian composers and the Armenian diaspora.

Please visit our website at www.tolive.com to learn more about these concerts and our other programs here at the Meridian Arts Centre, Meridian Hall and the St Lawrence Centre for the Arts.

Thank you for supporting live music, and enjoy this evening’s concert by the DoosTrio.

Clyde Wagner President & CEO TO Live

tolive.com

Josephine Ridge Vice President of Programming TO Live

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DoosTrio Kayhan Kalhor “When Mr. Kalhor performed, it sounded like a conversation among several instruments, with the varying timbres at times evoking the wailing pleas of disconsolate lovers. From a simple, muted beginning, the music became more intense and embellished, as ornate melodies and ornaments unfolded with calligraphic detail above ostinato bass patterns.”

—The New York Times

Wu Man “Renowned pipa virtuoso, a magnetic player in whatever genre she chooses to explore.”

—The New Yorker

Sandeep Das “[Sandeep Das’] virtuosic playing injected discreet surges of rhythmic adrenaline.”

— The Boston Globe

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Kayhan Kalhor

Three-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh, who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian music in the west and is a creative force in today’s music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. He has studied the music of Iran’s many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan, and has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon. He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations and Masters of Persian Music.

Kayhan has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has also performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. He has composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth Without Youth in a score that he collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov.

In 2004, Kayhan was invited by American composer John Adams to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives series. In the same year, Kayhan appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, sharing the program with the Festival Orchestra performing the Mozart Requiem. Kayhan was a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and his compositions appear on several of the Ensemble’s albums.

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Wu Man

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Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso, Wu Man is a soloist, educator, and composer who gives her lute-like instrument—which has a history of more than 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. She has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create global awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions.

She has performed in recital and with major orchestras around the world, is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets and The Knights, and is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble. She has appeared in more than 40 recordings throughout her career, including the Silkroad Ensemble’s Grammy Award-winning recording Sing Me Home, featuring her composition “Green (Vincent’s Tune).” She is also a featured artist in the 2015 documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. At 13, she was hailed as a child prodigy and became a nationally recognized role model for young pipa players.

She was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship and the first artist from China to perform at the White House. In 2013, she was named Musical America’s instrumentalist of the year and in 2021 she received an honorary doctorate of music from the New England Conservatory of Music. She is a visiting professor at her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a distinguished professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an Conservatories.

Sandeep Das

Hailed as a “creator of myths with Houdini-like skills” (The Sydney Morning Herald), Sandeep Das is one of the leading Indian tabla virtuosos in the world today.

Debuting at the age of 17 with legendary sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, he went on to establish a prolific international career that now spans more than three decades.

He has collaborated with top musicians and ensembles from across the globe such as Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble, with whom he has performed for the past 21 years, as well as Paquito D’Rivera, Bobby McFerrin, and orchestras like the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Chicago Symphony, among others. A Grammy-winning musician and Guggenheim Fellow, Das’ groundbreaking new music projects sit at the crucible of ancient tradition and modern innovation, enchanting audiences worldwide with “flawless playing” (Songlines) and as a “roadmap for irresistible aural adventures” (DownBeat).

His original compositions have been performed in over 50 countries including China’s Forbidden City Concert Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Hollywood Bowl. He launched Transcending Borders One Note at a Time in 2020 to widespread international acclaim, which seeks to harness the power of music to create positive social change. Driven by a vision for a brighter future, Das is the founder of Harmony and Universality through Music, a non-profit organization in India that has promoted global understanding through music performance and provided learning opportunities and scholarships for visually impaired children with artistic potential since 2009. He is also an active public speaker, and has presented at The New York Encounter, The EG Conference, TEDx events, and multiple university residencies. In 2015, he established Das Tabla School, where he currently trains musicians from over six countries both online and in person in Boston.

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Shining a spotlight on an explorations artist: Candace Kumar Candace Kumar is a cultural dance artist, choreographer, and educator. She specializes in Filipino folk dance and practices diverse styles from across the Philippines. She believes cultural dance can guide us through the future as we navigate life on land that is not our ancestral home.

Last year, Candace was one of seven artists selected by jury to receive explorations funding. TO Live’s explorations initiative supports Torontobased artists from all disciples who want to push the boundaries of their practice, awarding each with $7,000 to test new ideas or research new techniques.

Candace’s explorations research is called “Oceanic Echoes,” and investigates the historical connections of Pangalay, the fingernail dance originating from Indigenous communities in the Sulu Archipelago, across Asian cultures.

Through interdisciplinary exploration, Candace seeks to uncover the cultural and historical influences of Pangalay and its neighbouring dance forms, fostering cross-cultural understanding and collaboration among AsianCanadian dance artists.

Learn more about Candace in our interview with her below.

What’s the importance of the performing arts in your life?

The performing arts are part of my cultural identity. As a mixed Asian-Canadian unable to speak my cultural languages, I found a language through dance.

Dance is how I express love for my homelands while living in Canada as a child of immigrant parents. Through the performing arts, I can advocate for Filipino culture in Canada but also shed light on issues in the Philippines. I can engage in community building and understand my complex identity. It’s a multi-faceted way of storytelling that reaches people on a deep level.

What inspired you to participate in TO Live’s explorations initiative?

My research idea has been floating in my head for the past year, but there has been no opportunity to bring it to life. I was drawn to this opportunity because of the research/exploration element to it, with no expectation to create a final product. This opportunity felt relieving because I am still in the early stages of 14

my research and open to all the possibilities it could take me, which I felt was possible with this grant.

What research idea or technique are you exploring with this initiative?

My project has a few main components, including in-depth research on Pangalay dance and interviews with Pangalay practitioners in the diaspora and Philippines, and then applying them to solo movement explorations sessions. I am also working with Thai classical, Indonesian classical, and Indian classical dance artists. During the past few months, I have conducted interviews with the artists, understanding their journey as cultural dance artists.

My final step is to draw conclusions to better understand some key questions: What do the histories tell us? Do the artist interviews reveal gaps in our CanAsian dance community?

How important is it for artists to have creative space and time, free from the pressure of predetermined outcomes, to research and explore?

It is extremely important for artists to have the freedom of space and time to research and explore their creative ideas. Many grant opportunities must result in a completed work. I feel this standard to always be creating, producing, performing, choreographing, etc. is quite exhausting on the artist. Time for exploration, play, wonder, questions, is just as important as the final outcome, and I believe should be nourished more in the Toronto arts landscape.

What does TO Live’s support mean to you as an artist?

TO Live’s explorations has enabled me to pursue some very meaningful paths towards my own evolution as an artist. It has allowed me to put more of a focus on to my own development and the effects are being felt immediately. I am truly grateful for this opportunity. This work does not end with explorations, it is merely a starting point for a greater project that will engage audiences, which all started with the support of TO Live.

Discover the other explorations artists at tolive.com/explorations.

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#ArtsStartHere, and it begins with you.

The TO Live Foundation is committed to creating a future where art engages and inspires all Torontonians. A future where all the creative voices of our diverse communities are heard and celebrated. A future where artists have the support they need to experiment and grow.

Visit tolivefoundation.com to learn more about how our Foundation is committed to building a better city through the arts.