Wild Up program

Wild Up March 27, 2024

Photo credit: Alex K. Brown

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

Welcome letter from TO Live

Welcome to the George Weston Recital Hall, and to this evening’s performance by Wild Up. Based in Los Angeles, this ensemble of musicians is truly breaking new ground, both in terms of their repertoire choices and their approach to concert presentation.

Tonight’s program provides an exciting introduction to Wild Up’s world of music. You will be hearing two works by Julius Eastman, the pioneering Black queer composer who is only now receiving the recognition his work deserves 30 years after his death. One of Wild Up’s favourite composers, Eastman’s work is the subject of their Grammy Award-nominated multi-volume recording project, the Julius Eastman anthology.

Tonight’s performance opens with a piece by Diné composer Raven Chacon. You will also hear music by the Brazilian-American modernist, Felipe Lara; Swiss minimalist Jürg Frey; and New York-based inti figgis-vizueta, whose works draw inspiration from her Irish and Indigenous Andean heritage. Collectively, they are among the most distinctive and gifted contemporary composers in the world today.

Thank you for joining us in the beautiful George Weston Recital Hall whose superb acoustics will be on full display. This hall is admired for being one of the best in all of Canada and we hope you will join us again for some of the exciting performances that we have planned.

This Saturday, March 30, you will be able to hear a celebration of the Great American Songbook with Sing & Swing: A Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents Production featuring Bria Skonberg and Benny Benack III. Then on May 9, we present the Armenian-Canadian pianist Eve Egoyan who will explore the piano through an Armenian folkloric lens in a concert that grounds itself in a work by Komitas Vartapet (the godfather of Armenian music), and includes works by contemporary composers from Armenia and the Armenian diaspora: Vache Sharafyan (Armenia), Mary Kouyoumdjian (U.S.A.), Narine Khachatryan (Germany), Boghos Gelalian (Lebanon), Tigran Mansurian (Armenia), and Egoyan herself.

That is only a taste of what is to come! Thank you for supporting live music and we hope you enjoy the concert.

Wild Up

Called “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant...fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” by Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times, Wild Up has been lauded as one of classical music’s most exciting groups by virtually every significant institution and critic within earshot. Artistic director Christopher Rountree started the group in 2010 with a vision of a group of young musicians that rejected outdated traditions and threw classical repertoire into the context of pop culture, new music, and performance art.

Over the past decade, the now Grammy-nominated group have accompanied Björk at Goldenvoice’s FYF Fest; brought a Julius Eastman portrait to the National Gallery; premiered David Lang and Mark Dion’s anatomy theater at LA Opera; performed the west-coast premiere of Ragnar Kjartansson’s 12-hour Mozartian epic Bliss; played the scores to Under the Skin by Mica Levi and Punch Drunk Love by Jon Brion live with the films at L.A.’s Regent Theater and Ace Hotel; premiered a new opera by Julia Holter at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust; premiered a new work of avant-pop icon Scott Walker and celestial loopmaker Juliana Barwick at Walt Disney Concert Hall; played a noise concert-fanfare for the groundbreaking of Frank Gehry’s new building on Grand Avenue and First Street in downtown L.A.; premiered hundreds of other works; held performance and educational residencies at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Colburn School, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, National Sawdust, the Hammer Museum, the Getty, and dozens of educational institutions across the U.S.; and started an annual winter festival in L.A. celebrating ecstatic music-making and mindfulness practice called Darkness Sounding.

Their critically acclaimed, two-time Grammy-nominated Julius Eastman record has been featured been lauded as “a masterpiece” (The New York Times), “instantly recognizable” (Vogue), and “singularly jubilant..a bit in your face, sometimes capricious, and always surprising” (NPR). The records have been consistently among the top 10 in all genres by The New York Times and NPR.

Photo credit: Ian Byers-Gamber

Ensemble

Conductor and voice: Christopher Rountree

Violin: Andrew Tholl, Mona Tian

Viola: Andrew McIntosh

Flute: Rachel Beetz

Saxophone: Pat Posey

Bassoon: Archie Carey

Cello: Derek Stein

Piano: Adam Tendler

Photo credit: Jenna Putnam

Christopher Rountree

We hear Stravinsky pouring out of an abandoned warehouse; see dozens of watermelons fly off of Disney Hall; parse a chorus singing Haydn’s “Creation” backwards; see Lady Macbeth in a dozen crooning silhouettes washing blood out of rags over bright porcelain sinks in a museum bathroom; hear a violinist recite a poem about melting ice cream and lost love; watch three minutes of Le nozze for 12 hours on repeat; follow the archeology of a lost ballet coming to life; and hear the sound of rose-petal jam-making as music. Conductor, composer, curator, and performer Christopher Rountree is standing at the intersection of classical music, new music, performance art, and pop.

Regarded as one of the most iconoclastic conductors in the field, Rountree’s inimitable style has led to collaborations with: Björk, John Adams, Yoko Ono, David Lang, Scott Walker, La Monte Young, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mica Levi, Alison Knowles, Patricia Kopatchinskja, John Luther Adams, Sigourney Weaver, Ted Hearne, Tyshawn Sorey, Ragnar Kjartansson, Missy Mazzoli, L’Rain, Caroline Shaw, Saul Williams, Ellen Reid, R.B. Schlather, James Darrah, Ryoji Ikeda, Du Yun, Yuval Sharon, and many of the planet’s greatest orchestras and ensembles including the San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera national de Paris, the Washington National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Rountree is the artistic director of Wild Up, curator of Darkness Sounding, and the music director of Long Beach Opera. He has been artistic director of an interdisciplinary ambient series in an oak grove in L.A. called SILENCE, and curator of the L.A. Phil’s Fluxus Festival.

Artistic director

Photo credit: Sam Lee

Program

Raven Chacon: Whistle Quartet (10 minutes)

Julius Eastman: Buddha (10 minutes)

inti figgis-vizueta: form the fabric (7 minutes)

Jürg Frey: Grizzana (16 minutes)

inti figgis-vizueta: talamh (11 minutes)

Felipe Lara: Ventos Uivantes (10 minutes)

Julius Eastman: Gay Guerrilla (20 minutes)

84 minutes presented continuously, without intermission.

Ritual

the music of Raven Chacon, inti figgis-vizueta, and Julius Eastman

For as long as we can remember, at Wild Up, we’ve been obsessed with rituals. We want a concert to feel like a convening of energies, a stream of sound that takes whoever hears it somewhere. Like entering a dark room, not knowing what you’ll find there and then finding simply sound moving around you. When we think of the concerts that move us most, and have moved us to become ourselves musicians, they all share that one magical enveloping feeling. Something unknown, something unknowable, something different every time, something innate and so foundational that it couldn’t possibly ever change. Ritual comes from this questioning, this desire for magic, this yearning for the unknown in the cosmos and ourselves.

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 Toronto-based artists from all disciplines 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 Asian-Canadian 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 multifaceted 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 like a relief because I am still in the early stages of 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 Can-Asian 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 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.

TO Live’s explorations initiative is made possible by supporters of the TO Live Foundation. explorations is generously supported by Power Corporation of Canada.

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#ArtsStartHere, and it begins with you.

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