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The Toronto Star, Canada
September 22, 2012 Saturday
Musical Amicis have stayed friends
Yes, the name is the same, but the Toronto-based chamber ensemble has
lasted even longer than the popular television sitcom.
I'm referring, of course, to Friends, or as Italians (and at least
three Torontonians) prefer to say, Amici. This season marks the
friendly chamber ensemble's 25th anniversary.
Amici's season begins Oct. 12 with a fundraising benefit at one of
Rosedale's most distinctive residences, Dr. James Stewart's
award-winning Integral House, and includes its first appearance at
Koerner Hall, a March 1st anniversary gala headlined by soprano Isabel
Bayrakdarian.
In between it will be business as usual at the CBC's Glenn Gould
Studio, with the innovative programming for which this top-tier
ensemble has made its name.
Last season, for example, it presented a series of interactions with
the worlds of food, fashion and the fine arts, including a special
concert during which each piece was coordinated with a different
culinary course. This season includes a silent film night at the TIFF
Bell Lightbox, for which Amici will supply live accompaniments.
The enterprise began simply enough back in 1988 when Joaquin
Valdepeņas, principal clarinetist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
and David Hetherington, the orchestra's assistant principal cellist,
decided they wanted to regularize their association with Patricia
Parr, a professor of piano at the University of Toronto.
Although the intention was never to limit the number of players to
three - one can never have too many friends, after all - these three
became the basic unit around which programs were built, until Parr
decided to retire and Serouj Kradjian became the third musketeer.
The fourth musketeer turned out to be recently retired CBC producer
Neil Crory, who offered the ensemble the radio exposure to spread
their name and document their performances.
With full-time jobs keeping them busy, the threesome knew they could
only be part-time Amici, but even on this basis and with a less than
voluminous trio repertoire at their disposal, their concerts,
broadcasts and recordings quickly announced the presence of a potent
new force in Canadian chamber music.
Some of their earliest concerts took place at St. Andrew's
Presbyterian Church, across the street from Roy Thomson Hall, with CBC
fees their only remuneration and family members doing the ushering.
Even so, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's Andrew Davis agreed to
conduct them in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and no less a soprano
than Lois Marshall declaimed the text.
Recordings took their name farther afield. Their 12th album, titled
Levant and inspired by the Middle East, is about to be released. Its
predecessor focused on Armenian music, and the first, which included a
specially commissioned trio by Toronto composer Chan Ka Nin,
appropriately titled "Among Friends," won a Juno and became a calling
card for engagements.
Two other new pieces from the same composer's pen, along with a dozen
or so from other Canadian notesmiths, confirmed how seriously they
take their citizenship.
Not that they haven't travelled abroad; one of their European tours
was made memorable by an engagement in Bratislava at which no one
could find the key to the concert hall's grand piano. An appalled
Patricia Parr wound up playing Brahms on a humble upright.
When, a few years ago, Parr decided to hang up her suitcase, there
seemed something almost preordained about her successor. Years
earlier, Amici had provided the 18-year-old Kradjian's introduction to
the world of chamber music, and Parr was his chamber music teacher at
the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music.
Serouj Kradjian brought to Amici not only a fresh interpretive voice
and impressive keyboard technique - sometimes used to accompany his
spouse, Isabel Bayrakdarian - but the talents of a skilled
composer-arranger and inventive programmer.
The February 3rd silent film night is his idea and he is currently at
work composing and arranging some of its music.
He also plans to join Hetherington and Valdepeņas in their regular
spring engagement: working with the students of Earl Haig's Claude
Watson Arts Program and playing their compositions. Amici, it would
appear, come in all ages.
September 22, 2012 Saturday
Musical Amicis have stayed friends
Yes, the name is the same, but the Toronto-based chamber ensemble has
lasted even longer than the popular television sitcom.
I'm referring, of course, to Friends, or as Italians (and at least
three Torontonians) prefer to say, Amici. This season marks the
friendly chamber ensemble's 25th anniversary.
Amici's season begins Oct. 12 with a fundraising benefit at one of
Rosedale's most distinctive residences, Dr. James Stewart's
award-winning Integral House, and includes its first appearance at
Koerner Hall, a March 1st anniversary gala headlined by soprano Isabel
Bayrakdarian.
In between it will be business as usual at the CBC's Glenn Gould
Studio, with the innovative programming for which this top-tier
ensemble has made its name.
Last season, for example, it presented a series of interactions with
the worlds of food, fashion and the fine arts, including a special
concert during which each piece was coordinated with a different
culinary course. This season includes a silent film night at the TIFF
Bell Lightbox, for which Amici will supply live accompaniments.
The enterprise began simply enough back in 1988 when Joaquin
Valdepeņas, principal clarinetist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
and David Hetherington, the orchestra's assistant principal cellist,
decided they wanted to regularize their association with Patricia
Parr, a professor of piano at the University of Toronto.
Although the intention was never to limit the number of players to
three - one can never have too many friends, after all - these three
became the basic unit around which programs were built, until Parr
decided to retire and Serouj Kradjian became the third musketeer.
The fourth musketeer turned out to be recently retired CBC producer
Neil Crory, who offered the ensemble the radio exposure to spread
their name and document their performances.
With full-time jobs keeping them busy, the threesome knew they could
only be part-time Amici, but even on this basis and with a less than
voluminous trio repertoire at their disposal, their concerts,
broadcasts and recordings quickly announced the presence of a potent
new force in Canadian chamber music.
Some of their earliest concerts took place at St. Andrew's
Presbyterian Church, across the street from Roy Thomson Hall, with CBC
fees their only remuneration and family members doing the ushering.
Even so, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's Andrew Davis agreed to
conduct them in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and no less a soprano
than Lois Marshall declaimed the text.
Recordings took their name farther afield. Their 12th album, titled
Levant and inspired by the Middle East, is about to be released. Its
predecessor focused on Armenian music, and the first, which included a
specially commissioned trio by Toronto composer Chan Ka Nin,
appropriately titled "Among Friends," won a Juno and became a calling
card for engagements.
Two other new pieces from the same composer's pen, along with a dozen
or so from other Canadian notesmiths, confirmed how seriously they
take their citizenship.
Not that they haven't travelled abroad; one of their European tours
was made memorable by an engagement in Bratislava at which no one
could find the key to the concert hall's grand piano. An appalled
Patricia Parr wound up playing Brahms on a humble upright.
When, a few years ago, Parr decided to hang up her suitcase, there
seemed something almost preordained about her successor. Years
earlier, Amici had provided the 18-year-old Kradjian's introduction to
the world of chamber music, and Parr was his chamber music teacher at
the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music.
Serouj Kradjian brought to Amici not only a fresh interpretive voice
and impressive keyboard technique - sometimes used to accompany his
spouse, Isabel Bayrakdarian - but the talents of a skilled
composer-arranger and inventive programmer.
The February 3rd silent film night is his idea and he is currently at
work composing and arranging some of its music.
He also plans to join Hetherington and Valdepeņas in their regular
spring engagement: working with the students of Earl Haig's Claude
Watson Arts Program and playing their compositions. Amici, it would
appear, come in all ages.