Book of Mountains and Seas was originally scheduled to appear in Toronto as part of the Soundstreams 2020/21 season before the pandemic hit, and features music and libretto by Huang Ruo, direction and production design by Basil Twist, musical direction by Paul Hillier, and a vocal ensemble featuring Ars Nova Copenhagen. As a commissioner of… Read More
by Vania Chan, a member of the vocal ensemble for our 2021/22 production of Love Songs Claude Vivier’s Love Songs is an extraordinary musical work – one that is unlike anything I have ever performed before. It is playful, whimsical, romantic and dramatic. Overall, it establishes a sense of child- like vulnerability and innocence. When… Read More
by Lawrence Cherney, Founding Artistic Director, Soundstreams It has been said that as a composer, Claude Vivier had the purity of a child, and as a man, he played with fire. He was murdered one fateful March night in Paris in 1983 at the age of 34 by a man he had picked up in a gay bar. His short life was a dangerous one,… Read More
Soundstreams Announces New Additions to Team: Beth Brown is named New Executive Director; Coco Chen and Rebecca Cuddy elected to Board of Directors Beth Brown. Photo by Dahlia Katz. October 25, 2021 (Toronto, ON) // Soundstreams Board of Directors President Daniel Weinzweig has today announced the appointment of respected Toronto arts leader, producer and managing director Beth Brown, most recently of Nightwood Theatre, to the position of Soundstreams Executive Director. Brown joins Founding Artistic Director Lawrence… Read More
October 18, 2021 // Toronto, ON – Lawrence Cherney, Founding Artistic Director, Soundstreams, today announced additional details about the company’s world premiere production of Love Songs, as part of the company’s 2021/22 season. The digital broadcast of Love Songs will premiere on November 19, 2021. Claude Vivier’s travels to Bali and the Iranian city of Shiraz in the 1970s was for him an… Read More
October 5, 2021 // Toronto, ON – Soundstreams was pleased today to announce the world premiere of the RBC Bridges Showcase, featuring six world premieres written by RBC Bridges emerging composers, plus a performance of mentor Sarah Kirkland Snider’s ‘Scenes from Unremembered’. The event will premiere online October 14, 2021 at 8pm. The six participants… Read More
September 29, 2021 – Soundstreams today announced the appointment of Coco Chen and Rebecca Cuddy as new members of the Soundstreams Board of Directors. Coco Chen began playing the violin at the age of four. She studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music and earned a Bachelor of Music Performance at the University of Toronto… Read More
As the AIDS plague took his friends one by one and he himself faced an increasingly uncertain future, English artist, filmmaker, and queer rights activist Derek Jarman discovered his own form of hope, resilience, and solace in his garden by the sea. Long-time Soundstreams supporters Neil & Carolyn Turnbull have their own garden paradise, and we were… Read More
We mourn the loss of R. Murray Schafer. He was one-of-a-kind, one of the most remarkable artists ever to come out of Canada. He was the Wagner of the North: the mythologies he created are infused with a profound sense of spiritual connection to wilderness lands and waters. Virtually everything he wrote possesses a transformative… Read More
by Tim Crouch, Soundstreams But the ultimate gift of gardening is the way it concentrates and consecrates time, grounding the gardener in a present both conscious of and undistracted by the ongoing cycles of seasonality stretching across all past and all future. – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings Of course, Derek Jarman is more than a… Read More
September 1, 2021 // Toronto, ON – Lawrence Cherney, Founding Artistic Director, Soundstreams, today announced additional details about the company’s 2021/22 season premiere, Garden of Vanished Pleasures, produced as part of Soundstreams’ 2021 Digital Residency at Crow’s Theatre. If modern gardening has a patron saint, it must be English artist, filmmaker, and queer rights activist Derek Jarman. As the AIDS… Read More
WORLD PREMIERE WORK DEVISED BY MICHAEL GREYEYES, TIM ALBERY, LIEKE VAN DER VOORT, CHRISTOPHER MAYO & MORE August 3, 2021 // Toronto, ON – Lawrence Cherney, Founding Artistic Director, Soundstreams, today announced the company’s 2021/22 season, Renewal & Rebirth, with five world premieres set to showcase the work of outstanding Canadian and international composers through innovative and multi-genre musical experiences. With… Read More
July 13, 2021 // Toronto, ON – Soundstreams has announced details of the world broadcast premiere of Quiet Time, featuring new music from Canadian composers Robin Dann, Allison Cameron and Matthew Pencer. An audiovisual experience to be released on August 19, 2021, Quiet Time combines a musical exploration of solitude with the personal travel experiences and Arctic recordings of Dann and Cameron to create a captivating new soundscape inspired by some of the… Read More
Quiet Time, our production put together by New Voices guest curator Robin Dann, is an audio-visual experience inspired by the Arctic. Great headphones are a must, according to Dann – if for any other reason than to experience the magic of the binaural microphone! The device, complete with life-sized ears, “captures sound just like we… Read More
by Zoe Lin, Manager of Advancement and Patron Experience Growing up in Taipei, Taiwan, Dragon Boat Festival is one of the four most celebrated Chinese traditions, along with Lunar New Year, Tomb-Sweeping Day, and Moon Festival. The Dragon Boat Festival, also known as the Duanwu (端午) Festival is celebrated on the 5th day of the… Read More
Tuesday, April 6, 2021 (Toronto, ON): Soundstreams Board of Directors President Daniel Weinzweig has announced the appointment of Emma Fowler as the organization’s Interim Executive Director, as previous E.D. Menon Dwarka steps down to pursue new opportunities. Emma joined Soundstreams in 2016 as Production and Outreach Manager, and quickly moved up into the role of Director of Artistic Planning and Outreach. She brings a decade of skilled arts industry experience to the position of Interim Executive Director, as well as a proven passion… Read More
We’re pleased to be featuring composer Bruce A. Russell this February as part of Black History Month. Piece: Linea Nigra, for string octet (2015) Watch: On Vimeo. From the Composer: Linea Nigra (2015) is an orchestration and expansion of my piano piece Canon Chorale (2005). It’s scored for string octet: four violins, two violas and two… Read More
In honour of the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, we’re pleased to feature Toronto composer Kevin Lau. Piece: Between the Earth and Forever (2020) From the Composer: Between the Earth and Forever is, first and foremost, a work inspired by space exploration, and the intrepid explorers who dare venture beyond the boundaries of our planet,… Read More
We’re pleased to be featuring composer Bruce A. Russell this February as part of Black History Month. Check in for deep dives on works specially chosen by him. Piece: Companion, for two pianos (2019) Watch: Companion, Bruce A. Russell from Arraymusic on Vimeo. From the Composer: Companion (2019) is written for two pianos and is… Read More
We’re pleased to be featuring composer Bruce A. Russell this February as part of Black History Month. Check in for deep dives on works specially chosen by him. Piece: Kalimba Canon, for two alto kalimbas (1999) From the Composer: Kalimba Canon (1999) is written for two alto kalimbas. It began as a shorthand sketch in… Read More