Explorations on Improvisation

Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Workshop Week Presents this free event.

In this hour-long session we look at connections in improvisation between early music and jazz. Lucas Harris, a specialist in Baroque and renaissance lutes and guitars, shows us how vital improvisation and variation was to the realization of musical scores from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Paul Grabowsky, master pianist, composer and arranger, brings the perspective of a modern jazz musician, and together they tease out fascinating connections across centuries of music, and the place that improvising still holds for the contemporary player and composer. This workshop will be facilitated by David Fallis, known especially for his expertise in Baroque and Classical periods, and contemporary music.

We ask that you please register in advance to attend this workshop.

This event is hosted in-person and is open to the public. For anyone unable to attend in person, the event will be live-streamed. Register to access the live-stream link

Conductor David Fallis is one of Canada’s leading interpreters of operatic and choral/orchestral repertoire, known especially for his work both in contemporary music, and in the Baroque and Classical periods. He has conducted across Canada and around the world, including for the Luminato Festival, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Singapore Festival, the Royal Opera House in Versailles, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Festival Vancouver, Houston Grand Opera, and the Seoul Arts Centre.

Mr. Fallis directs Soundstreams Choir 21, a vocal ensemble specializing in contemporary choral music, which has performed with Soundstreams Canada, the Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Art of Time Ensemble, and Continuum Contemporary Music. He has conducted world premieres by leading Canadian composers, including Murray Schafer, James Rolfe, Christopher Butterfield, Christos Hatzis, Andrew Balfour and Andrew Ager.

Australian composer/pianist Paul Grabowsky has won two Helpmann Awards, several APRA and Bell (Jazz) Awards, and eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) awards. He was also awarded The Melbourne Prize for Music in 2007, The Australian National University H.C.Coombs Fellow in 2010 and was the Sydney Myer Performing Artist of the Year in 2000. In 2019 Paul was appointed Composer in Residence for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for which he composed 4 symphonic works.

Lucas Harris leads a busy freelancer’s life as a lutenist, conductor, continuo player, teacher, lecturer, coach, and researcher. Lucas’s journey with improvisation began as a jazz guitarist during his teen years, and continued through his studies of early music and basso continuo at the Civica scuola di musica di Milano and at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen. In addition to serving as lutenist for Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra for the past 25 years, he is a founding member of the Toronto Continuo Collective, the Vesuvius Ensemble (dedicated to Southern Italian folk music), as well as the Lute Legends Collective (an association of specialists in diverse ancient plucked-string traditions). Also a choral conductor, Lucas has developed and directed nearly thirty themed concerts for the Toronto Chamber Choir, and has been a guest director for the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Les voix baroques, Atalante, and the Toronto Consort.

This Event is Presented In Partnership With: