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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 plague took his friends one by one and he himself faced an increasingly uncertain future, he discovered his own form of hope, resilience, and solace in his garden by the sea. 

Cecilia Livingston writes deeply-felt songs of love and loss, and they chime perfectly with Donna McKevitt’s heart-aching songs that use beautiful texts drawn from Jarman’s journals. Their works are intertwined in Garden of Vanished Pleasures, a fully-staged production for digital broadcast, devised and directed by Tim Albery, working with other members of the team behind Hell’s Fury, The Hollywood Songbook. 

“The pandemic provoked us to develop new ways of engaging with audiences through digital platforms. The Garden of Vanished Pleasures, which opens the season, is itself a poignant metaphor for what we have gone through: a reminder that we must come to terms with all that we have lost, at the same time as we plant hopeful seeds of rebirth and renewal.” – Lawrence Cherney, Founding Artistic Director, Soundstreams  

Digital Passes for Soundstreams’ 2021/22 are available here; individual tickets are available at https://tickets.crowstheatre.com/. Visit Soundstreams.ca for more information.  

GARDEN OF VANISHED PLEASURES
September 23 – October 10, screening at 8 p.m. EDT (excluding Mondays)
Digital Broadcast, lasting approximately 75 minutes
Single Tickets are $20, or you can purchase a Soundstreams Digital Pass for the season 

Tim Albery, devisor and director
Cecilia Livingston, composer
Donna McKevitt, composer
Rachael Kerr, music director and piano
Michelle Tracey, production designer
Cameron Davis, projection designer and video editor
Wesley McKenzie, lighting designer
Dennis Patterson, sound engineer
David Jaeger, sound producer
Jessie Potter, production manager
Isabel Martins, props assistant
Jay Hines, head technician 

Mireille Asselin, soprano 
Lindsay McIntyre, soprano 
Rebecca Cuddy, mezzo-soprano 
Daniel Cabena, countertenor 
Brenna Hardy-Kavanagh, viola 
Amahl Arulanandam, cello  

Special thanks: Rick Banville; Howard Sooley for the two Prospect Cottage garden photos. 

Presented in partnership with Pinkhouse Productions. Garden of Vanished Pleasures is made possible with support from Neil and Carolyn Turnbull, The Mary-Margaret Webb Fund for Women Composers, and Steinway & Sons. 

The digital production of Garden of Vanished Pleasures is sponsored by BMO. 

Garden of Vanished Pleasures is part of Soundstreams’ 2021 Digital Residency at Crow’s Theatre. 

Made with the Generous Support of ACTRA Toronto, Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, Associated Designers of Canada, and Toronto Musicians’ Association. 

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Soundstreams is one of the world’s leading contemporary music companies, and the largest global presenter of new Canadian music. Founder and Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney is committed to showcasing the work of Canadian and international composers, and has commissioned over 170 new works, and programmed hundreds of unique and compelling concerts including chamber music events, multi-choir spectaculars, operas, music-theatre works, and seven highly successful international festivals. Soundstreams serves a broad community of music lovers through the yearly Main Stage series, and free outreach and education programs that include Encounters, the Insider program, RBC Bridges, and SoundMakers. Years of collaboration with artists from diverse cultures have laid the groundwork for Soundstreams’ leap onto the world stage, with productions like Claude Vivier’s Musik für das Ende, the Cree- and Sámi-language Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállábártnit, and Hell’s Fury: The Hollywood Songbook enjoying international success and rave reviews through The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.
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Media Contact:  

Tim Crouch, Director, Communications, Marketing, & Operations, 

[email protected] 

Media Gallery: https://soundstreams.ca/press-room/ 

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/soundstreams