Tapestry has just received its largest individual gift to date, $250,000 from an anonymous donor to fund the Leadership Legacy Programme. Over the next three years, 6 mid-career arts professionals will be given the opportunity for a 3-month residency at Tapestry as Associate Managing Artistic Director, a position which is intended to grow the company’s artistic capacity and to provide leadership succession for the future.

“My interest in human resource management is an extension of the deep and trusting relationships I have built with musicians and singers from an early age. By extension, that is how I try to manage my business relationships, beginning with the staff and board and by extension to my colleagues in other companies around the world. Further, the invention of a vocabulary to make the development of new operas practical and successful has been built over 20 years of relationships with playwrights and composers, directors, designers, and of course the performers.  It is truly a collegial world I inhabit.  We hope that through this programme we will identify a future leader who will welcome the rare opportunity to join a well-established organization where they will be enabled to realize both their artistic vision and the business practice that will make it possible.” Wayne Strongman

Read the full media release here.

Photo © Brian Mosoff, 2009

On December 30, 2009 Her Excellency The Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, appointed Wayne Strongman, Tapestry Managing Artistic Director, as a Member of the Order of Canada for his innovative contributions as the founding artistic director of Tapestry new opera works; as the long-time volunteer choral director for the Regent Park School of Music; and as a champion of Canadian composers.

“It is such an honour to be recognized by one’s country, especially in the arts. Those of us who are called to such creative activity don’t really do it for the praise! But for me it is especially warming to have the work of so many Canadian artists recognized: writers, composers, performers, designers, directors, stage directors and managers, administrators and an army of volunteers. They must all feel validated by this recognition that new Canadian operas are profoundly affecting our society, and this award is truly an affirmation of all our work.” Wayne Strongman

The new appointees include 25 Officers (O.C.), and 32 Members (C.M.). These appointments were made on the recommendation of the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada. Mr. Strongman and his fellow appointees will be invited to accept their insignia at a ceremony to be held at a later date.

Read the full press release from the Governor General’s office here.

Read Wayne’s full bio here.

There are a lot of anniversaries this year, including Tapestry’s 30th. Our friends a the Canadian Music Centre are proudly celebrating 50 years! To honour the milestone anniversary the CMC has partnered with the National Arts Centre and its orchestra for a special concert and birthday reception, November 9th at the NAC in Ottawa.

The birthday event will recognize 50 performers and conductors “who have played exceptional roles in shaping the Canadian music scene and raising the profile of Canadian music. The CMC is pleased to honour these individuals at this event”.

Tapestry Managing Artistic Director Wayne Strongman is one of them!

Click here to read more about the event.

Click here for a full list of the 50 honourees.

Click here for ticket info. on the November 9th event.

Happy Birthday to the CMC!

Opera Canada Magazine has just published their 50th Anniversary issue and featured a thoughtful, rave review for The Shadow from Editor Wayne Gooding.

Here are a few quotes:

“…Daniel and Poch-Goldin have fashioned a splendidly theatrical piece, one of the strongest developed by Tapestry.”

“We’re in absurdist territory in this opera, a world of dark impulses and imaginings, where private inner worlds break through public masks. Shakespeare’s Falstaff lightly referes to the inner world as ‘Our Saturday selves,’ but Jung talks of ‘a shadow side…of a positively demonic dynamism.’  The opera impressively exemplifies the same dualism; playfulness and farce animate The Shadow’s external storyline, but hte comic evocation of the dark side leaves you with the disquieting sense that you’re in a room full of dirty little secrets-and wondering whether you’ve let any of your own slip out.”

“Among a very fine ensemble of singers, pride of place must go to baritone Peter McGillivray as Raoul/Hernando. His central role bears the biggest burden, and he negotiated the difllcult and taxing score with great musical skill and all the dramatic chops to create a strong, pivotal character. Countertenor Scott Belluz, resplendent in a long, pleated topcoat and dark glasses, threw himself with evident relish into the diabolical title role, for which composer Daniel made full use of a high singing voice and lower speaking voice to create the Shadow’s other-worldly presence. Soprano Carla Huhtanen created a winsomely lovelorn Allegra, a powerful and eloquent presence in an otherwise all-male ensemble, while the not-inconsiderable supporting roles of the moneylender and the waiter (a  kind of Fawlty Towers Manuel in musical overdrive) were vividly handled by; respectively, baritone Theodore Baerg and tenor Keith Klassen. This is first and foremost an ensemble piece, and it’s for the
excellence of this that the singers and the seven-piece orchestral ensemble conducted by Tapestry Managing Artistic Director Wayne Strongman deserve the greatest kudos.”

Click here to read the full review.

The Shadow

by Alex Poch-Goldin & Omar Daniel
(World Premiere May 2009  in Toronto)
Director: Tom Diamond
Music Director: Wayne Strongman
Set & Costume Design: Camellia Koo
Lighting Design: Robert Thomson
Cast: Carla Huhtanen, Peter McGillivray, Scott Belluz, Keith Klassen & Theodore Baerg

One-act opera of intrigue, desire and deception featuring a countertenor in the title role; premiered at the Berkeley Street Theatre, Downstairs in May 2009.

Composers Juliet Palmer, Andrew Staniland and Aaron Gervais are featured as part of the new Toca Loca CD Review in the Globe & Mail.  All 3 have works in development at Tapestry as well!Visit our works in development page and read more about these upcoming world premieres:

Shelter
Juliet Palmer, composer
Julie Salverson, librettist

Dark Star Requiem
Andrew Staniland, composer
Jill Battson, libretttist

The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G.
Aaron Gervais, composer
Colleen Murphy, librettist

Click here to read a John Terauds Toronto Star piece on Njo Kong Kie and Kico Gonzalez-Risso’s new opera La Senorita Mundo, now in its world premiere run at Toronto’s Summerworks Festival.

A new operatic allegory La Senorita Mundo opens tonight (August 7 at 8pm) at The Theatre Centre in Toronto.

Composer Njo Kong Kie and librettist / director Kico Gonzalez Risso met in 2004 at Tapestry’s Directors’ Lab, both already graduates of Tapestry’s annual LibLab.

Kico stage directed a piece composed by Kong Kie in LibLab that year (the first 5 min of what became knotty together with a libretto by Anna Chatterton). Kong Kie also music directed a piece which Kico stage directed. Such is the collaborative process here at Tapestry…

Subsequently, Kong Kie wrote a song for Kico for his radio cabaret musical Ghost in Love, which was performed in Vancouver.

La Senorita Mundo is the latest collaboration from the pair.  Running 50+ minutes it is part of Toronto’s Summerworks festival and features Tapestry regular Keith Klassen (tenor) and Vilma Vitols (mezzo).

Click here for full schedule and ticket info on the Summerworks website or call .

Taylor Graham, librettist for The Virgin Charlie (part of Opera to Go 2009), has blogged about her experience working with Tapestry and the effect of her Dora Award Nomination on her life and career.

Click here to read her candid thoughts on the Tapestry creative process, the awards ceremony, and her career in the theatre/opera community.

Artists Featured: Scott Belluz & Krisztina Szabo in “The Virgin Charlie” (Opera to Go 2009)
Photo © Michael Cooper, 2009

Congratulations to librettist Marjorie Chan & composer Abigail Richardson and everyone at Tapestry, Theatre Direct and Luminato who worked on Sanctuary Song, winner of Best New Opera/Musical at the 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Awards!

Artists Featured: Xin Wang & Alvin Crawford in Sanctuary Song
Photo © John Lauener, 2008

Chris Hoile has written a wonderful cover feature for EYE Weekly on new opera in Canada in advance of the world premiere (June 5-11, 2009 in Toronto) of R. Murray Schafer’s The Children’s Crusade, co-commissioned by our friends at Soundstreams and Luminato.

From EYE Weekly:

“The contrast of a grand, site-specific work like Schafer’s The Children’s Crusade with a more modest one like The Brothers Grimm, whose portability has helped it to achieve enormous exposure, raises the question of whether Canadian opera will grow most with small- or large-scale works. Clearly, the dream will always remain of Canada creating one of the latter, which will enter the national repertory and, at some point, the world’s. There have been recent developments in this area such as Toronto’s Tapestry New Opera Works’ Iron Road by Chan Ka Nin (2001), Calgary Opera’s Filumena (2003) and Frobisher (2007), both by John Estacio, and Manitoba Opera’s The Transit of Venus (2007) by Victor Davies — the last three, surprisingly, in cities where modern opera had previously been anathema.

Wayne Strongman, managing artistic director of Tapestry, believes, “we have finally turned a corner in opera in Canada when audiences now want to see their own stories on stage.” Dáirine Ní Mheadhra, co–artistic director with John Hess of Queen of Puddings Music Theatre (QoP), agrees, saying that the number of excellent composers and singers, growth of less risk-averse audiences and instigation of www.opera.ca has reached a “critical mass” in Canada that has led to this recent boom.”

Click here to read the full article.