Montréal-based soprano and pianist duo Sara Schabas and Isabelle David will current the Canadian premiere of a chunk by Pulitzer-nominated composer Alex Weiser in Toronto on January 9. The efficiency will happen as a part of the Canadian Opera Firm’s Free Live performance Sequence on the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre
Alex Weiser’s (b. 1989) Yiddish tune cycle, in a darkish blue night time | .אין אַ טונקל בלויער נאַכט would be the centrepiece of the live performance.
in a darkish blue night time | .אין אַ טונקל בלויער נאַכט
Weiser’s music is ready to poems written in Yiddish by Morris Rosenfeld, Anna Margolin, Naftali Gross, Celia Dropkin, and Reuben Iceland that specific the realities of life as a Jewish immigrant to New York Metropolis.
“At the moment, the Yiddish-language world of Jewish immigrants in New York is usually remembered with nostalgia and kitsch,” Weiser writes in an announcement. “However in actuality it was wealthy and multifaceted, encompassing the total vary of human expertise from the quotidian to the chic.”
College of Toronto Musicologist Robin Elliott will narrate the efficiency.
This system will probably be rounded out by works by different modernist composers who had been affected by Nazi persecution in the course of the Second World Battle period. That features Erich Korngold, Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Mahler and Alexander Zemlinsky, artists who fled Europe, and Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered by the regime.
The artists
Primarily based in Montréal at this time, each Sara Schabas and Isabelle David are mentored artists underneath Barbara Hannigan’s Equilibrium Younger Artists program. You may pattern a earlier collaboration between the 2 artists here.
“My paternal great-grandparents had been Jewish immigrants from Poland to New York,” says Sara. “My grandfather Ezra by no means talked a lot about his Jewish heritage. However in the direction of the top of his life, he would chuckle over books of Yiddish jokes, which he spoke at dwelling as a toddler. Exploring the human situation on this language seems like uncovering a misplaced piece of myself.”
Sara Schabas, soprano
Toronto born Sara Schabas performs a spread of operatic repertoire from the standard to modern, in addition to performing as a soloist with orchestras and different ensembles. She premiered the title position in Maxime Goulet’s The Flight of the Hummingbird with Pacific Opera Victoria and Vancouver Opera.
Sara studied voice with a literature minor on the College of Toronto, and went on to earn an M.Mus at Roosevelt College with a Siragusa Endowed Scholarship. Her debut got here within the US with the Dayton Opera and Aspen Opera Theatre. This season, her roles contains Musetta in La bohème with the Institut Canadien d’Artwork Vocal with the Orchestre Classique de Montréal.
Isabelle David, piano
Pianist Isabelle David has carried out everywhere in the world at venues such because the Musiikkitalo (Helsinki), Jordan Corridor (Boston), Carnegie Corridor (New York), and Wilfrid-Pelletier Corridor (Montréal). Accolades and recognition embrace the Borromeo String Quartet Visitor Artist Award, Sylva Gelber Music Basis Award, and Canimex Canadian Music Competitors Grand Prize.
Her debut solo album Souvenirs of Auguste Descarries, that includes the world of the titular Quebec pianist and composer Auguste Descarries, was launched in 2022. Descaries was piano trainer to Isabelle’s grandmother Louis Lussier. Isabelle’s discovery of the manuscripts sparked a curiosity that led to her doctoral analysis, for which she was awarded a Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
- Discover extra details about the free live performance [HERE] (click on on January 9).
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