Ensemble Caprice is very busy these days with a series of concerts in Washington and San Francisco, with two different programs: La Follia and the Gypsies and Vivaldi and the Gypsies. At the end of the month, the Ensemble will be back in Montreal for a series of concerts featuring the album Salsa baroque, in various Maisons de la cultural and music centres.
Cellist Yegor Dyachkov, whose talent was featured on a recent release, Interwar Duets (with violinist Olivier Thouin), will join Appassionata on Friday, in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major, as part of the inaugural concert of the Orgue et Couleurs Festival.
He is featured in a rather interesting interview here (in French), in which, for example, he explains he was “tricked” by his mother into playing the cello. Since at that time, he dreamt of working in a zoo, she convinced him that all animals liked music and that lions just loved the low soothing sound of the cello. When later, he stopped to ponder if he could ever play with and for the king of the jungle, it was too late, he was hooked. He also explains:
“As other art forms, music brings us back to us in one way or another, it brings us back to our humanity, to a universal experience. It can put us in touch with something mysterious, undefinable, yet essential. It moves the heart and delights the spirit. Music is the art form that transforms our time perception.”
Tonight, 8 p.m., Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours, harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour performs Bach’s mythical GoldbergVariations. The artist filmed three clips introducing some of the variations in a more than humourous way. Bach would have enjoyed them I’m pretty sure…
The Orchestre symphonique de Québec launches its 110th season with flair tonight with a program featuring Alain Lefèvre, associate artist of the OSQ this year, in Rachmaninoff’ Fourth Piano Concerto (the 1926 version).
In honour of the 40th anniversary of the Grand Théâtre de Québec, the opening festivities also include a simultaneous outdoor screening of the concert, a pre-concert talk, and a special intermission performance on an outdoor stage by Alain Lefèvre of the solo piano version of Andre Mathieu’s Concerto de Québec.
Our friends on the West Coast are in for a treat tonight and tomorrow night as jazz pianist Lorraine Desmarais performs at the Rothstein Theatre. Raised on heaping servings of classical music, Lorraine knows how to mix standards with references to giants from the past and infuse it with her very own spice. Whether in solo, in trio or with a big band, she knows how to bring joy to the listener.
You can listen to her rendition of Summertime with trumpet magician Tiger Okoshi here.