Posted on 7.30.08-------------------------------------------------------
The Music Gallery's 2008/09 season starts the first week of September. For the third year in a row, a season highlight is sure to be our X AVANT Festival, which this year takes place a little later, Oct. 21-26, and also has a theme: "Space is the Place." Six days of new music that travels the spaceways, and honours the spirits of two twin celestial voyagers: Sun Ra and Stockhausen. This space-faring festival will launch on Oct. 21 with the world premiere of a new collaboration between Canada's Coleman Lemieux dance company and the Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of Marshall Allen, at a special venue to be announced, and will reach its final destination at the Music Gallery on Oct. 26 with "Last Kontakte," a tribute to late composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, featuring performers Steve Drury and Aiyun Huang.
The Music Gallery's 2008/09 season starts the first week of September. For the third year in a row, a season highlight is sure to be our X AVANT Festival, which this year takes place a little later, Oct. 21-26, and also has a theme: "Space is the Place." Six days of new music that travels the spaceways, and honours the spirits of two twin celestial voyagers: Sun Ra and Stockhausen. This space-faring festival will launch on Oct. 21 with the world premiere of a new collaboration between Canada's Coleman Lemieux dance company and the Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of Marshall Allen, at a special venue to be announced, and will reach its final destination at the Music Gallery on Oct. 26 with "Last Kontakte," a tribute to late composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, featuring performers Steve Drury and Aiyun Huang. Other festival stars (if you pardon the pun) include Philadelphia space-jazz outfit Sonic Liberation Front, Berlin sound and video artist Klimek, US acousmatic/tape artist Keith Fullerton Whitman, Quebec composer/keyboardist Andre Ristic, the AIMToronto Orchestra and a Saturday night headliner to be announced.
Taking in the whole season at a glance, we are excited to have Gregory Oh of Toca Loca on board to curate our new music programming of the classical variety — at a time when many are asking, what is "classical" anyways? To us, it is notated music that challenges your ears, stirs your blood and confounds expectation. Anything but "easy listening." Highlights of Oh's programming include: renowned US percussionist Steven Schick (Oct. 17), young New York pianist Marilyn Nonken of Ensemble 21 (March 21), New Brunswick's Motion Ensemble (Feb. 22) and Quebec's Bozzini Quartet (March 1), as well as a new programme by Toronto's Wallace Halladay and Ryan Scott. We've also expanded our jazz and world music programming in 2008/09, with promising performances planned for Barry Guy, Maya Homburger and Jeff Reilly (Sept. 7), Renaissance lute player Jozef van Wissem (Sept. 28) and The Attar Project featuring Parmela Attariwala & Shawn Mativesky (March 28) as well as dates with Toronto piano virtuoso Marilyn Lerner and Iraqi-American trumpet player Amir el'Saffar and his quartet. On Oct. 4th, the Music Gallery teams up with Bravo!FACT and video artist Tasman Richardson to turn the church into an all-night audio-visual delight for the third annual Nuit Blanche. And, last but not least, the Pop Avant series returns Dec. 6 with Removable Parts featuring New Yorkers Corey Dargel and Kathleen Supové, and a special trio of Michael Snow, Aki Onda and Alan Licht on Dec. 12.
