Please join us in 2024–25 for "Music's Mystery"
Next season, the TCC will explore the mysterious powers that only music possesses: to express that which cannot be expressed with words, to influence our thoughts and emotions, and even to change the way our brain thinks and remembers. Indeed, music exists precisely in the meeting place of our minds and our spirits. Tickets go on sale in late August/early September, and we look forward to having you join us!
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Kaffeemusik: Music & Memory
Saturday, October 26, 3:30 pm (Church of the Redeemer)
When we “remember” a melody, it plays in our mind, it becomes newly alive. There is not a process of recalling, imagining, assembling, recategorizing, re-creating, as when one attempts to reconstruct or remember an event or a scene from the past. We recall one tone at a time and each tone entirely fills our consciousness, yet simultaneously relates it to the whole.
– Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia
This multimedia presentation investigates the mysterious ways in which music is processed and stored by the human brain. Interspersed with gorgeous music by the likes of Lasso, Allegri, Purcell, and Mozart, we’ll recount tales such as the legend of Wolfgang Mozart’s visit to the Sistine chapel, questionable neurological theories such as the “Mozart effect,” the mind-boggling memory of American slave piano sensation Blind Tom Wiggins, and heart-warming tales of Alzheimer's patients who remember music when they can remember almost nothing else.
Sharang Sharma, guest conductor
Lucas Harris, narrator
Luke Welch, piano
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Concert: Christmas in the Eternal City
Saturday, December 7, 7:30 pm (Calvin Presbyterian Church)
Join the TCC for a celebration of glorious seasonal music that would have been sung in the Eternal City in the decades before and after 1600. The “Roman School” of composers — including the Franco-Netherlandish composers who travelled south to work near the Vatican (Josquin, Obrecht, Arcadelt) — produced a glorious body of work that is considered to represent the peak of perfection in Renaissance sacred polyphony.
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Concert: Dayspring of Eternity: The Music of Johann Rudolph Ahle
Saturday, May 10, 7:30 pm (Calvin Presbyterian Church)
In a nod to the TCC’s founding passion to showcase brilliant but lesser-known German Baroque masters, this concert celebrates the music of Johann Rudolph Ahle (1625–73) on the 400th anniversary of his birth. Ahle was born in the Thuringian town of Mühlhausen, where he served as organist, town councillor, and even mayor. The Mühlhausen organist post was passed to his son and then to J.S. Bach, who worked there briefly in 1707–08. Ahle composed magnificent motets, radiant sacred concertos, and tuneful hymns and also wrote an important treatise on choral singing. The TCC will be joined by Baroque strings, organ, and soloists from the Toronto Chamber Consort.
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Spring Fundraiser: A Mysterious Teen Prodigy: the Music of Maria Francesca Nascinbeni
Wednesday, May 28, 2025, 7:00 pm (Heliconian Hall)
In this initimate recital, the TCC’s Consort section leads will explore the work of the enigmatic Maria Francesca Nascinbeni. Her 1674 publication Canzoni e Madrigali morali e spirituali includes outstanding cantatas for one to three voices that require surprising vocal agility and range and would seem to be the mature work of a seasoned composer. Yet in the volume’s dedication, Nascinbeni reveals that she is only 16 years of age!
