Please join us in 2023–24 for "Music in Flight"
“Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything.” – Attributed to Plato
Join the TCC as we soar on the wings of early music in 2023–24! In October, we lift up England’s most brilliant Renaissance composer in his anniversary year. In December, we take some brilliant young singers from the Bach Children’s Chorus under our wing. In March, we will be uplifted by angelic music from an Italian convent. We complete our season in May gliding through the centuries on the words of Shakespeare. At our spring fundraiser, we’ll give in to our “impulse to soar” in continuing our research into blind composers.
Tickets will be on sale soon. In the meantime, please save the dates.
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A Rare Byrd (Kaffeemusik)
Saturday, October 21, 2023, 3:30 pm @ Church of the Redeemer
R.H. Thomson, actor
Christopher Bagan, virginal
2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of England’s greatest Renaissance composer. The TCC celebrates his life and music with a Kaffeemusik that gives a full portrait of his life as an “underground Catholic.” The program will also feature sacred works by Byrd’s teacher Thomas Tallis as well as madrigals by the “comon drunckard and notorius swearer & blasphemer” Thomas Weelkes, who also died in 1623 a few months after Byrd.
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Winter Sun
Wednesday, December 13, 2023, 7:30 pm @ Grace Church on-the-Hill
Guest director: Charissa Bagan
The TCC joins with the Bach Children’s Chorus to present our most cherished holiday favorites.
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The Muse of Novara
Saturday, March 9, 2024, 8:00 pm @ Calvin Presbyterian Church
This evening will feature motets, masses, and sonatas by the brilliant Isabella Leonarda (1620–1704), whose 400th anniversary year in 2020 was unjustly clouded by the pandemic. Leonarda entered an Ursuline convent at age 16, where she spent the rest of her life. Despite holding various positions of authority in the convent, she became one of the most prolific composers of her time, publishing around 200 works. Unlike other women musicians of the 17th century, whose careers flourished in their youths, Leonarda seems to have flourished in her later life: most of her works were published when she was between the ages of 50 and 80.
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The Bard, Reimagined (Kaffeemusik)
Sunday, May 5, 2024, 3:30 pm @ Church of the Redeemer
The TCC explores music inspired by the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare. The program will begin with composers from Shakespeare’s time but then progress through history to the present day. Along the way, we’ll see how his stories were refashioned through different styles of vocal music. Among the diverse voices we’ll hear is that of the eighteenth-century abolitionist writer Ignatius Sancho. We’ll also create space to reframe The Tempest from a contemporary Indigenous perspective.
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Spring fundraiser: An Impulse to Soar
Wednesday, May 22, 2024, 7:00 pm, venue TBD
“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” – Helen Keller
In May 2023, the TCC presented its program "Musical Vision" about blind musicians and composers who did not let their visual handicap prevent them from composing and performing great music. Such was the richness of material found on this topic that more of it will be presented in our 2024 fundraiser to support the Toronto Chamber Consort section lead program. This intimate song evening will feature German lute songs, Austrian lieder, lute solos from Italy and Spain, and even modinhas played on the streets of nineteenth-century Rio de Janiero by the mixed-race Brazilian Joaquim Manoel da Câmara.
