Alternate Takes is a musical program designed to explore how pieces of music for variable instrumentation reveal themselves differently when played on various instruments. It’s quite surprising how just a change of instrumental sound can affect a piece’s expressive dimensions.
Join four talented and thoughtful Canadian musicians for an evening’s exploration of Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces for clarinet or cello and piano, Brahms’s Sonata 2 for clarinet or viola and piano, Bruch’s Trio for clarinet, viola/cello and piano, and a trio by Kodaly. A colourfully interesting evening!
Featuring Stephanie Chua, piano; Colin Savage, clarinet; Mary-Katherine Finch, cello; and Laurence Schaufele, viola.
June 8, 2019 @ 8:00 p.m. Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Ave., Toronto
Tickets available at the door, or in advance at https://bemusednetwork.com/events/detail/617
Colin Savage has been principal clarinetist with the Mississauga Symphony for more than 30 years, and regularly performs on recorder and historical clarinets with a wide variety of chamber and orchestral ensembles in Southern Ontario. He has toured Japan and performed several times in the Royal Opera House at Versailles with Opera Atelier, and worked with New York Collegium, Tafelmusik, Canadian Opera Company, Apollo’s Fire, les Boréades and the Toronto Consort. Colin particularly enjoys playing bass clarinet with the Arctic fusion band Ensemble Polaris, whose recordings of Nordic/Canadian/Mediterranean genre-bending music have received international critical acclaim and delighted audiences across Canada. On the extra-musical side of life, Colin’s interest in analog photographic processes finds him in well-lit and very dark places; his images of abandoned spaces, shot with a vintage twin lens reflex camera, drew high praise in a solo exhibition of his work at Toronto’s Alliance Française in April 2018.
Violist/Violinist Laurence Schaufele is a young professional musician intent on exploring the possibilities of the viola and violin in a wide varieties of genres. He studied with Steven Dann, Nick Pulos, and Michael van der Sloot at The Glenn Gould School, Mount Royal University and the Medicine Hat College. When not playing classical music Laurence can be found playing jazz, klezmer, celtic, bluegrass and folk music. He has also performed with DJ Scratch Bastid and violinist Drew Jurecka for a hip hop/jazz/classical fusion concert this past year. Laurence is an avid teacher, spending time teaching in and around the Greater Toronto Area. Last spring, Laurence toured South America with the chamber orchestra Sinfonia Toronto. This was for Sinfonia Toronto’s first South American tour with stops in Peru, Argentina, and Uruguay. Most recently in November, Laurence with the Afiara Collective for a tour through Denmark. Laurence is a founding member of the Odin String Quartet as well as a renaissance folk band called the Renaissance Ramblers.
Cellist Mary-Katherine Finch enjoys a diverse performing career with numerous ensembles and in a wide variety of musical genres. She holds a Master of Music degree in Performance from the University of Toronto. Mary-Katherine has appeared with the Toronto Symphony, National Ballet of Canada, Esprit Orchestra, and served as guest principal cellist with Hamilton Philharmonic, Windsor Symphony, and Niagara Symphony, and is principal cellist of Mississauga Symphony. In 2015 she made her concerto debut with Mississauga Symphony. Mary-Katherine regularly performs chamber music on various concert series in Ontario. Summer festivals include Luminato, Elora, Toronto Summer Music, Festival of the Sound, and Ottawa Chamber Festival. Mary-Katherine is a member of Contact Contemporary Ensemble. As a dedicated teacher, Mary-Katherine maintains a busy private studio in North York and is cello instructor at the University of Toronto and Claude Watson School for the Arts.
Stephanie Chua is an expressive and versatile Canadian pianist devoted to presenting and performing contemporary works through musical insight and innovative programming. She has been broadcast across Canada on CBC Radio 2 and in Finland, Armenia, Hungary and Kyrgyzstan on Rondo Classic FM and has performed in solo and chamber recitals across Canada and in Europe. Recent highlights include Soundstreams’ gala concert ‘Reich @ 80’ under the direction of composer Steve Reich at Massey Hall (Toronto), solo recitals at Music Toronto’s Discovery Series, New Music Edmonton, and the Music Gallery (Toronto), along with performances at Impuls Contemporary Music Festival (Graz, Austria), the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, X-Avant Festival (Toronto), and Groundswell (Winnipeg). With the assistance of the Canada Council of the Arts, Stephanie embarked on a tour of South West England in 2008 that included performances at the Michael Tippet Centre (Bath) and the Cube Microplex (Bristol). As a much sought after collaborative pianist, Stephanie has performed in some of Canada’s most important contemporary ensembles –Trio Fibonacci (Montreal), Toca Loca (Toronto), Continuum Contemporary Music (Toronto), and Contact Contemporary Music (Toronto). She has also served as accompanist for the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Competition for Contemporary Music (Brandon, MB) and as repetiteur for Tapestry New Opera (Toronto). In 2009, Stephanie co-founded junctQín keyboard collective with Elaine Lau and Joseph Ferretti. junctQín is a trio of pianists committed to performances of contemporary music and commissioning new works for their unique instrumentation. Since its inception, the group has commissioned works from composers Aaron Gervais (Canada/USA), Hiroki Tsurumoto (Japan/Canada), Alex Eddington (Canada), Emilie Lebel (Canada), Jason Doell (Canada) and the Toy Piano Composers Collective (Canada). Recent highlights include collaborations with Finish composer Tomi Räisänen and with Austrian composer Karlheinz Essl (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna) co-presented by Toronto’s Music Gallery with additional sponsorship from the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation (Switzerland). Stephanie holds her Music and a Master of Music from the University of Toronto. She was also Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and earned her Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria. Her main teachers were Robin Wood and Marietta Orlov, and she has worked extensively in master classes with Menahem Pressler and Leon Fleisher. In 2009, Stephanie was the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Career Development Grant allowing her to pursue private studies with Ian Pace in London, England.