Media Reviews
Media Room
April 9, 2021
Sacred Music For a Sacred Space — and Beyond
2020-21 Season
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s next online concert, to stream on Remembrance Day, will reflect on and honour the experience of Indigenous Veterans. The TMC, under conductor Simon Rivard, is joined by composer and guest curator Andrew Balfour, and Elder Dr. Duke Redbird for a program that brings together choral music, poetry and dance. The centre piece of the program is Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew. Movements of the work will be sung by Andrew’s Winnipeg-based Camerata Nova and by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
December 17, 2020
The TMC Spreads Christmas Joy
2020-21 Season
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s next online concert, to stream on Remembrance Day, will reflect on and honour the experience of Indigenous Veterans. The TMC, under conductor Simon Rivard, is joined by composer and guest curator Andrew Balfour, and Elder Dr. Duke Redbird for a program that brings together choral music, poetry and dance. The centre piece of the program is Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew. Movements of the work will be sung by Andrew’s Winnipeg-based Camerata Nova and by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
December 17, 2020
Messiah/Complex joyfully proves beauty of a vast ‘Canadian’ experience
Media
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s next online concert, to stream on Remembrance Day, will reflect on and honour the experience of Indigenous Veterans. The TMC, under conductor Simon Rivard, is joined by composer and guest curator Andrew Balfour, and Elder Dr. Duke Redbird for a program that brings together choral music, poetry and dance. The centre piece of the program is Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew. Movements of the work will be sung by Andrew’s Winnipeg-based Camerata Nova and by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
November 13, 2020
The Challenge of Remembrance
2020-21 Season
Ken Stephen, Large Stage Live. On Saturday night, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir premiered what is undoubtedly the most intricate virtual concert I’ve yet seen. Over a 50-minute span, the Choir presented music ranging from Bach to the present day, and across a geographic span that extended from Canada to Liverpool, and from Leipzig to the south of India. Even more striking, this performance incorporated both visual art creation and dance alongside music — and dance in a style that cannot have been familiar to many in the online audience.
October 29, 2020
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Honours Indigenous Veterans In A Remembrance Day Streamed Program
2020-21 Season
BWW News Desk.
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir honours and remembers Canada’s Indigenous Veterans in a Remembrance Day streamed multi-disciplinary program.
The TMC, under conductor Simon Rivard, is joined by composer and guest curator Andrew Balfour, and Elder Dr. Duke Redbird for a program that brings together choral music, poetry and dance. The centre piece of the program is Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew. Movements of the work will be sung by Andrew’s Winnipeg-based Camerata Nova and by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
October 13, 2020
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir sings glorious songs of Thanksgiving
2020-21 Season
Ken Stephen, Large Stage Live. On Saturday night, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir premiered what is undoubtedly the most intricate virtual concert I’ve yet seen. Over a 50-minute span, the Choir presented music ranging from Bach to the present day, and across a geographic span that extended from Canada to Liverpool, and from Leipzig to the south of India. Even more striking, this performance incorporated both visual art creation and dance alongside music — and dance in a style that cannot have been familiar to many in the online audience.
July 21, 2020
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Names New Associate Baton
2020-21 Season
Michael Vincent, Ludwig Van Toronto. Montréal-born conductor Simon Rivard has been appointed Associate Conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Named as one of CBC’s “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians under 30”, Rivard was mentored by Valery Gergiev at the Verbier Festival (2018).
June 2, 2020
Three Major Toronto Arts Groups Combine In Historic Virtual Choral-Orchestral Video
2019-20 Season
Michael Vincent, Ludwig van Toronto. There is nothing quite like the hope found in the continued resilience shown by artists coming together during a crisis. The TSO has joined the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, to perform Gabriel Fauré’s moving Cantique de Jean Racine, under the baton of conductor Simon Rivard.
May 31, 2020
Review of Great Poets in Music online program
2019-20 Season
Ken Stephen, Large Stage Live. On Saturday, May 30, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was scheduled to round out its season with a concert devoted to great poets in music — a concert which I had fully planned to attend.
With a little bit of luck and a great deal of ingenuity, planning, effort, and coordination, the Choir has managed instead to present an online virtual concert built around the same theme. It originally aired at the same time that the live concert was scheduled to take place, and is now available online.
To pull this effort together, the Choir has brought together audio recorded performances from five other choirs, tossed in a previous video performance and a new social-distancing recording of their own, and tied the entire evening together with readings of great poetry and theatre by renowned Canadian actors Tom McCamus and Lucy Peacock and commentary by the choir’s interim conductor, David Fallis.