2021
MARKHAM CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVALS
Markham Contemporary Music Festival has been promoting, since 2011, the performance by local artists of music written worldwide in the 20th and the 21st centuries. An annual event, the Festival also includes lectures and seminars in both English and French, workshops, master-classes, pre-concert chats, intermission discussions, post-concert receptions, documentary films about the life of contemporary composers, and networking events. The Festival encourages local community engagement through activities that celebrate and preserve performing arts.
The 2021 Markham Contemporary Music Festival included the following events:
Concerts
SHOSTAKOVICH’S SYMPHONY No. 14
September 11, 2021 at 8 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Markham Contemporary Music Festival presents uniquely orchestrated compositions from two unique European masters of twentieth century music. Deeply touched by his fellow composer’s death, and scored for tubular bell and string orchestra, Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten is a mournful and meditative elegy. Dmitri Shostakovich’s most extraordinarily scored symphony is his Fourteenth. Written for two solo voices, string orchestra and percussion, this work is a profound ode to the power of suffering and death. Presented in original (Russian) language with surtitles in English.
PULCINELLA
October 2, 2021 at 8 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Markham’s 2021 Contemporary Music Festival is pleased to present a modern-day homage to the eighteenth century along with a newly commissioned work. In collaboration with ballet impresario Diaghilev, Stravinsky rediscovers the past in his neo-classical Pulcinella Suite based on the centuries-old commedia dell’arte character.
IN SINISTRIS MANIBUS
October 30, 2020 at 8 pm
Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts
10268 Yonge St, Richmond Hill
Award-winning Canadian pianist Dong Xu performs a stunning rare work for the left hand alone: Piano Concerto No. 4 by Prokofiev. French composer Paul Dukas presents his Fanfare introduction to a Persian inspired "poème dansé".
Open Rehearsals
October 5, 2021 a 7 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Maestro Kristian Alexander leads the Kindred Spirits Orchestra in an open rehearsal featuring 20th century American composer Korngold and his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Free admission.
October 12, 2021 a 7 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Maestro Kristian Alexander leads the Kindred Spirits Orchestra in an open rehearsal featuring 20th century Russian composer Shostakovich and his Symphony No. 15. Free admission.
October 19, 2021 a 7 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Maestro Kristian Alexander leads the Kindred Spirits Orchestra in an open rehearsal featuring works of 20th century artists. Free admission.
October 26, 2021 at 5 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Internationally renowned Chinese Canadian pianist Dong Xu discusses his work on a stunning rare concerto for the left hand alone: Piano Concerto No. 4 by Serge Prokofiev. Free admission.
Exhibit
WORLD MUSIC INSTRUMENTS
October 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, and 30, 2021
from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
MCMF Rehearsal Hall
3a-50 Innovator Ave (2nd fl.), Stouffville ON L4A 0Y2
Open visit of the World Musical Instruments Collection. Includes authentic instruments by Indigenous artists and a documentary film at 4 p.m. presenting the millennial-long history of Métis music in Canada. Tickets are required for a specific day and time.
Workshops
September 14, 2021 at 7 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Orchestral instruments Workshop I (strings)
Open to the general public, this workshop is led by Aurora violinist Alexander Gangurean and explores the history and performing technique of the Western stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello and contrabass). Limited to 10 participants registered in advance through the MCMF Office.
September 21, 2021 at 7 pm
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Orchestral instruments Workshop II (woodwinds)
Open to the general public, this workshop is led by flutist Rodney Grey and clarinetist Carmen Gassi and explores the history and performing technique of the Western woodwind orchestral instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon). Limited to 10 participants registered in advance through the MCMF Office.
September 28, 2021 at 7 p.m.
SMSV Cultural Centre | 3300 Highway 7, Markham
Orchestral instruments Workshop III (brass)
Open to the general public, this workshop is led by Métis trombonist Léon Racine and explores the history and performing technique of the Western brass orchestral instruments (French horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba). Limited to 10 participants registered in advance through the MCMF Office.
Lectures and Films
MUSIC OF THE BRAIN
October 7, 2021 at 6 pm
MCMF Rehearsal Hall
3a-50 Innovator Ave (2nd fl.), Stouffville ON L4A 0Y2
Music affects our development from the womb to the grave. This documentary examines the role music plays in developing our brains as humans, beginning with premature infants in neonatal intensive care wards, moving through the role of music in enhancing performance in childhood (including discussion of the Mozart effect), the role of music therapy in hospital patients, and finally looking at the elderly. Music is good for our health - as non-Western tribal cultures have always known - and this documentary shows you how and why.
SHOSTAKOVICH DOUBLE BILL
October 14, 2021 at 7 pm
MCMF Rehearsal Hall
3a-50 Innovator Ave (2nd fl.), Stouffville ON L4A 0Y2
This concert, recorded live from London’s Barbican Centre features Maxim Shostakovich conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his father’s momentous Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 (A Soviet Artist’s Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism). Krzysztof Penderecki conducts the Sinfonietta Cracovia in a performance of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony.
SONGS OF ISRAEL
October 21, 2021 at 7 pm
MCMF Rehearsal Hall
3a-50 Innovator Ave (2nd fl.), Stouffville ON L4A 0Y2
The sights and sounds of Israel burst forth from the screen in this musical celebration of Israel’s diversity. Listen to the favourite songs of Israel as the camera whisks you from one breathtaking landscape to another, into the cities and villages of her many peoples, though the miracles of her past and the wonders of her present.
The 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 festivals have been supported by the Tourism Industry Partners, a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation.
