Puzzle Me This

Presented by:

North Wind Concerts

Event Details

Hooray, the ACTA Recorder Quartet is back in action! To celebrate, we offer you a program of consort music from the 16^th, 18^th and 20^th centuries for your listening delight.

The program for PUZZLE ME THIS draws on multiple musical forms which call for some clever puzzling-out to create and to play, such as the fugue, canon, palindrome, quodlibet and more. We’ll present music by J.S. Bach, Adriano Banchieri, Cipriano da Rore/Dalla Casa, Frans Geysen, Canadian composers Wolfgang Bottenberg and Kelsey Jones, and pieces from the Dijon Chansonnier and Attaignant’s chanson collections. Also included are excerpts from Dalla Casa’s ornamented version of A la dolc’ ombra, with diminutions in all four parts. The 16th-century music will be played on a set of Renaissance recorders (SATB) by Thomas Prescott, and for the later repertoire we’ll use modern ‘Baroque’ instruments, in various combinations.

The ACTA Recorder Quartet is  Avery MacLean, Colin Savage, Tatsuki Shimoda and Alison Melville. Join us at 7:30 p.m on Saturday January 20, at the Heliconian Hall!

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One of Canada's few professional recorder consorts, the Toronto-based ACTA Quartet has been making music together since 2015 and brings together a multi-generational group of players with a wealth of performing experience. Their ever-expanding repertoire casts a wide net, from Renaissance dance tunes and Baroque fugues to arrangements of Sousa marches, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, Joplin's rags, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Girl from Ipanema, and beyond. Of particular interest for ACTA is the substantial repertoire of modern-era music for recorder consort from Canada, the USA, Japan and Europe, with its diversity of influences, styles and techniques. With such a range of music and using the diverse colours of the recorder consort (sopranino to great bass), ACTA seeks to broaden the public's awareness and appreciation of their instrument and its repertoire.

Galvanized by their enthusiasm for recorder consort repertoire and the enjoyment they take in working together, the ACTA Quartet presents shows for all kinds of audiences, in venues ranging from grade school gymnasiums to state-of-the-art concert halls. The group has presented numerous mixed programs in Toronto and for Chamber Music Mississauga, Hammer Baroque in Hamilton, and other presenters in south-western Ontario.

The ACTA Recorder Quartet members are Alison Melville, Colin Savage, Tatsuki Shimoda and Avery MacLean. They are joined from time to time by former member Anne Massicotte, Ondrej Golias, and/or other guests as necessary.

"Wonderful music, excellently played!...The meticulous and articulate playing of the quartet was clearly evident...Even without words, they were able to convey both the sauciness and sadness of the French chansons."  (Toronto Early Music Centre)

“...an eclectic program characterized by impeccable ensemble work, flawless intonation, and beautifully shaped musical lines.” (TEMPO Newsletter)

"The range of sizes and tones of the recorders...and the ability of the players to get such a variety of sounds...was amazing." (Ontario Concert Reviews)

Member Biographies

Toronto-born Alison Melville began playing the recorder in a school classroom in London (UK). Her subsequent career as a player of recorders and historical flutes has taken her across North America and to New Zealand, Iceland, Japan and Europe, most recently to Spain. A member of the Toronto Consort and Ensemble Polaris, she appears regularly with Tafelmusik and collaborates with many others. Some highlights: playing for The Tudors, The Friendly Giant, and Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter; solo shows in inner-city London (UK) schools; an improvised music-and-movement duet with an acrobat in northern Finland; and a summer of concerts in prisons across southwestern Ontario. Alison has been heard on CBC/R-C, BBC, RNZ, NPR, Iceland’s RUV, and on over 65 CDs, including several critically acclaimed solo recordings. She taught for many years at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is currently on the teaching faculty at the University of Toronto. www.alisonmelville.com

Colin Savage has been principal clarinetist with the Mississauga Symphony for over 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, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Consort. Colin particularly enjoys playing recorder and 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. 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, and at Gerrard Art Space in 2019. He continues to hone his limited hockey skills on rinks around the city, and has recently play-tested most of the outdoor ping-pong tables in Toronto parks.

Tatsuki Shimoda has been playing the recorder since a young age, coming from a musical family with whom he has explored music in various settings. Versatile in many styles from early music to avant-garde music, he has performed across Ontario, utilizing all recorder sizes. He has been awarded at various music festivals and earned his Performer’s ARCT for recorder in 2018. He completed his Bachelors of Music from the University of Toronto in 2022, with a minor in Mathematics. He continues to explore different musical styles as he works towards his Performer's ARCT for piano as well as apprenticing under the Japanese drumming group Nagata Shachu.

Avery MacLean completed her B.Mus. in Early Music Performance and Literature at McGill University, a post-graduate Certificate in Performance at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague (Holland), and an MA in Music Criticism at McMaster University. She has made guest appearances with the Les Violons du Roi, Aradia, Mississauga Symphony, Toronto Philharmonic, Toronto Masque Theatre, Toronto Consort, Scaramella Concerts and many other groups across Ontario. Avery can be heard on Naxos, Classical Kids and several private label recordings, and she has been featured on CBC and CJRT radio, CBC and BRAVO! Television, as well as several film soundtracks. She works as the Director, Research IT and Enterprise Data Architecture at The Hospital for Sick Children’s Research Institute, supporting Canada’s top research scientists, many of whom are accomplished musicians.