Evergreen: Renaissance Music For The Longest Nights
December 14 
02:30 PM
Venue
Heliconian Hall
Toronto, ON
Radar
Performers
Event Details
A consort of recorders brings musical “evergreens” of the Renaissance to life - music of hope, resilience and the returning light.
As the year tilts toward its darkest hours, music is a beacon of light and renewal. Join us for a program of ‘evergreens’ from the English and German Renaissance, including settings of The Leaves be green and Tandernaken, pavans, almains and galliards, and In nomines. Carols in praise of the rose, imagined to bloom even in midwinter, weave sacred beauty into this seasonal tapestry.
The rich and sonorous colours of a Renaissance recorder consort – soprano, alto, tenors, bass and great bass, all created expressly to be played together – will surprise and delight you, as this music from the 1500s speaks across the centuries to offer warmth and beauty in the darkest part of our year.
Works in 3, 4 and 5 parts by BYRD, SENFL, HOLBORNE, TYE, FINCK, HENRY VIII, BEVIN and others, performed by Romina Abadi, Avery Maclean, Alison Melville, Tatsuki Shimoda and Colin Savage, recorders.
About the performers:
Romina Abadi began playing the recorder in a Carl Orff class for children at the Pars Music Institute, Tehran, Iran. In 2008, she started lessons with Reza Asgarzadeh, where she started exploring the recorder more seriously. She has had the opportunity to attend master classes with Silvia Hintz in modern recorder techniques and Liam Finnelly on early music performance in Tehran. Since moving to Toronto in 2018, she has been playing in an ensemble and taking lessons with Alison Melville. Romina enjoys playing in groups and has played in small concerts in Tehran and Toronto. Outside of music, she has worked as a research assistant at the Virtual Reality and Perception Lab at York University.
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 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.
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 Shimodahas 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.
Toronto-born Alison Melville began playing the recorder in a school classroom in London (UK). Her subsequent career as a player of recorder 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
Featured Program
Settings of ‘The Leaves be Green’ or ‘Browning’ as it’s sometimes known, for three, four and five parts by Bevin, Inglott, Byrd and Woodcock.
Settings of ‘Tandernaken’ by Henry VIII and Senfl.
In Nomines by Christopher Tye. Pavans, almains and galliards by Anthony Holborne. And some mellifluous extras.