Telemania!

Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre

February 18, 2027, 7:30pm
February 19, 2027, 7:30pm
February 20, 2027, 7:30pm
February 21, 2027, 3pm

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Full Season 9
Jeanne Lamon 7
Thursday 5

Georg Phillip Telemann, whose 1733 publication of “Tafelmusik” inspired the name of our orchestra, lived in the cosmopolitan city of Hamburg for almost 50 years.

A vibrant centre for international shipping and a beacon for refugees from all over Europe, Hamburg’s prosperity and multiculturalism made the city a fertile setting for Telemann’s boundless energy and innovative creativity. He was a people’s composer who loved to create new works for every type of musician from superstar virtuosi to amateurs making music in the privacy of their own homes.

Telemann’s youthful employment brought him into contact with musicians from all over Europe, and his own experience as a multi-instrumentalist influenced the bold experiments with orchestral colours that have made his orchestral and chamber works so popular with audiences today. Telemann was also an innovator in the worlds of opera and sacred music; and loved to take sacred works out of the churches and into the gathering places of the city. In total, Telemann is estimated to have composed over 3,000 works and was one of the most well-respected composers of his time—the first choice for a coveted job in Leipzig ahead of Johann Sebastian Bach.

In music, projected images, and narration, this new program exploring Telemann’s inspiring life and musical legacy has been designed by Alison Mackay, former Tafelmusik bassist and award-winning creator of The Galileo Project, House of Dreams, and the Leipzig-Damascus Coffeehouse.

Box Office
Tafelmusik
(416) 964-6337 | Email
Running Time
120 minutes
Style of Music
Baroque orchestra, multimedia with actor

Alison MacKay

Creator

Alison Mackay played violone and double bass with Tafelmusik from 1979–2019, and has remained active in the creation of multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural programming for the orchestra. A number of her projects, which include The Four Seasons, a Cycle of the Sun; The Galileo Project; House of Dreams; and Tales of Two Cities: The Leipzig-Damascus Coffee House have been made into feature documentary films and have toured extensively around the world. In 2006, her children’s adventure, The Quest for Arundo Donax, was awarded the JUNO Award for Children’s Recording of the Year. Under her leadership, Tafelmusik has sponsored two city-wide arts festivals: the 2005 Metamorphosis Festival was a presentation of music, art, dance, film, and theatre inspired by the stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the 2008 Sacred Spaces, Sacred Circles Festival was a celebration of architecture and arts in the worship spaces of many cultures in the city of Toronto.  She is the recipient of the 2013 Betty Webster Award for her contribution to orchestral life in Canada.  

Performers

Tafelmusik Orchestra, on period instruments
Blair Williams narrator
Created by Alison Mackay

Performers

Tafelmusik Orchestra, on period instruments
Directed by Jakob Lehmann

Program

Beethoven Symphony no. 7, op. 92 in A Major
Farrenc Symphony no. 3, op. 36 in G Minor (Tafelmusik premiere)

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