Looking for more to read, watch, and learn about early music, art, news, and more? Check out these links.
Once a month, we will gather the top 10 links from the Bonus Content section in our weekly newsletter for Premium subscribers, Tafel Notes. Here are the favourite articles and videos from March.
- WATCH Alison Mackay, former Tafelmusik double bassist and program creator of The Indigo Project, Safe Haven, and Tales of Two Cities, explores the cultural influence of a powerful blue dye in this recent lecture for Massey College’s Massey Music Club.
- WATCH Watch a pair of videos of Ellen Fullman playing the Long String Instrument, a musical instrument with up to 100-foot-long strings that Fullman has developed over the past 35 years.
- WATCH What does Ravel’s Boléro sound like on cello? Better yet: what does it sound like when it entails four people playing one single cello? In this video, watch “an orchestral classic become an acrobatic masterpiece.”
- WATCH Follow along with the Ludwig Partiturbuch manuscript while listening to Bertali’s Sonata à 4 in D Minor, in this new video from the early music group Quicksilver, featuring Tafelmusik’s own Dominic Teresi on the dulcian.
- WATCH In a strange marriage of arts and science, The San Francisco Opera costume department teamed up with doctors from UCSF to create a mask that will allow the company's singers to safely rehearse together—while greatly diminishing the chances of spreading COVID-19.
- WATCH Our Music Director Elisa Citterio performed with Montreal ensemble Les Violons du Roy. Their program, Merveilles de l'Italie baroque, premiered live on Thursday, March 25—and, will be available to watch online later this spring, from May 2 through May 16, 2021. In this clip from ICI Quebec News, watch behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage from this program.
- LISTEN Are you familiar with Mary Lou Williams? A prolific jazz pianist, arranger, and composer, she wrote hundreds of compositions, recorded more than one hundred records, and frequently arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. This article explores what it means to interpret work that straggles two genres—classical and jazz—and unpacks methods of interpreting, and performing, her Zodiac Suite.
- WATCH Want to see what musicians see—from on stage, or back stage? In this project from the Berlin Philharmonic and Google Cultural Institute, virtually sit in on a rehearsal, with a 360-degree view of the stage. Or, virtually step backstage to visit their piano room, their audio control room, and more. (Note: this website is best experienced on a desktop or laptop computer.)
- LISTEN Want some spring-inspired music? BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Morning with Sarah Walker recently shared an energizing musical mix, meant to compliment the season—and, it features Tafelmusik, and our recording of Henry Purcell’s Abdelazer Suite, Z.570 – ii. Air.
- WATCH Is honking the new applause? Learn more about a Calgary choir's drive-in concerts, which offer a chance to perform like we did before the pandemic.
Image: Woman Reading a Letter, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1663 courtesy of The Rijksmuseum.