Culture Weekend: Music and Beyond and the National Arts Centre

Following on from a successful 2012 festival, Music and Beyond held a Celebration Concert on Saturday, 29th September. The selection of works included repeats of festival favourites as well as a few new choices. One person commented to me that the sheer variety meant that the flow of the concert was a little disjointed (the stage had to be set for each individual performance), but the quality was superb.

NAC Culture Days - contemporary dance

Again I really enjoyed Howard Cable's The Petty Harbour Bait Skiff along with the evening's offerings from the 'Jewish Composers Through The Ages' concert: Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody and Glick's 'The Rabbi's Wedding at the Palmerston Street Shul' from The Old Toronto Klezmer Suite. Both of these fun party tunes received great applause, even more than Seventeen Voyces' rendition of Java Jive. Yannick-Muriel Noah dazzled with 'Es gibt ein Reich' from Ariadne auf Naxos, whilst Julie Nesrallah added a touch of the unusual with Respighi's Il Tramonto. All in all an enjoyable evening!

Yesterday we headed to the National Arts Centre for their Culture Days offerings. M is a keen photographer so initially we headed to the Studio for a photography workshop on contemporary dance, with dancers from The School of Dance and tuition from SPAO. I caught a few of the dancers myself but also relaxed and enjoyed their performances! Later on we had a look backstage as well as taking in Glenn Gould's piano, Steinway CD318. This was our first Culture Days visit to the NAC; it was really interesting and comes highly recommended for future years.

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