West End Micro Music Festival Returns In 2024 With REVELATIONS

The West End Micro Music Festival (WEMMF) has announced its fourth season, REVELATIONS. 

Beginning November 22nd and running through November 30th, the fourth iteration of the West End Micro Music Festival brings another season of unexpected and ambitious art-making to Toronto.

REVELATIONS highlights 20th and 21st Century vocal music, with an assemblage of radical and revelatory works that carry the listener to a place of electrifying intimacy. Simon Rivard, Music Director of the Edmonton Opera, once again returns to WEMMF to lead both programmes.

PROGRAMME I — ECSTATIC VOICES: November 22nd and 23rd at 7:30 pm

ECSTATIC VOICES envisions a new context for the eight-person vocal ensemble. Featuring bold, sensual works for voices — Cassandra Miller’s The City, Full of People, Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices, Luciano Berio’s Cries of London, and Thomas Tallis' Lamentations of Jeremiah — this performance subverts expectations for the choir; bending, twisting, and mutating historical forms into new shapes and gestures.

Punctuating the performance is Claude Vivier's Cinq Chansons pour Percussion, featuring virtuoso percussionist Aiyun Huang. Placed in dialogue with the vocal music, these wordless songs evoke an otherworldly ecstasy.

Caroline Shaw - Partita for 8 Voices (2012)

Cassandra Miller (Canada) - The City, Full of People (2023)

Thomas Tallis - Lamentations of Jeremiah (1569)

Luciano Berio - The Cries of London (1976)

Claude Vivier (Canada) - Cinq Chansons pour percussion (1980)

ARTISTS: ECSTATIC VOICES

Conductor — Simon Rivard

Voice 1 — Sydney Baedke

Voice 2 — Reilly Nelson

Voice 3 — Danika Lorèn

Voice 4 — Whitney O’Hearn

Voice 5 — Marcel d’Entremont

Voice 6 — Elias Theocharidis

Voice 7 — Bruno Roy 

Voice 8 — Graham Robinson

Percussion — Aiyun Huang

Lighting Designer — Billy Wong

Sound Design/Tech — Fish Yu

PROGRAMME II — I SAW A NEW HEAVEN: November 29th and 30th at 7:30 pm

Astral washes of sound from an electric guitar join the plaintive lament of a lone voice in I SAW A NEW HEAVEN, for the closing weekend of the 2024 West End Micro Music Festival. An ensemble of Toronto's most adventurous artists reach for a new sonic landscape -- a conceptual space at the meeting point of the sublime, the supernatural, and the avant-garde. 

This programme features the Canadian premiere of Windsor-born Kati Agócs’ Voices of the Immaculate (featuring soprano soloist Reilly Nelson). In this work that “demands to be heard” (New York Times), Agócs juxtaposes texts from the Book of Revelations with the testimony of survivors of abuse at the hands of clergy. Opening and closing with mediaeval chant performed by solo electric guitar, I SAW A NEW HEAVEN creates a theatrical context for chamber music that sees revelation in both the past and the future of the artform.

Hildegard von Bingen - O Viridissima Virga, arr. Shibe for electric guitar (ca. 1140-1179)

Sofia Gubaidulina - From the Visions of Hildegard von Bingen, arr. for voice and electric bass (1994)

Sofia Gubaidulina - An Angel..(1994)

Cassandra Miller - Perfect Offering (2021)

Kati Agócs (Canada) - Voices of the Immaculate (2021)

Hildegard von Bingen - O Choruscans Stellarum, arr. Shibe for electric guitar (ca. 1140-1179)

ARTISTS: I SAW A NEW HEAVEN

Conductor — Simon Rivard

Soprano — Reilly Nelson (Agòcs)

Soprano — Danika Lorèn (Gubaidulina)

Violin — Julia Mirzoev, David Baik

Viola — Hezekiah Leung

Cello — Peter Eom

Electric Guitar/Bass — Lenny Ranallo

Piano — Joonghun Cho

Flutes — Sara Constant

Clarinets — Brad Cherwin

Lighting Designer — Billy Wong

Sound Design/Tech — Fish Yu

For more information about festival artists (including photos and bios), please visit our website: https://www.westendmusic.ca/artists.

The West End Micro Music Festival takes place at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Toronto’s West End. Concert dates are November 22nd, November 23rd, November 29th and November 30th, 2024. Each concert will begin at 7:30 p.m., and have a length of approximately 75 minutes.

Tickets (general admission) are $30.00 and can be reserved in advance online or purchased at the door. Admission for students is free, with advance online reservation.