Bravo Niagara! Festival’s upcoming spring 2022 season features a new set of classical music performances dubbed The Maestro Series, to debut on April 2.
Announced this week, April, May and June will feature six performances in total, five of them to be performed in front of live audiences at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines. The four Maestro Series shows are to be complemented by two TD Jazz Series events, both paying tribute to two of the biggest names in jazz history.
The Maestro Series is an opportunity for co-founders Chris Mori and Alexis Spieldenner to shine a light on the talented classical musicians who represent Canada on the international stage.
“They’re all Canadians who are internationally renowned,” Mori tells The Local. “During the pandemic, I really wanted to support our Canadian artists. This year five Canadians competed at the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. Per capita, the amount of Canadian talent that we have is truly incredible.”
The season kicks off April 2 with a free online performance by the Cheng² Duo. Twenty-three-year-old cellist Bryan Cheng is the grand prize winner of the 2019 Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal and 2020 Bader & Overton Competitions, while his 31-year-old sister Sylvie is a recipient of the Roy M. Rubinstein Award for exceptional promise in piano performance. The siblings will be filmed by Fourgrounds Media in the quaint setting of Mori and Spieldenner’s Bravo Niagara! studio in their Niagara-on-the-Lake Village home.
On April 8, Charles Richard-Hamelin, winner of the silver medal at the 2015 Chopin Competition, will perform works from Chopin, Ravel and French composer César Franck. The concert will be the first for Bravo Niagara! held in the intimate setting of Robertson Hall at the PAC. The famous Steinway grand piano will be rolled into the black-box theatre space from its usual home in the larger Partridge Hall.
“We are trying to create a more relaxed atmosphere,” Mori says. “We’re breaking down the barriers between performer and audience. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear these artists up close. No stage, everything’s going to be very close to the artist.”
Robertson Hall is also the venue for Jan Lisiecki’s April 26 concert. The one-time child prodigy, now 26 years old, signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammaphon at only 15 years old. His 2021 double album of Frédéric Chopin’s Complete Nocturnes immediately topped the classical charts in North America and Europe following its August release.
Perhaps not surprisingly, his Bravo Niagara! performance, dubbed Poems of the Night, features Chopin Nocturnes and Études. Lisiecki last played for Bravo Niagara! in 2018 at St. Mark’s Anglican Church.
The Maestro Series continues on May 29 at the Recital Hall with the charismatic and entertaining Jon Kimura Parker’s program featuring the music of Brahms, Beethoven and Liszt, as well as Chick Corea and Oscar Peterson. The gold medalist at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition, Parker is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has a dozen albums in his discography. The Vancouver native has received honorary doctorates from the University of British Columbia and the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto.
The creative partner with the Minnesota Orchestra’s Summer at Orchestra Hall is also the artistic director for the Honens International Piano Competition and an artistic advisor for the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. He juggles those responsibilities with those that come with his role as a faculty member of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. In the past, he has collaborated with the likes of Doc Severinsen, Audra McDonald, Bobby McFerrin and legendary drummer of The Police, Stewart Copeland.
As Spieldenner and Mori explain, the Parker event is one that they planned to present a while ago, before the pandemic put a stop to live performances.
“We haven’t cancelled, and we’re not going to cancel anything,” confirms Mori. “The challenge is trying to make up for those two years. The next couple of years are going to be phenomenal. All the artists, they want to come, and we want to see them. We’re actually already planning as far ahead as 2024.”
For the TD Jazz Series, the mother-daughter team has teamed up once again with Céline Peterson for a tribute to her father, Canadian jazz legend Oscar Peterson. The April 30 program features NOTL pianist Robi Botos, a Juno Award winner who learned much of his craft at Peterson’s Toronto home. He teams up with veterans of Oscar’s band — Jeff Hamilton on drums, Ulf Wakenius on guitar, and Dave Young on bass.
As well, rising jazz guitar phenomenon Jocelyn Gould will join the quartet at the Recital Hall at the PAC. Gould’s 2021 release Elegant Traveller is the reigning Juno Award winner for Jazz Album of the Year. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Gould completed a Masters Degree in Jazz Studies at Michigan State University and now teaches guitar at Humber College.
One of those rescheduled presentations completes both the spring season and the TD Jazz Series on June 22. Originally scheduled for March, 2020, the Brubeck Brothers Quartet bring their tribute to their father, well-known jazz artist Dave Brubeck, to Partridge Hall.
“It was right at the beginning of the lockdown,” Spieldenner says. “I think March 24 is when it was supposed to happen.”
“It was in honour of their father’s centennial two years ago,” adds Mori. “So now I guess it’s 102. They’re pretty busy making up dates. We are lucky to get them back here. We’ve never done a show that late — we’re usually done by May.”
Drummer Dan and bassist Chris, both sons of Dave Brubeck, team up with guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb for a multimedia presentation paying homage to their famous patriarch, the composer of jazz classics such as Blue Rondo à la Turk and Take Five. Archival footage of the late pianist, who died a day before his 92nd birthday in 2012, will be integrated with the quartet’s performance of their father’s music.
Though the province will soon no longer be requiring vaccine passports for indoor events, Spieldenner and Mori say they have entered into an agreement with the First Ontario PAC to continue to require them until the end of April. It’s a cautious approach that allows concert-goers to ease into the live setting once again. Capacity limits will be lifted, however, by the first event on April 8.
The pair credit their supporters for keeping Bravo Niagara! going through the pandemic. Like other arts organizations, they had to shift to a fully online model, unable to present any in-person performances until fall 2021, just before the omicron wave pushed people back into their homes.
“These concerts, and the recordings we’ve done over the last two years, would not have been possible without our corporate sponsors, government support and our patrons,” Spieldenner explains. “And we’ve received some COVID relief, too. Without ticket sales all of that has been so important.”
Though the entire run of live performances takes place in St. Catharines, Mori promises that they are working on future presentations in NOTL for the near future. Pandemic capacity limits and requirements have made that virtually impossible the last two years. She adds that they may offer a shuttle service from the NOTL Public Library for some of the spring events if there is a demand for it.
Lovers of classical music can purchase a new Maestro Series pass at 20 per cent off for all three live concerts. Alternatively, a Flex Pack saves Bravo Niagara! Fans 25 per cent on a selection of any of the three to five classical and jazz concerts in the spring lineup.
Single tickets go on sale March 1. Youth and student tickets are half price. Visit bravoniagara.org for tickets and information.
