Ladies storm Koerner Hall stage
Royal Conservatory of Music brings back female-centric concerts for a second year
Quiet Please, There’s a Lady on Stage: several in fact, back for a second season of concerts starring women from many musical genres at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Koerner Hall.
Last year’s experiment in femalecentric programming began with a sellout performance by Joan Armatrading, continued with sellouts for performers such as Lisa Fischer and ended with cabaret performer Meow Meow bodysurfing the crowd without putting a hair out of place.
The performers this season span classical, jazz, roots and world music. Here are four of the five “ladies” of the series.
Aviva Chernick: world music Chernick, accompanied by her bandmates in Jaffa Road, has an expansive interest in music that embraces Jewish, Arabic, Indian and Persian traditions as well as pop and rock. She begins her show with the ringing sound of Tibetan bowls. A cantor, Chernick has just returned to Toronto from California where she sang and led congregations over the Jewish high holy days. She sings in Hebrew, English and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and describes her music as “enchanting” with “lots of crossovers.” While her background is traditional and devotional, there is a heavy dose of jazz, classical and Indian music, she says. “The goal is to make a connection and go on a journey that is joyous and adventurous.”
Chernick appears Nov. 12 with Israeli singer Noa and Gil Dor.
Laila Biali: jazz Biali recently moved back to Toronto after living in Brooklyn for almost a decade with her 6-year-old son and husband, drummer Ben Wittman, in search of work-life balance. She’s been working on a record, Crossings, with songs inspired by her many trips back to the U.S. “The familiarity of air travel, hotel rooms and moving from one city to the next felt much more normal that trying to adjust to life as a family in a new city,” she said. These new songs, a combination of pop “with an edge” and jazz, will be the main focus of her concert. She will be accompanied by George Koller on bass, Larnell Lewis on drums, Wittman on percussion and William Sperandei on trumpet.
Biali appears Dec. 1 with Italian jazz and cabaret singer Pilar.
Patricia Cano: Afro-Brazilian jazz The star of Tomson Highway’s The (Post) Mistress has been singing the work of the First Nations playwright for almost 20 years. But her own cabaret show reaches into her Peruvian past. Cano describes her music as Afro-Peruvian, Afro-Brazilian, which she sings in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese accompanied by a guitarist. Most of the concert will feature music from her new album coming out in February. “My music is fusion-style, a mix of languages,” she says.
Cano appears April 19, 2017 with Colombian band Monsieur Periné.
Rosanne Cash: country Cash’s next album is a mix of Delta blues and Appalachian country music, the result of recent time spent in Arkansas where the boyhood home of her father, Johnny Cash, is being turned into a museum. She says she began to think about “personal ancestry and musical ancestry and how it infuses” her music. In the South she was “both the insider and the outsider.” Her husband and collaborator, John Leventhal, a native New Yorker, threw himself into the music of the South. “We wanted to paint a landscape we experienced,” which she also described as a “rich tapestry” involving blues, country, gospel and rock. “Genres of music are not a religion to me. I like all music.”
Cash and Leventhal appear April 27, 2017.
The fifth concert in the Quiet Please series stars vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant and pianist Aaron Diehl in Jelly & George, a tribute to Jelly Roll Morton and George Gershwin, on Feb. 23, 2017.
See rcmusic.ca for more information.