A sweet deal for artists, audience
Visitors to the St. Lawrence Centre’s Jane Mallett Theatre can’t help noticing an enormous lobby portrait of the smiling woman after whom the venue was renamed.
(I say renamed because it was called the Town Hall until Herbert Whittaker, then theatre critic of the Globe and Mail, mounted a campaign in 1984 to honour the veteran Toronto actress who also happened to be his Rosedale landlady.)
Visitors are less likely to notice a much smaller photograph at the far end of the lobby honouring Franz Kraemer, founding artistic director in the early 1970s of what was then known as Music at the Centre.
Now known as Music Toronto, Music at the Centre is still very much alive half a century after its founding, with its next concert being a Nov. 9 recital by the eminent British pianist Stephen Hough.
There have been changes over the years, among them a reduction of concert presentations from an annual high of 56 during the golden years to the present season’s 13, due in part to changing public taste and the arrival of such venues as Koerner Hall.
While still the city’s leading purveyor of chamber music, gone are the days when the Jane Mallett Theatre played host to not one but two eightconcert series of string ensembles. By itself the nowdefunct Tokyo String Quartet appeared just about annually for 38 years.
Music Toronto still takes pride in introducing young artists to the city, this season including the all-female Esmé String Quartet, founded in 2016 in Cologne, Germany, and the British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. His upcoming performance in town on March 29 will be Grosvenor’s fourth appearance for Music Toronto, having become what artistic producer Jennifer Taylor calls “a friend of the house.”
You may have noticed that, although she chooses the artists, Taylor doesn’t call herself artistic director. Why? “Because I am a listener, not a musician.”
In fact, she taught English literature at a number of Canadian universities before finding herself, one day late in 1989, lunching at a Yonge-Eglinton restaurant adjacent to a table occupied by then-artistic director Chris Wilcox and his board chairman.
On their way out of the restaurant the chairman turned to Taylor, saying, “Well, you obviously heard everything. What do you think?” Recognizing that there was, as Meredith Willson’s “Music Man” would have said, “trouble in River City,” she handed him her card.
Two days later she received a phone call from Wilcox, followed by an invitation to do a study of Music Toronto, followed in turn by the offer of a job as administrator.
Like the late Walter Homburger, who successfully managed the Toronto Symphony Orchestra without being able to read a note of music, Taylor turned out to have a nose for talent and the human skills to secure its loyalty.
She still remembers the time the distinguished French pianist Pascal Rogé asked her to sit in on his rehearsal because “I trust your ears.”
She credits her audience with cementing the loyalty of so many artists. It is, she asserts, the quietest, most attentive musical audience in the city. And she is probably right — with 499 seats, steeply raked so that the sight lines are excellent, there is an intimacy in her workplace impossible to replicate in large venues.
Artists value that intimacy. Widely regarded as one of the foremost pianists of his generation, Hough is returning for his fifth Music Toronto appearance. His program? In addition to the familiar Chopin and Schumann, he will be playing Rawsthorne and Hough.
Yes, Hough — one of the other reasons artists like to come to the Jane Mallett Theatre is an invitation to play what they want and, not surprisingly, Hough happens to be the leading interpreter of Hough.
Among the ensembles who have similarly become “friends of the house” Taylor singles out Canada’s St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Gryphon Trio, annual visitors supported by Music Toronto from the earliest stages of their professional careers.
No less a friend has been Montreal pianist Marc-André Hamelin, an international figure with a discography of more than 60 albums, returning after 12 previous visits since 1986.
To help celebrate its 50th anniversary Music Toronto has commissioned two new Canadian works, one from KellyMarie Murphy for Ottawabased pianist David Jalbert, the other from composer-adviser Jeffrey Ryan for the Gryphon Trio.
And on top of everything else, Taylor claims to offer Toronto’s best student-ticket price in classical music: $10 for the best available seat in the house. A happy anniversary present indeed.
Now known as Music Toronto, Music at the Centre is still very much alive half a century after its founding