“Let’s see now: 68 world premieres, 50 North American premieres, 28 Ontario premieres and 15 Toronto premieres. Not bad for a festival only five years old,” writes William Littler in Saturday’s (5/12) Toronto Star (Canada). “But then, 21C isn’t your average collection of concerts. The Twenty-First Century Music Festival, to use its full name, specializes in the new and the recent. Presented at and by [Toronto’s] Royal Conservatory of Music, it crams eight concerts into five days (this year, 161 pieces of music to be heard between May 23 and 27)…. America’s Kronos Quartet … opens the festival with a new work by Los Angeles-based Jherek Bischoff…. On Day 3, the self-conducted chamber orchestra A Far Cry will be joined by pianist Simone Dinnerstein in the Canadian premiere of Concerto No. 3 by … Philip Glass…. Most of the concerts take place in Koerner Hall…. Collaboration with resident musical organizations, such as the Esprit Orchestra, New Music Concerts and Soundstreams, has always been a feature of programming. But what has really distinguished 21C is its surprises… This year there will even be a concert celebrating Estonia’s centennial, featuring a violin and piano duo, an electronic music composer and the Grammy Award-winning, 15-member Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis.”
Posted May 15, 2018
