180724 – Toronto Concert Orchestra

We go back to the golden age of the popular song. In the spirit of the glamour and glitter of the era of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin, we’ll bring you the grandest of salon orchestras to recreate the lost elegance of a gentler time. Join us for an evening when love songs touched the heart with words and music. Mezzosoprano, Cassandra Warner, is joined by special guest, Sean Jones.

PROGRAMME

We will allow our setting to dictate our order for this concert, performing these pieces as the spirits moving between the garden’s flowers and trees call to us:

Puttin’ on the Ritz
Charleston
All of Me
My Girl
I Love Paris
Moten Swing
Yes, We Have No Bananas
Nola
Clarinet Marmalade
Cheek to cheek
Ain’t We Got Fun
I Get a Kick Out of You
One in a Million
La Vie en Rose
Pick Yourself Up
Someone to Watch Over Me
What’ll I Do
Stand By Me
Summertime
It’s Delovely
Embraceable You
Down Peacock Alley
Anything Goes
Honeysuckle Rose
Time After Time
In My Solitude
Always
I’ll Be Seeing You
Youkali

Conductor | Kerry Stratton
Special Guest | Sean Jones
Mezzosoprano | Cassandra Warner

PROGRAMME NOTES
Prepared by TCO's Assistant Conductor, Surinder S. Mundra

Throughout its history, the prosperous city of Toronto would become a haven to many industrious and savvy Leviathans of business, as well as those shining lights in entertainment!

Individuals like George Brown, Timothy Eaton, and Sir Henry Pellatt not only brought modernization and industrialization to an ever-growing cosmopolitan city, but also attracted arts communities that would reflect and enhance the trappings of decadence that came along with it during that booming time.

George Brown was the founder of the Globe and Mail, and a politician. Through his political career, he would form the coalition along with Sir John A. McDonald which paved the way for confederation in 1867. His initiative in securing national unity and stability would lay a fertile soil for greater opportunity and investment in the country, and its growing cities.

Timothy Eaton, the famous merchant (who would forever change retail practice), and the dreamer, Sir Henry Pellatt (who amassed his fortune firstly by bringing hydro-electricity to Toronto in 1883, and then constructing what is perhaps the most extravagant building in Canada, and even North America, Casa Loma) were two other enterprising individuals who would help make Toronto one of the most exciting and vibrant cities.

Another financial visionary was George Gooderham, the politician and financier who built in 1903 the finest and grandest hotel in all of North America, The King Edward. Canadian historian Anne Martin reports that critics of the time said, what the Alhambra is to Spain, the King Edward Hotel is to Canada. The opulence of this extravagant hotel was evidenced not only by its ostentatious decor and other contents which were shipped from a palace in France, but also in the big concert jazz bands that performed in it!

The crystal ballroom at the top of the newly extended 18-story tower attached to The King Edward was built in 1922. It was built in order to keep up with the dazzling Jazz age.

This was the place to be married. This was the place to hold annual functions, and to announce big news like when Jonas Salk announced his cure for polio. This was also the place to hear big bands and see big stage and film stars!

Whether we hear the bombastic and virtuosic solo passages from Clarinet Marmalade, the puerile gaiety of Yes! We Have no Bananas, the push for a freer form of orchestral jazz in Moten Swing, or any of the music tonight, we surely get a sense of excess, and self-indulgence in the gratifying titillation from a people (with more free time) recovering from a still very recent world war. We perhaps hear either triumphalism, or avoidance over those horrors that changed their lives.

Tonight’s programme showcases music of those wild times from the first half of the twentieth century (a time we might think of as innocent). At once, images of those whimsical characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby are brought to mind. We may also easily visualize the coquettish flappers who flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Then again, what was wrong with it all? It was a time for having fun. It was a time for making whoopy. It was a time to revel in idle pleasures...and it would soon end leaving its people in the midst of an inevitable market crash and another looming world war..

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
-The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

GRAND HOTEL

Week 8 | Casa Loma Symphony in the Gardens Series