In Tuesday’s (11/22) Globe and Mail (Toronto), Colin Eatock writes, “It’s late on a chilly Tuesday night in October, and Toronto’s St. Clair Avenue looks dark and deserted. But there’s live music at Dave’s, a local bar, and the place is packed. … In the centre of the room, a young clarinetist and an ad hoc string quartet are working their way through Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. Welcome to the revolution—the Classical Revolution, that is. Across North America, classical players are returning chamber music to its origins: informal performances among friends in intimate settings. … Credit for the founding of Classical Revolution (CR) usually goes to violist Charith Premawardhana, who organized the first CR jam session, at the Revolution Café, in San Francisco’s Mission District. But also sitting in that night was Canadian violinist Edwin Huizinga. Now that he’s back living in Canada, he’s organized a CR group in Toronto. … Huizinga is a professional musician—he often performs with Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Montreal’s Theatre of Early Music. But he’s attracted to the informality of CR’s sessions, and the range of musicians who come out to play. ‘The nice thing is the way it mixes people up, with professional and semi-professional players. The classical-music world can be quite closed, in general. So this opens up situations where people at different levels can be comfortable playing together.’ ”
Posted November 22, 2011
