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Toronto Consort’s 35th Anniversary Season Wraps Up with The Glory of St. Mark’s: Toronto, March 13, 2008 — The Toronto Consort presents its 35th Anniversary season finale at 8:00 pm on April 4 and 5. The Glory of St. Mark’s features some of the most splendid music composed for Venice’s famous Basilica, including a work where the musicians are positioned throughout Trinity St Paul’s wrap-around balconies to recreate the early baroque “surround-sound” experience, Venetian style. Tickets are available at the box office, (416) 964-6337. For more information, visit www.torontoconsort.org. St. Mark’s Basilica is the jewel in the crown of Venice’s many riches, and several great composers including Claudio Monteverdi and his successor Francesco Cavalli have written music specifically for its glittering, awe-inspiring interior. Toronto Consort Artistic Director David Fallis has selected several sacred works by these composers to create a programme that celebrates the gorgeous sounds most closely associated with St. Mark’s. Over the years, the Consort has established a well-deserved reputation for the excellence of its performances of Monteverdi’s works. As noted in a Globe and Mail review last fall, “This opera (Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses) is one of the oldest in the repertoire, and with the Toronto Consort under David Fallis, the musical treatment is period correct. Monteverdi was a brilliant orchestrator, and Fallis and his twenty-nine players gave full weight to the composer's eccentric musical accents." Monteverdi was appointed music director at St. Mark’s in 1613, where he wrote many vocal works for the Basilica’s famous acoustics. The Consort will perform the composer’s five-part sacred motet Christe Adoramus te for voices and continuo, and Stabat virgo Maria from the 8-part Magnificat, with violins, trombones, and continuo. The Consort’s own singers are featured as soloists in two other works by Monteverdi: mezzo-soprano Laura Pudwell sings the motet Ego flos campi, and sopranos Katherine Hill and Michele De Boer join the instrumentalists positioned throughout the church’s wrap-around balconies to perform the Salve Regina from Monteverdi’s 1640 collection Selva Morale e Spirituale. These pieces will be interwoven with a major work by Francesco Cavalli, the Missa Concertata — a sumptuous masterpiece for voices, strings, brass and continuo. Cavalli composed this 8-part mass at St. Mark’s in 1656, which includes an accompanying instrumental score with parts for violins, trombones and continuo. Instrumental works by contemporaries of Monteverdi and Cavalli scored for violins and sackbuts round out the programme. The Toronto Consort dedicates the April 4 concert as a salute to the Faculty of Music Library, University of Toronto, which has provided important research resources for many Consort programmes over the past three decades. The Toronto Consort presents The Glory of St. Mark’s
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The Toronto Consort
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