The Toronto Consort

Toronto Consort launches season with The Ambassadors
October 15 and 16, 2010

Toronto, September 24, 2010 —The Toronto Consort launches its 38th season on October 15 and 16 at Trinity St Paul’s Centre with The Ambassadors, a words-and-music exploration into the world of Renaissance diplomats. For tickets and information, call the box office at (416) 964-6337 or visit www.torontoconsort.org.

One of Canada’s premiere period music ensembles, The Toronto Consort is known for inventive programming by Artistic Director David Fallis that breathes life into the music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and early Baroque. To launch the 2010-11 season, he has invited Alison Mackay, renowned for her fascinating programs combining words, music and images, to create this exploration into the intriguing world of 16th-century diplomats and the musical riches they encountered. The Toronto Consort’s 2005 collaboration with Mackay — the enormously successful The Da Vinci Codex — has toured across Canada and has been recorded on the Marquis label as The Da Vinci Collection.

Renaissance ambassadors were astute chroniclers of cultural achievements, local customs and dramatic events. Bearers of lavish gifts, writers of secret dispatches and keen observers of courtly life, they were uniquely positioned to “gather intelligence” and many of their accounts describe music-making of the period. For her script, Mackay has drawn on a number of sources including the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, who advised the Florentine ambassador to Charles V, and Sir Thomas Bodley, who founded the famous Bodleian library in Oxford. Also quoted are the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, who considered herself an ambassador for the Catholic church and was immortalized in Bernini’s famous statue, the Ecstasy of St. Teresa.

For The Ambassadors, Fallis has assembled a program of music from Renaissance Spain, England and France including works by Thomas Tallis, Thomas Tomkins, Henry VIII — an accomplished composer in addition being to a monarch, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Juan del Encina, and Claude Gervaise, among others.

Non-subscription event on Sept. 28 & 29:
The Toronto Consort performs at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Essential Cinema series
The Toronto Consort goes to the movies! At 8:00 pm on September 28 and 29, David Fallis conducts The Toronto Consort and Choir 21 in association with Soundstreams in performances of Richard Einhorn's 1994 oratorio Voices of Light. The musicians will accompany two screenings of Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent film masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc with a special version of Einhorn's haunting score adapted by the composer himself. This event is part of TIFF Cinematheque’s Essential Cinema, the inaugural show at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For details, visit the TIFF website.

Media Contact: Luisa Trisi, Big Picture Communications (416) 481-1161 ltrisi@sympatico.ca