Free Events

Come out and join us for our final concert of the year!  To celebrate, we will be presenting variety of different styles with favourite you are sure to love.  Highlights include Rossini's Barber of Seville Overture, Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, and Toto's 1980s hit Africa.

Our very own Bruce Hoadley will be performing alongside a trombone quartet!

Free admission. Donations are gratefully accepted.

El Sistema Aeolian is proud to present an evening of chamber music.  For the past month, our participants have been working in groups of 3 to 8 members.  For many, the opportunity to prepare a work without a conductor is new, and they have certainly risen to the occasion!  The concert will feature various chamber works by string, woodwind, and brass players, as well as a culminating choral performance.

We are incredible proud of our students, and the work they have been doing with their peers!

Come out and join us for our final concert of the year!

Our amazing program will feature strings groups, choirs, and an epic performance by the new El Sistema Aeolian full orchestra!

Free admission. Donations are gratefully accepted.

El Sistema Aeolian is proud to present our first ever chamber music concert.  For the past month, our participants have been working in groups of 3 to 8 members.  For many, the opportunity to prepare a work without a conductor is new, and they have certainly risen to the occasion!  The concert will feature various chamber works by string, woodwind, and brass players, as well as a culminating choral performance.

Many of the pieces performed have been specially prepared for and by the El Sistema Aeolian participants.  That said, listen for a number of renowned classical works, such as:

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Composed in 1787 for chamber ensemble, Mozart’s Serenade No, 13 for Strings in G Major, or affectionately, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) is among the most famous of Mozart’s repertoire. Composed while Mozart was deep into writing the second act of his opera Don Giovanni, it was not published until 1827, after his death.

Listen for the Mannheim Rocket theme, opening with ascension in the first movement. The Mannheim Rocket is a rapidly ascending broken chord from the lowest range of the bass line to the very top of the soprano line, as pictured below from the 4th movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.

Minuet in G Major from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach/Christian Petzold

The notebooks are known by their title page dates of 1722 and 1725. The Minuet is from the later 1725 edition. Both were presented to Bach’s wife Anna and include keyboard music, vocal arias and tidbits which provide a glimpse into the domestic music of the 18th century and the musical tastes of the Bach family.

The Minuet in G Major first appeared with its companion piece – Minuet in G Minor in Bach’s 1725 notebook. Listen for the primary melody – it is also the main theme behind the song “Lover’s Concerto” written by Linzer and Randell and recorded by the American girl group The Toys.  In 1965, it hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold more than two million copies. Incidentally, the 1725 version of the composition was later attributed to harpsicord composer and Dresden organist Christian Petzold.

Listen to the The Toys version, “Lover’s Concerto” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGDZc9bdUZM

La Folia
Antonio Vivaldi

Based on one of the oldest known Renaissance and Baroque musical chords. Over the course of three centuries, hundreds of composers have used it in their works. The “folia” is a standard chord progression, featuring a “stock” melody line, s slow sarabande in triple meter, as its initial theme.  The folia traditionally served as bookends to a set of variations or to improvisation. Though the theme predated Vivaldi and originated in Spain or Portugal, he was the first to introduce it into the Sonata form.

Theme from Star Wars
John Williams

Also called “Luke’s Theme,” written in 1977 this instrumental hit is among the most well known pieces of composition for theatre of all time. Written by John Williams, it is part of the magical repertoire of astonishing film score which also includes Jaws, Superman, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List to name a few. Winner if 24 Grammy Awards and 5 Academy Awards, Williams continues to compose. His most recent film score? Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017.

Forest City London Music Week is the biggest celebration of London and area music and musicians. Planning for the event dates back to the early years of the project and with the help of our volunteer Board of Directors and some 60 volunteers forming the FCLMA Steering Committee we highlight the areas best in music.

The week is comprised of a number of events celebrating, encouraging and supporting musicians from this area of Ontario. FCLMA week is anchored by the FCLMA Classical, Jazz, World Music Awards Gala on opening night at the famed Aeolian Hall and closes with the FCLMA Pop & Rock Awards Gala Show at the London Music Hall.

Forest City London Music Week is the biggest celebration of London and area music and musicians. Planning for the event dates back to the early years of the project and with the help of our volunteer Board of Directors and some 60 volunteers forming the FCLMA Steering Committee we highlight the areas best in music.

The week is comprised of a number of events celebrating, encouraging and supporting musicians from this area of Ontario. FCLMA week is anchored by the FCLMA Classical, Jazz, World Music Awards Gala on opening night at the famed Aeolian Hall and closes with the FCLMA Pop & Rock Awards Gala Show at the London Music Hall.

Jack Richardson London Music Week (#JRLMW2018) is the biggest celebration of London and area music and musicians. Planning for the event dates back to the early years of the project and with the help of our volunteer Board of Directors and some 60 volunteers forming the JRLMA Steering Committee we highlight the areas best in music.

The week is comprised of a number of events celebrating, encouraging and supporting musicians from this area of Ontario. JRLMW is anchored by the JRLMA Jazz and Classical Awards Show on opening night at the famed Aeolian Hall and closes with the JRLMA Pop & Rock Awards Gala Show at the London Music Hall.

Events throughout the week include the annual SoundCheck for Success, our career development panel/seminar/mentorship day, Jack’s London Crawling featuring many of London’s downtown live music venues, Jack’s Battle of the High School Bands supporting young musicians and a variety of showcases cutting across genres and styles to present the areas musicians to the community at large.

Program
Water Night (1995)                                                            Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
arr. John Wiebe

String Quartet No. 1 (1967)                                              Peter Paul Koprowski (b. 1947)
I. Antecedent
II. Consequent

Piano Quartet No. 2 in A. Op. 81                                     Antonín Dvořák (1841 - 1904)
II. Dumka: Andante con moto
                                                     Clark Bryan, piano

Sinfonia for String No. 2 in D, (1821)                              Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)
II. Andante
III. Allegro vivace

                                                           Intermission

String Octet in E-flat, Op. 20                                            Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)
I. Allegro moderato con fuoco
II. Andante
III. Scherzo. Allegro leggierissimo
IV. Presto

The core group of the Rebelheart Collective consists of highly trained professional musicians. The group is flexible in size depending on the project. Other members include high-level student and graduates who want to work on building careers as a professional orchestral musician and community activist. They combine classical repertoire with new music, engaging with composers and collaborators from varied backgrounds.

For the season finale, Executive & Artistic Director Clark Bryan will join the Rebelheart Collective for Dvořák’s Piano Quintet Op. 81 entitled “Dumka.”

"Dumka" which is a form that Dvořák famously used in his Dumky piano trio and features a melancholy theme on the piano separated by fast, happy interludes. It follows the pattern ABACABA where A, in F♯ minor, is the slow elegiac refrain on piano with variations, B is a bright D major section on violins and C is a quick and vigorous section derived from the opening refrain. Each time the Dumka (A) section returns its texture is enriched.

Whether a question of the choice of thematic material, the superb instrumentation or the flawless structure of the individual movements, the quintet is, in all respects, an exemplary achievement of Dvorak’s proficiency as a mature composer. Here, he effectively incorporates nuances of Slavonic music, particularly in the melancholic dumka in the second movement and in the virtuoso stylisation of the furiant, a Czech folk dance, in the third movement. Even so, this is not a work that could be described as exclusively “Slav”. At the peak of his career, Dvorak skilfully combines folk (or “national”) elements with “Pan-European” principles, thus achieving his own distinctive, convincing synthesis. A major part of the quintet was written at Dvorak’s summer residence in Vysoka, and it seems as though the idyllic atmosphere of this environment was projected into the music itself: this is a serene work radiating with prevailing optimism which, in the final two movements, intensifies to an expression of spontaneous joy.

The Rebelheart Collective takes the Aeolian stage on Saturday, April 14 with three compositions that each stretch the heart and imagination. From the musical decadence of the 19th Century salons of the Czech Republic to the complex and cerebral compositions of the modern Soviet Union to post-modern, New York minimalism, this production will wistfully look to the past while longing for a future that harkens to a simpler, less complicated time. Featuring Scott St. John & Erika Raum on violin, Sharon Wei on Viola and Tom Wiebe on Cello in the First Circle; Francisco Barradas & Hua-Chu Huang on Violin, Katie McBean on Viola, Patrick Theriault on Cello and Joseph Phillips on Double Bass in the Second Circle and members of the El Sistema Orchestra in the Third Circle, the Rebelheart Collective is a chamber music ensemble formed to celebrate classical and new music from varied cultural backgrounds. Its focus is to make music performance and education accessible to all and support Social Justice causes through collaboration and awareness. With a focus on collaboration, community and apprenticeship opportunities, the Collective aims to dissolve barriers between artists and audiences with a relaxed presentation and welcoming spirit.

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Serenade in E, Op. 22

Composed in just two weeks, Antonin Dvorak’s Serenade in E, Opus 22 opens with a soaring Serenade, transitions to a lively waltz and then into an exciting scherzo. By the fourth movement, he returns to a tranquil and wistful serenade before the Allegra vivace, an offbeat finale conveying the spirit of a Bohemian village dance. Premiering on 10 December 1876 at Prague’s Zofin, a reviewer of the day wrote that it showed his “artistic development toward greater stability and independence... whose real artistic value cannot be denied in any way” (Prochazka, Narodni listy, 1 December 1876). Much like our own El Sistema students, Dvorak was an apt violin player at the young age of six. He achieved worldwide recognition for his use of rhythm borrowed from the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110

Written over three traumatic days, Shostakovich composed his String Quartet No. 8 amid failing health and muscle degeneration related to sclerosis and his reluctant embrace of the Soviet Communist Party. “Dedicated to the victims of fascism,” the score is either an honest homage to the all those who suffer under totalitarianism or the dedication itself was at the demand Soviet authorities and the piece actually represents his own epitaph at the precipice of suicide. To his friend, about this piece, he wrote: "I started thinking that if someday I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself." The piece was premiered in 1960 in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet. Hoping for criticism, when Moscow’s Borodin Quartet (one of the oldest quartets in the world) performed this for Shostokovich in his home in 1962, the composer, so overwhelmed by the beautiful realisation of his self through music, buried his head in his hands and wept. The four composers quietly packed up their instruments and stole out of the room.

Philip Glass (1937-)

String Quartet No. 2, “Company”

Written in New York City, Phillip Glass expected this work to be the instrumental music for Neumann’s stage adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s 1979 novella Company for the Mabou Mines Theatre Company. Glass (Academy Award Winner, The Trueman Show; BAFTA Winner, The Hours) liked the idea of using the medium of the String Quartet, allowing for both an introspective and passionate quality well suited to Beckett’s text and Neumann’s monologue.  Beckett himself selected four places within his work which are referred to as the “intercices.” Thematically cohesive, Company as taken on a life of its own with and without being referential to Beckett. At times romantic, the prominent melodies and simple arrangement (deceptive as it is) reflects Glass’ pioneering minimal compositions.

El Sistema Aeolian Performs a selection of orchestral and choral music, form classical mainstays to seasonal favourites.

Selections include Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, hits from A Charlie Brown Christmas, and a Symphonic Orchestra version of Beethoven's Ode to Joy theme from his 9th Symphony!

Doors Open at 6, Donations greatly appreciated!