April 2023 Newsletter 66
April 2023 Newsletter 66 Read More »
Celebration at Queen’s Park
Her Honour Elizabeth Dowdeswell welcomed us to the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario’s suite on February 7, 2022.
Bella Czyrnyj, 2022-2023 WMCT University of Toronto Graduate Fellowship recipient, opened the reception with a performance of Hommage a M. de Falla by Béla Kovács for solo clarinet. After welcoming remarks from the Lieutenant Governor, and the current and past WMCT presidents, Michael Bridge, 2021 WMCT Career Development Award recipient played a brief solo accordion recital. He included a “musical game,” challenging us to identify tunes from repertoire created around the time of the WMCT’s founding. We did well.
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WMCT Scholarship winner appointed to Sinfonia Toronto
Congratulations to Québec violinist Daphné Bourbonnais who has won the competition to join Sinfonia Toronto as a member of the first violins. Daphne currently holds the WMCT Glenn Gould School scholarship, and performed at the 2023 Annual Meeting. See the complete report in Ludwig Van Toronto.
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Marion Newman Honoured
The Canadian League of Composers has named the Music in the Afternoon April artist as this year’s “Friend of Canadian Music” citing her as “a driving force for truth and reconciliation within the context of classical music, helping lead colleagues and audiences through long overdue discussions about the very nature of what it means to call something ‘Canadian music.’”
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In Memoriam: Dagmar Stafl
In News & Notes 54, Bonnie O’Dacre profiled her remarkable biography, from a happy childhood in Czechoslovakia, through refugee status in Canada, to university degrees and a rewarding career and family life. The title of her autobiography is the sum of her possessions when she escaped Soviet Czechoslovakia in 1949. Dagmar joined the WMCT in 1990 – her old friend Esther McNeil would soon become President. By 1992, according to Counterpoint to a City, the Club’s “financial affairs were getting to be too complex for a person without extensive financial and investment experience to manage…. In 1992 the position of secretary-treasurer was changed to treasurer,” and Dagmar Stafl, who had retired as Chief Economist of the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, took over this job and set a new professional standard of fiscal responsibility for the WMCT.
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In Memoriam: Marlene Preiss
A long-time member, former board member, concert sponsor, and staunch supporter of the WMCT, Marlene Preiss passed away on Saturday, October 15, 2022, in her 84th year, at the home of her sister, Wilma Preiss Boughtflower, in Woodstock, Ontario. Marlene had been living there since the start of the covid pandemic in March 2020.
After successful careers with the Institute of Canadian Bankers and the York Region Board of Education, Marlene focused her attention to the pursuit of retirement excellence, travelling widely as a passionate patron of classical music. She was the voice of the Club as supreme chair of the Telephone Committee for many years. Marlene also supported the Toronto Wagner Society, the Canadian Opera Company, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Ballet of Canada, the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, Aldeburgh Connection, Toronto Summer Music Festival, and the Toronto Blue Jays.
There will be a Celebration of Life in Toronto from 1-4 pm on Friday, November 4, 2022, at the HotHouse Restaurant, 35 Church Street, Toronto. Condolences may be forwarded through www.cremationandcelebrations.com
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COC Ensemble Studio includes 2 recent WMCT winners
Alex Hetherington (2019 U of T Scholarship) and Vlad Soloviev (2021 U of T Graduate Fellowship) have joined this year’s edition of the Studio. Joseph So reviewed their first concert, which re-opened the Free Concert Series at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.
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Issachah Savage returns
Six years after his triumphant Toronto debut at Music in the Afternoon, the young American tenor returns to sing Beethoven’s 9th with the Toronto Symphony next week.
Joseph So interviewed him in Ludwig van, with a link to his enthusiastic review of his recital in Walter Hall.
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JUNO Awards to WMCT “Alumni”
Congratulations to our winners in two of the four “Classical” categories.
U of T Scholarship 2015
Career Development Award 2015
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