Gregory Oh

I\’m pretty happy with this review from NOW\’s Jon Kaplan with its very kind shoutout for my arrangement of Dido and Aeneas!

The most unusual show we saw was Dido And Aeneas: 21st Century Remix, in which music director Gregory Oh took Purcell\’s short 1680s opera and blended the original orchestrations with more contemporary musical styles.

The period sections stood quite comfortably alongside the modern percussion, bluegrass, Irish reels, Cape Breton fiddling and more, with Andrea Ludwig a poignant Dido (her lament at the end was mesmerizing), jazz singer Alex Samaras a firm Aeneas and Suba Sankaran a nastily wicked sorceress, singing her melodies with classic South Asian musical intonations. Hailey Gillis shone in a bluesy solo composed by John Millard, who also added some mean banjo playing to the show.

Like previous Global Cabaret workshops such as (re)Birth: E.E. Cummings In Song and Spoon River, which were then developed into full-length productions, Dido And Aeneas is the kind of bracing, entertaining work that deserves a larger audience and a longer run.

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The good folks at New Music Edmonton just rented my metronomes for their Hear This Now Festival. The funny thing about metronomes is that if you wind one up a lot and set it at a slow speed, it will last for a long time…

Read about the performance as well as the entire festival in the Edmonton Journal!

I just premiered a new concerto by Aaron Gervais – for Mozart Piano Videos – with the Group of 27 Orchestra. Hard to describe, but essentially a complex, layered triggering of various snippets of creative commons-licensed videos of piānists playing Mozart on YouTube with a chamber orchestra. Here\’s a review from NOW Magazine.

Incidentally, I am henceforth advancing the modified spelling of \”piānist\”. The alternative, in this age of swallowed terminal consonants, is somewhat…unpalatable.

Dreaming of performing Gyorgy Ligeti\’s Poeme Symphonique in Canada or the US but bummed about Wittner\’s rental cost (1000 euro plus about 1500 euro shipping to Canada)? Check out the metronome rental link, and make your dreams a reality!

http://gregoryoh.com/metronome-rental/

I\’ve been a Resident Artist at Soulpepper Theatre for almost four years now, which is a dream job. Essentially you get paid to work with wonderful people on wonderful projects. Here\’s a video of this past summer\’s Youth Mentorship Program participants, who are led by Paula Wing. I worked with them a bit on this musical number, which was serious fun, though I had nothing to do with their sweet dance moves.

This Will Not Be Televised – NICOLE LIZEE on Vimeo.

This year\’s Jules Leger Prize winner, Nicole Lizee, was featured at Open Ears Festival in 2012.  I had a great time conducting this ace ensemble, led by the Penderecki Quartet with DJ P-Love. One of the great pieces of our generation.

As I leave the Music Gallery after a long association, John Terauds at Musical Toronto has written a very nice piece about me. Thanks to the MG for all the opportunities and letting me do my thing, for better or for worse. My last show is GREX + David Lang\’s Little Match Girl Passion on Dec 20th.

Here are some cool videos of stuff I played in, posted by Soundstreams.

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All things must come to an end, and so it is with my tenure as curator at the Music Gallery. It\’s been wonderful working there with amazing artists and a wonderful team. I\’m particularly proud of my last two shows – the Feldman Second String Quartet this past October, and my last show, the Little Match Girl Passion, Dec 20th. This piece for vocal quartet is, as the New Yorker simply put it, \”a masterpiece.\”

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The Musicworks Magazine website has been overhauled and is looking great!

Back issues are now online – here\’s a link to the wonderful article that journalist Matthew Pioro wrote about me a few years ago. The photos (which I love) are by Adam Coish.