Voices Across the Atlantic by Barber, Brahms, Britten, Monteverdi, De (2019/2019), Director Daniel Taylor, Church of the Redeemer, Toronto, Canadá

Daniel Taylor – one of the most sought-after countertenors in the world (“Beauty of his voice will stop you in your tracks.” – Gramophone magazine) – and who has more than 100 CD recordings to his credit – presides as vocalist and conductor over this absorbing concert. It boldly crosses national borders and spans centuries of music and texts, from the enchanting madrigals of the seventeenth-century Italian master, Claudio Monteverdi, through the lovely Vocal Quartets of German composer Johannes Brahms, to two of the fascinating Canticles that England’s Benjamin Britten created from 1947 to 1974. Scored for voices and small instrumental ensembles, these two Canticles meditate on loss (Still falls the rain, 1954, with text by Edith Sitwell) and the Nativity of Jesus (The Journey of the Magi, 1971, on a poem by T.S. Eliot). American composer Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach (1931) is a warmly emotional setting for voice and strings of a mid-nineteenth-century poem by English author Matthew Arnold.   Limited tickets available. Reception included after the performance.