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SOUNDS OF AMERICA P H O T O G R A P H Y J A G : P H O T O G R A P H Y A slim discography barely hints at violinist Sarah Plum’s prolific career as a ‘new music specialist’ but confirms her engagingly adventurous sensibility. Plum’s debut solo album, ‘Absconditus’ (2011), focused entirely on the music of Sidney Corbett, one of several composers with whom she has forged collaborative connections and friendships. It was through Corbett that Plum met the Japanese composer Mari Takano, whose Full Moon (2008) prompted the keen interest in music for violin and electronics that is on display on her latest solo album. The seven compositions gathered on ‘Personal Noise’ document Plum’s exploration of this field; five of them were written for her, and she has worked with all seven of their composers. Eric Moe’s Obey Your Thirst (2014) opens the way into her beguilingly imaginative and far-ranging programme with a colourful electronic outburst that soon takes shape as a restless, rhythmically animated chase, the acoustic violin by turns responding and instigating. Although entirely acoustic, Eric Lyon’s Personal Noise with Accelerants (2015) uses computer technology to shape what the composer describes as ‘a noise composition in which the formal structure is generated with white noise’. The programme shifts direction with Kyong Mee Choi’s gorgeously shimmering Our monthly guide to North American venues Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto Year opened 1982 Architect Arthur Erickson Capacity 2630 Resident ensemble Toronto Symphony Orchestra Flowering Dandelion (2020) and the astrally swooning Sarahal (2013) by Mari Kimura, which enlists a second violinist (Yvonne Lam) in a mystically surreal duologue with interactive electronics. Jeff Herriott’s probing after time: a resolution (2013) coaxes tentative sonorities with deep mindfulness, while Charles Nichols’s perpetual-motion Il Prete Rosso (2014) deconstructs Baroque virtuosity, tracking Plum’s bow arm with a motion sensor as part of its interactive electronic process. Plum’s remarkably expansive palette of conventional and avant-garde techniques intensifies the pleasure of discovery across these fascinatingly varied soundscapes, concluding with the episodic, exuberantly innovative Full Moon, Takano’s response to one of Pina Bausch’s last ballets. Thomas May Some reputations die hard. It is still common, 40 years after its opening, to hear offhand dismissals of the acoustics of Roy Thomson Hall, home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, by people who have not heard the facility since its refurbishment in 2002 or who simply refuse to believe their ears. Those who have lived through its vicissitudes and attend concerts regularly are more likely to praise it in a quiet way as a place that manages the elusive ideal of withdrawing from the concert-goer’s consciousness and letting the music speak for itself. As a work of architecture, Roy Thomson Hall – named after the Canadian-born First Baron of Fleet in recognition of a donation by the wealthy Thomson family – does not invite praise for warmth. The upside-down bowl at King and Simcoe Streets is purely modern in style and made mostly of concrete and glass. Architect Arthur Erickson decreed a grey-on-grey interior to which the crowds would add life and colour. The conceit was viable but could not contribute any resonance to the auditorium, designed by acoustician Theodore Schultz in a wide-fan configuration with fabric tubes and convex acrylic panels hanging from an essentially open ceiling. This was an era when traditional ideas about acoustics, including the value of shoebox geometry and a roof overhead, were abandoned as antiquated. Muted at first, the consensus on the inadequacy of the sonic environment grew steadily through the 1980s until Russell Johnson and his Artec Associates (acoustic authors of Symphony Hall in Birmingham) were engaged in 1990 to remodel the auditorium. It took another dozen years for work to start in earnest, but the combination of reducing the interior volume with bulkheads, scaling back seating to 2630, adding a floor of Canadian maple and patching up the ceiling with a movable canopy resulted in an improvement that was instantly recognised when Sir Andrew Davis (also the conductor of the inaugural concert in 1982) led the TSO in the grand reopening, playing the Gabriel Kney organ for good measure. Even the interior design modifications, overseen by architect Thomas Payne, were for the better. In the early years the hall hosted such starry recitalists as Emil Gilels, Nathan Milstein and Leontyne Price as well as a Great Orchestra Series that included regular visits by the Vienna Philharmonic. In steady decline in the 21st century, these events were of course suspended by Covid. It seems likely that Roy Thomson Hall’s own events will concentrate in the future on pop, crossover and spoken-word attractions, leaving the serious stuff to its principal tenant, the TSO. Even the TSO is mixing standard classical fare under its still-newish music director Gustavo Gimeno with live-music Star Wars screenings. Like most landlords, Roy Thomson Hall seeks to maximise rental income, an urge that assures tension with its primary tentant. The sudden appearance in 2018 of a beefy security team to check bags at the doors raised some eyebrows: we know what trouble TSO subscribers can make! Yet despite operational irritations, one expects Roy Thomson Hall, with its lucid sound and cool palette, to remain serenely above the fray. Arthur Kaptainis gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE OCTOBER 2022 V

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