You loved our partnership with La Cucina so much that we decided to do it again!
They’ve come up with another special menu just for our patrons that pairs with The Carnival of Venice. Take a look and then give La Cucina a call (306-952-0552) to arrange your order for pickup on Saturday.
La Cucina is now accepting orders until closing on Friday, February 26th!
Our friends over at La Cucina Restaurant have created this special menu to go with our Saturday concert La Dolce Vita!
If you are local to Saskatoon you can call and pre-order for Saturday pickup. It’s a perfect addition to your special night in with the SSO.
Journey # 1
Chicken Cacciatore Dinner for 2 – $55
Traditional pan seared chicken breast, carrots, peppers, with chicken & tomato sauce.
Includes pasta – penne rose pesto, caesar salad and tiramisu desert.
Comes with home-made focaccia bread.
Journey # 2
Linguini Alla Pescatore Dinner for 2 – $65
Mussels, prawns, and scallops in a pomodoro sauce. Includes a salad and tiramisu dessert. Comes with home-made focaccia bread.
Add on bottle of wine $25. (Red & white Italian options available.)
Pre-order by Thursday, Feb 11, 2021
by calling 306-952-0552
Pickup time between 4-5 pm
on Saturday, February 13th.
One of our favourite holiday pastimes is to gather together and watch Christmas movies as a family. While we can’t gather in person it doesn’t mean we can’t keep up the tradition! There are different apps to synch your film viewing (like watch party or scener), or you can use your favourite method of video chat and press play at the same time on your viewing platform of choice. However you choose to watch those Christmas classics, the hardest part is picking one. We’ve rounded up some of our favourites for you to watch (once you’ve finished watching our concert films of course).
A Christmas Carol
While there are several film retellings of this famous Charles Dickens novel, ranging from 1901 Scrooge, Or, Marley’s Ghostto the 2009 animated film starring Jim Carrey, only one reigns supreme; A Muppet Christmas Carol
Special mention goes out to Scrooged mainly because this post writer loves almost any movie with Bill Murray in it.
It’s a Wonderful Life
This, now classic, holiday film was directed by Frank Capra and released in 1946. Starring Jimmy Stewart in his first post war-role, the movie was not the instant classic that the studio had hoped for. Even though it won five Academy Awards it wasn’t until the film became public domain that It’s A Wonderful Life grew into the Christmas classic we all know and love. Because films in the public domain can be broadcast without licensing or royalty fees broadcasters played the film repeatedly over the holiday season. The more people saw the 1940s film, the more popular it became. Now it’s hard to think of holiday films recommendations without this, now, classic!
White Christmas
When Irving Berlin wrote the music for Holiday Inn the winning number was White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby. It was so popular that it took very little convincing for Paramount Pictures to agree to another film based on the song White Christmas. It’s a loose remake of Holiday Inn (because why mess with a good thing), and once again starred Bing Crosby as the lead. While working on songs for all the holidays Irving Berlin actually found that writing a Christmas tune was the most challenging due to his Jewish upbringing. His struggles were worth it as we are fortunate to have a film and hit song synonymous with Christmas.
Charlie Brown Christmas
The 1965 animated TV special was based on Charles Schultz’ comic strip Peanuts. Charlie Brown is feeling down despite it being the holidays. His attempt to direct the Christmas play don’t go over well and nothing seems to bring him good cheer until Linus explains the true meaning of the holiday. This special has an incredibly iconic and jazzy soundtrack that was created by pianist Vince Guaraldi.
Fun fact: Did you know this special was commissioned and sponsored by Coca-Cola?
More of our favourites include: Shop Around the Corner – A 1940s film that inspired You’ve Got Mail.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas – We’re partial to the original, but there are several remakes to explore! A Christmas Story – As we get older we find we agree with Ralphie’s mom more and more, but who can forget that Red Ryder Range 200 Shot BB gun or that leg lamp. Elf – Who doesn’t love Will Ferrel running around in New York City in yellow tights. This film was heavily influenced by another classic Rankin & Bass’ Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Meet Me In St. Louis – Judy Garland sings well known hits including Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. We’re all for the original lyrics as we muddle through the end of 2020. Die Hard – Christmas movie? Not a Christmas movie? Who can really say. This year we vote that any movie we watch in December is a Holiday film. We’ve earned it.
What holiday movies are you watching this year? Tag us on social media @ssoyxe with your picks and let us know if you watch our holiday concert films!
For most, the music performed at A Night at Oktoberfest brings to mind a big party, tons of tourists, and a great pretzel recipe. For me, family comes to mind.
Like many Canadians, my family origins are that of settlers. A few generations ago my family came from various countries in Europe and the UK, and in 1929 my great-grandmother left Thierham, Germany with two small children to join her husband and brother-in-law in Saskatchewan. She would have come earlier, but having been pregnant with my grandfather (my Poppa) she was not allowed to travel.
Though he spent the majority of his life in Canada, Poppa was very proud of his Bavarian/German heritage. After retiring from the Air Force he began travelling to Germany fairly frequently to visit family. Every trip he would bring home a stein, several rolls of film full of photos from his travels, lots of stories and new music.
The menu from the family restaurant my mom worked at one summer in her teens.
All my life I’ve heard stories of those crazy Bavarians and the many visits back and forth between Germany and Canada. It was a journey I hoped to make with Poppa before he passed and someday I plan on travelling there with my mom. For now, I can enjoy the memories he shared by looking at old photos and listening to the music.
Oh the music! Apparently as a child, I would return from weekends with my Poppa having a whole new arsenal of Bavarian folk tunes under my belt. We would listen to those records and tapes on repeat for hours on end. Maybe that was the foundation for my love of German Lieder.
Now that vinyl is cool once more, I have a record player of my own and I’m able to revisit some of Poppa’s much-loved records. While the music brings back all kinds of memories, it’s the album covers that make me laugh. These are a few of my favourites.
Gathering in person is not an option currently, but I hope that experiencing live music at the same time brings us all closer together. So send a note to your loved ones, enjoy our Night at Oktoberfest and may the music bring you much Freude.
Harry Somers’ “Picasso Suite” was commissioned by the SSO in 1964 and received its premiere performance in Saskatoon. Since that first performance, it has gone on to be one of Canada’s most loved orchestral suites, and an audience favourite across the country!
Harry Somers was one of the most influential and innovative contemporary Canadian composers of the past century. Possessing a charismatic attitude and rather dashing good-looks, as well as a genuine talent for his art, Somers earned the unofficial title of “Darling of Canadian Composition.” A truly patriotic artist, Somers was engaged in many national projects over the course his lifetime.
Each of the movements in this suite provide musical interpretations of the many artistic phases which defined the life and art of Pablo Picasso. An invigorating blast of musical color begins the suite, recalling all the sights and fragrances of Paris at the turn of the 20th century.
Picasso has struck the Parisian art scene, a meteor of brilliance brimming with raw potential, and the world of classical art will never be the same. Just as suddenly as he arrives, the Spanish-born artist’s captivating colors are musically withdrawn into themselves.
What emerges from the silence are Somers’ sonic representations of the paintings which represent Picasso’s Blue Period. Somers utilizes the oboe’s potential for melancholy to full effect in this second movement. This is a movement that plays with the listener’s other senses, and which invites them to delve into the textures belonging to these paintings: the smooth pallid skin of his “Old Guitarist”, the warmth of the steam that is central to “La Soupe”, and the stale taste of dust that lingers in the air of his “La Vie”.
Transfixed by this rich introspection, we are caught off guard as the rolling thunder of percussion ushers in a new artistic phase: The Rose Period. Titled “Circus” by Somers, this movement conjures all the delight experienced by a child under the Big Top. This musical calliope spins us through the cheerful orange and pink hues of Picasso’s Rose Period, while broad-nosed figures from his African-Influenced Period dance vibrantly into focus. Somers uses this playful romp to tremendous effect, recalling the youthful vitality of Picasso’s painted women in “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon”.
One by one they strike a pose and skip away, as the musical calliope grinds slowly to a halt and a dissonant chord contorts the face of one lingering woman. Somers then begins to interpret the most iconic phase of Picasso’s life as an artist, one which owes a considerable debt to the stylized features of traditional African masks: his Cubist Periods. As we soar through the decade spanning 1909 to 1919, clusters of bent notes rain from the sky. Out of the mist, there seeps a sense of dread which culminates in a symphonic homage to one of the most prolific depictions of atrocity ever put to canvas: the infamous black and white mural “Guernica”.
Left in silence once more, the fifth movement’s plaintiff melody explores Picasso in the years immediately following World War One. Picasso’s muse returns in a new form, voiced by a soothing oboe melody, and spurs his artistic mind onward to bathe in the clean bright light of the Neoclassical style. Excitement bubbles forth as Somers falls into a fascination with lyrical spins and flourishes, illustrating the more bizarre offerings of Picasso’s Surreal Period.
Riding on the crest of this wave, we feel Picasso grow introspective once more. Stirring in the listener a longing for the innocence of the third movement, the brass call out to echo the valor of those who lost their lives on the field of battle. A delicate voice from a music box lulls Picasso into a deep slumber, and he dreams of a project that will consume most of his waking moments for the next four years: The Vollard Suite.
Art historians believe that many of the figures depicted in the Vollard Suite’s 100 etchings were inspired by Honore de Balzac’s 1831 short story “The Unknown Masterpiece”. The story revolves around a painter who attempts to capture life itself on canvas through depictions of feminine beauty, and Somers tasks the erotic lilt of the flute alone with capturing the sensual and manic devotion of the artist rendering his muse.
As did the style of the etchings themselves, Picasso’s temperament shifted wildly over the period spanning 1933 to 1937, with the spread of fascism through Europe darkening those clouds that had been cast over the artist’s mind. The virtuosity of the sixth movement trickles away to reveal one of the final images in the series: the once virile minotaur, now blind and impotent, being led to safety by a young girl.
The seventh movement, oddly titled “Temple of Peace” may be musically comforting in its initial majesty, but a glance outside of its pristine chamber betrays the arching shapes of strange architecture peeking from an even stranger garden. Picasso is still troubled, still searching to reclaim his youthful innocence. Punctuated by an unsettling violin motif, Somers creates in this movement a sense of motion towards something important while utilizing precious little melody.
The return of the music box signals the arrival of the eighth movement, as well as an epiphany crystalizing in the mind of the aging Picasso. He abandons the cold safety of the temple for the warm rain of the lush garden. Pushing his way through ever-thickening foliage, the garden eventually gives way to jungle. Emerging into a clearing at last, Picasso meets his alter-ego: the faun. Playing his double-flute with unbridled ease, the faun guides Picasso deeper into the wild and teaches him how to find peace within himself. The melody of his Rose Period “Circus” days come back in flashes, and Picasso is finally at home with himself again after so many years.
In the final movement, Codetta, Pablo Picasso can finally revisit his first few bombastic years in Paris unencumbered. As Picasso once remarked, “It takes a long time to become young.” Unconventional and riveting to its core, Harry Somers’ “Picasso Suite” is among the finest of artistic tributes to a man whose life’s work birthed whole new possibilities of creation for artists worldwide.
So, you’ve bought your concertstream.tv subscription or your one-time Digital Ticket for the SSO live-streamed concert. You are settled in your favourite chair, with snacks and drinks in hand and you are ready to enjoy the concert from the comfort of your own home.
But how do you watch the show? Great question! Here are some ways to watch and a few tips and tricks to help maximize your viewing experience.
Before the concert begins sign in to concertstream. You may already be signed in, but if not click Sign In, located in the top right corner.
Upcoming live streams are highlighted in the top banner. For single access buyers your recent purchase will also be listed under “My Library”.
Before the concert begins you will see a countdown and an option to add the event to your calendar. If the concert countdown ends and the video has not begun automatically refresh the page and press the play button. You can watch on any of your devices that have internet access, even your TV! We have some common ways to get the live stream on your TV below.
This video will be available for 24 hours!If you aren’t able to watch at the concert start time, happen to miss the first few minutes, or even if you want to watch it again, you can do that for 24 hours. If you are an online subscriber for the SSO you have access for the duration of your subscription.
You can press pause. Unlike real life, you can pause a live stream! If you need to take a break for whatever reason you can pause or rewind the live stream when you need to. The system will keep recording and it won’t interrupt your feed if you press play five, or more, minutes later.
Lag happens. If the video is choppy or isn’t lined up with the audio that could be due to your internet connection. We recommend pressing pause to let the stream load a little. If that doesn’t work, sometimes hitting the refresh button is all you need. Don’t worry about missing anything as the live stream automatically converts to a recording and is available for 24 hours from the concert start time.
If you have any issues please contact us!Sometimes email inboxes filter out messages from us so if you know you should have a link coming your way and it hasn’t arrived contact stream(at)saskatoonsymphony.org. We have someone monitoring the email before, during, and after the concert and they will get back to you as quickly as possible so that you can get back to enjoying your at home (or wherever) concert experience.
How to watch Concertstream videos and live streams on your TV!
If you have a smart TV you can:
Open the web browser on your TV and go to concertstream.tv. Once you are signed in you have full access to all your concertstream.tv content.
If you have a Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire you can:
Cast or airplay from your smartphone, laptop, or tablet.
Concertstreams apps are available on Roku, Apple iPhone, and Android devices.
If you do not have a smart TV or aren’t sure how to add apps to your devices you can:
1. Connect your laptop to the TV screen with an HDMI cable. This will allow you to use your TV as a mirrored screen or second screen. Push play on your laptop to start the video or live stream and it will show up on your TV.
Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite is not unlike a thoughtfully assembled box of one’s favorite assorted chocolates: each has something unique to offer our tastebuds, and all should be savored. If one has the time, sampling each of them in one sitting is a real treat. Having been expelled from France’s prestigious Conservatoire, Ravel loosed his musical creativity on the well-known and beloved stories of Mother Goose as a gift to two piano students: Mimi and Jean Godebski. As Ravel would later remark, “the idea of evoking in these pieces the poetry of childhood naturally led me to simplify my style and to refine my means of expression”. And refine them he did…
In the first movement of this programmatic work, Ravel descends into that delicate world of calm uncertainty we find between waking and dreaming. In his musical interpretation of Sleeping Beauty, the composer’s soft harmonies perfectly capture the stillness of an evening that has almost given way to dawn. The melancholic uncertainty in this introductory piece is not overdone, but gradually sprinkled over the listener like the fabled Sandman’s sleep dust.
The dream shifts once more as we begin the second movement, accompanying the miniscule figure of Tom Thumb on a fruitless quest. The poor fellow searches high and low for his home, while the birds that devour his poorly planned navigational system (breadcrumbs) taunt him with dissonant chirping from the uppermost tonal reaches of the piano. And just as the listener begins to grow weary of hills and valleys, we arrive at the sea.
The protagonists of the dynamic third movement, whose melody is grounded in a lively pentatonic sequence, are a sea-faring girl and her green serpentine companion. After the girl’s boat is scuppered on the rocks of an island inhabited by delicate doll-like denizens, she is named ruler of the so-called “pagodes and pagodines” and weds her companion. This marriage transforms them both into beautiful human royalty, and Ravel encourages us to delight in the pitter-patter of porcelain feet as we listen to the animate dolls zip swiftly from one scene of the story to the next. The meditative entrance of the giant green serpent is a winding and purposeful journey through the island’s flora, culminating in a reunion with the newly crowned princess and offering a pinch of romantic devotion to his character. While beauty is found in dreams and the journey home in previous movements, Ravel foreshadows in this bright collection of scenes the moral of the upcoming movement: that beauty can be found within.
The fourth movement is defined by the Beauty’s waltz, an introspective dance which gives way to the brooding dissonance of the Beast as slowly the two characters (and their melodies) grow closer to one another. The tension builds until their love for one another wins out, and the Beast is revealed to be a Prince. It is here, at the final precipice of the fourth movement, that Ravel tumbles into storytelling that is entirely his own, both thematically and musically.
The fifth movement brings everything full circle with the approach of a prince in Sleeping Beauty’s realm. A magical kiss brings everything into focus, and Sleeping Beauty opens her eyes to behold her true love. The pair venture forth from the drab room in which she slumbered and enter her fairy godmother’s garden to be wed. The themes of love and dreams and homecoming are beautifully brought together in a fitting fanfare that turns the final page of the storybook and score alike.
It can be said of beauty in the arts that the simpler something appears to a beholder, the greater were the creator’s efforts in cloaking the underlying complexity of their creation.
Subtlety, after all, requires a keen eye for detail. Such is the case with Claude Debussy’s Prelude a L’apres-midi d’une faune, a symphonic poem that some consider to be the definitive turning point in the evolution of modern music. Translated as “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun”, its enduring fame rests squarely on the piece’s ability to ebb and flow harmonically without losing the passionate purpose and endless curiosity of its flute-playing goat-legged protagonist.
Shying away from musical literalism, the layering of the orchestration and tickling lilt of the flute’s melodies imply a delicate balance between romantic discovery and cheeky flirtatiousness. This is done primarily as a tribute to the prelude’s inspiration, a poem by Stephan Mallarme of scandalously erotic proportions (at least, for the time in which it was written).
Depicting the musing mid-day sojourn of a fawn as he awakes after mingling with his very friendly nymph and nyad neighbors, the story drifts on a current of bubbling flute solos which deliver an intoxicating feeling of otherworldly calm. Punctuated by swelling ascending passages, the final product portrays a metaphor of the human psyche: a beacon of child-like wonder, part rationality and part instinct that lives to investigate and enjoy all that the external world has to offer.
The piece’s musical impact was astronomical, with daring compositional choices being pioneered from its very first performance at Paris’s Salle Harcourt in 1894. Repeating cells of
Stephane Mallarme
music with no real direction, flute solos beginning (unfingered) on the “bad note” of C# that flautists ordinarily stampede away from, and a chordal structure functioning as something of an afterthought in comparison to the unabashedly forward role of its principal soloist. Each of these bold decisions converged into a piece of music which cranked up the heat on a musical revolution that already started to brew, a way of interpreting music through the conviction that it can be so much more than a static phenomenon defined by timeless truths and classical principles.
At a time where social distancing, mask-wearing, and household bubbling have made us all increasingly wary of environmental interaction and exploration, Debussy’s Prelude a L’apres-midi d’une faune serves as a musical reminder of the scintillating pleasures that await us in this garden of life. All we need to do is awaken from our slumber and take it all in, one hoof-step at a time.
Hear the SSO perform this work as part of our Postcards from Paris!
[button link=”https://saskatoonsymphony.org/event/opening-night/”]Postcards from Paris[/button]
