Rafael Payare’s first classical spree as director of the OSM will focus on music from the Americas and will feature a concert at the Big O.
.
Rafael Payare is set to take center stage for his first classical spree with the Orchester Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and the orchestra’s new music director believes this will be his ideal introduction to Montreal’s vibrant summer festival culture.
Announcement 2
.
The Classical Spree, probably better known by its French name, La virée classique, is the OSM’s annual summer festival and kicks off Wednesday night with a huge free concert on the Olympic Park esplanade, just west of the Big O. There will be more than 20 concerts in and around the Place des Arts from Friday to Sunday. There are plenty of free activities, and the ticketed concerts are much less expensive than your usual evening at the Maison symphonique.
“It’s wonderful to have the Classical Spree,” Payare said in a recent phone interview from his home in Outremont. “Everyone knows how wonderful the Montreal festival season is and the orchestra is of course part of this by taking over the Quartier des Spectacles and spreading the music to different venues, with quite a wide variety of repertoire. This year, the theme will be America, to showcase the entire continent and the entire spectrum of music. It’s a crazy schedule. We strive to showcase many different composers and many different pieces. Sometimes they are known composers and sometimes they are not, but they should be known. So that the public can try different things. The big concert at the Olympic Stadium is a long one and then when we get to the Classic Party over the weekend, where all the concerts are 45-50 minutes, you’ll have different appetizers here and there. You can taste different things.”
Announcement 3
.
The Americas theme is tailor-made for Payare, who was born in Venezuela and is passionate about giving more exposure to the music of North and South America.
“It’s very important,” Payare said. “We are in the Americas and we are the ones who produce this music, so it is important that we can present (music from the Americas) to the audience and that they can try it and see that it is simply wonderful.”
Wednesday’s concert on the grounds of the Olympic Stadium is titled The Many Colors of the Americas and features an eclectic selection of works. The concert will begin with Antonin Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, commonly known as the New World Symphony. Dvorák is from the Old World, Czechoslovakia, but the symphony was written while he was living and working in the US in the early 1890s and is considered by many to be influenced by the music of the US, in particular the music African American.
Announcement 4
.
“Everyone thinks that classical music is from Europe, but then this wonderful composer came here and wrote a symphony talking about the new world and this beautiful continent,” Payare said.
There will also be a song performed by Polaris Award-winning Indigenous Canadian tenor and songwriter Jeremy Dutcher. There will be a trumpet concerto composed by Cuban-American Paquito D’Rivera and an excerpt from West Side Story. Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique will also perform a song from André Prévin’s Honey and Rue. In addition, the work Santa Cruz de Pacairigua by the Venezuelan composer Evencio Castellanos will be presented.
The Classic Spree is all about trying to bring the OSM and classical music to a wider audience than is normally seen at the Maison symphonique. There are free concerts on the weekend at the Complexe Desjardins, on the Esplanade outside the Place des Arts, and on Ste. Catalina St. nearby. There are also concerts at the Maison symphonique for between $22 and $45, $25 concerts at the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe and Théâtre Maisonneuve, and $10 shows at the Salle Claude-Léveillée.
ad 5
.
Payare conducts the OSM in various concerts on Fridays and Saturdays at the Maison symphonique. Other concerts range from Venezuelan-Argentine pianist Sergio Tempo playing Chopin to a concert with Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores along with OSM’s principal trumpeter Paul Merkelo.
“He and I are going to play a duet that he wrote that is very Venezuelan in a samba style,” Merkelo said in a recent telephone interview. “What we love about (The Classical Spree) is that it’s shorter shows but a lot more shows. So the public has a much larger variety of music to choose from. Think of it like a tapas restaurant where there are many delicious dishes on the menu and you can try a bit of everything instead of sticking with a main course.”
For more information on Classical Spree, visit the website: osm.es
