Tafelmusik Orchestra will combine myths and music for Summer Arts

In keeping with the Summer Arts Festival's theme of Metamorphoses, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra will debut at the Hopkins Center this Saturday, August 18 at 8 p.m. Its performance, "Metamorphosis: From Myth to Music" features the Canadian actor R.H. Thompson narrating a script based on Ovid's classic text as adapted by Alison Mackay.

The varied repertoire, which includes Jean-Phillippe Rameau's "Castor and Pollux," Jean-Baptiste Lully's "Acis and Galatea," parts of Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen and Rameau's "Pygmalion," among other pieces, enhances the myths and is used to narrate selected myths.

The many students of Professor Roger Ulrich's Classics 4 course are encouraged to attend, and will recognize several myths such as "The Contest of Pan and Apollo" and "Echo," whose musical versions are featured in Saturday's programme. Nicole Leibow '08 is grateful for this tie-in with the course.

"It puts what we're learning into context and makes the stories come alive," Leibow said.

For students whose distributive requirements or personal interests have led them elsewhere this summer, there will be still be another chance to see the group Gramophone Magazine has praised as "one of the world's top baroque orchestras."

As the last installment of the summer Arts Festival, the concert offers a final opportunity to explore the possible reincarnations of classical myths in art performed by a world-renowned ensemble.

Tafelmusik, which holds the title of Baroque Orchestra-in-Residence at the University of Toronto and has won nine Junos among other awards, was founded in 1979. The group tours worldwide, averaging fifty concerts per season, but releases albums at an equally astounding pace, having released seventy-four to date.

Just as the Northern Stage's idyllic performance of Ovid on the Green last month invited us to broaden our imaginations and appreciate the universality of these stories put to paper two thousand years ago, Tafelmusik promises to demonstrate the timeless endurance of these myths. Knowing that these long-dead composers drew from their ancient past during their creative process helps us to appreciate the duration and continued relevance of these stories to human life. Despite the two thousand years that separate us from Ovid's lifetime, and the roughly three hundred years that have passed since the Baroque period, Tafelmusik's combination of text and sound reminds us of what does not change through the centuries: the capacity of narratives, whether oral or aural, to unite our experience.