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Massey Hall: A Century of Renovation
Roy Thomson Hall/Massey Hall Performance Magazine – Spring 2005 By Stewart Hoffman A photo in the National Archives shows Massey Hall like you’ve never seen her before. An elegant chandelier appears afloat in the middle of an auditorium flooded with natural light from four levels of stained-glass windows. The brilliantly polished stage floor glistens […]
The Return of a Grand Master
A Look at Canada’s Storied Heintzman Piano Company
National Post, June 1999
Look carefully and you can still see the faded letters that spell “Heintzman and Co.” on the south wall of an elegant, eight-story building half a block up from the corner of Toronto’s Queen and Yonge. From 1911 until 1971, “Heintzman Hall” was the nerve centre of what had been the most prestigious of all […]
A Look at Canada’s Storied Heintzman Piano Company
National Post, June 1999
The Well-Tempered Tuner
(Profile of piano technician Ted Campbell)
Toronto Symphony Orchestra Performance Magazine By Stewart Hoffman At six-thirty in the morning, Roy Thompson Hall is a pretty lonely place. There’s a security guard posted at the stage door, and a cleaning staff – somewhere. But the auditorium is empty, and there are no musicians backstage to bat around the pucks on the two mini- table […]
(Profile of piano technician Ted Campbell)
Jazz at Massey Hall, May 15, 1953
(The fabled “Greatest Jazz Concert Ever”)
Roy Thomson Hall/Massey Hall Program By Stewart Hoffman On May 15, 1953, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell, bassist Charlie Mingus and drummer Max Roach stepped onto the stage of Massey Hall and played a concert that would assume mythic proportions. Each of the performers was seminal in the creation of bebop, and […]
(The fabled “Greatest Jazz Concert Ever”)
A Walking Miracle
(Profile of multi-instrumentalist Don Thompson)
Performance magazine, Winter 2005 By Stewart Hoffman “Instruments, to a degree, dictate what you can play,” says Don Thompson, who is sitting in a music room filled with them. Along with his baby grand piano, there is a vibraphone, a set of drums, and a pair of double basses – a blonde French one and […]
(Profile of multi-instrumentalist Don Thompson)
A League of His Own
(Profile of bassist Joel Quarrington)
Performance magazine, Winter 2005 By Stewart Hoffman It’s a brilliant July afternoon and at Parry Sound’s Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts bassist Joel Quarrington is performing a Dvorak quintet as if his life depended on it. Which is nothing unusual for Quarrington. That’s just the way he plays – absolutely focused, breathing along with […]
(Profile of bassist Joel Quarrington)
Here to Stay
(Profile of clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas)
Performance magazine, Spring 2005 By Stewart Hoffman In 1979, KRMA Television in Denver produced a documentary featuring three of the Aspen Music Festival’s most promising students. One of them was clarinetist and conductor Joaquin Valdepeñas. A slender 24-year-old at the time, sporting big glasses and lots of dark, wavy hair, Valdepeñas is first seen practising the […]
(Profile of clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas)
What is Old is Carlu Again
(The reopening of Toronto’s art deco masterpiece)
(a shortened version of the following appeared in The Toronto Star, 27 April 2003) By Stewart Hoffman There was a time when most everyone in town knew the Eaton Auditorium. Its acoustics were so good that Glenn Gould made more than 30 recordings there. Crowds packed the place to hear artists and entertainers from […]
(The reopening of Toronto’s art deco masterpiece)
Jazz Explosion
(Massey Hall’s Jazz History)
Roy Thomson Hall/Massey Hall Program, Sept-Nov 2001 By Stewart Hoffman (See the related article The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever: Jazz at Massey Hall for an in-depth account of the historic 1953 concert featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach.) Toronto’s fabled jazz clubs of the last century are long gone. […]
(Massey Hall’s Jazz History)
McCarthy’s Spark
(Profile of artist Doris McCarthy)
Homemaker’s Magazine, December 2000 By Stewart Hoffman She claims she’s “no hell” as a skater, but as the final credits roll for the documentary, Doris McCarthy: Heart of a Painter, the artist executes a series of graceful turns across a frozen pond, then ends her routine with a flourish; arms spread like wings, her body and left […]
(Profile of artist Doris McCarthy)
Jazz Legend Leads the Parade
(Profile of drummer Elvin Jones)
The National Post, 24 June 2000 By Stewart Hoffman It has been about 40 years since Elvin Jones, the dynamo behind the legendary John Coltrane Quartet from 1960 to 1966, redefined the art of jazz drumming. Jones is a tall man, and in those days, mounted behind his undersized drums, he could seem a giant. […]
(Profile of drummer Elvin Jones)
Walking History of Jazz
(Profile of pianist Gene DiNovi)
The National Post, 29 February, 2000 By Stewart Hoffman The year 1948 was a big one for pianist Gene DiNovi. He went on the road with singer Anita O’Day, and recorded with saxophone giant Lester Young. He recorded for Artie Shaw too, but – not satisfied with his bass player – the cocky, 20-year old […]
(Profile of pianist Gene DiNovi)
Orchestra Has Long Affair with Mahler
(Profile of conductor Riccardo Chailly and The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra)
The National Post, 5 February 2000 By Stewart Hoffman When workers hacked their way into a sealed room in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in the early 1990s, they must have felt like archeologists stumbling upon the treasure of an Egyptian tomb. Behind the walls of the venerable concert hall, home of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, lay a […]
(Profile of conductor Riccardo Chailly and The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra)
He Left His Heart in Ellington’s Songbook
(Profile of singer Tony Bennett)
The National Post, 15 January 2000 By Stewart Hoffman Tony Bennett’s watercolour portrait of Duke Ellington speaks volumes about the relationship the two men had. Ellington, staring straight at you, his head slightly cocked, is practically consumed by the bouquet of pink roses that covers the background. It seems every time Ellington wrote a new […]
(Profile of singer Tony Bennett)
Playing to Perplex
(Book Review: The Art of Glenn Gould)
The National Post, 18 December 1999 By Stewart Hoffman “Gould is no doubt best thought of as a musical experimenter and a popular educator,” writes editor John P. L. Roberts in his introduction to The Art of Glenn Gould: Reflections of a Musical Genius. So that’s it? It seems like faint praise for the pianist […]
(Book Review: The Art of Glenn Gould)
Piano Great Overcomes His Mysterious Illness
(Profile of pianist Keith Jarrett)
The National Post, 20 November 1999 By Stewart Hoffman Though Keith Jarrett has performed thousands of concerts during his 35 years as one of the most influential pianists in jazz, stepping onto the stage of Roy Thomson Hall tomorrow evening will not be an act he takes for granted. For a long while after the […]
(Profile of pianist Keith Jarrett)
Hearing Between the Lines
(Profile of film composer Mychael Danna)
The National Post, 4 September 1999 By Stewart Hoffman Film composer Mychael Danna’s condo, like much of his music, is drenched with the exotic. The film composer’s home overflows with Indian carpets, Moroccan lanterns, Thai pillows, Cambodian bells, hand painted silks and an assortment of instruments with names like gopichand and tanpura. The condo peers off […]
(Profile of film composer Mychael Danna)
Take Note
(The “Mozart effect” and early childhood music education)
Homemaker’s magazine, May 1999 By Stewart Hoffman It’s early Saturday morning at the Hugh Mappin Children’s Learning Centre at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, and the strollers are lined up along the hallways like taxis at an airport. Inside one of the classrooms, parents walk, gallop and tiptoe to a variety of music, holding their […]
(The “Mozart effect” and early childhood music education)