Along with cultural institutions like the ROM and the AGO, the TSO (Toronto Symphony Orchestra) is seeing a bit of a renaissance in the under 35 demographic with their TSOundcheck discounted ticketsfor as low as $7, but also with the New Creations Festival, a celebration of contemporary classical and new music. Their programming, for instance, will have a violin concerto composed by Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy. While it’s too bad that he won’t be part of the orchestra himself, soloist Pekka Kuusisto will be performing, and Owen will be DJing the after party in the Roy Thomson Hall Lobby on Thursday March 7.

Saturday saw resident Chicago Symphony composer and trip-hop DJ, Mason Bates/DJ Masonic perform his electronic infused energy symphony “Alternative Energy” where he assisted from within the orchestra pit with an M-Audio pad and laptop. It was incredibly refreshing speaking with someone whose passion for Debussy’s arrangements matched his love for beats produced by Portishead or Squarepusher. I chatted with him about the festival and

So how does it feel to be part of the TSO’s New Creations Festival?

This is my second time actually. I did a piece called “Liquid Interface” at the New Creations Festival a few years ago, which was a water symphony. I find this festival to be incredible. They bring huge symphonic pieces to Toronto, that on their own would be a big deal just by virtue of being played but they’re doing three or four new pieces per concert. I think it’s phenomenal, and the orchestra is incredible; the first rehearsal was dead on.

This is the kind of festival that I wish American orchestras would look to. You certainly have orchestras that play a great deal of New music like in San Francisco, but doing a festival of all new music is pretty incredible. It will not only benefit the field but the orchestra too.

Toronto has been experiencing a trend where cultural hot spots like the ROM or AGO with their First Thursdays are trying to bring in a younger audience; do you feel this is a North American trend?

I think we’re trying to do it, more at museums than at symphonies, but it is happening. I do a lot with the Chicago Symphony and we do Monday night series called Music Now where about 800 people show up to see contemporary classical music. I think one of the reasons it’s become such a go-to event for people who are traditionally seen as an outside of symphonic audience is because the presentation and format is more imaginative. The program notes are all video, and we have trippy lighting with pre and post party DJing. I think it’s happening a little bit, bit by bit. I’m of the belief that it can happen more but it has to be done the right way because you can’t just throw a desperate party together and assume that people are going to come.

When did you start integrating electronic music into your symphonic music?

It was like parallel lives for a while where I’d be writing a piece for the Phoenix Symphony and then going out to San Francisco to spin a set of downtempo and abstract beats. I remember being at some of those dj gigs when youre there playing for three to four hours and you have time to think like, ‘Why cant I have more symphonic sounds with this set, or vice versa, more electronica?’ So I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Philharmonic called “Omnivorous Furniture” which was my first electro-acoustic piece and since then I’ve written half acoustic, half electronic pieces.

What kind of gear do you use when you perform?

I keep the amount of gear I use when I perform pretty simple. When im actually making the sounds and designing the whole thing there’s a lot more in the studio. But live, the main goal is to keep everything working together. At its simplest, I’ll have the sounds locked into my M-Audio padded like percussion but when it gets more complex, there are some passages where I trigger stuff that rolls with the orchestra, and there’s tempo warping, and stuff like that. But you have to be careful with that sort of thing because the orchestra is like an ocean liner. It doesn’t really turn very quickly, so things like locking in beats is more complex than you’d think.

Your piece “Alternative Energy” is broken into four movements. Can you talk about them?

Debussy’s “La Mer” was a water symphony from the 19th century, or Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” was an opium-infused love story. I’ve always loved symphonic pieces that work on a narrative level because it takes you to a different space, psychologically in the concert hall.

“Alternative Energy” is an ‘energy’ symphony that travels through a huge variety of propulsive and mechanistic story elements from a down home blues level like a junk yard through to the present day with samples of actual energy facilities. And then an imaginative, almost indigenous space is created for the future. Each movement moves 100 years into the future.

The first movement has actual junkyard field recordings, and I actually got to go to the Fermilab to record. The next two movements take us to a near future China, and a post-apocalyptic Iceland that has become a hot island with just a few indigenous people running around. The idea is to tell the story symphonically, so you want to have awesome sounds and imaginative textures. I love to graft that to a narrative because ti allows for a wider emotional exploration.

You mentioned that you were at the Fermilab particle accelerator outside of Chicago. Can you tell me more about what it was like there?

It’s a massive facility. It’s so big that you can’t ever see all of it. I went to record sounds of the accelerator that runs atoms in a four-mile loop.They drove me around and let me record parts of the machine, which became the sound source for that movement of the piece.

Was it hard to get clearance?

Yes, but when I told them I was from the Chicago Symphony, I got a reaction similar to a few years ago when I went to record at NASA. Scientists are generally partial to the arts. They are creative and imaginative types who love the arts and love to have their field included in it. So they said absolutely. It was borderline bizarre because they drove me around in these cars and everyone there had been briefed on the importance of helping me find these sounds, and they were all very helpful, but I figured they probably had more important things to do that day.

Was everyone wearing the white Hazmat suits?

There was a radioactive area, but they were like, “oh don’t worry, it’s on the other side of this wall” haha. It’s wild because it kind of looks like 80s technology, all these old panels with patch cords. It achieves by brute force what it needs to do, compared to CERN in Switzerland which is much tighter and more compact. I think it was built in the 80s too, so it still has that retro vibe.

The next installment of the New Creations Festival takes place Thursday, March 7th and features Owen Pallett’s Violin Concerto as inspired by the solo violin music of Bach.

Photos from the TSO’s Flickr page and Josh Clavir

Porter Robinson Facebook

Posted on Mar 6th 2013 1:00PM by Jesse Ship

Since electronic dance music adopted its latest moniker EDM, a massive surge of corporate dollars from companies hungry to keep up with the trends and demands of an ever-growing digital fanbase have made it as big a deal to bean-counters as glowstick-wavers.Beatport, the world’s largest DJ music store, was just snapped up by the billion dollar SFX Entertainment (headed by Live Nation founder Robert Silverman) while video platforms like OneBeat will be exploding onto gaming consoles like Xbox and artists like Avicii are modeling for Ralph Lauren. EDM, it seems, is transitioning from popular in clubs to mainstream.Porter Robinson is 20 years old from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He didn’t grow up exposed to the ’90s rave scene, nor have access to underground dance parties. He started producing laptop music at 12, emulating what he heard in “Dance Dance Revolution” games.

A couple years ago he was taken under wing by dubstep baron Skrillex. “Spitfire,” his first release on Skrillex’s OWSLA label, quickly reached number one on the iTunes dance charts and on Beatport.

Like many members of the community, he’s a bit concerned about the limelight EDM is enjoying. He fears that if it becomes too popular, regardless of its merit, the masses will move onto the next hot thing.

“That’s worrisome,” Robinson tells Spinner. “I think it’s reflective of a cultural insecurity that we always need to be ahead of everyone else, but I think the positive side is that, one, people get to enjoy this very fun music. And if more people are exposed, then great. And two, the underground is 10 times bigger than ever before. For me, it’s easy to be cynical about it but over all I think the effect is positive.”

The folks at Beatport aren’t concerned about EDM going mainstream. As far as they’re concerned the genre’s already there.

“Almost all music is electronic in one form or another. It’s all evolving in a direction and eventually we’ll just drop the electronic and just call it music,” assured Matthew Adell, CEO for Beatport, who were just acquired by SFX, the worlds largest EDM promotions company for a cool $50 million. “What we call ‘electronic music’ will just be called ‘music’ in a couple of years. You know how in bad science fiction movies they’ll say things like, ‘Hey look, that’s the space toilet,’ but it’s in space? So why don’t they just call it the toilet? They’re already in space.”

OneBeat, run by business-execs Joe Kanellitsas (formerly of VH1) and Mikhail Lapushner, is one player banking on the underground not losing its cool. The New York-based media production company has been in talks for over a year with Xbox, convincing them to invest in an EDM-based “app,” basically a video portal, jam-packed with content.

Gaming portals like IGN and GameSpot have just recently launched their own Xbox apps where subscribers can watch live gaming events, talk shows, reviews and more. Lapushner hopes to fill a content void where he feels a few years ago, the only thing available was what he calls “EDM porn,” for lack of a better word.

“It was mostly just sexy girls dancing on tables shot on iPhones. We saw that the character rich environment of the scene is off the hook. From the go-go dancers to the DJs, it’s a content makers dream. From a content producing point of view, what you want is rich characters, and then it is about the execution of the content.”

OneBeat have yet to launch on Xbox, but have already started populating its YouTube channel with teasers of things to come with one of their mandates being to elevate their content beyond interviews with DJs on couches.

Some of it seems to be content for the sake of content, presented by vacant 20-something VJs, like their “Top 10 Holiday EDM Drinks” video, or a segment that features bitchy tweets from DJs like Chase & Status moaning about lousy steak at the Brussels airport. However, there’s some solid material for fans, like in-depth interviews with DJ/producers Art Department, a day-in-the-life of a club manager at New York’s Cielo, or on the candid side, “Top 10 DJ Touring Tips with Thomas Gold.”

While Beatport’s video platform currently only goes so far as a live bi-weekly Ustream broadcasts, where Porter Robinson has also been a guest, Adell isn’t bothered. Their new Daddy Warbucks, Robert Sillerman of SFX, has the stroke to push things over the edge.

“We’ve always been the community’s first stop train station,” said Adell, a DJ himself. “The opportunity we have now is to help direct fans [even more so] to amazing talent. This form of music is near and dear to my heart, so it’s only joyful for me to see other people seeking it out. I genuinely believe that house music makes your life better, and I hope it makes everyone’s life better as well.”

At SlurpTO Noodlefest, a handful of Toronto’s rising top chefs came out to prepare their own personal takes on the ultimate in Asian winter comfort food, the noodle soup.

But what really set the 10 or so booths from Toronto’s rising culinary community apart were the street food inspired accompaniments, which were composed of dishes were priced between four and six bucks. Having spent time teaching English in Taiwan, I’ve acquired a deep respect and passion for bizarre bits of easy-access food that can give you so much joy in convenient little packages.

Here are some of my highlights.

A-OK Foods (930 Queen St. W), the sister establishment to Ossington’s Yours Truly offered a sweet tofu wrapped rice Inari, my go-to snack when I lived in Taipei. You could buy them three for a dollar at any 7-11 or Family Mart, staples in Asia. Fish has an unfortunate gag reflex on my body, but I had a nibble and was surprisingly impressed. The salted cod was incredibly subtle and the rice had a slightly eggy taste with a peppery finish. Although not a slurpable, their Salt Cod Inari Pockets were one of the hits of the show.

A-OK’s Szechuan chicken and cold buckwheat soba noodles proved more of an acquired taste for the Western palate. Those not familiar with the tingly Szechuan ‘ma la’ peppercorns might have been in for a shocker. They  set your taste buds on fire, numb your tongue, and cause everything, including water, to taste sour until the pepper has run its course.

At Leslieville’s Skin + Bones Wine Bar (980 Queen St. E) booth, we feasted on an unlikely Taiwanese snack that I was used to seeing awkwardly translated into English as ‘chicken butts’ but what Chef Matthew Sullivan preferred to call by its more noble name, chicken tails. Basically deep fried, to the point of rendering the chicken fat, slathered in a green onions and oyster sauce mixture, they burst in our mouths like chewy chicken soup pillows. Forget about bacon or guanciale, this is the new decadence. Also notably decadent was the square of cold pressed egg yolk, that accompanied their warm soba noodles. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was processed cheese.

Which leads us Splendido and The County General’s combined table where they were serving up mini pork belly Big macs with good old Kraft singles slices. I’ve never been much of a fan of the Mickey Dee’s staple, but after one of these guys, Big Macs have been ruined forever. It was like eating the most incredibly moist and supple pat of butter, lost in a creamy Thousand Island tsunami.

Splendido’s (88 Harbord St.) opulent style of dining could never allow room on the menu for ramen, but if they did, they might taste a little like the creamy porcini-brothed, whole truffles shaved into bowls of joy garlicky joy that were presenting with slow cooked eggs that poach literally in their shells.

Mobile food specialists, Babi & Co, presented thick yellow egg noodles bucked the clear light broth trend with their rich Balinese shrimp and pork gravy-like soup, or Mie Udong. Floating about were tender barbecued pork belly chunks, crispy lardons, shallots and a miraculously tender shrimp that had absorbed all the soup flavours like an epic culinary sponge.

GwaiLo, another pop up food and catering specialty booth has seen temporary serving spots like the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel. Chef Nick Liu served his mother in law’s South African Hakka style rice noodle with a sweet-brothed crispy pork hock and pressed pork hock with Asian pear and pickled onions for contrasting tartness.

Matching in sweetness was the St. Catherine’s food truck, El Gastronomo Vagabundo’s Thai Tom Yum soup with a duck broth and cherry tomatoes, perfectly balanced in the elements of spicy, salty and sour, and one of the liveliest broths of the show.

Hawthorne Food & Drink (60 Richmond St. E.) served a slow cooked duck confit pho but what really had my eyes popping were their pork and chickpea momos created by visiting Tibetan-Indian chef Tashi, who had cooked for the Dalai Lama on multiple occasions. The chickpeas had been slow cooked to the point where it matched the pork’s chewiness in a textural sweet spot served with a tomato chutney.

Their neighbors just up the street, Richmond Station (1 Richmond St. W.), run by Chef Carl Heinrich winner of Canada’s Top Chef Season 2 delighted crowds with his mother-in-law’s Vietnamese jungle pho recipe. What better way to honour his family than serving it with on the spot snipped up bird eye chilies and tender beef flank. The freshly cut oils diffused immediately into the guinea hen broth — I think I might bring my own pair of scissors next time I hit up my local pho joint.

After all this, was there room for dessert? While Sabai Sabai were sold clear out of their famous veal medallion Tom Yum soup, however there was still plenty of mango coconut sticky rice available. A staple in Thai street food, the slightly coconut milk creates a delicate contrast with the sweet rice and mango, leaving taste buds lusting for more.

By the end of the day, everywhere I looked, chefs were swapping dishes, and I can only imagine the level of scrutiny they were experiencing as the young masters decoded each other’s recipes. Apparently over 100 restaurants applied and many that were approved were left on curator Suresh Doss’s (of foody haven Spotlight Toronto) waiting list, so in case you missed out on the sold out event, there’s always the possibility of a sequel.

 

There was no doubt that she would play all the songs off her ‘True’ EP in a calculated hour long set. The teaser of an album has been a defining moment in her career as she exits from palatable commercial-enthused pop to a niche future-of-R&B-sound. She’s not exactly all grow’d up but she’s definitely earning her indie cheetah spots with a little help from her producer Blood Orange a.k.a. Dev Hynes a.k.a. Lightspeed Champion, who, clad in a paisley suit and pant combo, accompanied her on guitar and vocals.

 

 

By her side, my photographer spied three bottles of water, a cup of tea and a lonely beer bottle. I wonder if she brought the tea from her dressing room or if she had a handler brew it especially for her, waiting at her pedestal. Was the beer just for cred? Divas and their riders!

 

 

Solange opened the night up with “Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work,” swaying to herself in a 70s cubist-styled dress that held tightly to her body without shedding a single square centimeter of skin from her ankles upwards. The crowd roared as she pigeon-toe strutted closer onto the stage (is she still learning to dance in heels?), eyes closed, just swaying to herself.

Other highlights included a tribute to the tragically murdered Mexican superstar Selena with “I Could Fall in Love,” and “Losing You” the sultry album hit that got my Solange-curious self hooked.

 

 

For her encore performance of “Sandcastles Disco” off her previous Mark Ronson produced album “Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams,” she invited Phil Villeneuve, (Fab Magazine’s current EIC) to strut his stuff along with her as a tribute to his viral pop star video series, which earlier saw him shake his stuff at Bay & Bloor along with Argos cheerleaders.

 

 

The party didn’t stop at the concert hall. Riding home from Broadview station, I was entertained by a bow-tied dance mafia, blasting “True” from an iPhone and engaging with random TTC passengers, maybe hoping to be the next viral Solange sensation.

 

Additional Photos