Sense and Nonsense
An off-centre look at the world through nonsense poems and tall tales – a sure cure for the February blues.
Monday, February 23, 2004 at 8PM
Trinity St. Paul's Centre
For Immediate Release - Toronto, January 30, 2004: Toronto’s Talisker Players return to Trinity St. Paul’s on Monday, February 23 with Sense and Nonsense. The concert is a sure-fire cure for the February blues, with an eclectic selection of humourous verse and tall tales, set to music for various combinations of strings, French horn and piano. The off-centre perspective of "nonsense" encourages us to look at ordinary life from new and perhaps more interesting angles. The Talisker Players have invited soprano Tamara Hummel, tenor Geoffrey Butler and baritone Ian Funk to join them for an evening that promises to divert and engage the intellect.
The programme features Eight Poems of Dennis Lee by the young Toronto composer Alex Eddington. Described by the National Post as "the highlight of the concert" after its premiere performance, the piece established Eddington as one of our most promising composers. "We will surely hear more of him, for his settings of these much-loved Canadian nonsense poems shone not just with wit and assurance, but with subtlety and truthfulness", added the National Post.
Renowned for the inventiveness of their programming, the Talisker Players round up the delightful evening with three other works by Canadians composers: Malcolm Forsyth's The Dong with a Luminous Nose - a masterful setting of the famous tragi-comic narrative poem by Edward Lear; Renovated Rhymes, by Elizabeth Raum - a romp through a half-dozen favourite nursery rhymes (delightfully twisted by the poet John V. Hicks); and an ironic setting of clever limericks entitled Five Bagatelles, by Andrew Ager.
The concert also includes Don’t Let that Horse, by Christopher Berg, a setting of a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti with a surreal take on the life of painter Marc Chagall; Verses from Ogden Nash, by Robert Jordahl; and A Little Light Music, by the incomparable Seymour Barab, a suite of very short stories that each end with a twist.
Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, soprano 
Tamara Hummel is an alumna of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio with recent credits at Tanglewood, Glimmerglass Opera and Ravinia. The Vancouver native holds a Master of Music Degree from the Manhattan School of Music and has also attended the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Praised for the "purity and control of her sound" (National Post), Tamara has appeared with Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Tapestry, Continuum, Vancouver Symphony, Pacific Opera Victoria and Opera Ontario.
Baritone Ian Funk is recognized as one of Canada’s leading interpreters of contemporary music, and has premiered many new works with Vancouver New Music, Queen of Puddings Theatre Company (Toronto), the Banff Centre, and most recently, Autumn Leaf Performance in their production of Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus, which traveled to Banff, Toronto, Montreal, Strasbourg and Huddersfield, England.
Tenor Geoffrey Butler has performed widely as a solo artist in both his native Canada and in the U.S.A. Among the more notable performances are appearances with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Pennsylvania Sinfonia, Niagara Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Kitchener Waterloo Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Ottawa Choral Society and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Praised for his versatility, he performs with equal facility in the genres of classical Broadway and modern musical theatre.
As always, the concert includes the spoken word. In this case the readings are from Fables for our Time – animal stories that wittily illuminate the human condition, by the great American satirist James Thurber.
"I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good." – James Thurber
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Media Contact: Francine Labelle/flINK
416-654-4406
labellefrancine@rogers.com
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