Focus: BORDERS

"Borders: such a homey, straightforward concept for a garden! But the Toronto Music Garden is not just any garden. Nestled between city and lake, it dissolves the borders between music and landscape, transforming Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello into a magical space.

Ideas about Borders resonate through this summer’s concerts. The Kirby String Quartet performs music that pushed the aesthetic boundaries of its day; Aruna Narayan keeps venerable South Asian musical traditions alive even while breaking down barriers as a female sarangi virtuoso. Lucas Harris and Wen Zhao cross musical borders to bring together two instruments with a common ancestor. And Orfea retells the ancient, pan-cultural myth of the hero/heroine who breaches the ultimate border in order to bring back a loved one back from the realm of the dead – a theme taken up by the monarch butterflies, revered in so many cultures as symbols of departed spirits, who visit the Music Garden in late summer on their great, mysterious migration."

Summer Music in the Garden

Various Artists

Toronto Music Garden
June – September 2008

"... I soon realized that the city of Pripyat, where the employees of the nuclear power plant and their families once lived, was where my real interests lay. The Atomic City, as it was once known, was considered one of the finest places to live in the former Soviet Union. The first apartments were built in the mid-seventies, when the power plant was under construction, and at the time of the accident, it was home to 45,000 people. There were all the amenities of a modern Soviet city, with many schools, stores, hospitals, and recreational and cultural facilities. It is now uninhabitable and will never be lived in again."

Bureau de Change

Kim Adams, Mark Clintberg, David McMillan, and Laurel Woodcock

York Quay Centre Gallery
June 28 – September 7, 2008

"Borders are illusions of duality constructed and maintained out of fear for survival. Only the human heart can release these illusions and embrace our interconnectedness. We must reach deep inside ourselves for the awareness of a simple truth — that our survival now depends on our capacity to give and receive pure love universally."

Cana-Drum – Journey of the Drum

Various Artists

Harbourfront Centre
July 1

"B-boying and B-girling is a global art form which crosses many borders. Like ethnic, race, gender, cultural, religious, age and demographic borders. It is a universal language where so many can relate to, understand and enjoy."

Pop, Lock and Load-Semi Finals

Various Teams

Harbourfront Centre
July 5, 2008

"Borders, what are they? We tent to build them to protect ourselves, to create separation. Borders are limits; borders are as long, as short, as narrow, or as wide as we want them to be. Why does the universe not have them, why do we?"

Body Geometry/Dance without Borders

Curated by Norma Araiza

Studio Theatre
July 12, 2008

“Tirgan” is an ancient Persian festival about affirming borders as a means of holding on to who we are. This message comes up repeatedly in every performance and lecture in Tirgan festival in 2008 where there is an implied emphasis on the importance of holding on to who we are while expanding and sharing a dance, a story, a culture."

Saeid Shanbehzadeh

Harbourfront Centre
July 18 – 19

"Borders, lovely in a garden, irrelevant in music...”

Love Songs

Queen of Puddings Music Theatre

Studio Theatre
July 26 – 27

"In Haiti I was mostly playing music for pleasure but despite that my band was in very high demand and we represented Haiti in different festival around the world. When I arrived in Canada it was a whole other experience where I had to work very hard for my integration, to produce 8 CDs to finally be known and participate to all the Festivals and all the major events going from the Casino of Montréal to the Cirque du soleil. I will be carrying my music as far as possible and I am extremely proud of sharing my music and culture with the whole world.”

Toto Laraque

Harbourfront Centre
August 3

"“Borders
or
he fringes showing me where my own lines are naively drawn in blowing sand
the periphery calling me out past what i know, siren-cum-muse playing with my curiosity
the parameters whose shelter i ease into for rest, with its warmth of familiarity
the delineations whose messiness reminds me that nothing is set in this life
the definitions i pretend with, that when set too rigidly, only splinter
If i had the fearlessness and wisdom to do without, i would. But i know only borders, from body to ideas to passing time, and so seek to broaden rather than fight them.”

Elizabeth Shepherd

Harbourfront Centre
August 17

"Much like Ashkenazic culture itself, which flourished historically in a geographical region of constantly fluctuating political, social, and musical borders, the Ashkenaz Festival has consistently presented work that blurs the borders between musical styles and musicians of differing ethnocultural backgrounds. In this year's Ashkenaz Festival, the first under my artistic direction, I'm thrilled to be continuing and extending that tradition. Ashkenaz 2008 will feature interracial musical collaborations between black and white musicians, inter-ethnic fusions involving Jewish and non-Jewish musicians and musical styles, and even an intra-ethnic programming thread that will spotlight Sephardic Jewish music and culture next to more widely known Ashkenazi Jewish art.”