Tags: Toronto Symphony Orchestra

What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.

I went to an event in Toronto on Wednesday to hear five Muslim speakers talk about the war between Israel and Hamas. The room was jammed with 650 eager listeners.

The keynote speaker was Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of the co-founder of Hamas.

Then three panelists each spoke, chaired by Raheel Raza, President of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. The panelists were Ontario MPP Goldie Ghamari, the first Iranian-Canadian woman elected to office in Canada and the Chair of the Standing Committee on Justice Policy; Asaad Sam Hanna, a member of the US Armed Forces and a strategic advisor to the Lobo Institute; and Bassem Eid, founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.

Read on…

Familiarity breeds content.

Question: do we enjoy things because they’re new or because they’re old?

Answer: Yes.

This is true in every endeavour, culture, life, and even secret life. An especially instructive example reminded me last week.

On Wednesday I went to the opening of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s 101st season. Yes, the TSO is 101 years old . But oh my, is it ever new again.

The first piece was Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, which no one knows, and far less famous than his other piano concerto Rhapsody in Blue, which everyone knows. I liked it, but I didn’t love it, maybe because it wasn’t etched into my brain the way Rhapsody in Blue is. So I couldn’t hum along, which is a big deal for me. Or maybe I was just a victim of ‘branding’. What if Gershwin had flipped their names and called one Rhapsody in F and the other Concerto in Blue?

Meanwhile…

The Arts Are Opening Up. We Should Too.

We went to the Toronto Symphony last week and heard their first live performance at Roy Thomson Hall in 20 months.

I got an e-mail at 2:30 that afternoon advising me to turn up early because everyone had to show their vaccine certificates as well as their tickets. Then at 4:30 the Symphony sent me another e-mail, and at 5:30 a voicemail. So we turned up at 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. concert and breezed right through.

But the concert was 15 minutes late in starting, and I heard later that the night before it started at 8:25.

Where multiculturalism fears to tread

The boards of Toronto’s biggest arts organizations are the last bastions of white maleness. Very soon, Toronto will “tip” from being a city where the

RamsayWrites

Subscribe to my Free Weekly Omnium-Gatherum Blog:

  • Every Saturday the Omnium-Gatherum blog is delivered straight to your InBox
  • Full archive
  • Posting comments and joining the community
  • First to hear about other Ramsay events and activities

Get posts directly to your inbox

Name(Required)
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Sign Up for Updates!

Get news from Ramsay Inc. in your inbox.

Name(Required)
Email Lists
Email Lists(Required)