Last season, Rezonance was fortunate to receive an Artist Development grant from The Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR), which gave us additional resources and the momentum to make a short professional-quality recording. We were originally planning to record in June, however the pandemic forced us to reschedule. After another attempt to record in August was again rescheduled (out of an abundance of caution), it finally all came together in September!

Improvisation was a regular part of musical performance in the Baroque and Renaissance eras. Unlike today, performers were almost always also composers as well, and someone performing someone else's composition would often take liberties - even adding whole sections to the work. Today it is highly unusual that a performer would depart from the score, even a tiny bit! In our program Flights of Fancy, we will be finding different ways to present how improvisation is a part of p

What is a toccata? And what does it have to do with our Flights of Fancy concert? According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the term comes from the Italian toccare: ‘to touch’. It is a piece intended primarily as a display of manual dexterity, often free in form and almost always for a solo keyboard instrument. It's the "free in form" part that interests us the most for the purposes of this concert. That means the piece, unlike so much other music of its t

We asked the our amazing soloist for Handel's Heroines Vania Chan (pictured here in the role of Cleopatra) a few questions, and she came back to us with amazing answers - her advice in number 3 is relevant to all of us at times! RBE: Which piece do you think will be most challenging for you during the upcoming concert, and why? VC: Simply because it’s the newest piece for me, I think Alcina’s “Ah! Ruggiero crudel…Ombre pallide” will be the most challenging. It has an extensiv