NEWSWIRE

New recital hall worthy of Accolade, says Star

The physical renaissance of Toronto culture isn't just happening downtown, as visitors to the gala-concert opening of York University's Accolade Project fine-arts facility and inaugural arts festival witnessed last night, reported the Toronto Star March 21. Far north of the longest shadow cast by the Royal Ontario Museum or the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts sits the University's now-complete Faculty of Fine Arts, all bright and shiny in its new digs. Most inspirational of all, it went from blueprints (by Bregman + Hamann Architects-Zeidler Partnership) to unlocked doors in less then three years. And, eschewing grand architectural pronouncements, it delivers the essentials room for students to learn, to practise and to perform in bright, airy, friendly, clean spaces.

A case in point is the Recital Hall in what is called Accolade East, the Star said. The building has a 325-seat auditorium with proscenium stage to house theatre and dance (there's even an orchestra pit with elevating floor), as well as a 500-seat cinema/lecture hall. This means each space could be tailored to specific acoustic and physical needs. The concert space could therefore be designed specifically for making music. From the vantage point of either the main-level seats or the three-row balcony, the space is a success – and a testament to how much you can do with the simplest of architectural elements.

The room starts with the ideal "one box" form, which places the music in the same space as the audience, said the Star. The sound is shaped by floor-to-ceiling convex, cream-coloured plaster pillars that are approximately two metres wide. The stage is a hollow box covered in hard maple. And things that can buzz and vibrate, like the exposed catwalks, are clad in acoustic panels. To adjust the sound, many of the plaster pillars contain double doors that swing open on large hinges. The floors are bare concrete, as are the main structural columns. The seats are tastefully padded in grey cloth. The overall effect in the tall yet intimate room is of a sober focus on the artistic tasks at hand. The sound is clear and direct, if not particularly warm. High frequencies (high notes) are occasionally piercing in their directness, while low frequencies (bass notes) are more muted. The sheer variety of music — much of it new — produced on the stage was testament to the enthusiasm of the faculty and students for their new quarters.

Andrew Craig (left), host of CBC Radio Two’s "In Performance", himself a York music graduate (BFA ‘93), hosted the evening, which included a couple of hundred student choristers and over a dozen York alumni or faculty on stage at various times, said the Star. York music department head Michael Coghlan's Accolade Fanfare for Five Trumpets blew the audience's hair backward in a suitably exuberant opening gesture. The evening ended with the world premiere of Eclipse, a concerto for piano, 10 instruments and voice by David Mott (right) , a professor in York’s Department of Music. Written in three movements that weave into each other, and conducted by York Professor Mark Chambers, Eclipse was a showcase for the considerable talents of Christina Petrowska Quilico, York professor of performance and musicology, at the piano. It also attempted to fuse musical styles and ethnicities into a new kind of sound, in much the same way as the mixture of backgrounds is changing the face of Toronto society and culture.

There was a buzz of anticipation in the scarlet-painted lobby before the gala began, said the Star, and there were even wider smiles afterward, as everyone involved last night realized that this particular piece of Toronto's cultural renaissance couldn't have turned out any better.

York’s Accolade ‘hums with new creative energy’

As Phillip Silver (left) shows a guest around the grounds of the new Accolade Project on York University's Keele campus, he seems like a proud father, exulting in the achievements of his offspring, reported theatre writer Richard Ouzounian in the Toronto Star March 20. The story was headlined, in part, "A fine arts overture: York University hums with new creative energy." On this occasion, said the Star, the fine arts dean's euphoria is justified, even to an outsider. The $107.5-million project, which officially opens today, is not only a carefully planned and well executed facility but it shows York as an institution with a real understanding of where Toronto is going in the future. "Some cynics," says Silver, "have sarcastically asked why York put so much money into a fine arts project 'all the way up here.' I'd remind them that we're just as close to the centre of the city as Harbourfront is, just in a different direction. We're focused on the area around here and the whole 905 region. I know there are a lot of people who claim they never go north of Eglinton. Well, in the future, they're going to realize that there's a giant portion of this city who never go south of Eglinton and they have an equal right to a place like this."

What York has provided is a network of interconnected buildings and resources dedicated to the fine arts that has no equal in the GTA or – in terms of architectural and pedagogical synergy – in the rest of Canada. And while the primary reason all this has been built is for the students, it's also clear that York wants the outside community to feel these facilities are theirs as well, said the Star. "There are over 250 individual events that York generates every year," says Silver, "but that still leaves a lot of time for interested outside parties to rent them, too. The door is always open."

Theatre, film, music, art and dance can also function together. This week, the theatre is being launched with a dance project but it could just as easily hold a play or an opera. The recital hall is equally friendly to a solo vocalist, a full orchestra or a jazz combo, the Star said. But it's not just in the public spaces that you feel this exchange of energies happening. Wandering through the building late Friday afternoon was like flipping the dial past a series of cultural stations on the radio. Someone singing lieder dissolved into a percussion-heavy piece of modern jazz, followed by the distinctive sound of the gamelan, underscoring a dance rehearsal. One student wheeling his harp through the halls passed a bevy of dancers in leotards, while a paint-spattered technical crew was taking a break from painting the latest stage set. "This is what York has always been about," smiles Silver, "the celebration of interdisciplinary exploration."

When asked how long it all took, he offers an initially cryptic answer, the Star said. "Either 40 years or three years, depending on how you look at it." He goes on to explain that, when York established its fine arts faculty in the 1960s, "the master plan for the campus always included a group of buildings in which each department would have its own spaces but put the students in close proximity with each other so that they'd realize that no art stands alone." But it took a long time for that vision to get realized, even though, as Silver puts it, "they kept nudging away at it over the years. When I started working here teaching design in 1986, my classes happened in an industrial park across Keele next to a topless dining lounge. The music department used to be all alone on the other side of campus, in the basement of a series of colleges, existing in rooms that were never meant for music."

Things went along like that for quite a while, said the Star. Then in the mid '90s, during a major review of the fine arts program, a series of external assessors offered their recommendation: "If the music department can't get better facilities, it ought to shut down." Lorna Marsden was in her first year as president and she took this advice to heart, appealing to the Harris government when it made its first SuperBuild call. But, as Silver dryly puts it, "They helped us with business and technology but they didn't want to hear much about music."

Silver, 62, became dean of fine arts in 1998 and his decades of experience as a world-renowned designer proved useful as he kept studying what was needed and making plans, the Star said. Then, in December 2002, with Grade 13 abolished and the double-cohort year about to start clogging the province's higher education arteries, another SuperBuild initiative occurred. "Thanks to the ingenuity of our board of governors and the leadership of president Marsden," recalls Silver, "we put in a proposal that served as the basis for The Accolade Project." The final approval came through in April 2003 and the fact the entire 358,000-square-foot project was up and running in less than three years "is a bit of a miracle," according to Silver.

On this afternoon, just a few days before the gala opening, there are still some signs to be affixed and final decorative touches to be added, but everything is amazingly tranquil, the Star said. "The students have actually been using the facility for a while now and they say it makes a real difference to them," says Silver. Almost as if on cue, a trio of music majors, lugging a pair of guitars and a hammer dulcimer, come down the hall, recognize Silver and tell him how much they love being in the new space. "We're all working together, even though we're still all individuals," volunteers one. "It's really cool." As a celebration of everything York has done and intends to do with The Accolade Project, a special series of 16 events open to the public starts tonight and runs though Saturday. Film, music, theatre, dance, visual arts - all are represented and everyone is invited. "At times like this," concludes Silver, "I like to remember what I heard Mavis Staines say once before a recital at the National Ballet School. 'You're about to see an exciting and wonderful combination of accomplishment and potential.'" Which sounds like a perfect description of The Accolade Project, concluded the Star's Ouzounian.