The Ottawa Sun, Canada
July 27, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

Festival tangos back from tangles

BY DENIS ARMSTRONG

Bloodied but unbowed, the 15th annual Chamber Music Festival got down
to the business of making music Friday night with a dramatic opening
night performance by Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and Tango
Notturno.

It was the kind of informal but spectacular music-making that the
festival’s new programmers — The Gryphon Trio’s Roman Borys, Jamie
Parker and Annalee Patipatanakoon — promised when they took over the
festival’s musical reins last year.

A classical singer with strong pop-culture appeal, Bayrakdarian is the
kind of new-generation opera singer who also has fans outside
classical circles. The 34-year-old Armenian Canadian, who made her
Carnegie Hall debut last spring, sang in the films Ararat and The Lord
of the Rings: The Two Towers, and has won the Best Classical Album of
the Year Juno three years in a row.

It’s not surprising then, that many of the 800 fans who attended
Friday night’s performance started lining up in front of
Dominion-Chalmers United Church two hours before the doors opened.

The concert with Tango Notturno — violinist Marie Berard, cellist
Roman Borys, bass fiddler Roberto Occhipinti, clarinetist Shalom Bard,
bandoneon player Fabian Carbone and pianist Serouj Kradjian — was an
all-tango affair, and as we know with tango — as with all things hot
and spicy — less is more.

Not, however, for Bayrakdarian. She and her excellent ensemble played
16 short pieces, alternating vocals and instrumentals in the first
half by Carlos Gardel and Rodriguez’s familiar La Cumparsita and
Gade’s Jalousie — two well-known tango classics that had the fans
tapping their toes. But it was Bayrakdarian’s superb acting skills
that made Weill’s Youkali soar to dizzying heights.

I don’t know if Bayrakdarian was feeling spent by a rather passionate
performance in the first hour because her song selection clammed up
tight after the intermission. She talked about the history of the
tango and its universal appeal while performing a tango in German and
another in Arabic, as well as familiar pieces by tango master Astor
Piazzolla, leaving it to Tango Notturno to provide the fireworks in
the second half. They didn’t disappoint.

While her coloratura voice didn’t blow me away, it did grow on me. In
the end, Bayrakdarian was brilliant, if a little uneven.

Also worth mentioning was the easy-going and festive atmosphere at
Dominion-Chalmers all night. Everyone from the concert emcees to the
performers seemed to be in a friendly mood. And why not, after waiting
two years for the Chamber Music Society to clean up all the bad blood
that was shed after the festival’s founder, Julian Armour, resigned
last year.

Now, finally, the Chamber Music Society seems to have settled much of
the civil unrest it had been tangled up in.

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Isabel Bayrakdarian and Tango Notturno
Chamber Music Festival
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5