Music in the Afternoon Berlioz, Rossini, Cusson
Women’s Musical Club of Toronto

Text is from the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto website.

Artists: Marion Newman, mezzo-soprano; Melody Courage, soprano; Evan Korbut, baritone; Gordon Gerrard, piano

Join us for our 125th Season! Students with ID – free tickets at the door

Concert 4: Marion Newman & Friends, April 6, 2023

Anchor work: “Sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat” from Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser, 1950

There is a tendency to paint the 1950s retrospectively as a grim time of repression and conformity, and the 1960s as an idyllic era of new ideas and big dreams, whether induced by pharmaceuticals or natural means. McCarthyism with polyester suits and ties on the one side, the Great Society with tie-dye T-shirts and love beads on the other. The reality was more nuanced and complicated. The 1950s also brought us rock and roll, economic prosperity, television, and the baby boom. The 1960s saw civil disobedience, race riots, and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. There was plenty of good and bad to fill up each decade. Both were defined by a proxy war between Communism and the West fought in Asia: the Korean War in the early 1950s, the Vietnam War in the 1960s; the former was much shorter, but millions died in each conflict. It is no coincidence that these points of reference mainly concern the USA; the country reached the apex of its cultural and geopolitical power during this period. “America at this moment stands at the summit of the world,” as Winston Churchill said in 1945. The country’s technological progress and adventurous spirit was on display for the entire world to see on the occasion of the moon landing in July 1969, a moment witnessed by over 500 million around the world when it was broadcast live on television.

WMCT at 125: Historical Perspectives

For this special season, WMCT artistic director Simon Fryer has created an imaginative series that constitutes a reflection upon the past 125 years of the WMCT, of the city of Toronto, and of international music history. To accomplish all of this within just five concerts, he has divided that 125-year span into five 25-year blocks. As 25 years is the length of a generation, Simon had the additional creative idea of including, in each concert, musicians who are in a mentor/mentee relationship, thus reflecting the past, present and future of the invited guest artists, as well as of the WMCT itself. For each concert, an anchor work is drawn from one of the five 25-year blocks of time, which provides an opportunity to reflect upon that period in WMCT and world history. Here is some historical background on the third period.