A new creation

Well, I have been enjoying spending time with The Mummers' Masque, which Dean Burry has been furiously working on for a long time now. It's a splendid piece, filled with variety, humour, warmth and some very beautiful music. I'm pleased with it and I think it's fits well with the TMT mandate and group personality. I'm looking forward to reading it through with all the performers on November 8th. This has become a TMT ritual....we all gather a number of weeks before a production for an afternoon of informal reading and discussion. It never fails that we leave these "read-throughs" with an excitement and sense of the richness of possibility that lies before us. These sessions also remind us how much work we have to do!

One of the many things I am happy about with The Mummers' Masque is Dean's use of traditional instruments. He's a crafty composer in that he uses the instruments traditionally, while also subtlely putting new spins on the instruments. To my knowledge, this will be the first time an accordian or an "ugly stick" are used in a TMT show! (Wait a minute...there were a few numbers with accordian in our Scottish Masque a few years back...)

While I am proud of our performances of early music - especially Purcell, Blow, Handel and Charpentier - I've never wanted TMT to be seen as an "early music group" per se, but a meeting place for different art forms, genres, traditions and performance approaches. Our forays into contemporary music - with commissions from James Rolfe, Omar Daniel, Abigail RIchardson and now Dean Burry - have been very successful and eye-opening for our audience and for me, frankly. It is my wish that we'll open up the commissioning we do to playwrights and choreographers in the coming years, truly to even the playing field between spoken word, dance and music within our organization.

So far so good with The Mummers. We've got alot of work ahead of us. It will be fun and I know it will ultimately make for an evening of superb entertainment. I will write more in the coming days about the specific elements and stories within The Mummers' Masque.