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Classical music: Violinist Timothy Chooi strings in new Music in the Morning season

Acclaimed performer’s two-week residency an early highlight of public matinee concerts

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In one of the early announcements on the 2020-21 season, Music in the Morning is starting the year with a two-week residency featuring violinist Timothy Chooi opening Aug. 31, a prelude to a full year of favourite performers.

Music in the Morning intends to resume matinee concerts at the newly remodelled Koerner Hall in the Vancouver Academy of Music. Plus, executive director Adrian Fung has added a new job to his busy life, returning to Canada from a stint in Oklahoma to become senior vice president of RCM Learning Systems at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music.

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Starting the season with the 27-year-old Chooi allows local audiences to check in with one of British Columbia’s most impressive musical exports. He hails from Victoria, and started out as a Suzuki student at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

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Timothy and his brother Nikki were well known as young West Coast performers; then, at age 14 Timothy Chooi commenced a musician’s life of travel, commuting between high school in Victoria and advanced classes at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

A succession of prestigious schools followed as did competition wins and prizes, including the chance to play on the 1717 Windsor-Weinstein Stradivarius on loan from the Canada Council for the Arts. This summer, Chooi accepted a professorship at the University of Ottawa, which is rapidly becoming a powerhouse school in Canadian music education.

Chooi explained recently from New York about how he envisions his Vancouver residency. His first round of four concerts, Aug. 31 to Sept. 3 at 10:30 a.m., will be works for solo violin starting, as one might expect with Bach, the A minor Sonata, BWV 1003.

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“The second violin sonata has been a touchstone throughout my career, but I’ve rarely played it all the way through,” Chooi said.

Next is a late work by Krzysztof Penderecki, La Follia, written for and premiered by Anne-Sophie Mutter. Chooi’s connection to the work couldn’t be more impressive: “Anne-Sophie Mutter went through it for me. I learned it in one week and then performed it; it has never been performed in Canada. Written in 2013 and about 15 minutes long, it’s full of Penderecki’s unique characteristics. It really cleans out the listener’s ears.”

Chooi plans to end his first programs with Paganini.

For his second batch of recitals, running Sept. 7-10, he’s joined by pianist Chiharu IInuma. The anchor work for the recital is Debussy’s marvelous Violin Sonata — “such a progressive work, integrating Eastern ideas into Western music,” Chooi says) and some short pieces by Tchaikovsky.

Violinist Timothy Chooi launches Music in the Morning’s new season.
Violinist Timothy Chooi launches Music in the Morning’s new season. Photo by Den Sweeney

A virtuoso display piece, Sunshine on Tashkurgan by Chen Gang, ends the program. But along the way Chooi and “a yet-unnamed guest violinist” will perform Shostakovich’s Five Pieces for two violins and piano, a work Chooi has often played with brother Nikki.

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Of course, every classical music fan is debating how safe it is to go back to the concert hall, an important issue that demands clarity if audiences are to assemble confidently.

Music in the Morning has a consistent strategy: Masks will be worn, hand-sanitation stations will be provided, screening questions will be asked and the hall will be restricted to 50 per cent capacity, which at the Koerner Recital Hall is about 100.

Mingling and refreshments, long a part of the Music in the Morning experience, will differ from past seasons, as “cookies will be individually packaged for patrons to enjoy outside.” Sounds like a plan, and a reassuring one at that.

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