SC Talk, Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 2pm, Title: “Putting It Together” (‘It’ = 2020-21 Season at RCM and Koerner Hall) + concert. Speaker: Mervon Mehta
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October 7, 2020 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
All talks are followed by a discussion. The talks will be held on Wednesdays from 2:00pm- 4:00pm.
Currently, this event is in person or ZOOM and in person (with performer). If you have any questions, then please email senior.college@utoronto.ca.
Title: “Putting It Together during the Pandemic” (‘It’ = 2020-21 Season at RCM and Koerner Hall) + concert
Speaker: Mervon Mehta, Executive Director, Performing Arts, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto
Contact and Chair: Deanne Bogdan
BIO and ABSTRACT: Former Vice-President of Programming and Education at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Mervon Mehta has been Executive Director of Performing Arts for the Royal Conservatory since 2009. Born in Austria, the son of conductor Zubin Mehta and singer Carmen Mehta, Mervon grew up in Montreal. For the past eleven years, Mervon has “put together” annually a dazzling array of concerts at Koerner Hall in classical music, jazz, world music, and pop.
Mervon will share with us the trials and joys of short- and long-range program planning at Koerner Hall, with an emphasis on the special challenges posed by this year’s pandemic.
Following the talk and before the Q&A will be a brief pre-recorded “live” performance (undertaken especially for this occasion) by Dr. Alexander Malikov, who will perform some Beethoven in honour of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Dr. Alexander Malikov performs extensively around Canada and the United States. He has been featured as Artist-in-residence on Performance Today with the Minnesota Public Radio, and has worked with conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Boris Brott, Gaddiel Dombrowner and Michelle Merrill. As a recitalist, he has appeared at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheater in Toronto, the Banff International String Quartet Festival, as “Montague Artist” at the Heidelberg University in Ohio, at the “Rising Star” series at the Texas State International Piano Festival, and many others. He is also an advocate of new music and recently premiered a piano concerto by composer Minho Yoon. A composer himself, Alexander gave the world premiere of his own piano concerto in 2016.
He is a prize winner of the Knigge, Shean, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Petroff, and Carl E. Baldassare Composer-Performer competitions. He is also a gold medalist of the 2019 Manhattan International Competition and received second prize at the 2020 Walled City Music International Online Piano Competition.
A graduate of Oberlin College with Angela Cheng and the Juilliard School with Julian Martin, Alexander went on to receive an Artist Diploma under Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Doctorate of Musical Arts with Anton Nel at the University of Texas. He is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma with James Anagnoson and John Perry at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto.
The link to register is https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JsKqeAMvTUuQN7RtVsVSEKo-DHaj3xRAluk2q6EEM7NUNFNMWEFVUEZLRzhURVFPMk9ZTkxYU05FRi4u
The deadline to register is Monday, before the talk at noon. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.
