Caledon Chamber Concerts presents Fire and Grace

October 25, 2018 · 0 Comments

Written By JOSHUA SANTOS

Caledon Chamber Concerts opened their 16th season with a performance by Fire and Grace at St. James’ Anglican Church on Saturday, Oct. 20.

The duo consists of guitarist William Coulter and Edwin Huizinga. This was their debut show at the church and Coutler’s first time in Caledon. The show explored baroque music fusing it with folk.

“Growing up as a classical violinist I grew up in Guelph, Ontario. William is a really great Celtic guitarist and we’re bringing those two worlds together,” said Huizinga

“My background is a classical guitarist but I’ve done most of my performing as a folk Celtic guitarist and I bring that to the table and Edwin brings early music and classical violin to the equation,” said Coulter.

Their repertoire has been described as vast ranging from Bach and Vivaldi, tango to Celtic tunes, traditional Bulgarian to American fiddle tunes and waltzes, all played with a sense of discovery and commitment to the elements of passion and virtuosity, according to a program by the Caledon Chamber Concerts.

Huizinga has appeared alongside Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, René Fleming, Mike Marshall and Stevie Wonder and has been featured as a soloist with the San Bernardino Symphony, the Sweetwater Music Festival, the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival and the Banff Summer Arts Festival.

Coulter has been performing for over 20 years. His most recent solo recording, The Road Home, was met with critical acclaim and in 2005 he received a Grammy award for his contribution to The Pink Guitar, a collection of solo guitar arrangements of Henry Mancini’s music.

The show on Saturday was the last of a tour where they played in Kingston, played two performances in Toronto and capped it off in Caledon.

The two met serendipitously at a show in Cleveland when they were hired for the same performance.

“I was hired to bring Irish music to work with a baroque ensemble. I was part of the Irish contingent and Edwin was part of the baroque contingent. We enjoy playing together and said we should do more so here we are four years later,” said Coulter.

“Before we become a duo, we toured together in a bigger Celtic Christmas show called A Celtic Christmas. We did that for a couple of years before we really started playing as a duo,” said Huizinga.

Coulter is from California while Huizinga resides in Ontario. They meet up about six times a year.

“We meet all around North America, also I consider California a bit of a second home. I spend my summers there and I play there a lot. There’s a lot of time where we end up in the same place and then there are of course times where we get booked to play gigs in New York. What we do is show up two days early and we practice for a couple of days and then we have some shows,” said Huizinga.

“We did mostly west coast shows at the beginning and then we were like, we have to make an album. We ended up basically honing this performance, this show that we had created together and turned that into the album.”

The two developed a film titled Fire and Grace in Ireland scheduled to be release this year. It captures live performances of The Liquid Gold Suite, filmed in eight different venues in Ireland, ranging from chapels to pubs to cathedrals to the seaside vistas of Slea Head all filmed live in County Kerry.

“We played concerts in Ireland with a friend of ours who is an Irish singer and one of the pieces we play there is a fusion of music by Bach and Irish dance music. It has eight short movements and we filmed one of the eight movements in a different venue a county there called County Kerry,” said Clotuer.

The film also features local artists and crafts people such as dancer, violin makers and stain glass artists among others.

The next scheduled performers are Madawaska String Quartet on Saturday, Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m. Single tickets are $35 for adults, $15 for students. Season tickets are $140 for adults and $60 for students. Tickets can be purchased at Forster’s Book Garden in Bolton, Howard the Butcher in Caledon East and BookLore in Orangeville.