Welcome - and thank you for visiting our page.

Canzona Chamber Players is an annual classical and jazz chamber music concert series in its 20th year featuring some of Canada's top musicians. The series has been hosted at various venues on Toronto Island and in downtown Toronto.

Founded by Jacob Stoller, Jonathan Krehm and Roger Sharp, we exist and thrive because of the enthusiastic support of the St.-Andrew-By-the-Lake Congregation and the Toronto Island community and our music patrons in the GTA.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to broadcast recitals on our YouTube page, which were recorded to the highest standard. The series has featured Winona Zelenka, Joseph Johnson and Jonathan Crow (TSO), Marie Bérard (COC), 2020 Juno recipient Angela Schwarzkopf, Yosuke Kawasaki and Jessica Linnebach (NACO) and many more.

We thank John S. Gray for audio recording these acoustic performances and Evan Mitchell for video recording, editing and broadcasting them. All performers were paid for their performance. In light of the war in Ukraine, we recently presented two fundraising events.

Click here to learn more and make a donation to Ukraine.

For the past ten years, we have held an annual fundraising concert in memory of Elizabeth Krehm, and to date have raised over $242 000 for the St. Michael's Hospital Foundation.

Click here to learn more and make a donation to St. Michael's Hospital.

Now in our 20th season, 2022-23, we are presenting live events again, beginning with John Kameel Farrah in November.

Please sign up to receive concert updates here.

We hope to see you soon.

Jonathan Krehm and Canzona Chamber Players

Thank-you to all who attended and donated >>

Thank you to all who donated raising

$11,175.00

Over $242 000 raised to date

All donations go to the St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation

in Elizabeth Krehm’s name, for the ICU

Please consider giving

DONATION LINK

Thank-you to all who attended >>

John Kameel Farah - Piano and electronics 2.jpg

PROGRAM

Composer John Kameel Farah performs his own compositions for piano and electronics, interspersed by a host of keyboard works of William Byrd and Bach, re-imagined with electronic arrangements, creating what he calls PROGRAM "Baroque-Mid-Eastern-Cyberpunk"

BIO

John Kameel Farah studied composition at the University of Toronto, where he received the Glenn Gould Composition Award twice. He studied piano with William Aide and, in 1999, had private composition lessons with Terry Riley in California, and further studies at the Arabic Music Retreat in Hartford.

Collaborations have included several scores for the iconic Canadian choreographer Peggy Baker and rising ballet star Robert Binet. He has also worked with astrophysicist John Dubinski, composing soundtracks to animations of galaxy formations and collisions in a project
called “Gravitas”. In 2010 he became a member of Canadian Electronic Ensemble, the oldest continuously active live-electronic performing group in the world. In Berlin, he frequently works with the Oriel String Quartet and the early vocal ensemble Vox Nostra. In 2016 he received a Dora Mavor Moore Award for sound design/composition.

Farah is based between his native Toronto, and Berlin, Germany. He has toured across Europe, the U.K and North America, as well as South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Israel/Palestine, where he presented concerts and workshops at the Edward Said National Conservatory in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jerusalem in 2002. He occasionally presents his side-project, “Music for Organ and Synthesizers”, looping and altering the pipe organ’s sound in combination with electronics in various churches and cathedrals.

Also a visual artist, John creates intricate and detailed ink line-drawings which draw inspiration from astronomy, history, mythology, and sound waves. He has presented his artwork at solo and group exhibitions and sometimes features live projections of them during concerts. He is currently doing a composition residency with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada, writing a new work for piano and orchestra.