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Included in General Admission

Free for members

Adult – $18
Student/Senior – $15
Family $36
(Special Prices Tuesday)

Delve into various string instruments and their cultural importance across the world through instrument-making workshops, art workshops, and in-gallery iPad activities.

iPad Workshop
Starting at 12, 1 and 3 pm in the Grand Hall

Explore the effect of sound on the visual experience. Throughout this innovative, 30-minute iPad workshop, discover and experiment within the McMichael’s gallery spaces to create your own musical response inspired by the artworks that are currently on display.

Family Artmaking Workshop
Drop-in workshop at the Pine Cottage: 11 am to 5 pm

This mixed media and instrument-building workshop will lead participants of all ages through the steps and processes of creating and decorating their very own Brazilian percussion instrument: the ganzá!

Participants will be inspired by the rich history of Brazilian music and design culture to create this simple shaker. The ganzá is fundamental to any traditional Brazilian samba ensemble as it is often used to determine and keep rhythm. The ganzá is shaped like a cylinder and made of metal or a hand-woven basket, and is traditionally filled with pebbles or stones.

Musical Performance
Tio Chorinho in Gallery 8: 2pm

Toronto’s Tio Chorinho (pronounced shoh-REEN-yo) is the only ensemble in Canada dedicated to performing Brazilian choro music. The group performs regularly at events and festivals throughout Toronto and southern Ontario, and its reputation is growing nationally and beyond following the debut CD release of Chora Brazil, which earned two nominations from the 2016 Canadian Folk Music Awards (for World Music and Instrumental Group of the Year). The group features Eric Stein (mandolin), Avital Zemer (seven-string guitar), Maninho Costa (percussion), Milos Popovic  (cavaquinho), and Andre Valerio (guitar and cavaquinho).

Choro
(pronounced SHOH-roh) is primarily an instrumental musical form that originated in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro in the late-19th century. Choro is the original Brazilian soul music – a unique marriage of popular and classical European styles with Afro-Brazilian influences. It is the foundation of many modern Brazilian music styles, and is often described in American terms as “the New Orleans jazz of Brazil.” Exciting, energetic, soulful, intimate, nostalgic and virtuosic, choro is an infectious urban-folk style with universal appeal.

Inspired primarily by the recordings and compositions of the great Brazilian mandolin master Jacob do Bandolim (1918-1969), Tio Chorinho also performs music by other essential composers of the genre, including Ernesto Nazareth, Pixinguinha, Waldir Azevedo, Luiz Americano, and others. Tio Chorinho recently began to integrate original compositions in its repertoires, while still capturing the authentic spirit of choro. Wherever Tio Chorinho performs, audience members are consistently thrilled by the group’s virtuosity and easy-going charm on stage.