Musician’s busy schedule devoted to personal projects like Sunday’s Reed Blowout.

John Terauds, Music Critic, Published on Wed Aug 03 2011

The mix of old and hip in the Junction fills Kornel Wolak with pride.

As he walks along the west-end neighbourhood’s main artery, Dundas St. W., he points out how the new arrivals to this gentrifying district strive for handmade-style authenticity.

Fair-trade coffee? There are several tasty options. Artisanal cheeses? No problem. Each new business is boldly going somewhere the big-chain brands can’t take us.

It’s a metaphor for the clarinetist himself. Since arriving in Toronto about six years ago, he has resolutely charted his own course.

Now in his early 30s, the Polish-born woodwind player has worked as a classical soloist. He is on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s list of regular clarinet fill-ins during the music season. He spent two seasons working with Toronto-based crossover group Quartetto Gelato.

But, despite the security it may offer, Wolak is not interested in a full-time job with any organization right now. “I’m totally devoted to my own projects,” he insists.

Here is a mixture of classical training and a curious spirit that has guided him into a number of fascinating collaborations.

“My landlord and the phone company are my biggest inspirations,” says the smiling freelancer, who has a number of projects in the works.

One of these is coming up this weekend.

In what they are calling a “Reed Blowout in the Music Garden,” Wolak and Toronto accordion master Joseph Macerollo pair up for an afternoon concert at the western fringe of Harbourfront on Sunday afternoon. Wolak says there will be classical pieces by Mozart and Rossini on the program — alongside arrangements by big-band legend Benny Goodman “to lighten the atmosphere.”

Also in keeping with Wolak’s desire to nurture a living music tradition, the Music Garden centrepiece is the world premiere of Quai Quodlibet, a new piece for accordion and clarinet by Toronto composer Norbert Palej.

The 4 p.m. free Music Garden concert is a prelude to a hectic close to 2011. On Wolak’s calendar are concerts and master classes in Poland, Ecuador and Brazil.

This fall, Wolak teams up with Toronto jazz-piano hotshot Chris Donnelly. They’ll be touring Atlantic Canada, southern Ontario and the Prairies, including making a stop for a Canadian opera Company free lunchtime concert on Nov. 1 at the Four Seasons Centre.

“We’re playing the whole program from memory,” boasts Wolak of his collaboration with Donnelly. Wolak relates how they were one of four groups performing simultaneously at a programmers’ showcase earlier this year: “The power went out, and we were the only ones left playing.”

Both the accordion and the piano can stand in for a full orchestra. In the case of the collaboration with Donnelly, this means the duo can program Mozart’s gorgeous Clarinet Concerto and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue — a piece that begins with a long, sensuous clarinet solo.

Donnelly and Wolak also came up with their own, highly unusual take on the music of Bach: Wolak transcribed some of the Partitas for Solo Violin into something playable on clarinet. Meanwhile, Donnelly devised a percussion accompaniment on — wait for it — spoons.

Wolak laughs. “Chris is crazy. We were at this showcase, and he saw some folk musicians playing the spoons. He resolved then and there to learn how to do it.”

That can-do spirit is sprucing up the classical concert world . . . just like young entrepreneurs freshening up an old neighbourhood.

Just the Facts:
WHO: Kornel Wolak, with Joe Macerollo
WHERE: Toronto Music Garden, 475 Queens Quay W.
WHEN: Sunday @ 4 p.m.
ADMISSION: Free

Despite an inauspicious start to his training back in Poland, musician now very much in demand

John Terauds, Toronto Star (Entertainment) Toronto, Ont. – Jun 5, 2008

The clarinet’s song can run from mellow to shrill in the quick draw of a breath. That makes it an easy match with a wide range of music, from classical, to jazz and klezmer.

But that doesn’t make it easy to play.

Kornel Wolak assumed that he would one day be a musician, given that his father is a trumpet player and his mother a violist.

But no sooner had he started to take clarinet lessons in his native Poland when he was 11 than his teacher dismissed him, describing the youngster to his mother as “the anti-interpreter of the clarinet.”

Wolak describes his musical start with equal parts amusement and embarrassment. He is only 28 now, resettled in Toronto, and in demand as both a soloist and chamber player.

On Sunday afternoon, he joins Toronto Sinfonietta at the Royal Ontario Museum in a performance of the Clarinet Concerto by Karol Kurpinski (1785-1857), a Polish composer influenced by Haydn and Mozart.

Wolak has been a member of popular-minded Quartetto Gelato since last fall. They, in turn, bring their fun fare to Luminato at the Distillery next weekend.

The Polish expat was offered the job with Quartetto Gelato last year, after they heard him perform at the Niagara Chamber Music Festival. The Toronto Sinfonietta gig also came out of a live performance that impressed artistic director and conductor Matthew Jaskiewicz.

Control and a smooth, elegant expressivity are what make Wolak shine. His big, sleepy eyes belie a quantity of coiled-up energy that likely gives bounce to his outings with Quartetto Gelato.

It’s a good thing his mother didn’t take the first clarinet teacher’s verdict too seriously.

“We drove to Poznan, to see another master,” Wolak recounts.

“He listened to me and said I need some more lessons.”

He describes how he would go to regular junior high from morning to early afternoon, then go to music classes until the evening.

Asked what students who didn’t take music would do with their afternoons, Wolak laughs and replies, “They would make fun of us.”

Hard work earned him admission to a music academy in Poland, a performance degree from Indiana University and then, a scholarship toward an artist diploma from the Glenn Gould Professional School at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Wolak, who has settled in the High Park area, thinks the city’s ethnic diversity has made him feel comfortable.

“I want to live in a big city, but also one that is friendly,” he says.

The young talent recorded the Kurpinski concerto last year with the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Lukasz Borowicz in Poland, after having performed the piece on tour.

The disc, which also contains five overtures to operas by Kurpinski, is available online and will be on sale at the ROM.

What Toronto Sinfonietta, with Kornel Wolak
Where Samuel Hall Currelly Gallery, ROM, 100 Queen’s Park
When Sunday at 2 p.m.
Tickets Included in museum admission. Info www.rom.on.ca

What Quartetto Gelato
Where Luminato at the Distillery, OLG Music Stage
When June 14 at 9 p.m.
Admission Free