Sarah Slean Tackles Canadian Covers

Dressed in a floor-length, glittering, golden gown, Sarah Slean led the Art Of Time Ensemble's Toronto Songbook through her teenage musical crushes, suicide and unrequited love, only to land on the lonely side of the moon at Harbourfront Centre last Thursday.

Artistic director and pianist Andrew Burashko called in Slean to flex her vocal muscles in front of the six-piece ensemble. The essence of the Art Of Time is education, as Burashko hopes to open minds and ears to various forms of classical music. The Songbook featured orchestral arrangements of songs from some of Toronto's finest, including Hawksley Workman, John Southworth, Ron Sexsmith, Leslie Feist, Leonard Cohen, Sarah Harmer, Martin Tielli and Hayden.

Opening the night with Cohen's "Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye," Slean's symphonic vocal chords nearly brought the show to an early emotional high. Slean returned to Toronto last year after a lengthy stay in France, and the Parisian rendezvous helped her blossom into a musician beyond her years. Using an arrangement by Roberto Occhipinti, the suited players moved into the soothing notes of Sarah Harmer's poetical ode to D. H. Lawrence. Slean delivered a version of "Lodestar" that might make the other Sarah consider re-recording her You Were Here classic.

Slean later mused about her teenage infatuations with one of Toronto's seasoned indie heroes, Hayden Desser.

"I thought I was the cat's ass in high school because Hayden played on my record," she said before the string section rolled into "Stride" from his 1998 release, The Closer I Get.

Slean's apparent teenage popularity was the result of Hayden's appearance on 1998's Blue Parade, where he plays guitar and lends a few mumbles on the tail-end of a hidden track dubbed "I Want To Be Brave (Madeleine)."

To momentarily lighten things up, Slean introduced Southworth's "Eyes Are The Flowers," which was arranged by Michael Occhipinti. This little gem was lifted from Southworth's 2006 literary love bug, The Pillowmaker.

Cameron Wilson arranged an atmospheric version of Feist's "Monarch," from her obscure 1999 release. Other highlights include an ethereal version of Sexsmith's "Cheap Hotel," Workman's "No More Named Johnny," Tielli's "I'll Never Tear You Apart" and Cohen's gloomy "Dress Rehearsal Rag," which served as a bookend to the set.

Slean returned to the stage for an encore and positioned herself at the piano to seduce the audience one more time. She closed with her latest musical masterpiece, "The Lonely Side Of The Moon," a melancholy, philosophical ode to the destruction of the earth. The lyrics provided haunting closure to a stellar night."Earth so beautiful/Can this be the end?/Let me learn your miracles/If I am to start again/ on the lonely side of the moon."