This is spectacular:
The city of Montreal is about to adorn its streets with some literary graffiti.
Starting in September, the words of 10 Montreal writers will be painted on buildings, billboards and brick walls around town.
Lines from famous Montrealers such as Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Michel Tremblay and Monique Proulx will go up in places where the public can read them.
Full story here.
Hermione as Lizzy? Sure. But hearing Matthew Macfadyen’s voice issue from Rupert Grint’s mouth is remarkably odd.
(Via AustenBlog!)
This is such a delightful idea:
RIP
Jane Austen
16 Dec 1775 – 18 Jul 1817
Goddess of Writers
Priestess of IronyIn memory of Rev. George Austen’s daughter, please leave condolences in the form of quotations &tc.
Don’t leave them here, though; or rather, you can if you like, but go to Peg Kerr’s journal and leave them there too, as that’s whence this was plucked.
The one I left was from the first chapter of Northanger Abbey:
[P]rovided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
It’s always amused me.
And now, having eaten two tomato melts on English muffins, I find that I am ravenous and must go make more.
Before I do, I will take the time to congratulate Talyesin on the hundredth and final serial installment of Squirrelman: Sins of the Past, his weekly serialized webnovel. Go read it.
Last night I went out with some other Band People (TM) to the Montreal Musician and Musical Instrument Show. Since three quarters of the exhibitors were luthiers, I was looking forward to seeing, if not actually playtesting, some electric cellos. In particular, Vector Instruments, a Nova Scotian maker of electric instruments of the violin family, was going to be there. I’d been researching their stuff recently, and if no one else had anything, at least they would. And I was in the mood to mess about with one. This is a big thing — it takes me a while to psych myself up to test instruments, particularly in public places.
There were a grand total of — wait for it — zero cellos there. Anywhere, in any of the rooms or halls. Traditional or otherwise. There were violins (trad and electric), basses (ditto), but if you’re a cellist, you apparently have no place anywhere in or around the jazz festival.
I wasn’t as bothered about it there as I was by the time I got home. Thinking about it on the metro made it worse, for some reason.
On the other hand, there were a surprising number of saxophones, flutes, clarinets, and accordions among the other expected string instruments. There were bassoons, for heaven’s sake. And drum kits being played by four and five year olds who had better coordination than I could demonstrate in the same situation. I had fun watching them, and looking at the beautiful beautiful work-of-art guitars, and watching Jan and the Baron play pretty things, and hanging out with everyone’s mother’s favourite guitarist and Ceri until the show closed.
The one piece of information I gathered that was directly applicable to my instrument was from the reps for Schatten Design, Canadian makers of pickups for various acoustic instruments, specifically the cello pickup. The reps were informative and friendly, and promised me a money-back guarantee if I tried it out and didn’t like it. They also told me that if I ordered it within the next week and mentioned that I’d talked to them at the exhibition, they’d ship it to me free of charge. It’s fifty dollars more than the ubiquitous Fishman C-100 pickup, but I’m more inclined to test it because of the support offered by the makers. Part of my resistance to the Fishman comes from the fact that it’s what the local guitar salespeople try to sell me, and they know guitars, not cellos, so when I ask them for more details they can’t tell me anything but keep trying to sell it to me irregardless. (Yes, yes, I know, it’s my birthday soon, and I’m not buying anything for myself until it’s well past, just in case someone has taken it into their head to do something extravagant. More evidence proving that I can learn.) And the Schatten is Canadian, too; I like that.
And because I’ve had several less than stellar days in a row, here is a terrific picture of Liam that makes me laugh every time I see it. I hope it brightens your afternoon as well, in the last hour before the weekend arrives!
OSM gets $105M concert hall
Montreal’s symphony orchestra (OSM) will be getting a 1,900-seat concert hall by 2011, Premier Jean Charest announced Tuesday.
The $105-million project is the Charest government’s first cultural public-private partnership.
The sixth concert hall at Place des Arts will be on the northeast corner of de Maisonneuve Blvd. and Saint-Urbain Street, and will raise to about 8,000 the number of seats in the whole facility.
The stage will be able to accommodate up to 200 singers and 120 musicians.
“The concert hall will boast some of the best acoustics in North America,” Charest said.
Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal’s current home, has often been criticized as lacking.
The concert hall will be smaller than the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, but will be used exclusively for classical music.
It’s about time! No architect as of yet, but there’s an acoustic engineer attached to the project.
(Full article here.)