Category Archives: Music

Catching Up

December was, predictably, somewhat frenzied.

Work:

I edited a math book (or rather, a parent guide to math from pre-K through grade 5), and found a case of plagiarism in the second chapter, plagiarism so glaring that the author had even copied the mistakes and misspellings from the website. This is not the way to my heart. I documented it thoroughly, finished copyediting it, and sent it along to the editor, whose problem it is. It took me a while to calm down, though.

When I handed that in, I got another project immediately, which I edited over Christmas. It wasn’t as intense a schedule as last Christmas when I worked on a manuscript three times as long (with issues, oh, there were issues with that one), but it was enough to keep me busy. (And stressed out during yesterday’s ice storm that had our power flickering as I raced my deadline. Fun times.)

Just before Christmas, I also got a very interesting query from a major game studio concerning my availability at certain points in 2015 and wondering if I’d be interested in talking about handling some copyediting work for them. Of course I was. Am. Whatever. Let’s see what happens. Today I had my small panicky meltdown when I was asked what my rates were, and now I’m fine. It just needs to go through the contracts people in HR or whoever it is, now.

Music:

My teacher’s studio recital was a couple of weeks later than usual this year, taking place on December 21 instead of the first weekend of the month.

I am very happy with how my piece went. HRH filmed it with his iPhone for me, and I finally watched it a couple of days ago. While it sounded like the intonation was a bit odd overall, I suspect that is more due to the church and the poor wee iPhone striving mightily to record me seventy-five feet away, because it sounded fine under my fingers. Did I mention how happy I was with how it went? As in, no qualms or destructive self-criticism whatsoever? I don’t think that’s ever happened. I think doing this Wagner piece was very good for me. I’m sure my teacher will have comments when we view her (much better) video of it this weekend at my first lesson of the year, of course, but I am sure she will also be very excited about how well it went.

Christmas break:

We hosted Christmas at our house this year again, and both sets of grandparents joined us. Dinner was lovely, and we even managed to get the good china out this year. (We didn’t go so far as to dig out the good cutlery. Let’s focus on the small victories, though.)

I think the gift we were the most excited about receiving (apart from watching our kids be thrilled about everything they unwrapped) was our set of Paderno pots and pans. We gleefully stripped all the mismatched and bent stuff off the pot rack and hung all the new shiny ones. Cooking with them is a dream: they’re heavy but well-balanced, they sit level on the elements, and they clean up in a breeze. We adore them. The other big thing was that HRH designed and built Owlet a dollhouse for Christmas:

More details about that will come in her 41-months/January post, whenever that happens, since the 40-month/December post isn’t even up yet. Maybe I should declare amnesty on that one and just jump to the January post.

HRH and I took Sparky out to see Big Hero 6 after Christmas, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. Two days later, HRH’s parents came to spend the afternoon with Sparky and Owlet while we went out for lunch and to see the last Hobbit film. It was so unusual for the two of us to be out together, let alone without kids, and the experience was very enjoyable. Sparky told us how lucky we were to see two films in one week, and I had to point out that since HRH and I only see two or three films in a theatre each year, it was more like we were just fitting them in before the calendar restarted.

Sparky:

Sparky completed his first session of art classes in mid-December. Before it ended I asked if he’d be interested in registering for the next session, and he said ehn, not really. I gently pointed out that we’d have to figure out another extracurricular activity, then, and he buried himself in a book and ignored the situation. But when he brought all his art home the following week and we went through it, we saw some really good stuff, and told him so. We hung the canvas he’d painted, and framed a beautiful multi-media piece he called “Birch Trees in Winter” that he’d done at school, and suddenly he was very excited about going back to art. He got a pile of art supplies for Christmas from us, too (thank you, Michaels, for your crazy sales and decent-quality student stuff) and was thrilled. This year he also told us (repeatedly, in whispered asides) that he knew we were Santa. We’ve never really perpetuated the Santa thing; we’ve always told the kids that Santa is an idea, a representation of love and generosity and sharing, one of the spirits of Christmas. So this wasn’t a disappointment or a betrayal; it was more like he was confirming that he knew he was part of it, consciously helping to spread the joy and love associated with the season. He’s growing up.

Solstice also celebrated his one-year anniversary with us. We call it his birthday to keep it simple, even though we know he’s actually eight weeks older. Happy birthday, fuzzybunny Solstice!

How Is It December?

This year has flashed by. I’m not panicking about it, just feeling slightly sad. Owlet’s post for last month is still in draft form, and her next one is due tomorrow (ah ha ha, that’s not going to happen). For all the time I’m spending at the computer, not much of it has been writing in any form.

I’ve been tangled in horrible paycheque luck these past three months. The most recent snafu is that accounting has recently discovered that no, Canadians can not in fact be paid via direct deposit, which is a complete contradiction to what they said when I checked with them in early October. The direct deposit option was being promoted as a quicker way to be paid, and after the really, really, really late payment earlier this fall, it had sounded like a good idea. Everyone is horrified and apologetic, and I’m waiting to be paid. The accounting department is swamped because two of their full-time employees retired this summer, and the new employees are making mistakes and working more slowly. There’s not much I can do except wait. Which is stressful on its own, of course, because not only can I no longer schedule an expected payment date into my agenda and work out a household budget with any confidence as I used to (it used to be four and a half weeks from the Friday of the week my invoice was sent through, like clockwork), but I can’t even expect the payment process to be flawless (other than slow). I’m sure it will get better… eventually.

I’ve been prebooked to copyedit another book on math, which is great; not only do I already have a stylesheet for the other book in the series, but my December work schedule is taken care of. I’m also slowly working through a private editing project of picture books, which is fun but challenging on how to schedule it into my other work, as well as how to think about it/approach it and put my thoughts down on paper for the author.

I recently applied for a copyediting position with a quarterly magazine incredibly relevant to my interests. The editing sample they asked for consisted of working over a five-page article, which took me a day and a half because it needed a lot more work than the example they’d provided as a guideline, and I was constantly referring to the house stylesheet and making decisions in a bit of a murky situation. However, a zillion other people also applied (many non-professionals as well as professionals). Yesterday they announced the position had been filled (by a professional), and that they’d been spoiled for choice with a lot of perfect people, but they could only choose one. I am moving forward, disappointed but not devastated, assuming I am one of the perfect people who didn’t get hired. It would have been more lucrative than my ongoing freelance job with the publisher, and the work would have come at four predictable, reliable times per year, so I could have organized my schedule around them. But it wasn’t to be.

Our fall concert went well last Saturday. We brought Owlet, and it was her first non-Canada Day concert. As always, I wish I’d done better, and hoped the people sitting closest to me weren’t hearing the sludgy mess I made of quick finger-twisting bits. Our next concert is in March and we’ll be doing Beethoven’s seventh, which is very exciting for the celli and bass. Up next for me is our Christmas studio recital, which is a bit later than usual this year, on December 21. I’m working on a transcription of Wagner’s “Song to the Evening Star” from Tannhäuser which is asking a lot of me in the letting-go department.

The furnace went on the fritz a couple of weeks ago, necessitating repair. We had the money, but it meant that the optometrist appointment and new glasses I was planning on didn’t happen, and isn’t going to for a while. (See above re. unreliable payment schedule.)

I think that’s about it. Knitting is at a standstill, because the shawl I’m working on is now at the 400+ stitches per row point, and there is always something else that has to be done instead of knitting a row. I’ve spun a couple of yarns, but I’ll save those for another post.

Fall Concert Announcement!

It’s that time of year! Fight the November dreariness with some sparkling music at our fall concert, presented this Saturday evening by the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra!

The concert takes place at 7:30 PM on Saturday 29 of November 2014, at our home base of Valois United Church (70 Belmont Ave. Pointe-Claire, between King and Queen). The theme of this concert is Great Britain Revisited, music written in and about the British Isles. Here’s the programme:

Handel: Concerto Grosso Op. 6 no. 5
Mendelssohn: The Hebrides Overture
Vaughn Williams: The Wasps Overture
Haydn: Symphony, no. 104, the “London”

Admission is $10, free for children 18 and under. The concerts usually last just about two hours, including the refreshment break. The address and map are on the church website. Children of all ages are very welcome.

I hope we’ll see you there!

Twenty Years of Cello

In July of 1994, I found a cello teacher, met with her, started working on rhythm and reading music, and with her help bought a secondhand cello from one of her other students who had just upgraded. There’s a loose note on the inside cover of my notebook that reads 30 July 1994: C major scale *pivot and thumb, Schröder pp. 4+5, Suzuki #2+3, which would have been my very first bit of cello homework.

On the sixth of August, I had my first actual lesson entry in my notebook. It looks like my homework was practicing a C major scale both up and down, being careful about the position of my first finger on the A string, remembering to pivot the arm and keep the thumb loose but in place behind the neck, and to cut my nails. It’s telling that these are all still things I have to think about, even after twenty years. Plus ça change…

Aww, Schröder etudes nos. 5 and 6, and Suzuki 4 and 5 (AKA Song of the Wind and Go Tell Aunt Rhody) — and all in pizzicato, because we didn’t start with the bow until November of that year.

This is what I just finished playing in Suzuki:

As you can see from my numerous notations, there’s a lot more to be thinking about, mostly to do with interpretation. A lot of these notes are more holistic than prescriptive, like “visualise leaves,” and would be useless to anyone else trying to decipher them, like “wahm wahm” and “poof poof poof poof.” Others are actually scribbles by Owlet, with bonus tiny owl stickers because she loves me. My teacher asked me if I wanted a clean copy to play from at the recital, and I said no; I like this one just fine, messy scribbles, stickers, and all.

The chickadee sticker at the top of the left page was placed there by Sparky, actually, carefully chosen from our teacher’s extensive sticker collection. We always get a sticker on our recital piece, in celebration. I may be in my forties, but a sticker on my recital piece still makes me very happy.

Twenty years. So much has evolved. I have had to revisit certain pieces of technique over and over again — the left elbow, the right wrist — because as something else is modified, the changes cascade and you have to relearn how the muscles and movement interact again. Right now I’m struggling to figure out how to get my left fingers just right for thumb position. I have really long fingers, and while this is great in general for playing, thumb position requires fingers to bend and pronate to be just right, and I have a lot of length to bend. It’s uncomfortable. But then, just about every bit of technique is when you start trying it. I’ll get there.

Cello Thoughts

It’s recital day. I’ve had a rocky season with lots of downs and not very many ups.

At a lesson in early May I got not one, but two bad pieces of cello news. As if cello hadn’t been hard enough for me (I’m having a really difficult time understanding and settling into musical lines lately, and it’s driving me up the wall), it suddenly got way worse: our principal cellist and section leader (who also happens to be my teacher) had been invited to teach at CAMMAC summer camp, and so she couldn’t play in our annual Canada Day concert. She would be replaced by a guest principal… who also happens to be the conductor’s wife. She is a lovely person, and a terrific cellist whom we’ve worked with before, but all of a sudden I felt like I had to work even harder on pieces that were already somewhat challenging, because there would be someone judging me (I know, I know, it’s a community orchestra, this doesn’t actually happen, everyone plays to the best of their ability, except argh). My confidence relies on my teacher’s presence a lot. And even worse, as there are only four celli in the section now, I am the second cello playing the upper line when it’s divisi, which means I’m playing a line with the principal cellist. Just her and me. And the top line is traditionally the crazier, more difficult one. No pressure.

The second bit of bad news I got that day was my teacher suggesting that maybe my piece wasn’t in good enough shape this close to the recital, and perhaps we should pull something else out and dust it off. We hadn’t worked on it for a couple of lessons, focusing on the group pieces and orchestra music instead, and since I only have biweekly lessons, that means a month. But I didn’t have anything else, because I don’t work through the Suzuki books the way others do. Every piece I work on is my next recital piece. I have orchestra and Sparky’s lessons and group pieces for both the younger and the older groups, and so my efforts are spread over a broader field. I don’t measure my progress by how quickly I move through the Suzuki repertoire. (And a good thing, too, because I don’t need any more stress.) So I came perilously close to tears, and we worked through the rest of the lesson. I got home and tried to be objective, going through the few collections of music I have, and found a transcription of Wagner’s “Song to the Evening Star” from Tannhäuser. I didn’t have the piano accompaniment, though, so I did a bit of sleuthing online and tracked down an even better, more faithful transcription of the song on IMSLP. I sent it to my teacher as an alternate suggestion.

She liked it, and we have it lined up for my Christmas recital piece. She apologized for making the suggestion at the time she did in the lesson, and said that by the end of the lesson my piece had already improved to the point that we didn’t need to substitute anything new. It was a hiccough along the road, that’s all, but it was hard while it was happening.

Orchestra is… well. It’s feeling like a triage every week: What am I worst at that I need to beat into some kind of acceptable shape before next rehearsal? It doesn’t help that I don’t enjoy playing two of the pieces because I don’t like the music very much. Sometimes I grow to enjoy pieces I’m not fond of because playing them provides a whole different kind of appreciation, but not this time. On the other hand, we’re playing the very first piece of Tchaikovsky music I fell in love with as a young teenager, the waltz from Eugene Onegin, and the third act prelude from Lohengrin, which are lovely. But everything else I am either ‘meh’ about or actively disliking, which is a very odd place for me to be in. I’m not particularly looking forward to this concert.

Sparky has been growingly sulky and whiny about cello. Part of this is nine-year-old self-expression, I know, and part of it is a general ‘I’ve had it’ with school and lessons; it’s that time of year. But he has asked to stop, has flat out said “I’m not doing cello any more after this recital,” and I’m of two minds. I would really like my cello time back to myself, to stop wasting money and energy on something that isn’t appreciated. (I could enjoy lessons and group class again! I could afford to have my own lesson every week!) But he does enjoy it when it’s going well, and he’s good at it. He’s at a point where things are improving rapidly, and dropping it now means that he won’t really see all the work he’s put in reaching a rewarding fulfillment for him. And yes, there’s also the fact that if we let him stop, he has gotten what he wants by whining and being disagreeable enough that I don’t want to deal with it any more. If he drops cello, he wins, and that’s the part I don’t like, because I don’t want to reinforce whining = getting what he wants. It just grates on me, especially since I’m with him every second of his cello life. In the end it’s the behaviour that’s unacceptable, and that’s what I’m struggling with. I am never going to force a child to go to music lessons if he actively dislikes them, but that’s not the case. He’s trying to avoid the work and focus, and the tactics he’s using irritate me a lot. If he presented me calmly with valid reasons for stopping, I’d be more okay with it.

At the moment, I’ve said we’ll talk about it during the summer. Time off should help. We’ll see. If he decides he wants to stop, then he’ll be the one who tells his teacher, and presents his reasons. I’d be fine with him taking a season off, too, going back after Christmas. But if he decides to drop it completely, then he has to choose another extra-curricular activity, preferably one HRH could do with him. There’s a great karate school near us, and he’s always been interested in that; maybe he could try a session of it.

Anyway, we just need to get through the day. And last lesson, my teacher suggested that we play through what I’ll be working on this summer…

The last time I worked on these with a teacher was about seventeen years ago. (Hey, did you know that as of this summer, I will have been playing the cello for twenty years? That’s pretty awesome.) The Bach solo suites. It’s like being handed the key to the inner sanctum of cellists.

Spring Concert Announcement!

We’re presenting our spring concert this Saturday evening! This one really crept up on me, because I had to take a month off from cello and orchestra for several reasons. But suddenly, it’s concert time!

This concert’s theme is Musical Gems:

    Mother Goose Suite – Ravel
    S̩r̩nade Op 7 РR. Strauss
    Concerto grosso op. 6 no. 1 – Handel
    Symphony no. 40 in G minor – Mozart

It is also dedicated to George, the eldest member of our cello section, who passed away two weeks ago. He was one of the original founding members of the orchestra, and a fascinating, philosophical man with a very dry sense of humour. He will be missed.

The concert is taking place at 7:30 PM on Saturday 29 March 2014 at Valois United, our orchestra’s home, which is at 70 Belmont Ave (corner King) in Pointe-Claire. Admission is $10, free for children 18 and under. The concerts usually last just about two hours, including the refreshment break. There is a map as well as public transport info on the church website. Children of all ages are always very welcome.

Owlet: Thirty Months Old!

Owlet is going through another level-up in language; it’s just more precise in general. (Except for ‘pinnanose.’ “Play pinnanose, Mummy?” I almost don’t want to teach her to say pee-yan-oh, because hearing her ask to play “pinnanose” makes me giggle inside every time.) She’s slimming a bit (thank goodness), and her legs look longer as a result. She looks more like a little girl now than a chubby toddler. I had to buy her a new snowsuit (the second one this winter) one size bigger, with longer sleeves and legs. She’s wearing size 4 jeans and tops, and I have no idea what her shoe size is; she’s worn size 9 boots all winter, but I bought them large on purpose. Her two-year-old molars are finally IN, thank goodness.

Her favourite colour is “pupple.” Her favourite foods are yoghurt (‘yodirt’), gravy (on anything — I have to keep a container of it in the fridge to pour over anything at a moment’s notice), her Shreddies and Ohs (her word for Cheerios) with milk in the morning, and “TANDIES!” after supper. (She gets two M&Ms for dessert after dinner. She tries to ask for them after breakfast and lunch, too, but that’s not happening.) She dips her whole hand into HRH’s coffee and licks it off. He caught her gently putting my wineglass down the other day. She looked at him and kind of smacked her lips quietly.

She’s working on issuing commands, often at inappropriate times. She occasionally tries to put people, things, or cats into time outs at random moments, or scolds them sternly for something they did ages ago that she suddenly needs to work through again in her mind.

She is very into Hide and Seek. Like most toddlers, she is somewhat unclear on the concept, but loves what she does anyway. She’ll hide in the same place that she found Sparky just about every time, and of course he finds her right away. We had to explain to him that he needed to pretend to look. “Why? I know where she is,” he said. Well, buddy, we knew exactly where you were when you played it at her age, too, but we played along.

She is also very into playing babies: rocking them, giving them bottles, and burping them. Her imaginative play with her Fisher Price animals and her ponies is starting to take off, too. There are general storylines that are followed: one pony gets a crown or something, runs to everypony one by one and says, “Look! Look!” and the other pony says, “Oh, you look so pretty!” Then they run to the next pony together, and so on. With the farm animals, one of them comes running to me and says, “So-and-so pushed me.” We have to go through the process of calling the offending party over, asking if it pushed the aggrieved party, reminding it that we don’t push our friends, and requesting an apology.

She had a bad cold at the end of January that had her home from school for a week, and triggered a nasty round of croup. If I’d known her entire class was coughing, I’d have sent her back two days earlier; I was doing the good parent thing and keeping her home to avoid infecting anyone else, but it turned out they were all sick already. Oh, well. We had fun doing groceries, and watching Sesame Street, and making lunches and scones together. One day I had to drop off a round of daycare cheques for the next couple of months, and they sent home a craft for her to do that the other kids had done earlier in the week. She loved doing her “homework” while Sparky did his. She played with the iPad way too much while she was ill, and I had to institute a detox when she went back to school; that did not go over well at all. There was about a week of screaming before and after school, but then everything settled, and now she’s back to books and toys in her down time, thank goodness.

Her favourite books at the moment are Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch, and the Oliver Jeffers books, particularly The Way Back Home. Her favourite song is “Let It Go” from Frozen, which she sings remarkably clearly, surprisingly on-key for a toddler, and does all the motions she’s seen in the video. Her favourite parts to play out are when Elsa builds the ice palace, and when she pulls off her crown and throws it away. (Sparky is also in love with this song, and sings it particularly well.) She is going to absolutely love the film when we get it on DVD.