To promote her new album An Ancient Muse (which is quite good, although I’m only halfway through it so far), Loreena McKennitt will be appearing at the Galeries Laval location of Archambault (1545 Le Corbusier Blvd, Laval, QC) on December 2 at 14h00. It’s a bit of a commute outside Montreal, but it’s the only appearance she’s doing in the province at the moment. No concert dates have been announced yet, either, but I’m sure there will be.
Category Archives: Music
Unexpected Mailbox Joy!
There was money in my mailbox today! Well, not actual money, but a cheque in US funds that I wasn’t expecting. I did a tech read for an excellent book in early October, and I completely forgot that the new consultant contract I’m working under pays me separately for things like that.
And you know what? Not only does this cheque completely cover what I paid for my new cello pickup, I will have extra left over. Which means I can buy both the new Loreena McKennitt album and Thomas Pynchon novel being released today without a twinge of guilt.
Hurrah!
Concert Recap
After every concert we put on, I want to come home and journal about how this was The Best Concert Ever! And what that says to me is that I (a) enjoy them, (b) feel confident about our capabilities, and (c) the concerts go really really well, (d) the presence of an audience adds that extra edge, and (e) the concerts are fun. And evidently the audiences agree with me, because they keep coming back.
Last night was excellent. I’ll be riding the high for quite some time.
For my part, I was concerned about my performance in the Beethoven. September and October were horribly busy months, where I couldn’t practice as I wanted to practice (which quickly became the way I needed to practice), and trying to catch up in November proved extremely difficult. I’m proud to say I pulled it off: I didn’t savage the really difficult bits, only twice fell apart and stopped playing altogether for a bar or two, and nailed some of the stuff that had been really stonewalling me. The entire orchestra melded into a seamless Beethoven-playing machine, and achieved some sort of para-Beethoven performance that even we didn’t anticipate. Not that we expected it to go badly; it’s just that we’d never played it quite like that before. Everything else on the programme went smoothly as well, but the Beethoven simply overshadowed it all.
Also, my debut as a triangle player was a triumph.
The house was about three-quarters full, which was very gratifying because there’s nothing worse for a performer than to look out into the audience and behold a sea of empty seats: it’s demoralizing. And in the end, three people who I hadn’t been expecting showed up as well as the three I knew would be there. Thank you t!, Jan, MLG, Jeff, Paze, and HRH; your presence meant a lot to me. (Plus you got to enjoy some really, really fine music.) And I appreciate all the well-wishes for our season opener left in form of journal comments and phone and e-mail messages from those who couldn’t make it, too.
And I discovered that having a dress rehearsal the morning of the concert date itself does dreadful things to my sense of time and the day’s schedule. I’m thankful that this was an exception to the rule.
Next up: the first section of the Messiah!
Psyched
This concert is going to rock. I also have a percussion solo, or more correctly, I play when everyone else is playing but I play the only example of a particular percussive instrument in this concert. (Yes, I play the cello. Apparently I also have a secret identity. Don’t worry, Mousme, your job is safe.)
My only regret about the day is not being able to share the fun over at the ADZO household this afternoon, because I really, really could have gone for a relaxing family birthday thing with good friends. (Well, I also regret not being able to go to band practice today to test out my new cello pickup, but that can happen next weekend.)
The concert is at 19h30 tonight, folks, and the location and directions and particulars can be found here. It’s public, and the more the merrier!
tearful the day
While I work I’m listening to the new Evanescence album The Open Door for the first time, and enjoying it more than I enjoyed the first album.
And then something in my brain that was paying attention to the music knocked on the other part of my brain that was writing, and said, “Excuse me, but we have a very well-done integration thing happening here, and it’s really very interesting. I think you should listen more closely.”
I know I’ve had music and masses on the brain for the past two weeks, but there’s really nothing like hearing Mozart woven into gothic rock, and woven in (thankfully) well.
Drawback
The only problem with writing historical-based fiction:
typetypetypetypetype — pause
Q: Wait — damn. Did Albinoni actually write a Gloria? Even more specifically, did he write one before this point in time?
A: Maybe? Difficult to prove since very few of his works were actually published, meaning that most were lost. I can get away with saying that yes, there was a minor Gloria written by Albinoni for the purposes of my narrative. Also, I have just discovered that he was rather fond of the oboe, which suits one of my characters rather well.
I think I’m going to go out for a walk, before the apocalypse-like flood hits late this afternoon.
Release
I’m about to move the herbal and pregnancy books off the reference shelf within arm’s reach of my desk, where I keep the books I need at a moment’s notice during whatever project I’m currently writing. This is somewhat of a ritual, because it’s a sign of me finally completely releasing whatever’s been eating my brain for the past however many months.
The books that will be staying there are the ones at the far end, the ones on swans and mills and late medieval technology. And the ones I will add this afternoon are the ones on Vivaldi and music and Baroque-era life, for this new novella which is now threatening to turn into a full-length YA historical novel, one that may well have publication potential when I’m done and it’s been revised.
Once the initial furious output on this story calms down, I’m looking forward to being able to go back and forth between it and Swan Sister. And early in the new year I’d like to go back to rewriting the Pandora book, too, and finally writing the end now that I’ve figured it out.