Category Archives: Music

Concert Reminder!

Right! Since it’s little over a week until the first concert of the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra 2006-07 season, consider this your official notification and invitation to an evening of excellent music!

Next Saturday evening, November 18, at 19h30 (this time now confirmed) we will be presenting a wonderfully varied programme for your listening enjoyment:

Overture to “The Devil in Hydraulicus” – Schubert
Melody in F, op. 3 no. 1 – Rubenstein
Symphony no. 8 in F major – Beethoven
“Waves of the Danube” waltz – Ivanovici
Two Hungarian Dances – Brahms
“Skaters’ Waltz” – Waldteufel

Admission is $10 per person; entrance is free for those under 18 years of age. The concerts usually last a couple of hours, a bit longer if there’s an intermission.

The concert takes place in Pointe-Claire at Valois United Church, on the corner of Belmont and King. The 203 and 204 buses stop within one to three blocks away, and the Dorion/Rigaud commuter train stops at the foot of Queen. While there are general public transport directions here for you, I usually encourage people who are carless to find someone who has a car and share the cost of the driver’s admission to the concert among them. It’s more fun to enjoy the evening in the company of others. (Here’s a map for those of you who will be driving.)

Soothe the gloom of November with an evening of soul-warming music! See you there!

Thanks

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who dug Vivaldi recordings out of their collections and lent them to me unasked. I now have over six hours’ worth of Vivaldi music, which is perfect for my current writing soundtrack.

Anyone have any Geminani? (Kidding. I’m kidding!) (Although now it would be interesting to find out if anyone has some, just for trivia’s sake.)

In Summary

Today was a dull, gloomy, very rainy day. And I ignored it all, and wrote all day long instead. The novella now stands at total of 11,174 words, which means 4,193 new words today (whee! — not that this is going to happen often). I encountered an interesting development in the form of passive-aggressive insistence from a character whom I had intended to be an old, dour, stubborn obstacle somewhere down the line insinuating herself into the storyline as a young, charming, sympathetic woman. I shall have to make the obstacle the board of governors instead.

I went to orchestra tonight feeling not as bad I generally have been feeling because I managed to get some practice in today, and it showed when I played the Beethoven. Unfortunately, I ignored the other pieces in favour of the Beethoven symphony because it’s what needed the most work, and that showed too, particularly because we played them last and my right hand has been stiff all day, so I kept fumbling the bow as well as missing fingering. Although I console myself with the fact that twice tonight, the Beethoven was so good that my throat closed up and I had to fight back a feeling of being swept away by the music.

Our principle cellist is test-driving a new cello, and she let me try it at break. Oh, it was so gentle on the fingers. I’ve been told by luthiers that my cello is remarkably easy to play, but it requires pounding and sawing in comparison to this one, which was incredibly soft and gave almost no resistance at all to fingers or bow. It felt as if it was cooperating in the creation of sound, as opposed to being played. I played a band solo on it, and some of the new sequences from the latest song we’ve been working on, and it was… well, I keep saying it over and over, so there’s no point in belabouring it: My cello was stiff in comparison. Although it made me despair somewhat, I’m glad I had the chance to play it because now I know how good a cello can be, and that’s the kind of thing I can look for when I eventually get to a point where I can seriously shop for an upgrade.

And from the file marked “Eep”, I realised tonight that we only have one more regular rehearsal before the concert date. I’m not quite sure when that happened. Possibly when the last half of October got eaten by my book deadline.

New Speakers!

Oh, my goodness. A subwoofer makes all the difference. These Vivaldi cello sonatas and concertos? Positively creamy. A dark cream, but creamy nonetheless.

Liam fell asleep in the car on the way home from shopping, and I managed to not only get him out of the car without waking him up, but inside the house, into his crib, and out of his jacket. I’m feeling pretty darn smug, let me tell you. Of course, he’s going to be ravenous when he eventually wakes up, because he fell asleep before he could have his lunch, but now I have the time to fix his sandwich and potatoes without the boy having a minor meltdown about how cruel I am to keep him waiting the five minutes it takes to prepare his meal. I’ll just keep them warm. And then after lunch it’s off to visit with his godparents!

As an antidote to all that feeling smartness, I feel dumb because I can’t collapse the new umbrella stroller we used. At all. I like to think it’s jammed, but I probably just can’t remember the correct combination of push-here bend-there it requires.

The Writing Soundtrack

Two problems.

One: I am astonished to discover that I have next to no Vivaldi recordings. I have the ubiquitous Four Seasons and an album of double concerti (for the double cello concerto, of course), and once upon a time there was also my beloved Il Giardino Armonico The Red Priest album that was enthusiastically lent to someone (who?) the week after I got it and subsequently lost track of it, but that seemed to be it until I remembered that all my cello CDs are on a different shelf. Still, there are only two more albums of cello concerti and sonatas there. Sounds like it’s time to invest in a couple of low-budget CDs of general instrumental stuff, and the Gloria, at the least. (Naxos, you are my friend.)

Two: The speakers I’ve been using for my computer have finally died. They died an honourable death, being the first set of high-quality speakers I received with my Discman back when I was seventeenish, so they’ve been in steady use for eighteen years or so. The only problem is that my sound card doesn’t have a speaker on it, so I’ve had to hunt out my big cushiony headphones and the cable extension to reach to the port on the back of the computer tower. Working with headphones is very odd. I’m not sure if I like it or not yet.

ESTC Update

Total word count, ESTC: 41,207
Total words today and yesterday: 1,172

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
41,207 / 50,000
(82.4%)

You know that whole dramatic “how will I ever fit all the info that has to go into Chapter Two into Chapter Two!” thing I’ve been wibbling and worrying about?

Short. Very, very short. Three pages of point form notes, which will probably expand to six once I write it out. Which leaves me lots of room for all the other stuff I want to write, like rituals in the final chapter and another three or so pages of meta stuff on rites of passage that belong in Chapter Two as well; all the things I wanted to include but was afraid wouldn’t fit. Yay me.

Oh, and I made pretzels this morning. Next time I’ll use one cup less flour and cut the sugar in the dough by maybe half. Very excellent nonetheless. But then, I’m a salt devotee, and I adore big dough pretzels.

And there’s nothing like the Colonial theme from the BSG season 2 soundtrack to get me motivated. Of course, it also has other associations for me, but damn, it’s a fine, fine piece of music.

Er

I like Sting.

I love John Dowland.

Sting singing John Dowland? Um. I’m not sold.

The lute playing is awesome so far, though. It’s just that Sting’s voice and style are so modern, and the Dowland is so, well, Tudor. I’m not sure it works. What I am sure of is that it’s going to introduce Dowland to a whole new set of people, which can only be a good thing. And he sounds like he’s very in love with the music and respects it, which I respect in turn, and kudos to him for recording a Dowland album at all.

Maybe it’s just that the album opens with “Can She Excuse My Wrongs?”, which is my very favourite Dowland song, and the pace of it along with his expression don’t quite fit. The slower tracks aren’t as jarring, possibly because he sounds less modern. And the spoken word bits are very good too.

Did I mention the excellent lute playing?

My liking for the whole thing is certainly improving as the album progresses.

Currently Listening: Songs From the Labyrinth, Sting