Category Archives: Music

Canada Day Concert Review, In Brief

My power is about to be turned off for the day due to work on the building, so this needs must be short and sweet.

The concert was a tremendous amount of fun, and all involved appeared to enjoy themselves immensely. The temperature had dropped after a solid rainstorm, there was a lovely breeze (which I hear might be due to a couple of my guests!), and the ambiance, of course, was spectacular as it always is in the St Joachim church.

Many, many heartfelt thanks go out to each and every one who came out to enjoy an evening of live classical music, and who evidently enjoyed themselves enough to rise en masse to give us a standing ovation. It was a wonderful finale to a terrific, though challenging, season. I always deeply appreciate the effort my friends make to attend these evenings.

What am I going to do all summer? (Other than see films on Wednesday nights, and attend book clubs, I mean…)

July Countdown

At last — cooler temperatures. Hurrah! I slept the night through and I’m extremely pleased.

We had a three-hour orchestra dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon, and wow, what a workout. By the end I was making clumsy mistakes in passages that I know I’ve flawlessly played through before. I also know there are a couple of spots that I really ought to practice today until my fingers bleed. Well, maybe not that far, but at least until muscle memory ensures that I can play them without tripping up tomorrow night.

And on the birthday front, I not only have chocolate liqueur (mmm) and a new cyclamen plant, but thanks to a united effort from MLG, Annika and Tara, I am now the proud owner of a Tara Bisset original! It’s a mirror with a wide frame, which features painted owls something like those at the Dance on the Sidewalk! web site, but with colours chosen especially for me. Owlies! Yay! They now hang by my front door, reminding me to smile and dance every time I leave to go out into world, and when I come home, too.

Memory Goes First

I completely, completely forgot that I have birthday coming up in a couple of weeks. I only remembered yesterday when, frustrated with not being able to find black sandals with a sane heel, I decided to buy the new Holly Cole CD and had it in my hands when I realised that I’d mentioned I wanted it in public, on my web log, and with a birthday approaching, I couldn’t safely purchase it.

I knew I had a birthday coming up. I mean, we’ve been discussing the absence of people whom I’d like to count among those to celebrate with, and my birthday is exactly two weeks after my oldest friend’s birthday (mmm, Thai food), and my students have planned a birthday outing for me as well… but it basically slipped my everyday conscious mind.

I’m certain I would have remembered in a rush when I flipped the calendar to July. Perhaps it’s my current obsession with the July 1 concert that’s taking up room that would otherwise be gleefully chanting, “It’s going to be my birth-day, it’s going to be my birth-day…”

To all intents and purposes, I forgot my own birthday. Cake, presents, loved ones.

This is a sign of old age, isn’t it.

Canada Day Concert Plug!

Hot.

Okay, give me a break; I’m not exactly working at full power, here. Sure, Montrealers are used to 35 degree Celsius temperatures that feel like 45 degrees thanks to the humidex factor (for those of you who still work on the Farenheit system, that’s something like 95 degrees and 113 degrees), but we usually work up to it slowly over a month. This week it was bang, suddenly hot and humid, with temperatures ten degrees over the average seasonal. Looks like things will cool off nicely over the next few days, though, with a beautiful clear Canada Day of about 25 degrees.

Speaking of Canada Day, yes, it’s concert-plugging time! Please note that the concert actually begins at 8 PM, and yes, it’s free. It’s being held at St Joachim Church in Pointe-Claire Village, below the Lakeshore, right on the waterfront; you can take the 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro. Free classical music! Culture! And as a bonus, the fireworks are scheduled for ten PM, right after we finish, and the church steps are a glorious spot from which to watch them.

I found a lovely black linen sleeveless dress for summer concerts on sale yesterday. I might have confused the salesgirl by scouting around for a small stool while I had it on. What’s the point of buying a concert dress if you’re not certain it will allow you to hold the cello between your legs? The one I really liked, with a woven linen design along the v-neck and the hem, I had to put back because I couldn’t set my feet far enough apart. The one I ended up with runs a close second, though, and is elegant and understated. Now, of course, since I have a new black linen dress, I need dressy black sandals to go with it. I sense a trip to Angrignon Mall tomorrow…

Words And Music Etc

Orchestra last night was like a train wreck. We all should have just stayed home; I mean, for goodness’ sake, we played the Grieg better the very first time when we were sight-reading it. Collectively, we appear to be at the stage where we know a bit, but not enough, so it’s falling apart. The only thing more dangerous than not knowing anything about a subject is knowing a bit about it.

And, on a completely different topic, here’s an example of why I love the English language:

Verse feet in the romances are predominantly iambic, but anapests and trochees that appear should often be taken as welcome prosodic variations.
–from the introduction to Middle English Verse Romances by Donald B Sands

And this morning I found this in the writing diary of Virginia Woolf:

Writing is not in the least an easy art. Thinking what to write, it seems easy; but the thought evaporates, runs hither and thither.

And that’s it, really; when you think about it, and conceive of the finished product, it seems a piece of cake. Actually doing it, though; wrestling the language into some semblance of gawky order… now, that’s anything but cake. More like cement and traffic-light brownies or something. Or whatever you can think of that describes hard and heavy and not what you were expecting when you put it in the oven at all.

Oh, and I saw the four Animatrix shorts plus Final Flight of the Osiris last night; a colleague of my husband’s recorded them for us. I enjoyed them all for different reasons. I already had every intention to pick up the compilation DVD next week, but now I have even more motivation to do so.

On Dreams Etc

My parents are back from their trip to Italy, and when my mother called last night she sounded like she’d been roaming the pages of Janson’s History of Art, pages 278 to 473 inclusive (in the third edition; YMMV depending on the edition you consult, of course). I’m extremely happy for them; it sounds like they enjoyed themselves immensely, but I am just a teensy bit jealous. It comes from being so well educated, I think. If I’d never learned anything about art or history or Western Culture, then I’d have no reason to be envious, would I?

I’ll be interested to see the success rate of this dreaming true thing I’ve been experiencing on and off. Some events I’d like to see happen, such as the wedding of two friends at a particular time of year, or last night’s dream of a film starring Tom Cruise and Carrie-Anne Moss. Then there are others which I’d rather not see happen, like being told by a book rep during the winter that Terry Pratchett has just died. I think I’d like to be completely wrong on that last one, thanks.

Today, I sit down with my first NaNo novel and edit, edit, edit. This will be Edit No. 4, and, I think, the final edit before I write query letters and choose sample chapters to submit to an as-of-yet undetermined list of publishers. One of my cats has graciously consented to be in my presence this morning, so maybe today I’m not as cranky as I have been. Or perhaps she’s just acting out of pity, and it’s pure charity. Whatever her motivation, today will feature Maggie, laptop, peppermint tea, and lotus incense. And Mozart, whose music appears throughout the novel. (Yeah, I know; a CD tray full of Mozart should drive me crackers by about noon. I’ll strike back with Tori Amos when I can’t stand it any more.)