So far, our visit has been lovely. I forgot the document I’m supposed to read and a laptop upon which to read it, but other than that, the trip down was excellent, we have eaten excellent food, and had excellent company. Mum and I are about to visit Spun Fibre Arts, a local yarn shop that retails not only Louet, but Ashford and Schacht spinning wheels.
Back soon. And happy belated Solstice, everyone.
Hail, faithful orchestra groupies! July 1 is coming up, which means that the annual Canada Day concert presented by the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra is also nigh!
On Wednesday July 1 the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will be giving a free (yes, free!) concert as part of the overall Canada Day celebrations in conjunction with Pointe-Claire Village. We do this every year, and it’s always terrific fun. Our guest conductor is the justly famed Stewart Grant, who is phenomenal.
This year’s exciting programme features:
Symphony no. 3 – Schubert
Pavane РFaur̩
Norwegian Dances – Grieg
English Folk Song Suite – Vaughn-Williams
The concert begins at 20h00. As always, it is being presented at St-Joachim church in Pointe-Claire Village, located right on the waterfront at 2 Ste-Anne Street, a block and a half south of Lakeshore Road. The 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro drops you right at the corner of Sainte-Anne and Lakeshore. Here’s a map to give you a general idea. I usually encourage those facing public transport to get together and coax a vehicle-enabled friend along by offering to buy them an ice cream or something. It works nicely, and it’s fun to go with a group. And hey, you can’t beat the price. Be aware that if you’re driving, parking will be at a premium because of the whole Canada Day festivities thing going on. Give yourself extra time to find a parking place and walk to the church, which will be packed with people.
As it’s a holiday, the village will be full of various celebrations, booths, food stalls, and the like. You might want to come early and enjoy what’s going on.
Free classical music! Soul-enriching culture! And as an enticing 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.
Write it on your calendar, tell all your friends and family members! The more the merrier!
Today the latest paycheque for recent freelance services arrived, on top of the provincial tax refund and the usual child assistance cheque earlier this week. I have a very nice deposit to make at the bank after my cello lesson this afternoon. Of course, municipal taxes and the car insurance and registration are also due. It never gets any easier. I handed in my latest assignment yesterday and am taking a month of leave from the freelance gig, because there’s two weeks of family vacation wherein I will accomplish nothing even when we are home, and I need to get some work for myself done. Orchestrated is just sitting there and I want it done and gone to make its rounds.
I came home from orchestra last night wired and very awake. Things went really, really well. The rest of the brass section joined us, and as they sit behind us I didn’t know they were there till they tuned with the rest of the horns we usually have. I jumped; some of the violins laughed at me. I love having a brass section at Canada Day; it adds such a nice rich texture to the lower tones. Anyway, I was very awake, and didn’t get to sleep till after one o’clock. I had a whole blog post written up in my mind but have essentially forgotten it.
I’m really enjoying working with this guest conductor, and I made a point of telling him so last night. Each guest we’ve had lead us has gotten better and better. I prefer this one the most. I hope the majority of the orchestra votes to accept a fee increase so that we can keep him. I think he’s worth it, and our yearly dues are ridiculously low to begin with.
And in other orchestra news, practising problem parts really does make them better. Who’d’ve known? The only problem is that due to time constraints and prioritization, I don’t practise the easier bits, so sometimes we get to places which ought to be easy and I stumble.
Took the boy to the doctor this morning; he’s about 38 lbs and 40 inches, two more and an inch more than six months ago, respectively.
Right. Now, lunch.
HELLO PROVINCIAL TAX REFUND!
(I’m sorry, was I a little loud, there? I’m a bit giddy. Nothing like getting a bit more back from the government than you expected.)
This, plus receiving 4/5ths of the payment for the full-size cello last night, means… buying the 7/8 cello is happening this Friday FOR REALS because I’m no longer missing a couple of hundred dollars. I’ll also be plunking a chunk down on the Visa, and then the rest is to be squirrelled away in savings against the rainy famine-not-feast days.
Thank you, world!
Now, if I could just concentrate on getting this assignment finished…
Today, the world is a little dimmer as one of its feline lights leaves us. It’s not my news to share, but the call telling me about it affected me deeply yesterday, and affects me more than it might have at any other time of the year.
Sunday marked the first year anniversary of Maggie’s death. And I don’t really know what to say other than I still miss her very much, and I am still unexpectedly reminded of her and tear up. A couple of months ago I heard a sound in the kitchen while I was working, a kind of rusty strangled meow-like sound, and in the back of my brain I identified it as one of the cats. Then my subconscious kind of poked me and said, “Well, yes, except the cat that made that particular sound you heard for seventeen years is no longer with us.” And I burst into tears, and e-mailed Ceri a garbled note that essentially said, “I still miss her so much.”
Cricket has taken to sleeping between HRH and I, something that Maggie used to do now and again, and when we watch TV next to one another she jumps up onto the chesterfield and snuggles between us. In both she reminds me of Maggie. Not that she’s doing exactly what Maggie used to do; it’s more like she’s joining us in the same activities Maggie used to accompany us in as well, sharing space and time that Maggie used to share, somehow bringing her into what it is we’re doing.
Liam still talks about her all the time. Up until a couple of months ago he was still telling random people that Maggie had died, and that Gryffindor was our new cat.
They leave us, but they don’t. There’s a Maggie-shaped hole in my heart, but her memory curls up there and is with me always.
And this isn’t anything like I wanted to write, but I can’t get the words out properly in any way that makes sense.
I’ve just been asked to read a well-known (well, within the Wicca field, anyway) and respected author’s upcoming work to blurb it.
Friday night I had my second to last cello lesson of the year. (Not the calendar year, the school year. Yes? Yes.) On the way there I was thinking that it would be nice to just play music. The last few lessons have been really focused on the polishing of technique and they were great, but I wasn’t certain I was in the mood for it this time.
(My brain also absented itself as I drove there and took me the way to orchestra instead. I found myself on Donegani wondering what I was doing. Was ten minutes late as a result.)
Anyhow, got there, set up, my teacher asked me what we were doing and I said we’d been putting the final touches on Grenadiers and we’d started prepping Gavotte. She said we’d warm up with the Gavotte prep exercises, so we worked on them, focusing on the minute readjustment of the left elbow necessary to stay in tune, and the release of the first finger guiding the bow to wrap around the string in order to avoid audible string crossings. Then we started playing the C section of Gavotte, then moved to play the whole piece. (Although I played through the A and B sections for fun I hadn’t worked them, and evidently I have been playing it much too quickly.) And then we were turning the page and looking at Bourrée, which I hadn’t played in, well, a decade, and we worked on similar issues with the addition of one of my banes, maintaining constant bow weight and not doing tiny accents on every new note when I change bow direction. She played with me during both pieces, either doubling my line or playing the cello accompaniment, and we played the whole piece I hadn’t prepped, which explained the lack of solid shifting halfway through. I really enjoyed it.
She said I’d handled the things we were addressing well, and I said I was glad, seeing as how I hadn’t prepped the Bourrée. She may have forgotten, or mixed me up with another student. Or maybe she was just determined to get me to the end of book 2 before we took our summer break. Whatever the reason, I said that I was glad we’d done what we did; I’d been hoping we wouldn’t drill the final phrasing bits of Grenadiers, and was thinking how nice it would be to just play music. She told me to just ask whenever I felt like that; she knows how things get, and she cheerfully accommodates students when they need that kind of lesson. I got it without asking, sort of, and still got to work on technique stuff. The last couple of lessons have been very technical and stop-and-start affairs focusing on single phrases, and sometimes I really get into those. This past lesson wasn’t one of those nights, though, so everything worked out just fine.
And so here we are, working on the end of the Suzuki book 2 review. I have my schedule of what pieces to review on what day of the week over the break, and my photocopy of handwritten prep exercises for book 3, and instruction to start messing about with it this summer. It feels like it has arrived somewhat suddenly, although we’ve been working on it since Thanksgiving interspersed with recital stuff and orchestra stuff. Everything I work on ties in somehow, and lots of what I’m working on in the technical sense is universally applicable.
When I think about the mental list of things I wanted to accomplish through lessons (becoming more familiar with the geography of the finger board, a more solid foundation in theory, improved intonation, a better bow hold, more efficient left hand movement, accurate thumb position, a better vibrato) we’ve done so much work on most of them. I no longer panic when a conductor uses most solfège terms (although I still can’t keep dièse and bémol and bécarre straight, and when someone starts using movable solfège terms I panic because why can’t we all just agree that do is C, why does it have to shift to indicate the tonic of whatever key you’re in?), my bow grip no longer causes cramps or locking of joints, my left hand can fly all over the place, and I know where notes are in different places with more certainty than ever before. I still trip a lot, and over- or under-shoot shifts, and my wrist keeps trying to reassert its reign over my right arm and lift the damn bow instead of leaving it on the string, but in general, I can tell that my technique has refined by leaps and bounds over the past eight months. And I’m filled with a smug kind of glee to think that I will only get better, and better, and better.
I am so glad that I decided to do this, and so very thankful that my teacher and I seem to fit one another’s teaching/learning styles. She charges so little and waves her hand at me when I say that we go overtime pretty much every lesson; apart from the buying of the new cello thing (which is two-thirds covered by the pending sale of the 4/4) this is very affordable financially, and time-wise is worth it. The discipline and reward are good for me in many different ways.