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A Musical Summer
Aug. 18th, 2019 03:00 pmAs usual, I attended Music & Beyond this summer - it was celebrating its 10th year. In many ways, it was the best year ever - more "beyond" concerts than in the past couple of years, still a great selection of harp concerts and concerts from the Baroque era, plus at least one exciting new venue - All Saints Event Space in Sandy Hill. The main frustration was that sometimes there was quite a long distance to travel (on foot) between concerts. Still, I made it to 17 concerts over the 2-week period of the festival and definitely got my money's worth out of my early-bird pass.
So what were the highlights? An Ocean Apart, which highlighted the linkages between songs of England and those of Nova Scotia, was interesting and featured a number of my favourite composers. So were the concerts offered on the first Sunday - Music and Water, and Return to the Garden. Both of those featured a harp, which is an instrument I love. The baroque harp was also featured in "Sparrows, Doves, Ravens, Owls", a concert of mostly 17th century compositions by Purcell, John Jenkins, John Blow and others.
In the "beyond" category, I went to "Music, art and literature in the life of Igor Gouzenko", where Julian Armour actually read out part of a letter that Gouzenko's daughter wrote to him, and "Music and Law", with retired chief justice Beverley Mclachlin and mystery author introducing her selections with wonderfully entertaining stories about how those particular pieces related to legal matters. On the second Saturday of the festival, I also attended a very interesting concert of music and dance. Then on the Monday there was Sherlock Holmes and Music, which as something of a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, I obviously had to go to!
At The Planets, I got to hear the newly-restored organ at Notre-Dame Basilica on Sussex Drive. That was a treat, although it was a warm evening and the venue, surprisingly, was not air-conditioned.
I'm not going to describe all of the concerts I got to, but I do want to spend a bit of time on Music and the Brain, with Michel Rochon. It was mainly lecture format, interspersed with short piano segments, but Rochon is also a pianist, composer and medical and scientific journalist currently teaching at l"Universite du Quebec a Montreal. He said some interesting things - for example, he feels that improvisation should be taught (insofar as it can be) or at least should be a component of music education. He mentioned how he feels while improvising that it isn't really him doing the playing - shades, perhaps, of "automatic" handwriting? He also said (in answer to a question from the audience) that he believed absolute pitch (sometimes called "perfect pitch") to be more of a drawback than an advantage; I found that slightly inconsistent in light of his views on improvisation. I will say that music teachers of my youth tended to say that playing by ear instead of reading the music in front of you was a negative thing, perhaps promoting lazy habits or something? I don't really know what the current views on music education (whether of kids or adults) may be - I guess I'll have to consult family experts on that one! Anyway, I'm now reading Michel Rochon's book "Le Cerveau et La Musique". He writes in a very accessible style, geared to the lay-person but with plenty of suggestions for further reading.
After Music & Beyond came Chamberfest. Rather than getting a fuIl pass for that, picked up a "pick-six" pack of six general admission tickets. That meant a choice of three concerts for the two of us. All three of them were at the National Gallery auditorium - Baroque Treasures, Eybler Quartet and Clara Schumann 200th birthday celebration. I won't go into more detail about them, although I enjoyed them all. But they afforded us a great opportunity to visit some of the artworks, including their summer blockbuster of Gauguin works and the photography of Dave Heath.
I've got a couple of CDs on order at the moment - one of them the new Bruce Cockburn album and the other some "lost tapes" of Ian & Sylvia.
We've also gone to a few movies this summer, and most of them also seem to be about music _ Yesterday; Leonard and Marianne; and Rocketman (about Elton John). I may provide some reviews at a later date, but for now I think I'm all wrote out.
So what were the highlights? An Ocean Apart, which highlighted the linkages between songs of England and those of Nova Scotia, was interesting and featured a number of my favourite composers. So were the concerts offered on the first Sunday - Music and Water, and Return to the Garden. Both of those featured a harp, which is an instrument I love. The baroque harp was also featured in "Sparrows, Doves, Ravens, Owls", a concert of mostly 17th century compositions by Purcell, John Jenkins, John Blow and others.
In the "beyond" category, I went to "Music, art and literature in the life of Igor Gouzenko", where Julian Armour actually read out part of a letter that Gouzenko's daughter wrote to him, and "Music and Law", with retired chief justice Beverley Mclachlin and mystery author introducing her selections with wonderfully entertaining stories about how those particular pieces related to legal matters. On the second Saturday of the festival, I also attended a very interesting concert of music and dance. Then on the Monday there was Sherlock Holmes and Music, which as something of a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, I obviously had to go to!
At The Planets, I got to hear the newly-restored organ at Notre-Dame Basilica on Sussex Drive. That was a treat, although it was a warm evening and the venue, surprisingly, was not air-conditioned.
I'm not going to describe all of the concerts I got to, but I do want to spend a bit of time on Music and the Brain, with Michel Rochon. It was mainly lecture format, interspersed with short piano segments, but Rochon is also a pianist, composer and medical and scientific journalist currently teaching at l"Universite du Quebec a Montreal. He said some interesting things - for example, he feels that improvisation should be taught (insofar as it can be) or at least should be a component of music education. He mentioned how he feels while improvising that it isn't really him doing the playing - shades, perhaps, of "automatic" handwriting? He also said (in answer to a question from the audience) that he believed absolute pitch (sometimes called "perfect pitch") to be more of a drawback than an advantage; I found that slightly inconsistent in light of his views on improvisation. I will say that music teachers of my youth tended to say that playing by ear instead of reading the music in front of you was a negative thing, perhaps promoting lazy habits or something? I don't really know what the current views on music education (whether of kids or adults) may be - I guess I'll have to consult family experts on that one! Anyway, I'm now reading Michel Rochon's book "Le Cerveau et La Musique". He writes in a very accessible style, geared to the lay-person but with plenty of suggestions for further reading.
After Music & Beyond came Chamberfest. Rather than getting a fuIl pass for that, picked up a "pick-six" pack of six general admission tickets. That meant a choice of three concerts for the two of us. All three of them were at the National Gallery auditorium - Baroque Treasures, Eybler Quartet and Clara Schumann 200th birthday celebration. I won't go into more detail about them, although I enjoyed them all. But they afforded us a great opportunity to visit some of the artworks, including their summer blockbuster of Gauguin works and the photography of Dave Heath.
I've got a couple of CDs on order at the moment - one of them the new Bruce Cockburn album and the other some "lost tapes" of Ian & Sylvia.
We've also gone to a few movies this summer, and most of them also seem to be about music _ Yesterday; Leonard and Marianne; and Rocketman (about Elton John). I may provide some reviews at a later date, but for now I think I'm all wrote out.
