blogcutter

Slowly but uncertainly, the options for going out somewhere interesting are expanding. Beaches and splash pads are mostly open. Some beaches even have water wheelchairs for folks with disabilities. The Ottawa Art gallery has reopened, in a limited way. You have to reserve a time (a two-hour window) online beforehand and they're only open Wednesdays through Sundays. Still, in the 10 AM to noon slot, they give priority to seniors and there were still slots open when I last checked. Given that OC Transpo is free for seniors on Wednesdays, I may book a Wednesday morning slot n the near future, perhaps in a week or two.

As for the National Gallery, it will be reopening July 16 and 17 for members only, and Saturday for the general public. It will only be open Thursdays through Sundays. The Ingenium series of museums will be re-opening during August, starting with the agricultural museum on August 1. Aviation and Space opens August 8 and Science and Technology on August 14. There too, members will be allowed in slightly before the rest (July 20 and 31; August 6 and 7; August 12 and 13). And it seems that they too will only be open on a Wednesday through Sunday or Thursday through Sunday schedule and they want you to pre-book online. I don't know about the War Museum or the Museum of History. The Museum of Nature was planning for a September re-opening last I heard. It will be interesting to see which exhibits are open and which ones remain closed off for now. I guess it will be easier for the "look but don't touch" places like art galleries than for somewhere like the Museum of Science and Technology or the Children's Museum, which have always been very hands-on oriented.

It's progress, although it all seems a bit of a hassle. Having to pre-book means the day you've reserved may turn out to be the kind of stiflingly hot day when you don't feel like going anywhere. I'm also concerned that I might get super-exhausted if the café facilities are all closed and there's no place to sit down and enjoy a coffee or cold drink or snack. It also seems to me it would be better if they could all re-open on a 6 days-a-week schedule (though maybe still with reduced hours each day to facilitate regular cleaning) - if nothing else, it would make things easier for physical distancing.

Last week when the temperatures soared to unbearable levels, we enjoyed our first ice cream cone of the season at Purple Cow. It was a different experience from last year - we had to line up outside as there were two couples or pairs of people ahead of us and we were all masked. But it didn't take too long. Another day we drove to the Shouldice stand on Prince of Wales and got a big basket of strawberries and a smaller basket of tomatoes.

So we enjoy the small pleasures in life where we can get them. I still think we could be allowed to do more. Reopening playground equipment is long overdue. And reopening movie theatres, including the special screenings like Stars and Strollers, would allow people to escape into air-conditioned comfort. It might be necessary to block off some of the seats but when I think of how South Keys, for example, used to regularly hold daytime screenings (even the cheap Tuesday ones) attended by perhaps half a dozen people, it strikes me as ludicrous that we're not reopening them now while the summer heat is upon us, the kids are off school and would-be vacationers have nowhere else to go.

As 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.