One week ago today, I played John Williams’s _Five Sacred Trees _with the Niagara Symphony Orchestra.
I actually didn’t choose this piece. Bradley Thachuck, the music director of the NSO, asked if I wanted to play it; I had heard of it, of course, and said yes… and then listened to it. That was in February of 2016; I ordered the part right away and started practicing it. And continued practicing it, pretty consistently, for the next two years. This turned out to be a little bit overkill, but actually… not all that much.
Over the course of the two years that I invested in it, I learned, re-learned, memorized, and agonized over every bar in the piece, so now that it’s all over, it seems like it would be worthwhile to write it all down in the form of detailed notes about how I played it. These are not, of course, instructions to be followed; what worked for me may not be best for someone else, and some of these decisions were only arrived at after a practicing process that was in itself valuable. They are, though, the kind of thing that I think I would have appreciated reading two years ago; just a list of issues and how one person chose to work through them. With a standard like the Mozart concerto, you already begin work on it with an idea of what the issues and choices are, bar-by-bar. Here are some ideas about Five Sacred Trees.
A note on memorization: I did memorize it, and made a video recording with piano for memory, both for rehearsal and archival purposes. When I mentioned to Stephane Levesque, who played the piece with the OSM, that I was hoping to perform from memory, his horrified reaction made me reconsider. Stephane rarely forbade me from or forced me to do anything, as a student, but when he did there was usually a very good reason, so a strong reaction from him, based on performance experience with the piece in question, seemed worth paying attention to. I ended up having the music in front of me in performance and found some parts of it– like the opening cadenza, and much of Dathi– easier with my eyes closed, while some parts, like Tortan and Craeb Uisnig, were easier with eyes open (but I was still very glad I didn’t need my eyes glued to the part, and could swivel to communicate easily with the conductor and concertmaster.)
I’ll post these by movement, so here are my notes on Eo Mugna.
Opening: Big breath out, empty lungs. Small breath in and out at the bottom. Big breath in. There’s a crescendo on the first note, but leaving too much room for it makes the entrance sound timid.
Mm 4, whisper lock on.
Mm 5, eighth notes long to contrast with the accents on many of the other eighths in the opening.
Mm 7, there is a decrescendo on the low C in the 1st edition, removed in the 2nd. I settled on a slight decrescendo but still an emphatic vibrato and ending to the note.
Mm 8-9, I chose to take a large pause and then play this section with all legato eighth notes.
Mm 10, long low C and then accelerated up the run, using the R4 F# and found that anchoring my attention on the Bb ensured it emerged cleanly. I probably worked this run up from quarter=20 about fifteen separate times, and it stuck a little more each time.
Mm 11, started extremely slowly and sped up, with the last two eights aided by the L-only Eb fingering.
Mm 12 aided by a firm grip on the low G. The final D of the bar is, for some reason, extremely intuitive to play as an eighth note in the tempo of the new section, which it is not. The conductor requested that I elongate it, so I did, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to just play it as a quarter in the new tempo, which would be an excellent length.
My tempo for the main section was intentionally rather fast: more like 85 (to the marked 72-76.) I like this tempo because it allows the entire theme to be played comfortably in one breath, and because the marked tempo sounds draggy to me, but maybe I’m just young and impatient.
So, what’s the difference between a grace note and a thirty-second in this passage? I have been reliably informed that John Williams, when asked this question, had no strong opinion on the matter. One could make a case that, in the interest of not confusing the cello section, who unlike the bassoonist are individually tasked with playing this theme in unison with other people, the second quarter beat of mm 13 should be deliberately placed on the beat and not a moment before, whereas the second quarter beat of mm 16 should have the grace note placed slightly ahead of it.
Mm 19, I rather enjoy that the first half of the bar contains a sixteenth note instead of the expected thirty-second, and make possibly an inappropriately big deal of it.
Mm 21 could be interpreted as a change of character and a bouncier articulation, and I was planning on doing so, but once I was actually standing beside the cello section taking their shot at the theme, it suddenly seemed a little obnoxious, and I smoothed it out.
Memorization-wise, mm 27 and 36 are easy to mix up and end up in the wrong place. My mnemonic was that the first time is fancier (grace note before the 2nd big beat of 27, omitted in 36) and started higher, and the second time around I just want to get it over with (no grace note) and end lower (the downwards run starts on G in 37, E in 28.)
Mm 29, the low D looks like it should have to be quiet. It doesn’t; it will be swallowed by the bass clarinet and the wind section anyway, so whatever volume will be best in tune is fine.
I put the lock on during the low G in 28 and remove it after the D just for peace of mind.
Mm 34, I play the first A of the run long and the high A with the L hand only. Mm 36-37 is conspicuously lacking in dynamic guidance, but with aggressive section that comes after it, I decided to go for loud.
Mm 52-53: should the first bassoon note have a clearly audible attack, or should it start in the ring of the orchestra’s final chord? I’ve heard it both ways, but chose to observe the accent and make sure by attack was heard.
Mm 55 whisper lock on in caesura.
Mm 55-56, all the eighths have legato markings, which makes a nice contrast with 53-54 and also with the sfz in 57, where I took Chris Millard’s suggestion to conceive of it “like a frog burping.”
Mm 57-58: are the eighth notes grouped six and three, or do the slurs stand in contrast to the emphasis that is properly place on the first and second quarter beats of 58? After all, this section is essentially meterless, yet he still put a bar line in the middle of this ascending line and chose the vehicle of eighth notes to convey the desired pitches. There’s a strong argument for the latter, but I chose to phrase with the slurs.
Unlock before mm 59. 59, grouped the run 3-3-4 to accelerate.
If memorizing, I implore you to not play mm 16 where mm 62 should be.
Mm 64, I like the sfz interpreted as a lift before the downbeat of the next measure.
Starting mm 66, it’s easy to get too soft, too fast. The dim only starts in mm 70.
I am back in Regina as of today! My first port of call for this holiday break, immediately following the Messiah, was Calgary, where Mike and I spent the first part of the holiday with his parents. For the past few years we’ve been there just before Christmas, so they usually pick a date to call “Christmas” and celebrate Christmas Eve and morning accordingly. I was introduced to The Shepherd radio play, which I hadn’t heard before, as well as the supposedly French-Canadian tradition of tortiere as a Christmas Eve dish.
Then, on actual Christmas Eve, we went to see my parents, just in time for a family meal. After a few days in Toronto, we headed back to Kitchener for the rest of the break (we’ll, break for me, Nutcracker for Mike.)
I have two Masterworks concerts left with Regina before heading back to Ontario for Five Sacred Trees. I’ve been debating the best way to deal with the issue of music for the performance. I have memorized it, and have been doing memorized runs of the entire work almost every day for about a month already. However, pretty much everyone who has played it has advised me to play it with the music onstage. As a wind player, I don’t have a lot of experience with playing solo repertoire, well, at all, compared to string and piano players; and memorization isn’t expected of wind players the way it is of other families of instruments. So I will have the part onstage with me.
However, it’s complicated to arrange the page turns so that they work out well; and even once photocopied, the pages require folding over and under each other in a way that would look awkward to do between movements. I don’t want to have to be shuffling around with pages between every movement, especially if I have it memorized anyway. I even, if it turns out to be possible for all relevant parties in the orchestra, would like to do almost all of it attaca from movement to movement— excepting the break between Tortan and Eo Rossa, which requires vigorous tone hole-blowing and prayers to the gods of gurgling water incidents :P
I considered getting a foot pedal and playing it off of tablet; but that then adds in the potential for technological malfunction; and since there are electronic components in concert halls that could interfere with the Bluetooth that connects the pedal to the tablet, a successful run at home doesn’t guarantee success in concert.
I still have a little bit of time to figure something out…
One of the things I decided to accomplish this winter (or rather, have someone else accomplish while I sat around and watched) was having my bassoon tuned up. Since there are, shockingly, no dedicated bassoon repair professionals in Saskatchewan, I made an appointment to go see Frank Marcus in Wasaga Beach while I was in Ontario for the holidays.
I was mainly concerned about my wing joint; I had been having more trouble than I thought was entirely fair with my high B and C. Both reassuringly and somewhat disappointingly, there was nothing massively wrong with the area that, once fixed, could cause the entire high range of the bassoon to suddenly become easy. (How unfair!) However he did adjust the B resonance so that there is no delay in it coming up, which should remove some uncertainty. He also added some (clear) paint to some parts, explaining that the wood of a bassoon is also sometimes a source of leaks, which I had had no idea of.
When he got to the long joint, though, he stared at the pressure gauge in surprise, and said, “maybe it’s wrong.” It wasn’t sealing at all, and when he removed the keywork, it was obvious why: one of the holes underneath was neither uniformly flush with the pad, nor even circular. “It looks like a beaver gnawed on it,” Frank commented. “Benson didn’t do this.”
I am pleased to report that it is indeed much easier to play low notes… an inability I seem to have not noticed too much during the past few months. Whoops!
Yep! It’s on the internet, even. With my picture and everything. So that you, too, can be puzzled at the sight of a reed player holding their instrument with a reed on the bocal and also wearing red lipstick for some reason. When Bradley Thachuk, the music director in Niagara, first suggested that I play John Williams’ Five Sacred Trees and I agreed, to be perfectly honest I couldn’t have hummed you a single bar of it. I sent off an email saying yes, that sounds like a good choice, then hopped over to youtube to listen to it. And thought, oh, this sounds kinda hard. Uh-oh. That was about a year and a half ago. That initial listen put the fear of God in me, and I immediately ordered a part and started working on it. Finally, about two weeks ago, I could at last say that I was able to play all the right notes, in the right order, at more or less the right tempo. (Actually, if I had said that two weeks ago, I would have been technically incorrect– I only noticed yesterday that I learned a run in the fourth movement– luckily only a single bar– in the wrong clef. WHOOPS. Fixed now.) Not-so-coincidentally, last week I traveled to Ottawa to have a lesson with Christopher Millard, principal bassoon in NACO, on the piece. Usually, I would prefer to be farther along in the preparation process than just “able to play correct pitches” before traveling for a lesson. But in this instance, I didn’t really have choice. I knew I wanted to play it for someone who had performed it recently, and Chris gave the Canadian premiere of the work. And it needed to be before he left for summer festival work in mid-July, because on August 12th, I’m getting in the car and beginning the drive to Regina for the season. So, that’s just the way it was. And honestly? I needed the deadline of a lesson to make me put my butt in a chair and finish learning the thing. In a sense, the time, expense and general inconvenience involved in going to Ottawa was the whole point. As they say in my current home city of Kitchener-Waterloo: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. As the vast legions of ABD graduate students of the world can tell you, human psychology is uniquely poorly equipped to deal with large projects with definite endpoints but no immediate pressures driving them forward. So, creating a short-term deadline that had meaning and importance suddenly became a much higher priority for me when I won the Regina audition. Prior to that audition, I had been planning on attending the Glenn Gould School for next year. I had decided it was a good time to go back to school because I wanted the structure of school to help me achieve my goals. And mostly what structure is, is small but strategically placed deadlines. Lessons every week, studio recitals every few months, final recital at the end of your degree. (Or something similar to that schedule.) I wasn’t at all worried about learning this enormous concerto, because I would have all the right kinds of pressure to keep me on track with it. I might even have other performance opportunities (recital, concerto competition, etc.) to get it ready. As soon as I got the Regina job, all of that assurance vanished. Not only would I not have any of those same small deadlines looming for the concerto, suddenly I had a whole lot of new deadlines, of a sort I have never really encountered before: namely, preparing and performing an entire, full-time season as a principal player in a professional orchestra. Considering that this time last year I had just been accepted to paramedic college and was seriously considering how relaxing and fun it would be to just play music as an amateur, uh, a principal job and a concerto in the same season is a little bit of a change of pace. (Spoiler alert: I did not end up attending paramedic college this year. I like having hobbies, but I’m not quite at the win-a-bassoon-job-while-in-school-for-a-completely-different-discipline kind of level.) So, that’s what the next six months are going to be about for me: manufacturing deadlines, as well as managing the ones I already have. I’m grateful for my time as a freelancer/underemployed musician (let’s be real here) because it taught me that manufacturing deadlines is a huge part of a life in music. Woohoo! Let’s all make up some arbitrary dates to freak out over!
It’s a bit difficult, as a freelancer, to separate “season” and “summer” in the way that someone with a job, or even a student, can. However, it’s probably safe to say that it’s now the summer for me: I played my last concert with the Niagara Symphony for the time being two weeks ago– I am going to be on leave from the NSO next year as I start my new job as principal of the Regina Symphony, and couldn’t have asked for a better ending to my time with the NSO than playing Mahler’s 2nd symphony, with my partner playing beside me.
The week after, we were going to work together again as I came to visit him at his job, and I played 3rd and contra on– I am not making this up– Mahler 1. Yes, two Mahler symphonies in as many weeks: I’m pretty sure this is what I imagined being a professional musician would be like in my first year of music school.
That concert was particularly special because it was Music Director Edwin Outwater’s final farewell to the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. During the many bars of rests I had the privilege and pleasure of counting during that concert, I also had the opportunity to reflect on this crazy profession; after ten years– a decent amount of time, in MD terms– here’s a guy choosing to move on from his job in part because that’s simply what’s done, not to mention the fact that he also lives and works in a different country. This is normal for a conductor. And to a lesser extent it’s normal for musicians, too.
In the past two years of “being a freelancer,” I’ve worked in three of the four farthest practicable corners of the province– Windsor in the west, Niagara in the south, and Thunder Bay in the north. (The farthest east I’ve been is Oshawa with the Ontario Philharmonic, and while I hear the Kingston Symphony is a nice band, I don’t exactly regret missing the opportunity to have driven the three and a half hours it would take to get to a gig in Kingston from Kitchener…) There are really great, fun things about doing this. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I have a decent understanding of the geography and transportation systems of the entire province. And, by and large, I’ve been lucky that so many of the places I work are beautiful. St. Catharine’s is one of the most astoundingly quick-growing cities I’ve ever been in – it seems like every concert cycle, there are three or four new businesses on St. Paul street alone. Thunder Bay has some of the most stunning views from inside any city, ever. I’ve played pops tunes beside Niagara Falls underneath fireworks displays, I’ve stood on the bank of the Detroit River and listened to a Creedence Clearwater Revival reunion concert being played in another country, I’ve gotten to live and work in places like Dundas and Ancaster which, as a Torontonian, would have remained in the category of “places vaguely near here that aren’t” if I hadn’t discovered how gorgeous and special they were. I’ve played on the rooftop of a condo in downtown Toronto while being filmed by a helicopter. My job, such as it is, for the past few years has been really exciting, and when I attempt to describe what I do to people, they invariably seem intrigued and somewhat envious. But also confused.
Because it’s hard to explain to people in other industries why this– where by “this,” I really mean this much gorram driving-- seems like a reasonable thing to do as some semblance of a regular job. And to a large extent, it’s not. It’s a totally ridiculous way to make a living that is wearing on me after only two years, and while there are some people who manage to sustain it long-term, I suspect I would opt-out if it started to seem like I might have to be one of them.
But at the moment, the pendulum is swinging the other way: In mid-August, I’ll load the car up and drive for four days, to Regina, where for the first time in my life I’ll be making all (or most) of my income from a single source, an employer who provides me with benefits and, following the tenure process, the guarantee of a job to come back to.
So, that’s different. It’s also eerily familiar: get in the car, drive, play. The timelines are just extended.
In all seriousness, though, I am really looking forward to this drive in the way that I don’t look forward to driving, say, in rush hour on the 403. I’ve done about half of it before– the bit between Toronto and Sault St. Marie, and then the Soo to Thunder Bay– and then the next two legs (Thunder Bay to Winnipeg, Winnipeg to Regina) are new to me (except I have been a passenger in a bus going Thunder Bay to Kenora… so yes, I will probably stop at Egli’s on my way by.)
I’m spending the summer, in chronological order: coaching gymnastics, going to Ottawa to have a lesson on Five Sacred Trees with Chris Millard, having a pre-party in Toronto for my wedding, going to ADULT GYMNASTICS CAMP WITH MY ADULT GYMNASTICS FRIENDS OMG THIS IS A REAL THING THAT EXISTS AND I AM GOING, getting married in Calgary, going on a honeymoon-type hiking adventure, possibly coaching some more gymnastics, and then… leaving.
I have no idea. Yeah, I won one last week, but I still exited with a longer “to improve in my preparation process” list than a “things I did awesome on” list. I’m still gonna write down everything I know about auditions, though, because the one thing I do know is: you have to go to them. ~Winning my job~ was not the surreal, magical experience I imagined it would be while I was in school. There’s a mythology about that idea, and that phrase, at music schools. “She won a job!” “Back when my teacher won his job…” “If I win a job…” or, for the cockier, “When I win my job…” We spend years imagining how we’re going to feel on that day. Winning my job felt normal. I started taking auditions in third year of undergrad, which was the first point at which I had even a basic level of control over the instrument. In my final year of school, I won a tenure-track position in a small regional orchestra– where only two people showed up to the audition. I didn’t win because I was an super-duper player and totally ready, I won because, on that specific day, to that specific committee, I was preferred over the other candidate. That’s it; a relatively small thing, but it had an outsize effect. Besides a lot of street cred back at school, I suddenly had a small foothold in the freelance scene, a calling card of “I play here.” I had a window into the lives of working musicians, the kind who aren’t in the Montreal Symphony. Two years later, that orchestra moved from playing in a university lecture hall to a brand-new, gorgeous, city-owned performing arts center that rivals the best in the province. I’ve played principal parts with that orchestra that I would never have had the chance to do, as an out-of school freelancer: Tchaik 6, Don Juan, Bolero. We once played every single Beethoven piano concerto in the same concert. Next month, we’re doing Mahler 2. Beyond the playing, I ended up on the Player’s Committee; through the PC, I attended the annual conference of the Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians, and became the delegate for my orchestra. A year after that, I became a member of the committee to re-negotiate our collective bargaining agreement. This is not exactly standard fare for the first few years after graduating from an undergrad in music. In the middle of that, I won an audition where I WAS THE ONLY PERSON WHO SHOWED UP, for a one-year position in a small but full-time orchestra. Because I was the only person who bothered to do the audition, I ended up with the immense advantage of having the experience of doing a whole season, full-time, with a professional orchestra, straight out of my undergrad. What I learned is that the difference between being a freelancer, and being a musician with a pile of folders on the stand from the same orchestra, is HUGE. I also learned that the things that seem easy in music school become not-so-easy as soon as you’re not in music school. At McGill, I took for granted that I would practice at least 3 hours a day or so. Why on earth wouldn’t I? All my friends were doing it. The practice hallway was the social and community hub of the school. I would arrive there around eight in the morning and start warming up. As people arrived, they’d check in on their colleagues– you have a lesson today? What are you going to play? How’s the face feeling? K, have a good warm up. Skipping classes to practice was de rigueur. The cafeteria would clear out at around 1 or 2 PM when stragglers finally managed to convince each other to get get back up the stairs to the practice wing. If I ever felt bored in the evenings, I knew I could walk the two blocks back to school, noodle around a bit on the bassoon, and chat with whoever else was still hanging around. Life was good– practicing itself was never easy, but the idea of needing motivation to practice was laughable. HA. HA. HA. Living in a basement apartment, playing second bassoon to a level that was pleasing to the people around me and thus mostly uncommented-on, suddenly I found myself struggling to sit down and get in an hour a day of focused practice. It turns out that, just like the act of practicing is a skill, the act of planting your butt in a chair with the intention of practicing is also a skill, and one that atrophies fast. I’m still not up to the same level of consistent, quality practice that I was at McGill– but if I’m being honest, I think it’s probably pretty universal feeling among professionals about their student days. And I do regret all the lost practice time in the past few years, especially when I contemplate how most of the people who show up to the same auditions as me went to grad school, and thus have at least two more years of intensive practicing than I do under their belts. But I also have the experience of making the transition, and having it be shitty at first, and then gradually better. That, too, was an education. To a certain, still small extent, I know how to transition into a job. So when I won this audition (which had a regular number of people at it, for once! :P) it felt totally natural– as if there is such a thing as a career path, and this was the logical next step in mine. I didn’t freak out. I just did what I had learned in Gabe Radford’s audition seminar, way back in NYOC 2011, to do in the event of a successful audition, and what I had practiced twice before– smile, say thank you, and shake hands with your new colleagues. Realistically, my A+ audition advice of “just make sure to show up to really sparsely populated auditions!” isn’t exactly practical for the vast majority. Especially those that play instruments more popular than the bassoon, and people who aren’t Canadians with the benefit of national auditions. SO while you can’t control the second part– “sparsely populated auditions”– you can control the first. JUST MAKE SURE TO SHOW UP. How many people could have snatched my first two, crucial jobs out from under me if they had bothered to try? Honestly, probably a lot. They just didn’t. So there, that’s my audition advice. JUST GO. Even if you think you suck, even if you’re not sure you want the job, even if one of your keys starts making a weird buzzing sound two days before that might have been all in your head (*raises hand*), even if your Tchaik 6 reeds develops a crack the day before (*raises hand again*), even if you have to fly back the day of the audition to be at an 8 AM madrigal-learning session the next day (*bangs head against desk*), even if you have to fly to the audition the morning of (actually not me, but MAJOR kudos to one hugely determined candidate at the audition last week for getting up at 3 AM after a gig the night before to fly across the country and play an audition.) JUST GO.
The thing about playing in a symphony orchestra, which fact is so obvious as to barely even need stating, is that often you’re playing music written a long time ago. Something I do often, especially while playing music that I’m somewhat in awe of, is to imagine the circumstances and feelings of the person who must have played the part I am playing for the first time. Some are fairly mysterious; but some pieces allow for a decent amount of extrapolation just based on the context of the piece. It’s safe to assume, for instance, that the bassoonist playing in the orchestra at La Scala for the first performance of La Gazza Ladra was feeling something in between annoyance and panic, seeing as, according to legend, the overture was only completed in time for the performance when the producer locked Rossini in a room and forced him to write, handing pages out the window to the copyists. (I know I certainly was the time that I had to play the principal part of that on ten minutes’ notice.)
Others are more mysterious, but intriguing. Consider the bassoon solo in Shostakovich’s 9th symphony.
The 9th symphony is, for the most part, a light and cheerful work, with the bassoon solo as the glaring exception to the mood of the piece. In the Bulletin of the Moscow State Philharmonic for 1945, Shostakovich is quoted mentioning (and complimenting) the bassoonist by name: one Vorobyov. How did Vorobyov feel, in the hanging moments of silence before the beginning of the fourth movement began, knowing that he was about to play not only probably the biggest orchestral solo of his life (there are, indeed, very few bigger orchestral solos available) but one that– at least in the interpretation of most modern bassoonists– carries dangerous political undertones? David McGill, in his “Orchestral Excerpts for Bassoon” CD, ascribes the text “Free-dom!” to the first two notes of the solo, and describes later motifs as “fooling the authorities” and “a strong undercurrent of pointed sarcasm.” Stephane Levesque, when giving a short class on his interpretation of the piece when I was at McGill, described his imagination of an individual alternately speaking out against injustice, then being cowed at the dangers of doing so and retreating.
It’s difficult to imagine that this interpretation hadn’t occurred to Vorobyov. Was the thinking about totalitarianism and dissidence, as he took a breath for that first F? Or was he only thinking about the hope that his embouchure wouldn’t tire before the end of the movement?
This line of enquiry is a preamble, basically, to the point that it’s easy for modern musicians to imagine that we have lost something that previous generations once had. The vast majority of modern musicians, if asked who their favourite composer is, will name someone whose music they will never premiere, for obvious reasons. When mainstream orchestral musicians do give a premiere, often we’re not too happy about it. There are two possible reasons for this. The first is a kind of time-based quality bias: if “good” music is music that has stood the test of time, then every generation is going to end up premiering a relatively large proportion of total garbage, of which only the cream of the crop will ever be heard by subsequent generations. The second possible explanation is that music has simply gotten weirder and less fun to play over the past hundred years. I will leave the merits of that theory up to people who have the energy for spirited debates about the essence of contemporary music.
The point is– it is a rare and unusual thing, to give a premiere which makes you think, “this must be how it felt to play [other piece that I like] for the first time.” To play music that is a) good, b) situated unmistakeably in the sound world of the present day, and c) likely to receive repeat performances and become part of an actual body of repertoire, is a very unusual thing.
I had the opportunity to play such a piece the other night. The piece was Ecstasy by Christos Hatzis, with text composed and performed by Sarah Slean. If these names sound familiar together, it’s because Ecstasy is a companion piece to the first collaboration between Hatzis and Slean, _Lamento. _I actually had the opportunity to play Lamento twice, first with the Niagara Symphony and then with Thunder Bay, and it is a piece with an enormous emotional impact and an incredible musical inventiveness. You can watch the premiere of that piece, with Symphony Nova Scotia, on CBC:
The TBSO commissioned Ecstasy as a kind of counterpoint to Lamento, as the names would suggest. They also commissioned another piece from Hatzis, which they will perform in October 2016.
Although it would be rude of me to say I hope to be there– since my being there would require someone else’s getting sick– the impact of Hatzis’ music, and the experience of being the first person to get a part, hear it in the context of the whole, and be present for the creation of something both new and lasting, is almost enough to make me want to say it.
I started the month of August feeling somewhat nervous over the fact that I had almost no gigs lined up. Fortunately, it picked up somewhat, and I’ve actually been pretty busy. On the 4th, I played a recital at the Belfountain Music Festival. Belfountain is an area in Caledon, Ontario, where violinist Zachary Ebin has put together an eclectic festival featuring professional concerts in multiple genres of music as well as a student division of Suzuki string students. It all takes place in the Melville White church, one of the few remaining pre-Victorian era timber frame churches in Ontario, which was built in 1837, in active use until 1964 and is now under restoration. I played the 2nd cello suite– turns out it still hurts the face if you’ve been playing it for years, folks– as well as Nussio’s Variations on a Theme by Pergolesi, the Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras No.6 for flute and bassoon, and a Handel sonata fashioned into another flute-and-bassoon duet. Two days after that recital, the Belfountain Music Festival featured a string quartet concert with a professionally-led campfire sing-along out back behind the church afterwards, to give you an idea of the kinds of things going on there! Pretty much immediately afterwards– close enough to the recital that I didn’t feel too guilty about leaving my bassoon at home and calling it “post-recital relaxation,” anyway– I attended as a delegate of the 2015 conference of the Organization of Canadian Symphony Muscians! OCSM is a conference of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM, aka the musicians’ union) which counts as member orchestras pretty much all the major symphony orchestras in Canada and many of the full- and part-time regional ones. For the first time, the Niagara Symphony was invited to send a delegate, so I hopped in the car and drove past more windmills than I’d ever seen in my life to Windsor, Ontario, where the conference was held this year. I learned a ton about orchestra contracts, negotiating, the AFM, and the way that other orchestras in Canada do things, met some super people from all over Canada, and had a waterfront view of Detroit from my hotel for five days. Creedance Clearwater Revival was playing some sort of reunion concert in Detroit the first night I was there, and there were people lined up all along the Windsor waterfront to listen. When I got back from Windsor, I pretty much just stayed on the road and spent a night in Kitchener before spending two days in Hamilton filling out the section for the final concert of this year’s National Academy Orchestra/Brott Music Festival. (It not even that much closer, but WOW, is it ever more pleasant driving to Hamilton from Kitchener than Toronto…) We played Carmina Burana, which contains my favourite Latin drinking song ever! I have two more one-day gigs and some private lessons to teach in Toronto before I go to the Interprovincial Music Camp to teach as a faculty assistant. And finally, I am moving for September! Into a slightly more expensive ($630 instead of $554– all good prices for downtown Toronto), but disproportionately more pleasant (I anticipate), co-op house. Woo-hoo!
I’ve been living in Toronto for a little over two months now, and we’re well into the “mostly wasps with a 60% chance of stinky garbage” phase of summer. For better or for worse, most of my gigs at this point are either outside or in churches, meaning a trip to the Salvation Army to get some less-hot black clothes is probably in order! Thus far it’s been enjoyable, though, especially since some of the gigs I had in the past few weeks were at Casa Loma. Casa Loma is a large and impressive castle with equally large and impressive gardens built in the early 1900’s but Sir Henry Pellatt, who as far as I can tell (mostly by reading the informational signs inside Casa Loma itself) was kind of a pompous dick. Eventually he couldn’t pay his taxes and the city seized the castle, although not before it was used during World War 2 as a secret Allied research base– the sonar equipment used to detect U-boats was developed in the attic of Casa Loma, hidden from the public (who came to the castle for weekly social dances) by nothing more than a sign that said “Under construction, we apologize for the inconvenience.”
Anyway, Casa Loma has some pretty rad gardens, maintained by a whole army of gardeners, which includes a closed (and air-conditioned!) glass gazebo in which concerts are held every Tuesday. I didn’t take any pictures, but fortunately for once the publicity photo is exactly correct about what it actually looks like.
The music is great; we played an “Opera Hits” show, Beethoven 7, and the most recent Tuesday, a concert of mostly French Impressionism. The place is always packed-- even the Beethoven 7 concert, when it started pouring rain in the middle of the performance, people who were outside of the gazebo stayed to listen!
Tomorrow I have a different outdoor gig, at the Jackson-Triggs winery. I’ve played there once before, with NYOC in 2012. Jackson-Triggs has its own amphitheatre and puts on an entire summer concert series.
On my way through wine country tomorrow, I’m also planning on stopping at a meadery to buy some mead, which I haven’t been able to find in LCBOs and have been trying to for ever!
I also have some solo stuff going on; last Friday I played a kids’ show of my very own, consisting of the 2nd Cello Suite and Nussio’s Variations on a Theme by Pergolesi, with lots of explanations, jokes and tricks in between the movements of each. One of the teachers at the Niagara Summer Music Camp later told me that she had never seen the campers so attentive before for a single-instrument recital!
I’ll be playing the same rep again, plus the Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 (for flute and bassoon) and some Handel duets at the Belfountain Music Festival on August 4th.
Besides all that, I also got a job at a patient transfer company– the non-emergency ambulances that take patients between hospitals and from their homes to hospital appointments– and as a result of the lifting requirements of the job, have finally started lifting weights for real! I have been doing the Stronglifts 5x5 program at the U of T gym. I’ve been meaning to learn how to lift for… like, years, so this job is the kick in the pants I need :D I start my job training at the company in a few weeks!
That’s all, folks. Now, I gotta go work out/warm up/make reeds/ get supplies to make some jam with the huge excess of mulberries on the trees around my house!
I was waitlisted for Rice. Considering I started the process resigned to the idea of not even getting past the prescreening, I feel A-OK about that!
I participated in my very first concerto competition! A few weeks ago I flew to Toronto for a day to play in the finals of the Orchestra Toronto concerto competition. The winner ended up being a flutist that I went to McGill with (3/4 of the finalists were McGill people, interestingly…) but I was still very happy with how I played. Because of the competition, I ended up pulling out of the opera audition I was going to do around the same time after realizing that the job sounded good in theory but would actually be extremely inconvenient in practice. Plus, I could do the competition without missing out on any services in Thunder Bay, whereas for the audition I would have lost a few days worth of pay for an audition that didn’t serve my interests anyway.
I went to a barn dance at a farm in Neebing the other night with some symphony friends! Merrie, our principal trumpet, is also a Ceilidh dance caller, and her husband is a celtic fiddler who was playing with a guitar player visiting from Quebec. It was awwweeesome.
The symphony season ends on the 3rd of May, but I am staying an extra week to play a show with my wind quintet! It will be at 3 PM on May 9th at the Foundry. The title of the show is “Music of the Americas,” despite my mostly-joking suggestion of “Nothing European.” Entrance is by donation.
I guess I technically have two symphony seasons to play the ends of– I haven’t been in St. Catharine’s very much this year, but I’ll be with the Niagara Symphony for the last concert of the season on May 17, in which, bizarrely, we are playing one of the same pieces that we played in my first concert in Thunder Bay– Christos Hatzis’ Lamento, sung by Sarah Slean. This will be our last concert in Sean O’Sullivan theatre at Brock– next season, we will be moving into the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, the new PAC in downtown St. Catherine’s. (FirstOntario is apparently a credit union that made a major donation, but it’s kind of a snazzy name for it, isn’t it?)
