After the concert on Friday, we have a four day long weekend with NAO. Most of my housemates went to Toronto for the Pride festivities, but I came to Kitchener instead to visit my partner, my mom and see some concerts at the National Youth Orchestra, which is training at Laurier again. Last night I went to a faculty concert where David Hetherington and the percussion students played Tan Dun’s Snow in June, and the string faculty played Schubert’s Quintet. Today we went to Balzac’s– the coffee shop– with one oboist from Brott and one from NYO, and as we were all walking out we saw a sign for CAFKA-- Community Art Forum, Kitchener and Area– about something called In Search of Abandoned. A guy inside the building, which happens to be the Communitech Hub, came out and asked if we wanted to see it. We said OK, so we went inside and were led through multiple card-access-only doors to something called the HIVE: Hub Interactive Virtual Environment. It seems like a pretty rad place to work. On the way we saw stuff like this:
Inside the HIVE, three of us got normal 3D glasses and one got special “pilot"s glasses”, which had three little extra motion sensor knobs sticking out of each side of the frames. Then we were in the middle of a bunch of virtual mountains. The pilot controls the perspective on the mountains– if they’re looking down, you see them from above– and uses a steering wheel and some ropes to control the speed and direction.
The exhibit ends today, so you probably can’t go see it. Sorry. Suckerrrrrs!
(If you want to see something else cool, I’m going to one of the NYO’s free chamber concerts tomorrow. There’s a Mozart flute quartet, Berio’s Opus Zoo– aka the quintet piece that has always eluded me but I really want to play as soon as I find enough other people who are down for it– Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, and the Brahms horn trio. You can find the complete list of NYO chamber music, faculty, and full orchestra concerts here.
On Thursday was our first concert with the National Academy Orchestra! We played Mozart’s Jupiter symphony, the Mozart Requiem, and a piece by the director of the choir who came in for the Requiem. This Friday we have our next concert, which is all Beethoven (a celebration of Beethoven in Eb major?) with the Emperor concerto and Eroica symphony. You can find the full list of concerts here: http://www.brottmusic.com/concerts-tickets/2014-concerts/
The last concert, I should add, has the Rite of Spring, the Firebird suite, and three other pieces on the same program…
Three hours after my recital ended, I had my first post-school rehearsal :P That week I was playing fourth on the Verdi Requiem with the orchestra of the Société Philharmonique de Montréal. That concert was on Good Friday, and the bassoon section was Marty– my first teacher at McGill– playing principal and two other students from McGill besides me. The next day I took the Montreal-Toronto Megabus hopefully for the last time, and crammed in an Easter party before going to Kitchener to do some school shows with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony the first half of last week. The latter half of the week was Niagara, who had the Sultans of String in, and we performed both a childrens’ show with them and a full pops program. All of the music on those programs was written by the Sultans, and it was really good! Some in the orchestra even went up to the lobby to buy their CDs and get them signed (as band leader Chris McKhool said, “buying our CDs is definitely the safest way to take us home with you tonight!”) So, between travel Montreal-Toronto-Kitchener-Toronto-St. Catherine’s and all the rehearsals and concerts, this is actually the first day I’ve had off after my recital. On Thursday I’m flying to Thunder Bay for their audition, and then have another concert cycle with the NSO (Cosi Fan Tutte overture, Brahms Piano Concerto #1, and Beethoven 7!) while simultaneously chaperoning at the Ontario Student Classics Conference (http://www.classicsconference.org/), which I attended as a high school student and just happens to be 1) the exact same dates as NSO masterworks 5 2) at Brock University, 3) hosted this year by my former high school, and thus 4) provides me with a free room at the Brock residences for this concert cycle. Sweeeet. Then I have to get all my belongings from my soon-to-be-former place in Montreal, find a place in Hamilton and move into it, because I’m going to be playing in the National Academy Orchestra for the summer! I only auditioned for two summer festivals this year (oops!), NAO and the NAC’s Young Artist’s Program, and although I got into both and was hoping to be able to go to both, they ended up conflicting in such a way that I wasn’t able to get a sub for NAO as I was hoping. So, I reluctantly had to pass up the YAP for this year, since NAO is a 9-week orchestral program that pays a minimum of $430 a week to each apprentice. However I’m very happy to be able to participate in that, especially with both Rite of Spring and The Firebird on the program! Happy summer!
It’s been a while since bassoon day, but I didn’t write about it at the time and I’m on a wifi-enabled bus right now, so why not!
I admit I wasn’t actually there for the whole thing. I ended up working that morning– teaching music classes to small children, in the classroom right beside the one being used as a vendor’s room/general hang-out room for Bassoon Day. So, lots of “Mommy, can we go see the clarinets?” before and after the classes. They haven’t gotten to bassoon yet in the Little Musicians curriculum… I’ll be coming around to the classrooms some time soon to introduce them to it. (Last year, I walked into one class and the teacher said, “Wow! Boys and girls, how do you think you make a sound on THIS instrument?” One perceptive kid raised his hand and shouted “I know! You don’t!”)
So, I only caught the tail end of the masterclass with Mathieu Harel in the morning. However, I have played in his masterclasses in previous years, and he is a very perceptive teacher and entertaining speaker. In the afternoon was the masterclass with Ole Kristian Dahl: Nadia played the 2nd movement of the Mozart, Daniel Weber’s Andante and Hungarian Rondo, I the Prelude from the 2nd Cello Suite, and Mary the Berwald Konzertstuck. None of us actually got very far into our pieces; he didn’t need to hear the whole thing before deciding on a facet of technique that we wanted to work on. He suggested trying to hold pieces of paper against the keys even when the keys are up (“And in my studio, every time it falls, a euro in the jar!”), compared playing your first note slightly out of tune to getting on a train to the wrong city, and demonstrated how he could play the entire Scheherezade solo in one breath (“I won a crate of wine from my colleagues for that.”) somehow he managed to keep the audience actually laughing (with us, not at us!) the whole time.
Later in the afternoon, there was a concert where Ole along with pianist Pamela Reimer and Stephane, Marty, Mathieu, and Michael (Principal, 2nd, Associate, and Contrabassoon of the OSM, respectively) played all sorts of bassoon things in various configurations including the premiere of a new trio for bassoon, contra and piano by Mathieu Lussier, who was also in attendance. Finally, the traditional forest of bassoons where every single person in the audience who has a bassoon (which is most of hem, obviously) gets up on stage for bassoon ensemble works. Kaitlin, a former McGill student who now studies with Ole, was even there via Skype on a music stand in the back row.
If you’d like to be updated about future McGill bassoon days, Stephane usually posts an announcement on the IDRS forum, or join the bassoon newsletter that Pascal Veraquin’s woodwind shop sends out and an announcement will probably be made there.
I’m playing in the master class with Ole Kristian Dahl at 2 PM, and there’s another masterclass in the morning, a concert in the evening and people will be hanging out in the vendor’s room for the rest of the day. Given the photo, I’m going to be really disappointed if there is not actually a transparent bassoon in attendance… I don’t know where the picture is from, but the only one that I know of is that of Lionel Bord, bassoonist in L’Orchestre de Paris, who demonstrates its many excellent qualities in this video, among others:
Check out the pictures from the NSO’s holiday pops and family concerts on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbabij/sets/72157638763933986/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbabij/sets/72157638765859823/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbabij/sets/72157638765363575/ I especially like the angle on the tinsel and light-up icicles that Cathi brought as decorations for our bells. :P And the maestro’s spiffy guitar and guitar-playing jacket. A few days ago my family also played a concert/sing-along at the Runnymede hospital. My dad played piano, my mom flute, my brother viola and obviously I played bassoon. (Perhaps not so obviously… my mom suggested that I go play Christmas carols at my brother’s school on violin… an instrument I haven’t practiced for about five years.) It seemed like the patients enjoyed it, although my dad’s jazz-inspired improvisational wanderings based on popular Christmas carols certainly confused a few who were expecting a simple sing-along! Now that (most of) the crazy travelling is done I can finally focus just on the Toronto Symphony audition, which is coming up in less than a month! Also learning my parts for the next MGSO concert– principal on Bruckner’s 2nd symphony and Janacek’s From The House of the Dead overture. My recital is also coming up next semester, which will be my last semester at McGill! Aaa! (Yesssssssssss…..) I have the program mostly planned, and have already performed half of the repertoire and started working on some of the rest. Still– at McGill you only have one official recital during your degree (as well as two juries performed just for a panel of professors) so this will be my first time doing an entire recital all by myself. So I’m sure I’ll be writing more about that as the time approaches…
I just got my copy of the CD that the NYOC recorded this summer, and am very excited to listen to it! We spent two days recording in the Multi-Media Room at McGill, and the CD includes Mahler’s Ninth symphony and the commissioned work for this year, which was written by McGill student James O’Callaghan. It doesn’t seem to be up on iTunes yet bu you can buy a physical copy here !
Yesterday, the musicians of the McGill Symphony orchestra (well over a hundred of us!) played to a nearly full house at Maison Symphonique, the home of the OSM in Montreal’s place Des Arts. Here is some media coverage of the event– Claude Gingras says it best in his last paragraph: Année après année, Hauser anime avec la même passion cet orchestre constamment renouvelé. Les effectifs changent, forcément, mais le résultat demeure toujours du plus haut niveau. On ne voit vraiment pas qui pourrait remplacer Alexis Hauser à McGill! (Year after year, Hauser animates the constantly renewed orchestra with the same passion. The players change, but the result is always at the highest level. It is difficult to see who could ever replace Alexis Hauser at McGill!) I feel incredibly grateful to have been able to play in Hauser’s orchestra for the last two years of my time at McGill. His energy, musical intelligence and kindness are inspirational to all the students he conducts, and I look forward to another semester-and-one-third of music-making at McGill!