The first time I saw Into The Woods was at the very first production put on by Music Theatre Montreal. It was late 2011 and a strike of the unionized support workers at McGill meant that all of the campus groups that had bookings at Moyse Hall– the main theatre in the Arts building– were out in the cold as far as spaces for their shows went. Since I was on the executive of such a group– The McGill Savoy Society, which usually books Moyse for a two-week run of Gilbert and Sullivan in February– this was obviously concerning. MTM was the first theatre group to have to face the problem, and despite every expectation that the show would be canceled, everyone involved in the production pulled together and managed to book a different venue and put on the show, a great success. I remember wishing that I was playing it, but since I was doing both Sweeney Todd and The Gondoliers that year, I wasn’t too deprived on the musical theatre front. The second time I saw Into The Woods was a few days ago, a Disney blockbuster with actors so famous, even I had heard of some of them! Okay, two– Anna Kendrick, who might as well have been filming an audition for the role of Cinderella with the music video for “Cups” (aka the Carter Family’s “When I’m Gone”), and, of course, Johnny Depp. My dad said that he thought Johnny Depp was becoming a caricature of himself: possibly true, but I don’t know what else can be expected of him from the role of pedophilic forest animal. The best thing about this movie, I think, is that it exists. Although it might seems a little bit pessimistic to say, I think it’s true that a lot of people who would never buy a ticket to a production of a Sondheim musical will see this movie. And that’s not necessarily because of any antipathy in modern culture for live music; it could be just price. Pretty much the only way to mount a top-notch production of a show and sell the vast majority (IDK, possibly excepting IMAX or whatever premium movie theatre tickets some people might buy) of the tickets for $10 or less is to make it a movie. There were some parts of the movie, too, that not only did the musical justice but actually improved on anything that could be done in a theatre: probably the highlight of the entire movie for me was the song “Agony,” in which Cinderella’s and Rapunzel’s princes compare their hardships as the true loves and saviors of their respective difficult women. The song is over-the-top and ridiculous, and the ability to make it ridiculous in a cinematic way only improved on the humour. (They splash around in a waterfall overlooking the kingdom, striking poses and ignoring the water damage to their presumably expensive riding boots.) The main problem with Into The Woods as a movie, then, was that it was just too damn long. Or rather, too damn long to not have an intermission. The structure of the acts in the show basically demands an intermission: at the end of the first act the characters all get their wishes and everyone lives happily ever after. Applaud, go buy a $6 Häagen-Dazs bar from the concession stand, and rally for the next act, which has a lot more weirdness and body count (which was diminished by one for the movie: Rapunzel lives.) With both acts run together, I was wishing it was over about 45 minutes before it actually was. With both Into the Woods and Mr. Turner-- a movie about British artist J. M. W. Turner– in theatres now, I eagerly await Hollywood’s take on Sunday in the Park with George.
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!
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:
http://youtu.be/tpKW82ZdCrs
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…
Coming to your from a megabus somewhere in between Kingston and Toronto… I just got back from Houston, Texas! My hotel wasn’t that close to Rice, but I decided to walk it anyway. Google directed me to a route almost entirely on residential streets with huge, nice houses and PALM TREES where I felt very safe (except for the omnipresent Canadian semi-disbelief at the idea that at least some of the houses I was walking past probably contained guns.) I also had my final chamber music performances of the semester last week. My quintet– by quintet, I mean violin, clarinet, horn, bassoon and double bass!– performed an arrangement/parody of Till Eulenspiegel entitled Till Eulenspiegel Einmal Anders (Another Way), and my sextet performed the Poulenc two nights in a row on different concerts. The last concert of the Poulenc was also my last time playing chamber music at McGill with our oboist, Alana Henkel. Alana is an amazing oboist and equally good English horn player who just graduated from her Masters’ and left this weekend to start the next phase of her life in Minnesota with her husband. You can find her at http://alanahenkel.com –she is an excellent musician and a wonderful person and I highly recommend her if you need an oboist in her area! This week I have family and pops concerts in Niagara, go back to Montreal to make up the theory exam I’m missing the day after tomorrow, and then finally back to Toronto for the holidays!
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!
As well as going to school for bassoon, I am also doing a minor in the Music Education program at McGill. Due to extremely poor course planning on my own part, I only officially added the minor to my program this year. However, I had taken music education courses in the past, played in shows conducted by an excellent conductor in the education program who recruited mostly education students for his pit orchestras (well, no bassoonists in the education program anyway), attended workshops hosted by the music education council (there was an awesome one last year where some drumline guys came in and taught a bunch of us simple drumline patterns, an activity which due to the sheer amount of noise involved I suspect is probably better suited to a football field than a classroom) and went to the parties and events hosted by the music ed council. However, now that its actually on my transcript I have quite a few music ed classes to finish up this year before I graduate. Among them are two conducting classes: Basic conducting this semester, which is exactly as the name would suggest, and Instrumental conducting next semester, which is where you get to conduct the “lab band” made up of the students learning secondary instruments in the wind, brass and percussion techniques classes. (I played french horn in the lab band last year while I was taking Brass tech! :P ) I’m preparing for the first practical test in Basic conducting this week, and I have to say it’s kind of kicking my ass. The simplest thing, such as making it clear in advance that the next beat will be legato and not marcato like the previous beats, looks awkward and completely unfollowable when I conduct the test material in front of a mirror. Even the beat patterns, which I hardly had to think about when we did conduct + sing assignments in musicianship/aural skills class, just don’t look quite good enough when I have a baton in my hand. (Also, I already broke my baton. Oops. I was very disappointed to find that there was in fact no unicorn hair inside of it, or indeed any other magical object appropriate to a wand core. That’s what you get for $10 I suppose. It is now sporting some classy yellow electrical tape.) I’m trying to approach the 5-10 bar fragments that we have to conduct for our test like I would prepare an excerpt. First I need to think of the tempo that’s indicated based on a melody I know I can call to mind in the correct tempo. I’m using the opening of the Mozart concerto for the two fragments that are around 60, the opening of the Poulenc sextet for the one that’s around 132, and Beethoven 4 for the one that’s at 80. None of these are entirely satisfactory since the tempi are all a tiny (hopefully unnoticeably) bit off from the indicated tempi and none of the moods or time signatures match up to what I have to then conduct based on their tempo. However, I would rather use slightly less accurate pieces of which I’m used to having to remember the tempo than pieces that match exactly in metronome marking, character and meter but that I have to search for and call to mind with more difficulty. Then I have to remember to breathe! When I played in lab band, it always seemed like the silliest thing that none of the student conductors could ever remember to breathe with the ensemble. Now I understand that it’s actually hard to get used to breathing as if with the intention of making sound, and then… not producing any sound with the air you’ve taken in. After that, what I find most difficult about the actual conducting is being able to prepare character the next beat without taking over the character of the previous one. Fortunately, since I’m taking this class later in my degree than I would have if I had planned to do the minor from the start, I know lots of other students who have finished that class and gone on to more conducting classes. I’m meeting with a friend tomorrow night to conduct for her. Hopefully I’ll feel comfortable with the basics soon! In other news, this weekend was the first MGSO concert of the year. The program was Verdi’s Forza del Destino, the Ginastera Harp Concerto, and Dvorak 8. My only part for that concert was principal in the harp concerto, which was awesome since it was a unique piece to get to play and the schedule gave me lots of free time. However, today we had out first rehearsal for the next concert, including an initial run through of Daphnis and Chloe Suite #2. This concert I’m playing principal on that and on a piece by Kaija Saariaho which involves quite a lot of spoken German in the wind parts, and third on the overture to the third act of Lohengrin. So I have more work in orchestra this semester, but that’s okay since this concert will be at Maison Symphonique! Okay… now back to trying to figure out how to conduct fermatas.
Last Sunday, NYOC 2013 played our final concert in the University of British Columbia’s Chan Center in Vancouver. That was the last stop of the tour that started at Koerner Hall in Toronto; we then went to Ottawa to play in the National Arts Centre, Montreal to record Mahler 9 in the MMR and play at the outdoor Theatre de Verdure (the only venue I’ve ever played where there was a real live moat around the stage…), Calgary in the Jack Singer, Edmonton at the Winspear, and ended in Vancouver. There were chamber concerts throughout, which is new for the NYO; usually the chamber music is finished after the first two weeks of the training session, whereas this year every wind group and a few string groups were asked to play additional concerts in churches or hospitals. Luckily my group played in Cambridge, not far from Kitchener-Waterloo, not too long after the chamber session had ended so we didn’t have to worry about finding space in our brains for chamber music once the tour started.
Here are some videos of our quintet performances:
Our first performance of Tombeau de Couperin: http://youtu.be/O4syGFzOyIs
And again a few weeks later, at the additional concert in Cambridge: http://youtu.be/-GFmcZ4EZ-8
Our second quintet, by Kelsey Jones (a former professor at McGill!) http://youtu.be/l7l5e8o0VZk
The tour started pretty quietly, travel-wise, in Toronto, with a whole free day. We took advantage of some rooms at GGS and U of T to make reeds. Ottawa was next with its endless tourist attractions; I ended up going back to my very favoritest bar ever, the Zaphod Beeblebrox club in Byward Market– where you can get a real live Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster!– to hear a folk band that half the NYOC oboe section went to high school with. Small world… On to Montreal, where Kevin and Bianca discovered the joys of the Oversize Score collection in the library.We then took a plane to Alberta, where we saw some wildlife, some mountains, and took an early morning hike up one of them before finally arriving in Vancouver! Michelle, one of the oboists in the section, invited the whole double-reed section over to her house for dinner in Vancouver. Her mother, as well as being a lecturer in engineering at UBC, also runs Twinklebelle, and had tons of amazing accessories lying around the house waiting for trade shows or to be shipped out. We tested some designs of ornamental flower accessories for her, which she ended up allowing us to wear for the next day’s concert! (Only the black ones, of course…) Now I’m back in Toronto and have two weeks before I hopefully ship out to the Interprovincial Music Camp to work as a Facuty Assistant for a week, and then head straight back to McGill for a new school year!
My jury is played, final assignment turned in, and I’m back at my parents’ house in Toronto learning to drive and practicing the rep that I’ll be playing for the rest of the summer. So, here’s a partial (I’ve probably forgotten things…) list of repertoire I played this school year. In no particular order, and with a varied assortment of ensembles:
- Berlioz: Corsair Overture (1st)
- Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto #1 (2nd)
- Scheherazade (1st) -Beethoven 3 (2nd)
- Stravinsky: Symphonies D’Instruments a Vents (2nd)
- Stravinsky: Mass (1st)
- Nielsen: Wind Quintet
- Debussy: Nocturnes (2nd)
- Petrushka (1st)
- Tchaik 5, only the 3rd and 4th movements (1st)
- Gounod: Petite Symphonie (1st)
- D’Indy: Symphony on a French Mountain Air (1st)
- The Miraculous Mandarin Suite (2nd)
- Jennifer Higdon: Percussion Concerto (1st)
- Claude Vivier: Orion (3rd)
- Mozart Requiem (1st)
- Parsifal: An Orchestral Quest (2nd) (a Canadian work, an hour-long orchestral arrangement of music from Parsifal which was utterly wonderful)
- Wagner: Wesendonck Leider (1st) (orchestral arrangement)
- Paquito D’Riviera: Aires Tropicales for woodwind quintet
- My big project for the first semester was the KW audition and for the second was my jury, for which I played the Osborne rhapsody, Saent-Saens Sonata, a Vivaldi concerto, and the Tansman Sonatine.
On to the summer!