A musician being nice about a conductor?
Linhan Cui is the real deal, as a conductor, and will soon be snapped up by a major orchestra if there’s any justice in the world; in the meantime, I treasure every concert I get to play under her direction.
Blanche Neige
What if Clive Barker had a fever dream of Snow White as imagined by Angela Carter? This is the question nobody but me asked, but I imagine Angelin Preljocaj’s Blanche Neige to answer.
Winnipeg is one of my favourite orchestras to play with, and recently I was invited to play guest principal for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of this show. The draw for musicians is that it’s a new ballet constructed entirely out of Mahler symphonies; but once I watched a video of a previous production sent to the orchestra, I was also excited for the reaction to the work, which is– look, I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that this is a very sexy ballet. The costumes were designed by Jean Paul Gaultier. The sexy cats had headgear intended to convey the danceable impression of ball gags. When Snow White eats the apple, it’s less a trick and more of an orgasmic force feeding.
I’m not casting aspersions. It all– in my opinion, from the production I did watch and the reaction of the Winnipeg audience– worked great. There is something about the project of presenting Mahler as anything other than an integral whole symphony that invites, nearly demands, a certain amount of enjoyable grotesquerie; Ken Russell comes to mind. That said, the music was not as chopped up as you might think it would have to be; no crazy cuts and very few significant alterations to make the music fit the dance. There were even two entire movements, the Purgatorio of the Tenth symphony and the third movement of the First, which accompanied probably one of the most memorable stagings in the show: the introduction of the seven dwarves (I think credited here instead as “miners”), an entire vertical ballet taking place on a sheer rock face, one of the pieces of it that is available online:
The only really wacky alteration was this section, from the very end of the 3rd movement of the Third symphony, being repeated eleven times:
…which is how I learned that in the Brothers Grimm version of the story, the happily ever after is that the Prince orders the evil Queen to dance herself to death while wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes, which is what is happening during the above. Disney sure didn’t mention that part!
Anyway, I’m very much hoping that the National Ballet or some other company around these parts picks this up, as I’d like to see it properly!
NMC
The last time I was at the National Music Camp, I was 14 and played a bassoon for the first time in the beginning bassoon elective. This summer I returned as a faculty member. (Full disclosure… once I started playing bassoon in earnest, my allegiance was firmly to the other music camp, on the grounds that the dining hall was quieter and they didn’t make you do “evening program,” so I never actually attended as a camper on bassoon.)
I didn’t take all that many pictures– one of the excellent things this camp did was take away all the camper’s phones, so there just wasn’t much photo-taking culture in the absence of ubiquitous devices. To be honest, I suspect a lot of the kids (those who didn’t sneak them in anyway, that is) were relieved to have them gone for a week. Hey, maybe they’ll do the same for the faculty in the future!
Laurel leading a very cozy band sectional
A bat taking a rest outside the bassoon studio (I realize this does not exactly look like the peak of bat health, but at least it flew away and we didn’t have a dead bat to deal with…)
Not a camper any more… they can’t force me to stay in the loud horrible dining hall… ate all my meals on the dock with my buddy Montaigne.
Very good doggo getting ready to listen to faculty wind quintet rehearsal
Pulled out the 2nd cello suite for a faculty concert
Garden Walk
Arcady Ensemble’s “Garden Walk” concert– the first half was a setup where, instead of musicians assembling in a central location for a concert, musicians are spread out through the Whistling Gardens playing solo works with related thematic material, and the audience walks around through them. Ronald Beckett’s music is always fantastic and the dedication of his audience to the ensemble is impressive.
My spot in the garden
The entrance to the performance space
Who am I to disagree?
His Second-Last Bow
Swan Lake with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Back in Regina to play Aura Pon’s Romp and Repose.
Our old house for sale… (not by us, the landlord had planned to sell it when we moved out)
That cat in the window of that place on Albert
SCARY SWOLE BUNS I MISSED YOU
Regina Symphony 2017-2022
For a school show one year, Christian and I did a sort of competition where we each had to play a snippet of Vivaldi at gradually increasing speed and the kids chose a winner. Pretty sure Christian was cheated out of many rightful wins because my instrument looked cooler.
The ears are what happens when you play Opus Zoo around Christmastime.
You don’t get many “triumphs” as personnel manager… if everyone’s onstange at the right time you get to sleep at night, but not much more… however, I did arrange for the Saskatchewan debut of the bass oboe… here it is.
The only photo of my playing the bassoon that makes it look kinda cool.
Cirque Musica
This week we played two iterations of a holiday circus show— one in Brandon, and one in Regina. The first show, in Brandon, was in a hockey arena, and featured a Wheel of Death, which I’d never gotten to see live before. Unfortunately, the show in Regina was in the Conexus Arts Centre which is too small for it.
The part for Sleigh Ride featured the signatures of everyone who’d played the show recently– so of course the following evening I got a text from Mike Hope of the Calgary Philharmonic, who was playing the show that evening. (In the Saddledome, so they did have enough room for the wheel…) Sign your rental and touring parts, folks! :D
Practical Notes on Five Sacred Trees: Dathi
- As I mentioned, I memorized the piece to play for a recording with piano, but used the music in performance with the orchestra. I taped together the part such that there were no page turns during movements, but it still left a page turn in between Craeb Uisnig and Dathi, which are attaca. I wrote in the rest bars at the beginning of Dathi on the previous page, and waited to turn until mm 15, the 2/4 bar where the wind section is making the most noise.
- Mm 41. Let me tell you a story. When I first heard Judith Leclair’s recording of this, I didn’t like that she played this bar legato. Nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t like it, and wanted to play it more emphatically. Except every time I tried, I cacked at least one note in it. When I tried it legato, presto, cacks gone. After several months of this, I gave up and played it legato. And they all lived happily ever after, the end.
- Mm 45, move a little… compared to what? Unclear, but I chose to interpret this as move a little compared to the dramatico section immediately preceding it, and consequently my tempo for 45is a little bit slower than for 35: better to not sound rushed on the runs in what should be a fairly calm section, at least for the first few bars.
- Mm 46 in the second edition of the bassoon part is, mystifyingly, marked 45a in the score and orchestra parts, and the numbering discrepancy remains for the rest of the movement. I’ll here continue referring to location by their marking in the bassoon part.
- Mm 50: 80 to the EIGHTH. Not the quarter. Jesus Christ. (At least, this is closer to the tempo of both recordings, and… well, try it yourself and see.)
- Mm 70 I played the easy version. Sue me.