Author Ian McEwan pens libretto

Music often figures in novels by Ian McEwan. The English author's current novella, On Chesil Beach, centres on a violin player as one of its two main characters, while his previous novel, Saturday, featured a young blues musician.

Now, the author has become more directly involved with the subject, telling an audience at a Harbourfront Centre reading Monday evening that he has just finished work on the libretto for an opera. The musical work is a collaboration with Michael Berkeley, a composer and BBC Radio 3 host.

The opera is about a composer who, while conducting a piece of music he wrote at an earlier point in his career, finds he no longer identifies with the passions and preoccupations of his younger self.

McEwan described himself as a having "very catholic tastes" in music, admitting to having once played the flute "rather badly."

Vit Wagner

Robbie Lane's brainwave

It's an Old School kind of day. Toronto rock 'n' roll veteran Robbie Lane is going back to his old alma mater, York Mills Collegiate Institute, tonight to help kick off its 50th reunion at the Capitol Events Theatre (2492 Yonge Street). Robbie, one of the princes of Yorkville in the boom days, starts rocking with his band the Disciples at 7:00 p.m.

A commemorative CD of original music created and produced by members of the Class of 1975 is out there, sort of like a musical yearbook. Proceeds from the CD will benefit Sick Kids Foundation’s b.r.a.i.nchild Fund (Brain-tumor Research Assistance and Information Network), which was founded by renowned pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. James Rutka, an esteemed member of the Class of 1975.

Tomorrow it's like high school all over again as an expected 4,000 alumni from all over the world will congregate at York Mills Collegiate's open house from 11a.m. till 5 p.m.

-Greg Quill

Fond of the Font

In the music business it’s usually the small print you’ve got to watch for. Not with Bruce Cockburn, though.

Cockburn's hot type.

Breakfast In New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu, the Toronto-based singer/songwriter’s 1999 album, is now part of a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York specifically because of the big block letters set in Helvetica typeface spelling out the title on the cover.

Breakfast is part of an extensive MoMA exhibition on to March 31, 2008, celebrating the 50th anniversary of “the official typeface of the 20th century,” created by Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffmann.

There's a lot of Helvetica love going around these days. Gary Hustwit’s documentary on the Swiss font screened last weekend at Hot Docs to a warm reception. There was even a Down With Arial protest in front of the Royal Cinema on College St.

But if the truth be known, the whole Cockburn thing was a bit of a fluke. The brain trust around True North Records, Cockburn’s Toronto-based label, liked his choice of titles.

"But how are we going to fit it on the cover of an album?" wondered company president Bernie Finkelstein at the time.

"Well, let’s not hide the fact we’ve got a long title," said cover art designer Michael Wrycraft. "Let’s make it the cover."

-Peter Goddard

Facebooking the music

What do 148 Facebook members, most of them from Toronto, have in common? They all belong to a group on the social networking site called Who The F$@* Is Chantal Chamandy? (registration required)

Most TTC riders out there already get the joke, but for the rest of you, Chantal Chamandy is the singer whose ads for a new album have been plastered over every TTC train and bus in the city for weeks now.

LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR

If you've been on the TTC, you've seen her ads. But do you know who she is?

"She's on every bus I take. Girl's HOOKED UP with the TTC" writes one Facebook poster.

Other semi-literate online posts range from confused - "for the longest time i thought she was chantal kreviazuk or whoever (the chick married to raine maida), but... nope." - to philosophical - "Is it bad to hate her?" - to matchmakery - "imagine (if) chantal chamandy got married to jeff ltd? that would be the most annoyingly overexposed couple in the history of the ttc"

There's also a lively debate going on under the Is Chantal Charmandy a 'stain' on the Earth? discussion topic.

Not many members seem to have actually listened to the Montreal singer's single, despite it being widely available at GTA Dollarama locations. However, more than one member referenced a recent Sunday Star Buzz article that tried to get to the root of the mystery.

But the intrigue grows, even spawning a spinoff Facebook group, Who the f*ck is chantal chamandy and why is she on every friggin TTC ad? which already boasts 35 members.

Chamandy's Facebook fanclub has 65 members.

-Shauna Rempel

iRebel

Seen defiantly changing CDs and brazenly perching their outdated technology on their laps while riding the TTC, a revolution seems to be rumbling amongst fans of portable music who are rejecting the iPod in favour of the older, bulkier Discman. Rather than being ridiculed as Luddites, it’s the Discmanites themselves who seem to be openly mocking their iPod-toting cousins.

The rebellion seems to encompass all musical genres and fashion types: alt-rock loving hipsters, baggy pants-clad hip-hop heads, leather-jacket wearing punk rockers.

But I have to say, the Discman, which along with its predecessor the Walkman revolutionized how and where we listen to music, looks incredibly bulky when compared to the teensy tinsy iPods that have saturated our culture. Already, a trend of wearing big-as-furniture headphones seems to counteract the portability aspect of iPod technology, where smaller is better. What’s next, boom boxes on the TTC?

The reasons behind the rebellion could be many: a statement on music piracy, a rejection of the need to have new (and instantly outdated) technology, or part of the ’80s nostalgia movement harkening back to a simpler time.

But for one rider, sporting a fuschia-and-black mohawk, eyeliner and a battered Sony, it was a case of necessity if he was going to get his daily death metal fix. "My iPod’s broken," he shrugged.

-Shauna Rempel