You don't have to listen to better music -- just lie about it on Facebook

Social media isn't really about a new way of communicating, it's a new way of expressing all the weird little quirks that make us human.

Today's AHA! moment came from a story that illustrates a couple of ways people are circumventing Facebook's penchant for spreading our personal news and preferences all over the place.

Guilty pleasures suddenly become public pleasures. Wouldn't I be embarassed if my friends discovered I listen to Il Divo, or Leroy Anderson, when I should be savouring the complex pleasures of Elliott Carter?

Wouldn't you know it, there's now a service available that will mask your true listening pleasures on Facebook with a fake playlist that can help you tailor your image to whatever you feel your peer group would best approve of.

Check out the details here.

Just because a musical instrument is compact doesn't mean that it is simple

Prejudice lurks everywhere.

I spent a couple of hours with Toronto clarinettist Kornel Wolak yesterday and, once we got the business part of our meeting out of the way, I peppered him with questions about his instrument. I quickly realised that the orchestral world is like a microcosm of the city: We acknowledge and respect our neighbours, but we don't necessarily spend time to understand where they come from and what their everyday challenges might be.

I played clarinet (B-flat and bass) in high school, but I barely got past figuring out fingering and making a semblance of an acceptable noise before I graduated and left the woodwind behind forever.

So, given that I play the piano and the pipe organ, which contain thousands of individual components, one of which will randomly act up on any given day, I have to admit that I unthinkingly classify most other instruments as simple.

As Wolak told me about the differences between different makes of clarinets, how difficult it can be to find a professional-grade instrument that is balanced from lowest to nightest notes, that easily plays legato and that has a pleasing tuning, it was clear that a clarinet may have fewer keys than a piano, but making the right match between player and instrument is no easier to achieve. It is an idiosyncratic bond as intense and, with any luck, as rewarding as a happy romantic pairing.

I also assumed that the simple adjustment of a lever here and a piece of new cork there would be enough to keep a clarinet going for decades. Also not true; the moist breath of the player, frequent swabbing and the cycles of seasons can take their toll on the wood. For Wolak, an intense performer, this means a life cycle as short as three years before the instrument needs some major attention.

Even that is not simple: Wolack books three days with a technician in Indianapolis whenever one of his clarinets needs a major going-over.

Like me and my neighbours, every musical instrument is as quirky as the next. As with people, the more time you spend with it, the more you expect from it.

That said, Linsey Pollack is here to make fun of everything I just wrote:

Two oboes, eight hands show off the fun side of National Youth Orchestra of Canada's summer activities

The four members of the oboe section made clever merry at the National Youth Orchestra's annual talent show, just before the start of their concert tour on Thursday. (You can read more about it in today's Star.)

The oboists are Véronique Guay (from Montreal's South Shore), Aidan Dugan (Ottawa), Ron Mann (North Vancouver) and Hugo Lee (Toronto):

We can build space shuttles, but we can't figure out the magic of wood as an acoustic material

For all of our astounding technilogical sophistication, the mysteries of wood still somehow seem beyond us.

Every few years, a news item flashes by announcing that a scientist has formulated a molecular explanation for the magic sound of Stradivarius violins. A deeper reading usually reveals that some part of the mystery has not been explained, usually because we're missing some secret ingredient in the varnish, or that there are no old-growth spruces left in that Val di Fiemme woods where the old masters sought their materials.

I bring this up because Le Figaro in France today published a short profile of La Roque d'Anthéron music festival master piano technician, Belgian Denijs de Winter, calling him "the piano whisperer." (The festival begins today, running to Aug. 21.)

In the article, de Winter says that one of his great accidental discoveries, many years ago, was that, contrary to all of the accepted wisdom in the piano world, exposing the wood of a piano to repeated changes in humidity levels is actually good for its sound, because it allows the soundboard to loosen-up, thereby improving its ability to transmit vibrations from the strings.

He went so far as to build a climate-controlled room in his Brussels piano-rebuilding workshop to observe this more closely.

If you can read French, you'll find the article here.

So, this is a long, roundabout way of suggesting that we poor little humans, instead of working against nature, as is our wont, might remind ourselves to accept her into our plans and calculations.

It's just really hard to quantify in scientific language.

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JAN LISIECKI ON A ROLL

Young Canadian sensation Jan Lisiecki is a guest of the La Roque d'Anthéron festival tomorrow -- same day as Yuja Wang.

Today, he has just finished giving a recital at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland -- a recital that should be available for free streaming at www.medici.tv by Sunday.

It's part of an amazing summer for him, which has put him in the big leagues. We're lucky that Stratford Summer Music has managed to snag him for three days of recitals: Aug. 4 to 6.

Paul Dateh's little webisodes turn old-fashioned physical comedy into music

Adventurous, 20-something American violinist, singer and composer Paul Dateh has been having a lot of fun for the past year and a half turning classic comedy routines into little musical webisodes.

Since every Monday morning deserves a distraction, here is Dateh going cuckoo with guitarist Ken Belcher. If you like what you see, you can find plenty more episodes of Violince here:

Deep spatial experiences are ours when we listen from the centre of the musicmaking

It's funny how earbuds or earphones place the music inside our head, but we still don't feel like we're inside the music. Usually it still sounds as if it's being projected towards us, as in a traditional concert hall or from stereo speakers.

Vancouver composer Jordan Nobles has spent more than a decade experimenting with spatial effects in music, where the performers are placed around the audience, or in different parts of the space in which the performance is happening. For the most practical reasons, few composers think beyond the traditional performance configurations when writing music.

But hearing music all around is a bewitching experience, and it changes our relationship to it, and to the space. It also changes us.

As Nobles once wrote in Musicworks magazine about spatial music:

The first time I employed this new technique in my own composition, I was fascinated by the behaviour of the audience. When the music began, at first people looked around, turning their heads this way and that and straining their necks to see the musicians surrounding them. After a while, they gave up trying to ‘see’ every musical entrance or event and sat still, many with eyes closed, and just listened. They were experiencing the novelty of being inside the music itself, instead of having it projected toward them. This is the way in which we experience sound in the real world of nature, as opposed to the world of today's media where sound and images are constantly projected uni-directionally at us from stages, screens and speakers. We are in the center of our environment; sound does not come from one direction but surrounds us completely. Unlike the eyes, the ears can hear all 360 degrees around no matter which way they are facing - and hey are always open. We experience spaces not just by seeing them but by listening. With your eyes closed, you can tell what type and size of room you are in. Our ears and brains developed with the capacity to process a depth of information through sound direction and reflection which is simply not possible in the conventional concert hall setting. In a sense, when we create a spatial music event, we are waking up areas of the brain that are too often neglected in our contemporary life.

Nobles is one of those composers who is not afraid to refer to familiar tonal/harmonic patterns in his music, making it particularly accessible to any audience.

CBC Radio Two's Concerts on Demand a couple of days ago added an excellent sampling of his work from a concert given by the Vancouver Cantata Singers, led by artistic director Eric Hannan at the Blusson Centre, a multi-level, oddly-shaped atrium-type space at Vancouver General Hospital (pictured at right).

Of course, the broadcast loses all sense of the spatial -- but the music itself is good, and well performed (except for the final piece, by Mendelssohn, in which the sopranos sound pretty ragged).

Besides three pieces by Nobles, there is one of Arvo Pärt's tintinnabulist wonders, a setting of the Te Deum, and Medusa, a fun little creation by fellow Vancouverite Kristopher Fulton.

Listen to the concert here.

Here is another one of Noble's choral experiments, Coriolis, in which he works on creating compelling dissonant vibrations. Being at the centre of the circle created by the members of Musica Intima in 2009 would likely be a brain-bending experience.

The past becomes much more compelling if someone helps us find our place in it

"Strombo," (2011), 19 x 30 inches, by Harry Enchin

During my walk yesterday around the 50th annual Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition at Nathan Phillips Square, the biggest crowd of excited spectators had gathered around Harry Enchin's photo collages that seamlessly blended street views culled from the City of Toronto Archives with current images. It was Toronto then and now, as seen from two perspectives magically (or, shoould we say Photoshopically) merged into one.

It made me think how people appreciate the past, but don't always get excited about it -- unless they can see something of themselves in it, too. Enchin managed to make that connection very successfully.

It also made me wonder about how conscious classical music programmers are about trying to make a connection between sensibilities and expectations of today with the music of the past.

I know that the act of interpretation literally brings the music of the past into the present, but most people who aren't already fans usually think of it as something that's exclusively from the past.

Perhaps we need to mix up the setting and take the concert out of the traditional auditorium. Perhaps we need to mix in background visuals.

The easiest thing to do is for an artist to offer the audience a few words of introduction about the music, to at least personalize it.

An example of the flip side of this is new music that draws explicit connections to something from the past -- like the "Fugue" movement in Paul Hindemith's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B-flat Major, from 1936 (as played by Glenn Gould, here):

 

Canada at 144: Are we ready for a national culture that reflects our urban realities?

It's Canada Day, and I'm about to put my feet up and hide the laptop for the next 10 days.

Before I go, I thought I'd celebrate this strange and wonderful country with a wish that, someday soon, our performing arts will become an even better reflection the mix of cultures and influences in our big cities -- which is where most Canadians and Canadians-in-waiting live.

There is a major disconnect between the faces I see on the subway or streetcar and the faces I see at Roy Thomson Hall, the Four Seasons Centre, Koerner Hall, the Jane Mallet Theatre and Walter Hall. Perhaps this is the way it's supposed to be, but, if you believe, like me, that a society's culture is a mirror of itself, then that reflected image tells me that there's a big disconnect going on culturally as well as economically.

Rather than harp on a problem, I've tried to find an example of an artist who I think reflects a positive vision of our cultural future: Haligonian Dinuk Wijeratne.

Born in Sri Lanka, raised in Dubai, educated in England and New York City and, now, transplanted to Halifax, this pianist, composer and conductor is the embodiment of the urban reality I see and feel and hear around me every day -- and his home base is a city nowhere near as diverse as Toronto.

I've chosen three examples to show off different aspects of what Wijeratne does.

The first features Canadian pianist David Jalbert in a recital from the Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur in Montreal.

David Jalbert / Wijeratne Colour study in Rupak Taal from Philippe Meunier on Vimeo.

 

The second is the first part of a performance by Wijeratne, frequent collaborator, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and tabla player Mayookh Bhaumik at the 2008 Atlantic Jazz Festival:

The third is is of Wijeratne explaining and presenting his work as music director of the Nova Scotia Youth Symphony:

 

Today's free lunchtime concert a great opportunity to catch jazz piano art of Toronto's Chris Donnelly

Today's free noonhour recital at the Toronto Jazz Festival's open stage in David Pecaut Square is excellent young Torontonian Chris Donnelly. His recent solo album, Metamorphosis, a single, 50-minute work of his own creation, was a huge treat. And its well worth brining a take-out lunch to the square to get a sample of his craft.

In case you're not familiar with Donnelly, here's a guick introduction, thanks to last year's edition of the biennial Nottingham International Jazz Competition (Donnelly was one of the four finalists, as he had been on his previous try, in 2008).

If you only have time for one clip, start with Part 2:

 

Time for a non-musical moment: What finer gesture than bringing some Pride to Rob Ford's cottage

I'm more musical than political, but I can't help but applaud a group of people who are, I gather, planning to parade their way up to Rob Ford's cottage this weekend, where he is honouring "tradition" and "family" instead of acting as mayor of all Torontonians.

Part of taking on this kind of a job means sacrificing a lot (if not most) of one's personal life. It's one of the many reasons why otherwise capable and qulified people don't take on public service.

Anyway, brining a bit of colour to cottage country is not a bad idea, is it? For more information on how to join this fabulous flash mob, email info@proudoftoronto.com and check out the group's website or Facebook page.

Let's turn for inspiration to Little Britain's Matt Lucas (as regular character Dafydd), in a number from the live stage show: