'Breathe and express' captures the core of every form of human expression

It wasn't just the usual zombie ride to work on the subway for me this morning.

Standing next to me from Bloor to King stations was a young man, probably in his early 20s, who was giving a friend an expertly detailed critique of a ballet choreographed by the late master, Sir Kenneth Macmillan. This man didn't look or carry himself like a dancer, but he spoke as if he had intimate knowledge of the artform.

At one point, he spoke of "breathe and express," as a way for dancers to pace their performances, as well as give them a better defined emotional shape.

It was one of those moments that focused so much of what any artist needs to do in performance -- be it an author shaping a manuscript, to a string quartet working together on stage. It also has a wonderfully Zen feel to it.

it could also be a new form of morning yoga: Breathe and express.

Colin Firth's eloquent tribute to Maureen Forrester captures great Canadian's love of life

Everyone who attended the tribute concert to Maureen Forrester in Stratford yesterday received a lavish coffee table-worthy programme filled with background, anecdotes, written tributes and pictures commemorating a particularly generous life.

I didn't have a chance to look at it until I got home last night.

Among the many beautiful tributes inside is one from Colin Firth. I hope no one minds that I'm going to reproduce it here, in its entirety:

Maureen's son, Daniel, and I were roommates while studying acting at the Drama Centre in London in the early 1980s. When he first came to stay at my family home in Winchester, I decided to force a piece of music on him -- a piece by Frederick Delius that had enthralled me since I was a child. To my surprise, Danny recognized it immediately. Not the piece, but the voice. It turned out to be that of his own mother. He then checked the record sleeve and discovered that at the time of the recording his mother was pregnant -- with him. I'd spent years in love with the voice of the woman who was singing with my future friend inside her!

Daniel was subsequently adopted by my family and was in frequent demand as a holiday guest. This became a reciprocal arrangement and I came to experience Maureen's hospitality, her generosity, her formidable intelligence, her trust, her eccentricity, her candour, her experience and her wisdom. I stayed in her home on Lake Muskoka and to my delight the adoption exchange continued for some years. All that was missing in this wonderful new relationship was that I had never heard Maureen sing live.

That changed in 1986 when I was visiting some old friends in Missouri, and one of them excitedly mentioned that Maureen Forrester was singing Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde that evening in the university auditorium at the end of the street. That night, Maureen sang magnificently -- thrilling her audience, not only with her voice, but also with her wit, warmth and her mighty energy. Following the performance, I proudly took my friends backstage where she was surrounded by adoring fans. As I approached, I became somewhat concerned that -- out of context -- she might not recognize me immediately and there would be an awkward moment. I needn't have worried as the howl of delight and surprise, which she let out from across the room when she saw me, would have filled the Royal Albert Hall.

That may have been the last time we met. That cry of welcoming recognition is my abiding memory. From the same voice that had camptivated me onstage a few moments before and in my home as a child. All those things, as well as her words of advice and encouragement, are gifts I will always carry: her friendship, her acceptance, her voice, her family and my cherished lifelong friendhip with Daniel.

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What could possibly go better with this than "One Charming Night," from Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen, as recorded by Forrester with the Vienna Radio Orchestra and conductor Brian Priestman:

One charming night
Gives more delight
Than a hundred lucky days:
Night and I improve the taste,
Make the pleasure longer last
A thousand, thousand several ways.

 

'Your job is not to relax; your job is to inspire people,' composer tells National Youth Orchestra of Canada

Brian Current rehearses Soma with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada on July 14. Photo: John Terauds

Executive director Barbara Smith describes the National Youth Orchestra of Canada as a microcosm of the country's youth (the youngest members are 16). After spending time with them at "boot camp" on the pastoral University of Western Ontario campus in London, I realised that it was also a micricosm of the whole classical-music world, reflecting the broad range of opinion and belief in programming and teaching, as well.

I need to sit and think and distill the experience into something for the Star.

In the meantime, one rehearsal session is still rattling around in my poor little brain.

On Thursday, Toronto composer (and head of new-music performance at the Royal Conservatory of Music) Brian Current arrived to rehearse Soma, a new commission from the orchestra.

After plowing through the opening measures of his intense, deftly structured, often uncomfortably piercing evocation of a journey towards an exalted state, Current stopped the music to do some fixing with the players. 

Part of his work involved getting the players to make "ugly" noises with instruments. Current said that we've been so culturally conditioned these days to think of art music as relaxing, and to make as beautiful sound as possible with our instruments that it's not easy to think of the act of making music as an act of provocation.

It takes only a moment of reflection to realize that a movie soundtrack, an opera, even a string quartet can be a stream of provocations -- to joy, to tears, to anger, to extasy. So much of the history of Western music is about new pieces -- from Gesualdo to Stravinsky to Adams -- provoking listeners into fits of dislike, with acceptance, even appreciation, coming much later.

"Your job is not to relax; your job is to inspire people," insisted Current. He later elaborated that each artist's real job is to reflect "what it is to be alive in this time and in this place."

How much of our daily classical music experience lives up to this ideal?

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In the spirit of good, old-fashioned fun, which is very much a part of the experience, here's a clip of the brass and percussion sections of the National Youth Orchestra rehearsing a flash mob that they're going to surprise conductor Jonathan Darlington with tonight after dinner:

 

It's too bad we're still debating value of pop vs classical rather than appreciating music on its own merits

Last night, I dropped in on a private preview of some music that is coming to town next season. It was a fascinating experience for me, on several levels. But one thing stood out: The composer's embarassment over musical style.

The composer should have been able to stand up in front of a roomful of Toronto arts patrons and say, Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to hear excerpts from one of the most emotionally challenging rock operas ever written.

As a listener, I should have been able to listen and come to my personal choice of liking or disliking based on that.

Instead, the work is being called an oratorio, and the composer apologised several times for the music's accessible style, because he wanted it to be considered as something serious.

I felt sorry that we live in a culture where something "popular" can't be considered by many critics as an aesthetic equal to something "serious." This is very well crafted music, just not art music. Does this make it less worthy of praise or consideration or enjoyment? No. But the point of contention lingers, especially in the world of opera -- and it's not about to go away anytime soon.

(I'll have plenty more to wite about last night's work next season.)

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On a related but very different note, here is experimental Vancouver violinist Suzka having some fun with Vivaldi (sorry -- the piece cuts off abruptly at the end):

 

My big realization from New Music 101 is how musicians should talk more to their audiences

I attended the last of four New Music 101 lecture-concerts yesterday by the Toronto Reference Library and the Canadian Music Centre. They had asked me to host the series and wouldn't take no for an answer when I said I didn't feel like I knew enough to stand up in front of everybody.

I'm glad I ended up hosting, because it taught me that, having made the effort to make plans and leave home, an audience arrives open and expectant.

Over the four sessions, which contained far more music than words, I was also struck by how difficult it is for many musicians to speak about what they do.

Anyone who seriously pursues music is taught to express themselves through their instrument. But throwing out some words is often just as valuable. As one audience member pointed out after the event last night, it helps humanize the performance as well as the music itself.

Non-classical musicians seem to understand this better. Pop, roots and jazz concerts usually feature quite a bit of banter between performer(s) and audience.

I think every music school should offer a half course that has nothing to do with history, theory or performance practice, and everything to do with how to talk to an audience. it might do wonders for all genres of art music -- from Early to as-yet-unnamed.

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Among the replies I received on yesterday's blog question was Bill McBirnie's suggestion of American composer Morten Lauridsen's 1994 setting of "O Magnum Mysterium" (O Wonderful Mystery). It's a sublime piece of contemporary a cappella choral writing, performed herre by the Brussels Chamber Choir under director Helen Cassano:

What is it I do? It's not about following the notes, says conductor Riccardo Muti

Here is an excellent, recent presentation by Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the art of conducting (thanks to my friend Shelley for passing this along):

Animated bookshelves a fun study in musical motion

Here's something fun that was posted on YouTube a couple of days ago. The music is by Irish-based Mexican flamenco duo Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero:

Mahler miniature a 10-minute chamber-music effusion of sound and emotion

The Associates of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra invited the Toronto Mahler Society out to join its regular audience at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre last night for the first of its Five Small Concerts, thanks to the presence of two Mahler's attempt at a Piano Quartet, in A minor, which was tidied up and finished by Alfred Schnittke in 1988.

I popped in to hear this piece, which I had never heard before. It turned out to be a quite the little musical drama in miniature.

Here it is, interpreted by Bulgaria's Quarto Quartet in live performance last year:

 

An organist's nightmare: How not to end the Hallelujah Chorus

One more flash Hallelujah Chorus, this time in Philadelphia

It's Hallelujah Chorus day! This one is from the old Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia -- now a Macy's. The store's most famous fixture is a grand organ, one of the largest ever made, and still played regularly during prime shopping hours.

This flash Hallelujah Chorus is a bit less focused than the one in Wellang -- but at least it has the combined power of 650 voices, organized by Opera Company of Philadelphia: