Canada Day Concert Recap

Can I get away with saying "Best Canada Day concert ever?"

Not really, I suppose. And it wouldn't do posterity any good, either. The main reason I journal is so that I can go back and refer to it, after all, so a bit more detail is necessary.

First of all, hearty thanks go out to the following in the order I saw them before the concert: my mum and dad, MLG, ADZO, t!, Jan, Lu, Ceri, Scott, Marc, Miseri, Mousme, tcaptain and J. One of the reasons I love this concert is because I see friends I don't see often. Your presence was deeply appreciated, and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. And thanks go out to everyone who wanted to be there but couldn't as well.

And of course, deepest thanks go to HRH and the boy, for making it an extra-special concert. This was the first concert the boy was old enough to attend properly and be aware of what was going on. He's known for weeks that it was coming up, and as the date approached I reminded him, shared some of the music with him, and looked through his book about instruments to explore the different kinds of things he'd see. He stayed for the warm up and by all reports enjoyed himself thoroughly, sometimes tapping along with the rhythm on the back of the pew in front of him, sometimes conducting like Douglas. After the warm up he pulled me outside to a jungle gym-type thing next to the school across from the church where he proceeded to throw himself up ladders, across hanging bridges, and down slides in all possible ways, encouraging me to do the same. Then MLG and ADZO showed up and he exhorted them to join him in his play too. Then he called some random teenagers over: "Hey, hi! Come play with me! Come slide!" and he did it with such openness and enthusiasm that they did so with decent humour. We met up with a few other people (Lu brought me swag from the BEC! I have an AGaTB lace hairband among ARCs and a book for the boy and other things!) and then I headed back to join the others preparing for play. (The music kind, not the jungle gym kind.)

We were fortunate in the weather. There have been awful, awful days when the night has been dreadfully humid and sticky, and there have been nights where the wind has been so bad we lost music and stands. But this night was just about perfect. It was hot (it's July, after all) but fingers weren't slipping on keys or strings and shirts weren't sopping wet. It was pretty much perfect.

There's something remarkably special about playing the national anthem. First of all, the cello line is so unlike the melody we sing that it's really unique to hear how it all fits together. Second, there's something very powerful about how the drum roll steadies and then initialises the orchestra. Third, it's incredible to sense the audience suddenly recognising what's happening and surging to its feet, joining in with the vocal line around the third note. Finally, it's just so damn cool to play it and to hear a few hundred people singing the anthem to orchestral accompaniment. And there's always an extra bonus when people applaud. Traditionally the anthem isn't applauded, and while I'm sure there's some sort of philosophical reason for it, I can't think of a time when I'm more prompted to applaud than after a stirring rendition of the anthem, partially for the anthem itself and the nation (yay us!) and partly for the performers. Besides, it was Canada Day.

While I never hit the cello zone, I was very comfortable throughout this performance and please with my work. I enjoyed myself a lot, which on its own is huge. I had no major technical issues during the concert. The finger I use for pizzicato froze up during "Younger Than the Springtime" as it always does, but apart from that and some minor intonation issues (I can't hear a thing in that church, it melds all the sound together), and a bit where both the principal and I stopped in frustration because the cellist behind her was playing very loudly and racing ahead in a certain passage in the first piece and we couldn't hear things well enough to keep the proper pace going, it was a very good concert from the performance side of things. It was lovely from the artistic side, too. I like to begin with a piece I find pretty because it gives me confidence for the rest of the night, and the Symphony no. 3 (by not-really-Mozart) has a beautiful and expressive second movement that I love to play. I greatly appreciated not beginning with the Figaro overture, as it has some finicky technical stuff that would have frustrated me had I played it cold. As it was we did a very good job of it, nice and quick. The church may muddle sound but it also makes it sound very large and well-blended, so the overture had a very nice overall presentation that allowed some of the less precise stuff to slip through without calling much attention to itself. The 32nd symphony went well too.

The second half of the concert was the musicals, and we nailed them. We absolutely nailed them. In the past we have done passable renditions of some medleys, but these are decent arrangements and we were really on. It helps to have a good brass section for these things, and ours handled things just fine, thanks. I heard people in the audience singing along at a couple of places, and there were people crying at the end of The Sound of Music medley (of course they were, the 'Climb Every Mountain' arrangement was specifically designed to rip shamelessly at heartstrings). It's always good for the ego to see people surging to their feet almost as soon as the conductor has cut the orchestra off, and to hear the wave of applause crash into us.

Sitting right next to the conductor means I make a lot of eye contact with him throughout the concert, and I get to see his face as soon as we're done each piece. He winks at us with a crooked grin, or beams, or clenches a fist in a "yes!" motion, or nods and places his baton on his stand, or gives us a wordless smile to tell us we aced it before turning around to accept the applause and bow. Seeing his immediate emotional reaction is worth a lot. He's genuinely happy for us, or thrilled at what he pulled out of us; he acknowledges what we've done. I like to smile back at him and nod, to reinforce what he's given us and to thank him wordlessly in return. I often get a chance to thank him in person after the concert as well, and he always seems so hesitant, so unlike the caught-up-in-the-moment triumph in the moments following the final chord. He told us at the dress rehearsal there would be no encore, that he's not "an encore kind of guy". "Leave them wanting more" is more his style, and I can see his point. It's great to leave things on that much of a high, vibrating with that much energy. An encore is satisfying in a very different way. (Besides, where could we go after 'Climb Every Mountain'? Nowhere, that's where.)

My deepest hope for this concert was that the boy would fall asleep or get so cranky that HRH would have to take him away from the concert. He was fine but squirmy, and HRH took him to sit on the steps to listen to the music. And when we began the Sound of Music he looked at HRH and said with excitement, "That's from my movie!" "Do you remember what it was called?" HRH asked. "Sound," the boy said after thinking about it for a moment. "The Sound of Music, that's right," said HRH. Another parent with a girl on the steps looked at him incredulously and said, "He's how old?" "Three," HRH told her, "but his mother is in the orchestra." (We apologise for his precociousness, it's subject-related, we assure you.) HRH brought him back in during the post-concert applause and they both applauded. HRH tells me the boy applauded enthusiastically after each piece during the whole concert, too. I was so pleased that he'd lasted the whole night, and that he'd had the opportunity to listen to the Sound of Music medley. I knew it would be exciting for him to hear us play something he knew.

As we'd expected, the boy was tired enough that we had to head directly home; no fireworks for us this year. He laid his head against the edge of his seat and stared out the window until he pulled his cap down over his face and drowsed. When we got him home at ten o'clock he went right to bed. I snuggled next to him, and he said sleepily, "Oh no, Mama, we forgot your cello at the concert!" I assured him it had been in the back of the car and it was safely home again, and he was asleep in seconds. We heard the faint sounds of fireworks in the neighbouring boroughs as we got ready for bed.

This was one of my favourite Canada Day concerts. It also marks the end of my seventh season with the orchestra. This time of year is always bittersweet for me, because I like to ride the high of a concert and use it to propel me into the next set of music. Without the structure of rehearsals every week I tend to lose momentum and stop playing. I have the ongoing search for the 7/8 to keep me going, but being on hold financially takes a lot of steam out of that project, and without rehearsal to test the various cellos in a group environment I lose out on that aspect of the home trial. (In fact there's a post due on the current 7/8 trial; it will come soonish.) It's hard to walk out of a concert on that kind of high and know you won't see everyone again for two months. We all scatter with instruments and stands and sometimes you can't even find section mates to bid them a good summer. I did get the chance to thank our substitute principal for stepping in to help keep us even and confident for this concert, and thank our conductor for a wonderful concert and an excellent season. The orchestra as a whole thanked our secretary/librarian/general manager with a lovely bouquet of roses; she really has done an incredible amount of work this season.

I've gained a lot of technique this year, and I owe a lot of that to our section leader. I absorb so much by simply sitting next to her. There's also a certain amount of pressure that comes from sitting right in front of the conductor (oh gods, he hears every wrong note I play), and it's done me a lot of good. I think my expression has firmed up a bit too, partly from the kind of music we've been playing, and partly from reading things like The Art of Practicing, Making Music for the Joy of It, and Rosindust, all of which talk about the emotion associated with playing and how to communicate it. It's important to remember that we make music because we love it. I think one of the reasons I prefer to play in ensembles is because I can relax more and merge my sound with someone else's. (I had a partial solo of two notes this concert! Yes! I played them with the principal, sharing the first note and playing a different note afterwards! If you were there you probably didn't notice. That's okay. I know it was marked 'Solo' in the music and that's what counts. And yes, I played it very nicely.)

I should really think seriously about lessons again.

Okay, this is very long, and more than enough. It was good, it was great, I loved it, I'm very pleased with how I played and with the overall evening. The end.

No, wait, one more thing: I hate it when audience members rush the stage to talk to people or to get to the bathroom before anyone else. We have sensitive and freaking expensive instruments here, people, and there's a mess of stands and chairs. The amount of times I had to step in front of people so they wouldn't kick my cello or knock a stand over onto someone or another instrument was unreal. Sheesh. At one concert we made an announcement to the effect of "stay back you thoughtless mob until the musicians have left the stage, thank you"; I think we should do it every concert. Also, people who won't step out of the way when one is attempting to carry an instrument past/around them annoys me greatly as well. I move to the side as much as I can, but they just stand there. I'm not sure what they expect me to do, other than to politely repeat "Excuse me, may I get past?" Gnarr.

All right, now I'm done.

(Originally posted at Owls' Court.)

In Which She Muses Upon The Importance Of Contrasting Musical Approaches

We had a guest conductor in to handle the first half of Wednesday's rehearsal, as our conductor was off at his own retirement dinner. (Or I may have misunderstood and it was someone else's retirement. Whatever: he was not there, being otherwise engaged in dining to celebrate someone's retirement.) The guest conductor's first name was Peter, although I missed his last name.

He was brilliant.

We worked on the 32nd symphony, and he was fantastic. He had us really work on the musicality of the piece, asking for different sounds, talking about how the parts worked with/against one another, how the dynamics were crucial. He was a violinist, and so now and again he'd grab his violin and demonstrate the sounds or the phrasing he was looking for. He used simile, metaphor, and humour to get us to understand how to produce the sounds he was asking us to do. (He told the celli we sounded like a nail gun at one point, and although we all laughed we knew exactly what he meant, and proceeded to shape the repeated eighth notes in a particular cycle as he requested.) And it worked, it all worked. He had us sounding tight and focused and blended. Ultimately, what he had us work on was the emotion of the piece, something that's hard to focus on by yourself in a large ensemble. The first half of the evening flew by until he suddenly looked at the time and said we had to stop. The orchestra broke into spontaneous applause for him, and the first question asked was, "Where do you conduct?" He admitted that he didn't, but that he did coach.

Now, none of this implies that our regular maestro isn't a good conductor: Douglas has done fabulous things for us in the past five years, introducing new styles of music, broadening our scope, and pulling a new sound out of us. What Wednesday night demonstrated to me was that having a fresh leader and a different spin on the music made us think about how we play it in a different way. It's kind of like how running your writing past a fresh set of eyes helps you understand it differently. I wonder what having a guest conductor in a rehearsal now and again on a regular basis would do for us. By addressing different details, Peter gave us a new understanding of the piece, and I really hope we can carry it over to the other pieces we play. It's not enough to just play what's there; we have to give it personality as well. We've been trying to focus interpretation in our section by emphasizing certain things, making repeated phrases after the second time, leaning on certain beats and so forth, but we can't make it happen everywhere. There was a complaint in our section that our principal was complicating the music and we should just stick to what was written down, but there's so much missing if you just follow the bare notes. Interpretation and style are crucial. I'm glad Peter demonstrated that the entire orchestra could do it, and make the music sound extraordinary.

Our principal had to leave at the break; I won’t see her again until next fall. Simply sitting next to her has helped me so much this past season. It meant that in the second half I sat alone, and I have been very bad and not learned the principal’s solo in the My Fair Lady medley, so when it was suddenly there I stalled. Fortunately the man who sits behind the principal played through it, and I gave him a grateful smile. Everything else I handled pretty well, except the transition into “Edelweiss” in the Sound of Music medley, where the celli have the theme, and all of us stumbled. The transitions are nasty things in medleys; usually the key and the beat both change, and you have to go right into it. And for some reason my fingerings weren’t intuitive for me. I mean, they are intuitive in that if I remember where I have to go they work, but if I blank and just stare at the number (as I did Wednesday night) I’m lost. I’m thankful I’d reviewed all the musicals over the week at home (shock, surprise! I actually had time to practice!), otherwise I’d have really disgraced myself. I managed to be the only cello to carry on in a couple of odd places, too. Go me.

Three more rehearsals — next Wednesday, an extra one next Friday night, the dress the following Monday — and then the concert on the Tuesday. And then no orchestra until September again. This season has flown by. I’ll miss it a lot.

(Originally posted at Owls' Court.)

Canada Day Concert!

This is your two-week warning, faithful orchestra groupies. July 1 is coming up, which means that the annual Canada Day concert presented by the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra is also nigh!

On Tuesday July 1 the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will be giving a free (yes, free!) concert as part of the overall Canada Day celebrations in conjunction with Pointe-Claire Village. We do this every year, and it’s always terrific fun.

This year’s programme features:

Symphony no. 3 - Mozart
Overture to The Marriage of Figaro - Mozart
Symphony no. 32 - Mozart
Selections from South Pacific - Richard Rodgers
Selections from My Fair Lady - Frederick Loewe
Selections from The Sound of Music - Richard Rodgers

The concert begins at 20h00. As always, it is being presented at St-Joachim church in Pointe-Claire Village, located right on the waterfront at 2 Ste-Anne Street, a block and a half south of Lakeshore Road. The 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro drops you right at the corner of Sainte-Anne and Lakeshore. Here’s a map to give you a general idea. I usually encourage those facing public transport to get together and coax a vehicle-enabled friend along by offering to buy them an ice cream or something. It works nicely, and it’s fun to go with a group. And hey, you can’t beat the price. Be aware that if you’re driving, parking will be at a premium because of the whole Canada Day festivities thing going on. Give yourself extra time to find a parking place and walk to the church, which will be packed with people.

Free classical music! Soul-enriching culture! And as an enticing bonus, the fireworks are scheduled for ten PM, right after we finish, and the church steps are a glorious spot from which to watch them.

Write it on your calendar, tell all your friends and family members! The more the merrier!

(Originally posted on Owls' Court.)

Pop Quiz

What do these things have in common?

'Marriage of Figaro' overture (what do you mean you want me to play two bars with a single upbow?)
Symphony no. 3, also by Mozart
Symphony no. 32, yet more Mozart

Selections from South Pacific

And to come, I am told, there are still:

Selections from My Fair Lady
Selections from The Sound of Music

If you guessed 'the Canada Day concert programme' you're right.

I am not a huge fan of musical medleys. They tend to not be well-arranged, schmaltzy, and all over the map rhythm- and key signature-wise. Add in the fact that I have actually never seen South Pacific and, well, yeah. (Okay, I know 'Some Enchanted Evening' and 'Bali H'ai', and am I the only person who thinks of Led Zepplin's 'Immigrant Song' when I hear the latter?) But the Canada Day concerts are all about making the masses happy with cheerful and recognisable music, so musical medleys we will play.

Also, our principal cellist had to tell us today that she wouldn't be in town for the concert, making it the first Canada Day concert she'll miss. Thank the gods she's got two potential subs lined up, because none of us could pull it off without someone solid in her chair. I will miss her terribly.

Somewhat related: I sight-read very well at the beginning of the night (and in E flat major!) but those skills degraded over the course of the rehearsal until I was just keeping up in the overture and the South Pacific medley.

I was really, really hoping for some Beethoven.

I need to go to sleep. I am very awake.

(Originally posted at Owls' Court.)

Thoughts On Orchestra And The Upcoming Concert

Augh.

Did I say the church was on the corner of St John's and Lakeview? I misremembered. It's about three or four houses along Lakeview. I'm so used to churches being on corners that I neatly edited my memory of Cedar Park United. So if you're driving down St John's this Saturday looking for a church, just turn west on Lakeview. No, really. Trust me.

I had a really bad fibro day yesterday; not only was the body clunky but I spent two hours after I submitted the proofs staring at a computer screen and I don't remember any of it. I started waking up around the time I brought the boy home, and was in great form when I left (so I thought). Loved the drive to rehearsal, which was at the church, but took the northbound exit at St John's instead of the southbound, which I do every other time I drive to this church because I am a creature of habit and nine times out of ten when I take St John's I'm going north. There was a beautiful fiery coral sunset to admire along the way. I cannot express how much I love this time of year, with dry roads and crystal-clear nights.

When I got there I discovered that the church had invested in new folding chairs that are not only padded but feature straight seats, for which all the cellists were thankful as most folding chairs slant backwards and create nasty stress on the lower back. These chairs are the perfect height and enable my knees to be at ninety-degree angles. They were set up on a grey-blue runner, so I didn't need to pull out the leather belt I use to stabilize my endpin on stone floors. Excellent! As a bonus, the ambient light was good enough that I didn't need my stand light. (This was a mistake, but more on that later.)

We shifted the order of two small pieces within the suite: the chanson now comes before all the airs and dances instead of after the finale, which makes me very happy because now everything resolves nicely. Before the shift there was the massive pounding finale followed by a very gentle song, which, while lovely, kind of robbed the suite of its oomph. We had our guest mandolinist there again as well as the guest vocalist there for the first time, and the balance is lovely. I'm really enjoying this suite, the damned Passepied aside. (Although last night it worked for me -- I kept up and only lost my place once instead of every three bars.)

I tried playing with a shorter pin last night, which made the cello more vertical, and there's not as much body in the way as when the cello is more horizontal as a result of the longer endpin. It's comfortable (at least with these particular chairs). I also played with the yet-again-remodelled bow (HRH took more off the body of the stick for me this week so it's nice and light, although the frog is still chunkier than I'd like, not that we can do anything about it) and I was impressed by the quality of sound I was producing. Every church has really different acoustics and affects how we hear our instruments and the ensemble; this one is pleasant, but overall the orchestra has problems hearing the other sections because the strings are on two different levels. It never ceases to amaze me that it takes moving out of the cavernous auditorium in which we regularly rehearse to remind me of how badly it swallows sound.

I was the only inside cellist there last night so I was playing the lower cello line alone in one of the pieces, as compared to the three outside cellists playing the upper line. I wondered why it sounded so thin. And my cello's nasal A string is really starting to hold me back; I have to constantly pull my weight and stroke when I use the open string, which is more work than I need to be doing. Maybe I'll try a wolf eliminator. It can't hurt, and it's under ten dollars. I wonder if I can get one before dress rehearsal Friday night. Maybe I'll go downtown tomorrow morning to my regular luthier and pick one up. I could ask them about 7/8s, too. If I get there when they open at 9h30 then I can be home by noon. Too bad I didn't think of this before; I could have gone out this morning instead, because it's beautifully sunny. Or maybe I'll try the new luthier; it would take about the same amount of time to get there by public transport. I don't know if I'm relaxed enough to try to travel somewhere new and head into an environment I know nothing about right now, though. After the book is handed in, I think.

Not only was the body clunky and fine motor control was pretty much absent (not a good thing when you have to make minute changes to balance in the right hand, although the left hand seemed to be just fine), but my body temperature plummeted about half an hour after arriving and thought processes slowed down too. By the time we got through most of the smaller pieces, I was fading fast. As a result I was only partially present for the symphony, which engendered interesting results. I managed to sail through places where I'd stumbled every single time in rehearsal, and messed up perfectly simple things. I have got to remind myself to get up and walk around at half-time. It would help give my mind a break. It's just that I like to use the time to run through tricky bits on what we're going to do next. (Also, as I am shyness incarnate, this way I don't have to mingle and chat.) I strongly suspect that the ambient light, while adequate to see by, affected my not-wholly-thereness.

It really felt like I was woolly, or part of me was missing. It was slightly alarming when it came to the drive home. I was determined that the I-lost-two-hours-staring-at-a-monitor thing of the afternoon was not going to happen to me on the way home, thank you very much, so I turned the music up, held the wheel with both hands, and stared at the road directly ahead of me. Once upon a time I could drive home from t!'s house and not remember any of it, but that was okay because I was nineteen, it was the West Island, and it was around one in the morning so the roads were deserted. Highways are bad. Then of course, when I got home, I couldn't fall asleep until midnight-thirty.

I'll say one thing for being slightly out of it: I was much better at moving past being anxious about small mistakes. But I was so exhausted by the end of the evening that I wonder how I'll handle Saturday night. It's a really long programme. I'm still not convinced by the opening of the Ravel, we didn't get to the Faure, and no matter how I angle my chair I can't quite see the conductor, and I'm sitting in front of him. I'll try the old raise-the-stand-an-inch trick and see if that helps. Proof that I was out of it last night: that didn't even occur to me.

On the other hand, I really liked the tone I was producing last night. I was hitting a few strings during crossings (thanks, stupid clunky right hand), but aside from that and the nasal A string I could actually appreciate the sound. You have no idea how happy that makes me.

~ Originally posted at my main journal Owls' Court.

Concert Announcement!

Yes, gentle readers, the time has come again to make plans to attend the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra spring concert! Every spring we present a lively and soul-uplifting concert to celebrate the arrival of the season (or advent, or the invocation of said season in this particular case, ahem).

This year's concert to celebrate/invoke/present an impassioned petition to spring presents a selection of French dance-themed music, some well-known, others perhaps a delightful discovery for you. The programme includes:

Overture to The Caliph of Baghdad by Boieldieu
Pavane pour une infante défunte by Ravel
Aires de danse dans le style ancien from Le roi s'amuse by Delibes
Pavane, op. 50 by Fauré
Symphony no. 1 by Gounod

The concert takes place on Saturday April 5, 2008 at 19h30, and will be presented at Cedar Park United Church at 204 Lakeview Ave, Pointe-Claire, QC (corner St. John's Blvd). Admission is $10, children under 18 attend free of charge.

Directions via public transport may be found here. If you're driving, take St. John's Blvd south from either autoroute 40 or 20. Lakeview is one street south of autoroute 20; the church is on the south-west corner of the intersection, with a parking lot on the west side. Here's a map to help you find your way.

Did I mention that we have a guest mandolin player? We have a guest mandolin player. Intriguing, yes?

So mark your calendars, and make a date with friends and family to share a wonderful evening of music and camaraderie. And maybe, just maybe, it will feel a little more like spring when we're through.