My writings - and those of others.
Why Festivals Enchant
A recent review of the closing of the Toronto Summer Music Festival is highly positive but questions why the audience is moved to so many standing ovations. In one way I know what he means. Some years ago at the conclusion of a performance of Mahler's Symphony of a Thouand, I found myself propelled to a standing position by the sheer force of it. There was nothing polite about it involving a decision to get up. It just happened.
The critic wishes that the crowd wouldn't jump up so enthusiastically so often, even though he commends the Festival format with its combination of free and paid performances, a tight time frame and a summer timetable.
Perhaps I can help - as a well tempered listener who attended more than 25 of the events. The reviewer does note that there is a core audience like me that attends everything. I'm a relative newcomer, but some have attended in the same way over the last 13 years. They know the returning performers by name and have a strong sense of who they are.
I had the privilege of sitting at the feet of the late Nicholas Goldschmidt in the 80's. At that time Niki was already more than twice the age of current artistic director Jonathan Crowe and he had honed the concept with an understanding that Festivals create excitement and momentum in a way that a single performance never can. Even subscriptions, great as they are, have too much space between events for that.
Niki's Festivals often crossed artistic discipline lines. Jonathan's combine different musical genres and levels of experience in the presenters. One of the strengths of this Festival is that it unites up-and-coming instrumentalists and singers with the finest professionals. The pros mentor the emerging artists by rehearsing and playing with them in public - or in the case of the singers, by conducting public masterclasses. The result is an immersion in all kinds of music and levels of understanding for both for performers and the listeners. Audience members stroll up the shady Philosophers Walk night after night fulfilled and happy.
The critic, perhaps correctly, thought the young instrumentalists in the final concert were too energetic and needed more nuance. Probably that is true. But what he perhaps misses in the standing ovations of the appreciative audience is their dominant demographic. Put aside for the moment the worry that there will be no audience for classical music in the decades to come. What those of us at this stage of our life recognize is the sheer beauty and poignancy of so much of what we are hearing - perhaps for the last time. It's worth standing up and applauding for that.
Classical Music for Kids
The Stroller Parking Lot at Toronto Summer Music Festival
Learning about classical music starts early. I danced to recordings of the L'Arlésienne Suite in my living room to strategically chosen by musical parents. But small people yesterday got to see and hear music performed live in an up close and personal way.
I've been attending Toronto Summer Music Festival daily since July 15, 2018. It features world renowned professionals, including those who live in our own city and it is a joy for its quality and its reasonable concert ticket prices - as well as its many free events. The professionals work with and inspire emerging professionals in its instrumental and vocal training programs, who perform frequently during the day in concerts and master classes.
I have volunteered previously along with many other locals and have continued to do so for three free concerts targeted to a young audience. Yesterday's concert was an example of how to engage very young participants by showing them how to distinguish between different instruments and the sounds they make.
There were four instruments to learn about - oboe, french horn, violin and piano. The lively mistress of ceremonies encouraged each one to play a short selection. Artistic director Jonathan Crowe took his turn.
After all had shown the basic sound of their instruments, we witnessed a competition - starting with a challenge for each musician to make a sound that would make us laugh:
Soon we moved on to a sound that would make us feel. It was remarkable how well very young children listened. We then had a vote and on the basis of the volume, the winner was - the piano! The pianist was still bragging - "I won, I won" - at at an informal concert later in the afternoon.
But the most surprising event was what could be done musically with a less familiar instrument - the saw. David Hetherington traded his cello in a later ensemble for this quite amazing rendition of Brahm's lullaby. He noted that while this could be termed a Stradivarius saw, it could be purchased at Home Depot.
The conductor Benjamin Zander noted in his famous TED talk that the world simply hasn't discovered yet who wonderful classical music is - and he demonstrated it admirably. The children in this audience have a head start. Wouldn't it be wonderful if more children had a similar one.
Doing Great Work
At this stage of my life, funerals of various kinds are a regular event in contrast to weddings - though I did attend one on Saturday where the bride and groom made their way to a small church on Toronto Island from the mainland by canoe.
Walter Pitman OC Oont would have approved. Doing things a different way was something he excelled at. He lived a full 89 years with many careers and achievements - secondary school teacher, first elected member of the New Democratic Party to the federal government, member of the provincial parliamentant so much more. Electoral losses later never slowed him down. He subsequently became Dean of Arts at Trent University, President of Ryerson Techological Institute, head of the Ontario Arts Council, head of the Ontario Instutute for Studies in Education - and in retirement the biographer of five outstanding Canadian musicians. He and his wife Ida were inveterate arts attenders and I first met them as delegates of a major choral conference where they joined a massed choir for each of my eight years on the job. Incredibly modest about his own abilities, Walter always said to me, "You're doing great work!".
It was good to be cut down to size at his service of celebration. We heard from a theatre director that he always said the same thing to him. And we even heard in a moving tribute by his daughter that he said the same thing to his children. But perhaps the best tribute of all came when she said of her parents, "Any time any of us came into the room - children, grandchildren and now the 10 great grandchildren - their eyes would light up. A lovely memory of a man whose enthusiasm and support lit up so many of our eyes that evening.
Music Unites us
Toronto has a wonderful summer music festival going on and I take in the concerts almost every evening for three weeks. Today was the first of three kids concerts, where I volunteer, and this morning something quite wonderful happened.
The performers were a change from the often classical fare. The group was the Kinan Azmeh CityBand visiting from New York and the lead on clarinet, Kinan Azmeh is originally from Syria. A good marketer reached out to ensure that some young recent arrivals from Syria were in the audience. Imagine their pleasure when Kinan introduced the group and invited questions in both languages - and all the kids responded. They clapped and cheered for music that combined familiar music blended with that of their new world. It's a good day to be a Canadian.
Kiran was back in the evening for an additional concert as part of Toronto Summer Music Fesival program. The volume was set lower and one could hear that the arrangements were beautifully nuanced to incorporate the two worlds of New York and Syria. We visited his childhood village - now reduced to rubble. He commented on the travails of going through customs with a Syrian passport - nearly every time in returning to New York he was asked to step aside and join a line called "Other", and then placed in a room with other nationalities of various ethnic backgrounds and colours and compelled to be silent for hours. In response to the inevitable, he learned to use the time to compose - and he said he wanted to dedicate the next composition to all the "Others" throughout the world caught in those same waiting rooms and never knowing the final outcome. Poignant moments.
Egged On
The author Ursula LaGuin died in 2018 at age 88 after a long career as a distinguished novelist, poet and essayist. I picked up a book of her essays, No Time to Spare, Thinking About What Matters and very much enjoyed the opening one, “In Your Spare Time”. She reflected on the survey she had received from Harvard asking about how she used her own spare time, with a checklist of 27 items. The first was “golf” and she didn’t put a check mark there. I wouldn’t either. But as she went on to say, this is a strange question to ask people in their eighties. I agree. All our time is spare time.
LeGuin observes that normally we think of spare time as free time left over from a job or working hours. There were other things to check on the Harvard list that she didn’t tick off and I wouldn’t either. Racquet sports? – No. Bridge? – definitely, No. When my husband was alive he always chose to play against me. When he won he was happy and when he lost he was amazed. Shopping? – “if necessary would have been better than -Yes. TV? – we would be lying if we said No – and last but not least, “Creative Activities” – specified further as Paint. Write, Photograph etc.
Like LeGuin, I don’t regard “Write” as a spare time activity. I’ve written all my life as I am doing right now. Most of my writing would be regarded as non-fiction whether paid or otherwise. It includes reports, newsletters, articles, grant proposals, a book. journals, letters, minutes, agendas, websites, blogging (since 1995) and more recently posts and tweets – plus a few poems. Writing is a continuum. It’s not about spare time. It also suggests the Harvard survey writer didn’t have a clue what it might be like to live for eight decades. I find myself thinking that way about a lot of other people too.
It came up when I read about my university’s alumni celebration dinner – to be honest I wasn’t reading at all but watching a video - containing a frame picturing a large collection of golden spoons. Those who graduated fifty years ago were to be recipients, as I was nine years ago. “That’s lovely”, I thought – “but has anybody asked whether that’s what we really need from the university after fifty years?” Were any alternatives considered? A massage certificate? A discount for upgraded reading glasses or hearing-aid batteries? Boots with better treads?
But LeGuin, bless her, has come up with the proper use for the golden spoon. Maybe between our fixation on probiotic yogurt and fibre-filled cereals, we have forgotten about the frequent menu item of our childhoods – the soft boiled egg. In her chapter, “Without Egg”, she even gives instructions on how to cook one for the benefit of recent feminist grads who wouldn’t be caught dead in the kitchen. And to go with it, she spends a bit of time on the egg cup. Apparently American homes no longer have them – and I am tempted to put a picture of one on Facebook in the “Share if you know what this is” category. Of course I still have one – three in fact. I also still have the Corning ware with the blue flowers on it which was a popular shower present for weddings in 1959.
After some discussion as to whether the egg should be placed in the cup with the larger or smaller side up, LeGuin moves on to the search for the proper spoon. Before that, she notes that a knife must be made of steel and the spoon must be untarnishable. “I’ve never seen a gold egg spoon but I’m sure one would do” she says. VOILA! I rushed to buffet drawer filled with odd bits of silver and there sat the spoon unopened in its little plastic gift box. Now it becomes a neessity and like Leguin, I start the day with a boiled egg and an English muffin – and browse another of her essays. My favourite to date is entitled, “Would You Please F*cking Stop! You’ll have to read it yourself to find out what it’s about.