RETREAT!

Well, it's early fall, which means it is retreat season!  The first choir retreat that I am conducting is coming up this weekend, and then the second one happens the weekend after Canadian Thanksgiving.  One of them is in town, meaning I get to sleep in my own bed in the evenings, and the other is in a log cabin on a secluded creek just outside of town.  Both of them will offer a great advantage to my choirs to do some concentrated learning, as well as opportunity to socialize, and build on choir morale.  

Having been involved in choir retreats for many years on the other side of the podium, I know how difficult it is for a chorister to stay mentally alert for all those rehearsals!  In the past couple of year though I have found that these retreats can be awfully taxing on me as a conductor.  After approximately twelve hours of rehearsals over three days, there are moments during the retreat where my focus dwindles, my patience grows thin, my arms get sore, my voice gets tired, my back gets sore, and the list goes on.  I'm fortunate to have an assistant for both of these choirs though, and I will make much use of them over the two weekends!

For our retreat with my chamber choir, which is the one we do out of town, I have found a pretty good system where we have enough time to really learn some repertoire, as well as finding time to enjoy the surroundings, and each other.

On the opening night, we rehearse for a couple of hours before dinner, and another hour after dinner.  Saturday morning I try to plan an extended warm-up, which will include enough stretching, vocalizing, breathing and tuning exercises to get people a bit more relaxed and ready to sing.  If someone in the choir is a yoga expert, this is the opportunity to use them.  The day is then divided up with sectionals and enough breaks to enjoy the day - especially if the weather is permitting.  This year, we are planning to take our new promotional photos, which should take up a good hour or so of the afternoon.  I also plan for at least one rehearsal to be spent on "new" music that we will be learning for future concerts in the season - something to keep the mind active, and sight reading chops in working order.  The evening will have a shortened rehearsal followed by a games night where we can all relax and get to know each other a bit better (there is often Bailey's involved!).  Sunday morning will also have a rehearsal component, but as many of our singers are off to church choir obligations, I have to limit it to easier repertoire, and small accomplishments.

This year, I expect much of the weekend retreat to be involved in memorization!  We are doing three spiritual arrangements, and it would be pointless to perform them with music in front of us.  So if we can memorize at least one or two of these works over that weekend - that will be a significant accomplishment indeed!

Do you have retreats coming up?  What are your strategies for an effective weekend retreat? 

Happy Michaelmas!

Tomorrow, September 29th, is the Christian Feast Day known as Michaelmas.  Otherwise known as the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.  It is also one of the few feast days which has the suffix "mas".  The other two being Candlemas (February 2nd, aka Groundhog Day) and the much more popular and commercialized Christmas.

During the Middle Ages, Michaelmas was a far more popular feast day.  It coincided with Autumn harvest in much of western Europe.  

In England it was customary to east a goose on Michaelmas to protect you from financial ruin. 

In Ireland, if you found a ring in the Michaelmas Cake, it would mean that someone was likely to be married that year.

It also coincided with the election of the new mayor and chief of police, and for a period of time on Michaelmas, there was a "lawless hour" where there was no law enforcement.  A symbolic gesture of this was to throw cabbage at people.

In Ottawa, Canada, in 1971, on Michaelmas ...

I was born.

Happy Michaelmas Everyone!

Election and the Arts Part II

As a follow-up to my post on the weekend - here is an article from Sunday's Halifax Herald which tries to answer why the Conservative Government, both present and past, have made massive cuts to Arts programs.  

I realize I'm probably "preaching to the choir" as it were, but it is important for us to read as we approach the election.

The original article is available through this link, but I post it in its entirety below in case the article is archived.

Political cynicism behind arts cuts 

By SILVER DONALD CAMERON
Sun. Sep 21 - 7:16 AM

‘TO BE QUITE candid," said the Danish professor, "we in the Scandinavian countries always considered your country as an uninteresting shadow of the United States. But now recently everyone wants to know about Canada, because we all want to know, where is this extraordinary writing coming from?"

In 1988, I was speaking at schools and universities in Denmark and Sweden, sponsored by the Nordic Association for Canadian Studies. Canadian writers were suddenly emerging on the world stage — Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro and many others. Everywhere I went, people wanted to know about Canada — its cities, its ethnic complexity, its geography, all the realities that are reflected in its literature.

Culture is the face that Canada presents to the world. It is also an extraordinarily attractive industry. With a ballpoint pen and a notebook, Alistair MacLeod composes stories that echo around the world. Celine Dion takes over Las Vegas, while Diana Krall conquers Paris. Alex Colville paints an image onto canvas, and sells it to a German collector for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That’s "value-added" and "export-oriented" beyond the dreams of Bombardier. In the information age, culture is the very content of the economy. In 2002, culture was a $40-billion industry in Canada. It was bigger than mining and oil and gas ($35.4 billion) and nearly double the size of the agriculture and forestry sectors ($21 billion).

Culture is huge. That’s why American governments relentlessly promote their own cultural industries, running interference worldwide on behalf of American publishing, recording, film and broadcasting.

Culture is design, music, architecture, images, film, story. It is also quilting, folk sculpture, video games and festivals. It is what Cape Bretoners do in their kitchens. It’s jazz on the waterfront, buskers on the Grand Parade, Shaun Majumder and Cathy Jones "goofin’ around" on TV. Culture tells us what it means to be Nova Scotians, and Canadians, and sentient human beings. It creates no pollution, uses few materials, employs hordes of people, and travels almost free.

And the Harper government hates it.

Every 20 years or so, a new Conservative government guts Canada’s cultural programs. The Harper crowd has chopped about $60 million since 2006, axing everything from the $2.5-million National Training Program in the film and video sector to the tiny $300,000 Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, which supported the archiving of important film, television and musical recordings.

Why? Gary Schellenberger, the Tory MP who chaired the standing committee on Canadian heritage, brays that arts support programs are fundamentally insulting to Canadian artists, indicating "that Canadian artists cannot compete globally" and that "Canadian talent is not as viable as American or European talent and that without government assistance, arts and culture in Canada could not survive."

Horse pucky. Insert the words "aircraft" or "nuclear reactors" or "softwood lumber" in this passage, and see how it plays. Consider, for instance, Prom-Art, the $4.7-million program of the Department of Foreign Affairs, which supported the foreign travel of artists promoting Canadian culture abroad. Yes, the Canadian cultural industry does need such programs — just as the forest industry, the aerospace industry and the power industry need government support in selling their products abroad.

Hello? Hello? Isn’t that what government trade and industry departments were created for?

The programs under attack are largely industrial support programs — training programs for cultural workers, research and development programs, seed money and venture capital programs. Stephen Harper says that the cuts are not anti-culture, but simply represent prudent financial management — and then says that there’s no point in "funding things that people actually don’t want."

Really? Who, exactly, was objecting to the industrial support programs he’s been cutting? Some voters dislike the Canada Council, admittedly, but who dislikes Prom-Art? Who even knows about it? And if we’re killing loser programs, when will Harper garrotte Atomic Energy of Canada, which has sopped up $20 billion in public money building reactors that nobody will buy? Talk about "funding things that people actually don’t want."

The truth about the arts cuts is buried in a recent Globe and Mail story on the Conservatives’ unprecedented use of data mining and micro-targeted marketing. One key to victory, the party believes, is appealing to "battlers," blue-collar workers and low-paid white-collar workers who feel ignored by the country’s elites, including government. The battlers really like tax reductions and cuts to government-supported programs — particularly in the arts.

And that’s why the latest cuts were made just as the government ramped up for an election. These cuts were designed to cause controversy, and to send a message to the battlers. They damage a major industry, and they shrink Canada’s presence in the world. But they may give the Conservatives an electoral edge in a few ridings — and that’s the only thing that matters.

Silver Donald Cameron’s website is www.silverdonaldcameron.ca

Election Promises - What about the Arts?

For my friends south of the border, you might be unaware that Canada is in the throws of a federal election.  The difference is, we just found out about it in early September, and the entire campaign, election, and induction of the new government will all happen before mid-October.

Here, we don't vote for a leader of the country - instead, we vote for individual members of the party, and the party who wins the most seats, becomes the government, and their leader becomes the Prime Minister of the House of Commons, and in turn, the leader of the Country.

The latest polls show that our current party, the Progressive Conservative party of Canada, under the leadership of Steven Harper, will likely be re-elected in some capacity.  It remains to be seen if they will increase their presence in the House with a majority, or continue to operate with a minority (i.e. fewer seats than the combined three, possibly four, opposition parties - all of whom are liberal to some extent - some more than others).

One of the things that the Conservative party has done in the last few months before Parliament was dissolved is to make unprecedented cuts to the arts in Canada, including the Canada Council for the Arts and other major granting agencies which basically fund all the major arts programs in Canada, and in turn, provide me with work.

Although at this point, I am not going to publicly endorse a political party, you might guess that I lean a bit to the left.  This latest announcement by the Liberal Party of Canada provides some reassurance that there is hope for the future of the arts.  However, my greatest fear is that we are headed in the direction of a long period of Conservative rule, where funding for oil, gambling and war will continue to supersede any new funding to the arts, and will instead be subjected to continued cuts.  Whereas it is unlikely that a Liberal, New Democratic, Green or even the one-province separatist party would support this sort of action.

I do hope that Canadians will take a good look at the political landscape that our current government is molding, and ask yourself if it creates the identity you want for our country.

Music for the Eucharist of the Anglican Church

I've been involved in Anglican Church music in some capacity for almost thirty years.  My parents enrolled me in the local Cathedral Men and Boys choir when I was eight years old, and within the first four months of moving away from my home city, I took a job as choirmaster at an Anglican Parish, where I've been director of music now for five of the last eleven years.

Back at the Cathedral, as you might expect, we used different settings of the Eucharist every week, in the style of British Cathedral music programs.  Some of the composers of these settings included the likes of Harold Darke, Charles Wood, John Stainer, Byrd, Charles V. Stanford and other British masters, as well as Palestrina, Victoria, Schubert and Mozart, and a host of Canadian composers as well.

At my current parish we rely on Merbecke for the Traditional services, and the American composer, Richard Proulx for the modern language service, and Gordon Light for our contemporary service, and it's been this way since 1982, a good 15 years before I showed up.

I've been thinking for the last few years that it is time for a change.  This Sunday, in celebration of the anniversary of a prominent parishioner and chorister, we are singing Charles Wood's setting in the Phrygian mode (often known as "Wood in the Phryg" (pronounced "fridge"), and it is going to be stunning!   As much as I'd like to make the inclusion of a choral eucharist setting a regular event at the church, I'm sure that it will be met with opposition from parishioners who feel that removing any part of the congregation's opportunity to sing is a step backwards.  So I'm trying to find a solution where we can all win, perhaps adding this element to our worship once a month, or maybe just on major feast days an holidays.

Well, if that idea is met with opposition, which I expect it will, at the very least, I think it might be time to retire the Proulx in favour for a new congregational setting.

If you have any ideas of settings of the eucharist for the modern language, which is the same at the Catholic Mass, that is particularly singable from a congregation standpoint, and "Anglican", you know, the kind of singing that doesn't induce instant hand waving or clapping on beats one and three?  I'd love hear your suggestions!

The importance of score studying!

On the table in front of me right now, I have the following:

• Handel's Solomon
  
• Monteverdi's Orfeo
  
• Haydn's Harmoniemesse
  
• RVW's Mass in G
  
• various works of Bruckner
  
• a mish-mash of works by Mendelssohn, Clemens non Papa, Knut Nystedt, Finzi, Britten, Koepke, Halloran and Whitacre.
  
• One black cat, and one mostly white cat with siamese markings.

By November 21st, pretty much all of this music will have been performed by me in some capacity.  Actually, a good percentage of it will be performed between November 8th and November 21st!

Solomon is on the 21st, and I'm conducting it.  The Monteverdi I am singing in a staged production (reading into this - it's memorized, and needs to be memorized by early November), Haydn, RVW (hurray!) and Bruckner are making appearances on the next Pro Coro concert at the end of the Month of September, and the rest is Da Camera music for our November 8th concert.

(The cats are on the table, simply because they're always around, and we are not strong enough to tell them what not to do.  Not that they'd listen anyway)

Right now, the two projects which are most prevalent on my mind are the Handel and the Monteverdi - both of which will require a fair amount of prep work.  I've been elbow deep in the Handel this morning, marking up the choral score with breath marks, dynamics, articulation etc - and will have to tackle the orchestra score in the coming weeks, so I can have my assistant transfer it all into the individual parts before they are delivered to the orchestra (time is money - and I've learned from experience that the more you have written in their parts before the first rehearsal, the quicker that rehearsal goes!).

The Monteverdi is going to be a ton of fun - it is such great music, and the musicians involved are fantastic!  Memorizing, however, is going to be a challenge for me.  I think the last time I actually sat down and intentionally memorized a work was about 10 years ago.  This is not to say that I haven't memorized music since then.  To be honest, like most conductors, I bet I memorize everything I conduct, but the music is always there anyway.  If push came to shove and I had to conduct Messiah or St. John Passion from memory, I probably could.  But this is different, this is singing!  With text!  In a language that I don't sing enough for it to be natural to me.  So it's going to be a daily activity around here from now until the end of October (and I'm not just writing that because I know the director of this project is reading this ...)

I'll be writing about issues in both conducting score preparation, as well as memorizing music in the coming weeks, specifically related to these two major works.  I'm also going to spend a fair amount of time getting into the story behind Solomon, and the connection between this major oratorio and King George II, which I find most interesting!

First though, I have to get over the first cold of the season.  At least I have it now ... and not in November!

A big change in my life ...

Well I did it.  

After years of constant frustration... wasting countless hours waiting for things to work as they should, but to no avail... thinking I've solved all the problems only to find out hours later that the problems still existed... going over to friends houses and lusting for something they have, and I don't, yet ever defending the fact that I could do anything on mine that they could do on theirs, even if it did take just a little bit longer... 

I gave in ...

I bought an Apple MacBook.

Life is so much better now.

For bloggers out there who need more proof - I turn your attention to this bloggers account of switching from a PC based system to an Apple - the posts are in a three part series, and if you are considering the switch - I recommend you read them all.

As a bonus, when I bought my Mac from the University Bookstore, I got a fancy new iPod touch - which only took my wife three days to fall in love with, so I bought another one for her too (only hers is pink).  

I kind of like this habit of buying early birthday presents!

coming soon ...

I've been rather negligent as of late with blog posts - simply because, as many of you who are involved with choirs or University will know, this last week marks the start of our year, and I'm trying to stay ahead of the game with my preparations and lectures.  I'm also in the middle of yet another long job application process, which will go into the mail today or tomorrow.

I do have a few blog post ideas in the works though, and I should be able to start putting them down here in the days to come.

In the mean time - here is a fun article from the CBC.  A good reason not to be shy about having Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot in my collection of CDs.

The New CBC Radio Two

Looking at my counter stats this week, my hits seem to be on the high side, it seems many of you are finding my blog this week while you search for CBC Radio Two, or CBC Radio Two Programming because of my older post on this subject, back when the powers that be at CBC first announced their proposed changes.

Since that announcement, there have been public protests, which I have been involved in, Facebook groups, email lists and from what I can tell very little support for these changes. Perhaps that demographic is being quiet and enjoying the changes, but I don't see that happening.

Yesterday, the changes went into effect, and I tried to keep an open mind about them. I am sad to say however that my original feelings towards these changes have not changed since I've listened to the new programming.

Yesterday morning, the familiar voice of Tom Allen came on the air, but was quickly followed by music that was so disruptive that we instantly hit the snooze button (this coming from a man who has never hit a snooze button in over 30 years of waking up to a radio alarm). After the snooze time ended and the offending radio noise came on again, the snooze was replaced by "OFF". We tried again this morning, with the same results and are seriously considering putting a CD in the clock radio as a wake up alarm. We've already replaced the radio station in the car for the drive in to work with a CD - and we'll need it on the way home as well.

The afternoon show "Tempo" with Julie Nesrallah is much the same as the morning request show used to be. Good music here - although nothing overly challenging for the critical listener, a lot of "safe" music, including Mozart, another replay of the Elgar Enigma Variations, which has always found monthly repeat performances on various radio2 shows in the past, and very little from the 20th or 21st century. I really do like Julie though, and she is finding her radio voice quite well I think, I just wish she was allowed a bit more talk with some educational componenet and live interviews, aspects that we've had in the past. Right now, it sounds a little bit like classical DJ'ing.

Eric Friesen's show, which played a fair amount of live music and followed interesting discussion topics is gone, and the drive home show, which was always an interesting mix of classical, eclectic, and good independent music labels, has been replaced by - at least what I heard on one occaision - rap and pop?

I'm so disheartened by this, that I find this post hard to write. The most disheartening aspect of it is that ALL the music I've heard on the new morning show and afternoon drive home show can be found on at least two or three other radio stations in Edmonton. Wheras those who enjoyed the old programming have no alternative but to resort to CDs or internet radio (which doesn't work so well in the car - my network cable not being long enough) .

So it is with great saddness that I have turned off CBC Radio2 in my car, and in my home. I only hope there is enough outcry over the coming year that a decision is reversed in some way.

We need to make this an election issue! This is public broadcasting that all Canadians are paying for after all.

Visit the Radio2 blog post from yesterday and read the comments, you'll see I'm not alone. Add to the comments if you wish, but know that the blog only allows comments for seven days after the posting was made.

Hitting the ground with at least one foot running

It's September 2nd, and so far, all is quiet. In fact as soon as the new CBC 2 Morning show started playing what they are referring to as "music" ... the bedroom got really quiet again. After 30+ years of never once hitting a snooze button, I've been converted... in fact, the snooze button is closely followed by the OFF button - a really really sad day for our national broadcasting service.

The quietness is going to change in a few hours though as the inevitable "back to reality" mode hits. On the list of things to do today is to finish up two course outlines and stand in front of a photocopier for a few hours while they all print. Apparently I have a TA for the course I'm teaching at U of A, and I was hoping I could use that person to do the copier work for me - but I haven't received confirmation of who this is - and class begins tomorrow at 9:00 AM.

Last week, almost certain disaster happened. We are one week away from the beginning of choir rehearsals, and we found out one week ago that the Oratorio "Solomon", which is the work I'll be conducting in late November with Richard Eaton Singers (Edmonton's symphonic choir) is completely OUT OF PRINT and won't be ready until mid-October. However, our incredible librarian and general manager found scores in Toronto, and low and behold, one-hundred-and-thirty copies of the piano vocal score should be somewhere en route, likely in a plane passing over western Ontario as we speak, and should be in the hands of our librarian tomorrow. Amazing really.

Other things on the to do list this week -- finish a job application, which will include putting together CDs and DVDs, prepare material for my church's concert series, including budget and PR related work, prep classes, including online material and powerpoint presentations, and prep rehearsals for next week!

The cats however are still sleeping unaware of the apparent cosmic shift in the world today.