Music

Do the instruments of the orchestra have specific personalities?

I went to a high school that had a full symphony orchestra, and even back then I could see, as a lowly quirky nerdy bassoonist, that certain instruments attracted certain personality types. The brass players were brash. The woodwinds were varying degrees of studious and serious, depending on how many reeds there were on their…

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Reminiscing about summer camp and the Fountains of Rome

This Sunday I’m lucky enough to begin a fantastic gig: hosting CBC Radio 2’s weekly classical music performance program, In Concert. Preparing tomorrow’s show put me in mind of summer camp – and thus conjured up all kinds of feelings and recollections. Once upon a time there was a camp called Toronto Music Camp that…

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Why it’s pointless to classify Rufus Wainwright

The year I moved to Vancouver, I arrived in the middle of November. It was dark and gloomy and dreary and rainy. I did a lot of walking that month, to get to know my new neighbourhood and my new city, and my constant companion was Rufus Wainwright. I know not everyone likes Rufus Wainwright….

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America the Beautiful

Here are some of my favourite things about America: Win Butler. Big Sur. The drumming of Art Blakey. The Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago. My earliest memories, of splashing through the shallows of Cape Cod as a toddler. That list is quickly cobbled-together over a bleary Sunday morning coffee – but needless to…

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The power of dramatic irony in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia

Dramatic irony is one of those storytelling techniques we all learn about in high school, and I haven’t thought about it much since then – except to enjoy it, when it’s used effectively, and even then, I don’t sit there and think, “This is a really great example of dramatic irony.” But I’ve been thinking…

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The enduring appeal of the Carmen archetype

This Saturday, on CBC Radio’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, I’ll be presenting a Canadian Opera Company production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, starring soprano Rinat Shaham. Carmen is an opera that’s impossible not to love. It’s not for nothing it’s one of the most popular operas of all time. And Carmen herself is a big…

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Listening for Chopin’s Ghost in the soundwaves

I always like it when something opens up my ears in ways I hadn’t considered. That’s exactly what happened this week when I listened to a new piece by Gordon Monahan called A Piano Listening to Itself. Monahan’s been creating compositions for years that force us to think about how we listen – he’s swung…

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The Cunning Little Vixen

When I was a kid, like many kids, the stories I loved best were the ones with talking animals, from Louis the swan in The Trumpet of the Swan, to the rabbits in Watership Down, to a certain frog named Kermit. There’s something undeniably magical about looking at the human world through the eyes of animals….

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Sweet summer music

Once in a while I’m lucky enough to get to keep Sheryl MacKay‘s chair warm while she’s off on holiday. This weekend on NXNW on CBC Radio 1 I’m thrilled to get the chance to listen to some of my favourite music and share it with folks listening across BC.  On July 24th I’m revisiting…

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