CBC

Filling in for Quinn On the Coast

For the next week and a half I’ll be filling in for host Stephen Quinn on CBC Radio Vancouver’s afternoon drive show, On the Coast – an enormous privilege, and I’m terribly excited! I’ve been very busy of late. On top of On the Coast, I’ve been working on a number of projects. You’ll see more…

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Cricket Mania

For years now, I’ve been experiencing the onset of a slow love affair with cricket. Maybe it’s because I love puzzles (especially the cryptic kind), and here in North America, cricket is usually shrouded in mystery.  It’s viewed as baseball’s exotic, off-kilter cousin whose rules are just a bit too cryptic to figure out, thank…

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Celebrating the Year of the Tiger

The Chinese New Year is next week, and the Year of the Tiger is coming to a close. I’ve been thinking a lot about tigers this week, because I spent the earlier part of it completely wrapped up in and riveted by John Vaillant’s superb book, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival….

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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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