REED MONTH

For those of you who didn't know, August is Reed Month.

After finishing work with Chamberfest this past Friday, I - gradually - started to get back into my practice regime. I saw a new baroque flutist in town, I made two modern reeds, I made a baroque reed - Life was good. 

Because of the long work hours at the festival I, unfortunately, haven't been able to play my new Wietfeld baroque bassoon by Pau Orriols (His company has a name, but I keep blanking on it - let's call it Bazinga for now). Dominic in Toronto has been quite excited to see the instrument, so I decided to take it down with me when I saw him today. 

Entrepreneurship not just a necessity, it's good for you too.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to watch a recital by Olivier Brauld, accompanied by Melisande Corriveau and Eric Milnes, focusing on the very beginnings of the French violin sonata. The list of composers included de Visée, Rebel, de la Guerre, Clérambault, Mascitti, as well as others. It was an excellent performance, and well narrated too! -It was very nice to hear French and English used interchangeably without any repetition.

After the concert I had a long chat with Eric Milnes about my prospects for grad school which proved quite fruitful. Eric had a great piece of advice for me, he preluded with a special pose and said "This is the best piece of advice I can give  you, are you ready for it?". He said that having your own projects were essential to a career in music. Not only if you had a problematic personality - which, by having your own group, would be challenged by personality conflicts, developing a good business practice, etc. - but even just for the fact that you'll feel more satified when seeing your own work come to fruition.

He couldn't be more right.

"For Heaven's Sake! We fixed the fortepiano"\The Frederick Beck/Francis Barwick Fortepiano

In the spring of 2010 I was rummaging through Studio A, Carleton University Music's main storage room and lecture hall, and stumbled upon an old piano wrapped in a particularly dusty blue rug. After managing to negotiate the removal of the rug (the legs on the instrument were quite flimsy), I opened the keyboard to find the inscription "Fredericus Beck Londini fecit 1777". The instrument was in poor condition, the strings had all lost their tension or had broken, and the sound board had three very large cracks in them. I continued to look for another maker's mark through the dust, figuring it was an exact copy, but, to my surprise, I couldn't locate one.

TBSI and Festival Montreal Baroque, part 2

Playing with Bande Montreal Baroque was an incredible experience for me. My first rehearsal was the pinch I needed to wake me from the dream-like daze I was in. Everyone around me in Susie's living room has been featured on at least one CD in my library - and I don't have a large collection - and were all ready to take on the new Brandenburgs. Although I had some time to look at the music while in Toronto, I was certainly not ready to pick up on the time-bending and extraordinary articulations so commonly found in the music of Susie and Eric, our director for the Brandenburgs. To everyone else these, what seemed to me, outlandish ideas were expected.