Sunday, June 17, 2012

Life Life Life

Life is hurtling by --- played a coupla times with the Toronto Symphony (massive Mahler 8 etc) and had the joy of being on the same stage as hundreds of great musicians including my young son and my ex (contra).

Went to New York and brought home my newest baroque bassoon, a lovely, tenor-voiced Scherer by the extremely gifted Leslie Ross.   In addition to my gorgeous new horn, Leslie gave me a disc of her recent compositions and performances with computer interactive bassoon... she is a superior being.

Guy and I are powering up for our next recital at the incredible, hothouse venue, Oregon Bach Festival.  I am so excited I could lie on the floor and do the chicken dance but don't know how.  I mean, this festival hosts great musicians from across the world and is the dream cross-over environment (cross-over, to me, means baroque music played on modern instruments).  We also get to present our kids show, Buzz and Crow (here is a link to photos from our last show)

Concerts and projects are filling in for next season... so excited to be playing concerti with my long-ago hometown orchestra, the Prince George Symphony with their exciting new chef d'orchestre, Kevin Zakresky.   This is my first time back in all these years!!  Playing Hummel and Vivaldi C minor and officially releasing the new Vivaldi disc.  In other concerto news, GF and I will be playing with the Okanagan Symphony in 2023/14 season and I will be doing one of my Vivaldi concerti on baroque bassoon (will announce in fall).

This July, I will be recording a concerto by Mathieu Lussier along with 2 solo works for trumpet (or corno) and bassoon with g27 and Eric Paetkau leading the orchestra.  Guy will be recording his Lussier concerto and is working on his strato-high range.  We will record the last work for that disc later with Alain Trudel (composer/conductor) but it is absolute secretarial hell to find two days that work for the conductor, composer, orchestra, engineer & soloists.  We need a manager.  We have a manager, but we need a manager who helps us with this endless scheduling.  Or not.  I dunno.  Anyway, this disc is all-Canadian music with roots in sultry music of the middle east, Sicily and other far-flung sonic locales, hence our latest album title Exotica.

And I have joined forces with Kristin Wolfe Jensen to update the Royal Conservatory Syllabus for bassoon... we are adding all the missing grades, starting from preparatory level to ARCT (Associate of the Royal Conservatory Toronto... at least, we think that is what the acronym stands for).  Kristin is bringing so much to the project in terms of advance preparation and connections that I grin with utter, unalloyed relief.  I have ideas but she has structure + ideas.

Norbert Palej has invited me, Guy and Beverly Johnson to perform a new work written by him (for us) at the U of T Cage Festival on October 25.

I will be playing again with Violons du Roy in the new season (missed playing with them soooo much this year) and playing/recording with Aradia again.   Guy and I will be criss-crossing the country, first to play at Prairie Debut in October then going to the east coast for concerts in March with fall/winter shows in Ontario... a quieter year for the duo except for all the recording.  I am still working out my Vivaldi tour, putting together different musicians to make a moveable band that might be a bit different from the usual... I so hope that I can pull this dream together.

OK, gotta hit the road now, get home in time to practise.  Driving a lot to look in on my brave old Dad these days.

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