Architect, house thyself

Posted on June 20, 2013 by barczablog

University of Toronto are undertaking an ambitious building project, the new home of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.  But it’s not that it’s a tall building or a unique shape; that’s not what’s especially daring about it.

It’s more a matter of principles, a question of integrity.

When you think about it, where should you house a school of architecture?  Academic departments can be housed just about anywhere: so long as the school’s home is not in any sense symbolic of its mission or its values.

Ideally a discipline should connect theory to practice, building a bridge between words & deeds.  When the discipline is the one concerned with building & design, the place to teach those disciplines isn’t an incidental matter.  If no one investigates or questions the relationship between the design of the space & the school’s functions & objectives, there’s a potential disconnect.

I’m excited to hear of this development, right in my neighbourhood.  A great deal of thought has gone into it. I am impressed by the idea of an architecture school that seeks to embody important principles such as sustainability, inclusiveness and equity.  The new building has the potential to inspire students as though it were a kind of embodiment of their goals, a kind of practical manifesto.

Artist’s rendering of One Spadina Crescent

The project also seems to rescue a beautiful old building that’s in need of renovation, namely the old Connaught Lab at 1 Spadina Crescent.  There’s a curious echo of one of the oldest tendencies in housing artists.  Again and again we’ve seen parts of our city (as in other cities on this continent) that once were the most affordable neighbourhoods for artists—usually marginal real estate no one else wants— gradually transformed. What is unwanted then becomes known as cool.  Eventually the neighbourhoods become gentrified, becoming the jewels of the city.  It was true for Yorkville, as it was for Queen St W.  In this case, the cool old building –1 Spadina Crescent– was home to the student newspaper and Art Department studio spaces.  If I don’t miss my guess, the coolness of the gorgeous old Gothic building won’t be lost in the new project; indeed that’s probably one of the subtexts driving the design.  The new building seems to function as a new gateway to the west side of the campus.

I can’t wait.

Watch the video for a sense of the ambitions underlying the project.

Posted in Art, Architecture & Design, Personal ruminations & essays, University life | 1 Comment

Bronzes by Ai Weiwei in Nathan Phillips Square

Posted on June 19, 2013 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

AGO unveils monumental bronze sculpture
series by artist Ai Weiwei in Toronto’s
Nathan Phillips Square
Majestic 50,000 pound sculpture installation adorns Toronto City Hall’s reflecting pool in advance of AGO summer exhibition, Ai Weiwei: According to What?

TORONTO—The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) unveiled Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s monumental sculpture series Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Bronze in the reflecting pool of Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square today. The installation precedes the AGO’s summer exhibition Ai Weiwei: According to What?, opening on Aug. 17, 2013. Toronto is the only Canadian stop on the exhibition’s North American tour.

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is a collection of 12 spectacular bronze animal heads representing the traditional figures of the Chinese Zodiac. The installation, made possible in part by the City of Toronto which generously allowed the use of the popular reflecting pool outside City Hall, is on display until Sept. 22, 2013.

Ai, who is under constant surveillance and has been unable to leave China since the government confiscated his passport in 2011, is supportive of the AGO’s initiative to share his works publicly. As a political activist and champion of freedom of expression, Ai has been publicly critical of the Chinese government’s record of human rights violations.

“Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is an incredible piece of public sculpture and a living testament to Ai Weiwei’s belief that art is for everyone,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, director and CEO of the AGO. “By installing this monumental art work in Nathan Phillips Square, we are offering Torontonians a chance to preview Ai’s prodigious talent, and proclaiming to visitors that our city is a place with an insatiable appetite for art and culture. I’d like to extend my most sincere thanks to the City of Toronto and City Council for making this extraordinary opportunity possible.” Larry Warsh, a friend of the artist and organizer of the Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Bronze world tour added, “Ai Weiwei is pleased to see that the Canadian people embrace the democratic spirit behind his work.”

The heads are installed in order according to the Chinese zodiac: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Standing 10 feet high, each sculpture ranges in weight from 1,500 to 2,100 pounds and is supported by a marble base weighing 600 to 1,000 pounds. The sculptures’ combined weight of over 46,000 pounds required consultation from a structural engineer for installation in the reflecting pool. The Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads have been previously exhibited in London, Los Angeles, New York, Sao Paulo, Taipei and Washington D.C. among other cities.

“The City of Toronto is pleased and proud to partner with the AGO to install this important work by such an influential artist,” said Mayor Rob Ford. “This sculpture series is not just visually powerful, but it is also a great example of public art, as it can easily be appreciated by people of all ages and backgrounds. Staging this work under Nathan Phillips Square’s Freedom Arches also shows that the City of Toronto is deeply committed to supporting and protecting artistic expression and the right to free speech for all.”

AGO extends invitation to Chinese-speaking Torontonians

The installation of these sculptures is one of a number of initiatives the AGO is undertaking this summer to draw attention to Ai’s remarkable work. Directed by Toronto artist Gein Wong, the Gallery invites Torontonians who speak a Chinese dialect to participate in Say Their Names, Remember, a live reading of the names of the thousands of schoolchildren who perished in the devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan province on May 12, 2008. This initiative was inspired by Ai’s powerful art works Remembrance (2010) and Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizens’ Investigation (2008-11). Volunteers who wish to participate in a reading of the names on Aug. 18, 2013 can register at http://www.ago.net/aiweiwei-names.

Nathan Phillips Square will host another Ai Weiwei work this fall through Scotiabank Nuit Blanche with the installation of a new edition of Ai’s Forever Bicycles (2013)—a sculpture of more than 1,000 bicycles—as part of this year’s celebrations on Oct. 5, 2013. Further details will be announced by the City of Toronto later this summer.

**

ABOUT CIRCLE OF ANIMALS/ZODIAC HEADS
Crafted in China, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads recreates a series of sculptures designed in the 18th century by Italian artist Giuseppe Castiglione, which once adorned the famed fountain-clock of the Yuanming Yuan (Garden of Perfect Brightness), an imperial retreat outside Beijing. In 1860 the original zodiac sculptures were pillaged by invading French and British soldiers during the Second Opium War and only seven are known to still exist; five have been repatriated to China, but ownership of two remains contested. In re-interpreting the original zodiac sculptures on an oversized scale, Ai focuses attention on questions of looting and repatriation, while extending his ongoing exploration of the ‘fake’ and the copy in relation to the original. The dual title alludes to the two ways viewers can understand the work—as a literal menagerie and as a traditional Chinese cycle.

ABOUT AI WEIWEI: ACCORDING TO WHAT?
Organized by the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Ai Weiwei: According to What? arrives at the AGO for its only Canadian appearance following a successful run at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. and at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Featuring large-scale sculptures, photography, installations, video and audio work, Ai’s art draws on both western consumerism and traditional Chinese symbols and objects. With humour and wit alongside solemn expression, the exhibition chronicles the artist’s work from the mid-1990s to the present and makes visible the often fragile links that bind individuals to history, art and each other. Following its run at the AGO, Ai Weiwei: According to What? will be be presented at Pérez Art Museum Miami.

ABOUT AI WEIWEI
Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing) has been the recipient of numerous grants, honours and awards, most recently in 2012 the inaugural Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent of the Human Rights Foundation; the International Center of Photography Cornell Capa Award; an honourary fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects; an Honourary Degree from Pratt Institute; and a foreign membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. Other honours over the past five years include a Chinese Contemporary Art Award for Lifetime Achievement; an International Architecture Award for Tsai Residence; Das Glas der Vernunft (The Prism of Reason), Kassel Citizen Award; The Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation Award for Courage; the Skowhegan Medal for Multidisciplinary Art; Wallpaper Design Award Best New Private House for Tsai Residence; and a Wall Street Journal Innovators Award (Art). Ai Weiwei is consistently included in top artist and human rights lists, including GQ Men of the Year in 2009 (Germany); the Art Review Power 100, rank 43 in 2009; the Art Review Power 100, rank 13 in 2010; the Art Review Power 100, rank one in 2011; Foreign Policy Top Global Thinkers of 2011, rank 18; and runner up in Time’s Person of the Year in 2011. Ai Weiwei helped establish Beijing East Village in 1993, co-founded the China Art Archives & Warehouse in 1997 and founded the architecture studio FAKE Design in 2003. He studied at the Beijing Film Academy, Parsons School of Design and Art Students League of New York; upon returning to China he collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ai Weiwei: According to What? was organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was curated by the Mori Art Museum’s chief curator, Mami Kataoka.

Leadership gifts in support of the exhibition from Emmanuelle Gattuso & Allan Slaight and the Hal Jackman Foundation.
Additional generous support from The Delaney Family Foundation, Donner Canadian Foundation, Partners in Art and Francis & Eleanor Shen. Assistance from media partner The Globe and Mail.

The installation of Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads was made possible in part by the AW Asia, New York.

Contemporary programming at the AGO is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

The Art Gallery of Ontario is funded in part by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. Additional operating support is received from the City of Toronto, the Canada Council for the Arts and generous contributions from AGO members, donors and private-sector partners.

ABOUT THE AGO
With a collection of more than 80,000 works of art, the Art Gallery of Ontario is among the most distinguished art museums in North America. From the vast body of Group of Seven and signature Canadian works to the African art gallery, from the cutting-edge contemporary art to Peter Paul Rubens’ masterpiece The Massacre of The Innocents, the AGO offers an incredible art experience with each visit. In 2002 Kenneth Thomson’s generous gift of 2,000 remarkable works of Canadian and European art inspired Transformation AGO, an innovative architectural expansion by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry that in 2008 resulted in one of the most critically acclaimed architectural achievements in North America. Highlights include Galleria Italia, a gleaming showcase of wood and glass running the length of an entire city block, and the often-photographed spiral staircase, beckoning visitors to explore. The AGO has an active membership program offering great value, and the AGO’s Weston Family Learning Centre offers engaging art and creative programs for children, families, youth and adults. Visit ago.net to find out more about upcoming special exhibitions, to learn about eating and shopping at the AGO, to register for programs and to buy tickets or memberships.

Aug. 17, 2013 – Oct. 27, 2013: Ai Weiwei: According to What?

Sept. 25, 2013 – Nov. 27, 2013: David Bowie is

Nov. 30, 2013 – March 2, 2014: The Great Upheaval: Modern Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection

Posted in Art, Architecture & Design, Press Releases and Announcements | Leave a comment

Cats came back

Posted on June 14, 2013 by barczablog


I’m thinking of a dark coloured t-shirt with eyes looking out of a dark background.  It’s in a child’s size, a much-loved shirt commemorating a happy memory excuse the pun of a fun show.  Now?  That child is now a mom, with her own child ready to see the show, ready for her own T-shirt (we bought one).

A generation later, Cats is back.  In its first visit I recall that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical was presented as a serious work with formal trappings, even if children were welcomed.  This time, however, I believe the show is truer to its roots.

ALW adapted a childhood favourite, namely TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.  While the work was –and is—highly original in its dramaturgy, the edginess of its style may have obscured the most obvious fact lurking in the background: that this show is not just an acceptable entertainment for children, but a family-friendly work of great simplicity & directness.

This time around Mirvish Productions seem to have a great deal of clarity about this.  Children are welcome to walk right up onto the stage during the intermission to see the set up close, snapping pictures with their smart-phones.  The marketing is at least as pervasive as before (T-shirts, CDs, decorative bags and more).  We’re more informal in the Panasonic Theatre, eating ice cream or drinking alcoholic cocktails, same as if we were at a ball game (i wish i could take my wine glass into the opera).

The theatre is full of children with parents revisiting their own happy memory from a generation ago.

While it’s the same score, some things are different.  I asked my friend Stephen Farrow, English music-theatre scholar, for his recollections about the original.

Cats in London used a conductor (and an 18-piece band, and four singers in a booth backstage to sweeten the sound in the big dance numbers), but not an orchestra pit. An orchestra pit would have been physically impossible, given that the entire stage and the first four rows of seats revolved through 180 degrees during the overture! The band (and the conductor) were in a room backstage. They didn’t repeat the revolving-stage-and-seats thing anywhere else (in London, it was staged three-quarters in the round), but they usually built the stage out over the orchestra pit, and the band was always somewhere backstage.”

Synthesizers have come a long way in the last thirty years, as have microphones & sound technology.  There’s CGI now, and if I am being objective, I think musicianship has progressed too.  Lona Davis leads a very tight show that ebbs and flows easily, leading from the keyboard as one of three keyboardists, with bass, guitar, two players on assorted woodwinds and a drummer/percussionist. Sometimes less is more.  Technology is probably part of this, as the monitoring & controlling of cues is wonderfully clean, apparently effortless, but I think, too, that this kind of show is now the norm rather than the exception: where singers are followed by a small ensemble without a conductor or an orchestra pit to disrupt the illusion.  It’s a tour de force even if perfection is expected.

Another difference that I think I detect is simply the nature of performance.  Cats is mostly populated with triple threats: people who can sing, act & dance.  In practice this usually means that the demands in the dramatic or vocal realms can’t be too outrageous, but there’s no mistaking the physical prowess of these Jellicles bounding across the stage.  If I remember correctly, one couldn’t easily assemble a cast of capable dancers who could also sing and act in the 1980s; but theatre schools seem to be filling that need nowadays, influenced by shows like this one.  What was a new performance vocabulary back then is now much more intelligible, not so daunting.  As a result Cats seems much more classical, unforced and poised in its balleticism.  It makes me want to re-appraise (upwardly) its place in ALW’s oeuvre.

The work seems boldly quaint, at once familiar and edgy because I see how daring it must have felt.  Without Cats you can’t have Lion King, to give the most obvious example.  While musicals were changing throughout that decade this show’s originality stands out, as i look back. There’s almost no story whatsoever.  If the conventional wisdom is that music begins where the words leave off, this is a special case, a through-composed work that brashly takes the stage with very little dramatic action.

I’ve been very conflicted about ALW: a man whose borrowings have long troubled me, less for the loose resemblance between “I don’t know how to love him” (in 4/4) & the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (in 3/4), than for the powerful Pink Floyd riff in “Echoes” that’s exactly like the most powerful tune in Phantom.  Having acknowledged what bothers me, i need to also admit his brilliance.  A musical is a very different animal excuse the pun from an opera. Cats is only one of several scores that make him arguably the most successful original composer of musicals over the last 50 years.  While I prefer Sondheim (and btw here’s a funny factoid for you, the three of us –Songheim, ALW and me—share the same birthday…one day earlier and it would be JS Bach.  Oh well), ALW has done much better at the box office.  Sondheim is more of a classical composer selling works to the musical theatre world.  Just as in the opera world Puccini gets denigrated for the sin of writing beautiful operas that make people cry, so too ALW in the realm of musicals.  Sondheim may be the critics’ darling, but box office doesn’t lie.  The audience is the ultimate judge.

Presented in the intimate Panasonic theatre (roughly 700 seats, without a proscenium arch), we’re watching Cameron Macintosh’s original but described as “an all-new Canadian production” directed by Dave Campbell.  Martin Samuel is an impressive Rum Tum Tugger, boldly taking the stage with a lovely voice.  Charles Azulay was an audience favourite as old Deuteronomy.

Perhaps the most challenging part is the high profile role of Grizabella, who sings that song, the one that everyone knows so well that it’s a struggle to avoid cliché.  Ma-Anne Dionisio gets to sing the song twice.  In the first act it’s subtler, leaving us wanting more, and indeed Dionisio held lots in reserve, suggesting the sorts of profundities in the song that may have been there once, before radios played it to death.  In the second act, when she didn’t back away from making a strong statement with the song, she seemed to get right inside it, surpassing my expectations.

Cats runs at least until the end of June (as I see a performance added for June 30th).  If you’ve never seen it, I believe you’d enjoy it.  If you’ve seen it, and especially if you have children I would strongly recommend that you take them.  It makes a splendid introduction to the theatre, and yes, an enjoyable night out.  http://www.mirvish.com/shows/cats

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Chopin: Iconosphere of Romanticism

Posted on June 13, 2013 by barczablog

You gotta love the title of the book.

It’s actually CHOPIN: Iconosphere of Romanticism, emblazoned simultaneously on the cover in Polish as CHOPIN: iconosfera romantyzmu.  This is an art-book, recording an exhibit from 2010 in Warsaw, edited by Iwona Danielewicz with the assistance of Andrzej Dzięciołowski, published by The National Museum in Warsaw.

There’s a certain justice in the bilingual cover even if the composer’s second culture is French not English.  His father is the Frenchman, while his mother was Polish.  The first twenty years of his life were spent in Poland, while the other half (almost exactly) of his short life was spent mostly in France.  The book was published in 2010, another of the many celebrations of the bicentennial of the composer’s birth.

I’m a big fan of attempts to put artists into context.  I admire the ambition behind such endeavors even if I retain a healthy skepticism.  So for example I keep reading about Chopin with Liszt, usually decoded via the modern understanding of these two, where Liszt’s virtuosity is something spoken of apologetically.  That may be part of the background, but I don’t believe that’s really putting it in context, not if we bring a 21st Century distaste for virtuosic display.  While Chopin is spoken of as subtler than Liszt (in this book, reflecting the usual critical prejudice), was that because he was more tasteful, or merely because he couldn’t bring an equivalent skill-set to the table?

(I leave that up to you)

It’s a given that Chopin is presented as part of the Romantic movement in the first half of the 19th Century.  Considering the title (especially when I focus on the word “Iconosphere”) this project is meant to conjure a movement.  While I eat this sort of thing up –who doesn’t like beautiful pictures?—I have some hesitation.  I don’t think of Chopin as a Romantic, at least not when we think of the quintessential romantics such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz & Liszt plus their transitional antecedents Schubert & Beethoven.

The book is a celebratory feast but…. a feast celebrating the thin ascetic seems a bit incongruous. Perhaps it’s because I put Chopin in a special category.  His piano music transcends categories.  I think of his cycle of Preludes Op 28 in context with Bach’s Well-tempered Klavier, another cycle of compositions that seems universal in the way it encompasses all of the key signatures, seemingly so pure as to be independent of period or context.  He’s one of the mountains of keyboard pedagogy that must be climbed.

So pardon me if I simultaneously eat up the romantic pictures, even as I think they’re redundant.  Chopin doesn’t require the imaginative gloss, charming as it is.

I feel a bit guilty speaking of a book that I couldn’t find on Amazon, but only on Google.  Thank goodness for libraries.

Posted in Books & Literature, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pride Week LGBT Short Film Festival

Posted on June 13, 2013 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

Canadian Media Guild’s Toronto chapter sponsors its second
‘TORONTO PRIDE WEEK LGBT SHORT FILM FESTIVAL’

TORONTO (June 12, 2013) – The Canadian Media Guild’s Toronto chapter (CMG-Toronto) is sponsoring its second Pride Week LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans) Short Film Festival, which runs during Toronto’s Pride Week from Monday, June 24, 2013 to Saturday, June 29, 2013. CMG-Toronto’s ‘2013 Pride Week LGBT Short Film Festival’ highlights 12 excellent LGBT-themed short films from recent years. The diverse, 110-minute program will play continuously on a DVD loop in the Graham Spry Theatre in Toronto starting that week at 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. from Monday to Friday, with an extra screening on Saturday, June 29th from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
Details:
Monday, June 24, 2013 to Friday, June 28, 2013 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturday, June 29, 2013 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Graham Spry Theatre, CBC Broadcasting Centre
250 Front St. W., Toronto, Ontario
Admission is FREE

The films in the program are:
1. Kiss, by Mark Pariselli – 4 minutes | Experimental | 2012

2. I’m Yours, by Chase Joynt – 5 minutes | Documentary | 2013

3. Her With Me, by Alyssa Pankiw – 13 minutes | Drama | 2013

4. Let’s Get Soaking Wet, by Steven Bereznai – 7 minutes | Comedy | 2011

5. Flyers, by Laura Terruso – 3 minutes | Drama-comedy | 2011

6. Where Are The Dolls, by Cassandra Nicolaou – 8 minutes | Drama-Experimental | 2012

7. The Closest Thing To Heaven, by Ryan Levey – 9 minutes | Documentary | 2013

8. APTN Presents: Two Spirited Parts 1 and 2, by Kathleen Maartens – 21 minutes | News documentary | 2012

9. Shawn, by Mark Zanin – 4 minutes | Comedy | 2013

10. I’m In The Mood For Love, by Jason Karman – 6 minutes | Drama | 2011

11. For Dorian, by Rodrigo Barriuso – 16 minutes | Drama | 2012

One more film is not yet finalized.

Check out the event’s Facebook page here: http://on.fb.me/1a25wXS

Posted in Press Releases and Announcements | Leave a comment

Herbivoracious

Posted on June 10, 2013 by barczablog

The clever turn of phrase “Urban Herbivore” echoes a favourite of yore.  In Belleville more than a decade ago I used to enjoy a place called “Urban Herb” whose vegan lore and hip décor made me always come back for more.

They’re much better at pithy prose than I.

I write this ostensibly as a review even though my relationship with the establishment is more intimate than that.  I go to the Kensington location (Oxford & Augusta) virtually every day.  There are days when I go elsewhere for lunch, mostly because I recognize most friends prefer meat.  I am way past objectivity on this one.

I’ve been going there for so long that the years blur into one another.  Has it been open a decade?  I am not saying I was there at the beginning, because I am a creature of habit.  I had other places I went to religiously.  I stopped going to places with lots of starch (anyplace featuring lots of rice or breads or pastas) once Dr Ebringer helped me identify this blight upon my internal gut-scape.  When my current dietary regimen fell into place –with the help of doctors, friends & the internet—Urban Herbivore became my regular place more or less by default.  Where else could I get something healthy, low in starch, and close to my office? There are alternatives, but for now (that is, the past few years and for the foreseeable future) U.H. are my lifeline.   Whenever I venture anywhere else I don’t feel nearly as well.  On weekends in Scarborough, my diet can be all over the place.  Heretical as it may be to some, U.H. have me saying “TGIM”.

As the business has grown (the restaurant Fressen + the other locations of Urban Herbivore) I  recall gradual changes inside and out.  In the past few months they’ve made the most exciting change, creating a large internal space, to go with the outer ring of seating along the windows + the seating outside the building (lovely in July, but not much use in January) that was there all along.  Part of that renovation was the addition of display space for additional delights that I tested for the first time this past week, namely healthy cupcakes.  Note to those who haven’t tried this place: “healthy” does not mean “boring”.  In fact the astonishing thing about these sweets –that I had after my salad –is how totally comfortable I feel inside afterwards.

They have menu items I’ve never tried, because the few that I rely upon are etched into my thinking.

Today I’m in muffin mode, perhaps because I knew I needed multiple coffees to get me going.  I was indoctrinated in their muffins by a family member who used to live across the street.  The sweet potato date muffin is not my favourite –I find it somewhat sweet—but it’s been there as long as I can remember.  I’ll order it when the others are all gone, something sweet & tasty but perhaps starchier than what I should be eating.  The muffin I ate today for lunch is called “apple walnut“, but with several other ingredients, including spelt.  When I begin it’s a dauntingly large muffin, yet before long I find myself sadly regretting how quickly it vanished.  If I’m not able to get to the muffin (I almost always get take-out) it has a ridiculous shelf life, particularly in company with coffee.  I have come in on a Monday to find a muffin I forgot to eat the previous Friday.  It may not be as fresh as it was, but dunked into coffee is still preferable to anything I would get nearby.

Other days I am usually getting a salad + a muffin, where one is like lunch and the other becomes part of dinner (and the one going first varies depending on my mood & workload).  When I say “salad”, forget what you know about salad, a word that may be holding you back from experiencing the possibilities inherent in food.  The concept is modular, where they assemble your salad according to your preferences as follows:

  • Pick greens, which means, possibly something like lettuces (“spring mix”?), or perhaps a spinach-arugula mix, or a romaine-kale mix, or some combination of the above.
  • Pick a protein. I am hampered here because I only ever get one of the choices.  I get the barbecued tofu, although I could get one of the others (hm… something gluten? I can’t recall)
  • The protein is your first of six items combined with the greens.  The remaining five are taken from a dazzling array, some simply clean fresh items like bean sprouts (boring… never get them) or cleverly prepared steamed broccoli (always), snow peas in something (often), cucumber with dill (usually), kamut, black beans, kimchee, and many others
  • Then you select a dressing from the six offered (again, wonderfully tasteful… for the longest time I went with lemon & tahini, then their carrot-sesame-ginger-, then I tried mixing the two but my current fave is something called sweet & spicy, a name that only hints at its excellence) plus an assortment of seeds & nuts on top

Sigh…!

There’s enough in the bowl to be eaten at two sittings, although when I am hungry it’s all gone in one.

The menu features other items that I try from time to time.  At one time I was hooked on their sandwiches, which are on their own homemade breads (focaccia or whole-wheat), particularly the avocado sandwich, which make a nice change of pace if you’ve had a salad every day for weeks.  And they also have a grain bowl that I have never explored for dietary reasons –starch—and not because I am not enticed.   I figure “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, but yes, one of these days I will have to try those other menu options.

The other thing I get from time to time is juice.  These are an amazing tonic if you feel a cold coming on or are recovering from a late night. Forgive me if this sounds like the ravings of a co-dependent but U.H. are in a sense enabling my worst behaviours, allowing me to get away with ridiculous late nights at the theatre: because they can make me feel so amazing the next day.  Fatigue and sore-eyes should slow one down, but don’t hit so hard when there’s a kind of out-patient hospital right in my neighbourhood, serving you herbal medicines to keep you going when you should have stayed in bed.    And they have fair-trade coffee that’s necessary when one surrenders to temptations  (aka cupcakes or various other delights) right under your nose.

Yes I eat meat.  It needs to be said that while nutritional concerns led me to U.H. it’s a matter of taste & quality that keeps me there.  I am not creeped out by meat, indeed I am the other extreme.  I  found my way to U.H. only after visiting a notorious (former) Augusta neighbour since moved down to Queen St W, famous for their brilliance preparing different types of wild game.   But why do people seem to freak out over the consumption of wild game, while seeming to be inured to the ongoing atrocities in our food supply?  For example, read this (admittedly controversial) page from the Institute for Natural Healing with a headline proclaiming “Processed Meats Too Dangerous for Human Consumption”.  Nobody wants to think about what’s in a hot dog, or whether that burger might make you sick, so if you’re going to protest, please concentrate on the places that are making literally thousands of people sick.

At some point I’ll write about La Palette, a place I mentioned in passing as part of my Queen W experience seeing Figaro’s Wedding.  That’s more my evening guise.

Daytime? U.H.

Posted in Food, Health and Nutrition, Reviews | 1 Comment

Launching Three Davids

Posted on June 9, 2013 by barczablog

Tonight a happy crowd packed Hugh’s Room for the launch of The Three Davids, a CD featuring music by three guys named David: the Davids Frishberg / Shire and Warrack. Onstage we listened to instrumentalists Charlie Gray, Alex Dean, David Young, led by David Warrack, sometimes accompanying vocalist Stevie Vallance.

The variety over the course of our evening took us across a broad range of styles, most of which could loosely be called jazz. Sometimes we were hearing something progressive and daringly spontaneous, other times, the players fell into the background for Vallance’s vocal stylings. Sometimes the songs were clearly articulated musical comedy, with the barest accompaniment, other times the vocal line was just one among many adventurous instrumentals.

We learned that Stevie Vallance is an Emmy award winner, a woman whose voice showed remarkable versality, as agile as a gymnast. The constellation of stars onstage varied throughout, seemingly a little different for every song. At the beginning we heard a duet from Vallance and Young, at times she sang with Warrack. She’s a charming presence who seemed to be having fun the whole time, without any sign that she was ever taxed or tired.

Everyone had their moments to shine. Gray’s warm flugelhorn, Dean brilliant every time he cut loose in a solo on his saxophone, wonderfully soulful on the flute. I am completely in awe of David Young’s musicianship, the most remarkable ear to find pitches as he probes unerringly up high, whether bowing or plucking. Anchoring everything, David Warrack gave as much as needed, sometimes teasing us with a minimalist sketch of the chord structure, at other times bursting forth with passionate lyricism. The closing number was an unforgettable take on “Autumn Leaves”, beginning with something resembling a bluesy Bach Toccata on solo piano, seguing into a swaggering trio.

And I can’t say enough about Hugh’s Room as a venue for live music. They’re like an old-time nightclub as you’d see in the movies. We sat on a slightly higher level, looking down on the floor level surrounding the performers. Yet it’s wonderfully intimate. If I were a jazz musician (ha… as if) this is where I’d want to play. Dinner was awesome (I had a wonderfully original Caesar salad, while across the table I saw a superb carrot ginger soup, and that was just the first of 3 courses). We chose the prix fixe meal.  For $35 we were stuffed and buzzing over the quality of the food.

Hey Hugh’s Room, you had me at “David Warrack”…. I suppose it was an act of mercy to let the artists leave after the encores. We wanted to hear more, but we’d had a superb evening already. They held nothing back.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stephen Bell: Concert Sunday June 9th

Posted on June 8, 2013 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

Please join Canadian/ Estonian tenor Stephen Bell fellow Canadian/Estonian pianist Charles Kipper for an afternoon of Estonian and English artsong on Sunday June 9th at 3pm at Estonia House 958 Broadview Avenue. Program to include selections from recently released live recording Kojuigatsus “Longing for home”, as well as Finzi song cycle selections and other Estonian artsong titles, to be released on a different recording later this year. Tickets are 15$ at the door, and partial proceeds from the event will go towards the SOS Children’s Village in Keila Estonia.

For more information please visit www.stephenbell.ca

Posted in Press Releases and Announcements | Tagged | Leave a comment

Waiting for Mr Goodyear : Beethoven Guru

Posted on June 7, 2013 by barczablog

It’s June 7th 2013, a year after a very busy weekend.   Last year I somehow managed to fit a Saturday divided between Glass’s hours of Einstein on the Beach and the first part of Stewart Goodyear’s Beethoven Marathon, into a schedule including a fulltime job, evenings teaching and the Sunday church gig.  Yes Sunday would have been the logical time for Einstein but I had a family do + church, so there was no other way, but to sample the Marathon without staying for the whole thing.  Hindsight is 20-20, right? I wish i had taken time off.  But I learned from that frenetic week, even if in the process –Arghhhh—I  missed the sonatas I really would have liked to have heard.  Even so it was memorable beyond any recital I’ve ever seen, both as an original approach to programming and for the actual performance.

What was so original? You can read my comments from last year.  But we were watching Goodyear’s hands on a screen at the top of the stage, testimony to the fact that this was in some respects a happening as much as it was a recital.  And we watched Melati Suryodarmo moving to the music.  The Marathon was part of Luminato, which I think with hindsight was a mixed blessing.  Maybe the festival helped promote the event, but I don’t believe the event was given the reception it deserved, that Luminato got more out of this relationship than Goodyear (although he’s too much of a gentleman to say such a thing).  Even Einstein –something I loved, and which I’d awaited fervently for over a quarter of a century—pales beside it.

And now Goodyear’s doing it again in a few places in the USA.  It’s now called the “Sonatathon” rather than the Marathon.  I think the name is better, as I got overly caught up in the notion of endurance.  But as of June 2012 Goodyear had never done it before, so even he may have wondered.  Was it possible?

Over the course of the weeks leading up to the event, I did my own mini-preparation, unquestionably influenced by the film Julie & Julia (a film of two parallel tales, wherein a blogger replicates the glories of Julia Child’s French cuisine in her own kitchen): as I would sit and play several sonatas in a sitting, and yes, wrote a great deal about Beethoven and about Goodyear’s Marathon.  I couldn’t help noticing that this music doesn’t exhaust me but actually refreshed me, giving me a natural high.  This discovery has informed the last year of my life.  I sometimes sit and play for hours.  I played all of Tristan und Isolde one day this winter, astonished how good music can rejuvenate you.  And I’ve played acts of Parsifal several times, especially Act III.  But in fact I had lived through this kind of experience before, when rehearsing shows in which I was music director.   I recall in particular one production where we were under the gun, rehearsing morning noon and night seven days a week, and most of the cast would get the occasional day off, but I didn’t need it. Nope.  I was mortified when the show ended so abruptly.  Che faro senza all my friends in this show?  It feels surreal the way the music heals you, the way your mind clears and quiets, everything else receding before the music.   Maybe it’s not a drug; but it is unquestionably so good for you that you want it again and again.

Playing a show all alone simply doesn’t work the same way, sigh…

But of course –let me get back to Goodyear & Beethoven—he vaulted over the obstacles as if he had seven –league boots.  To misquote a slogan for an energy drink, Beethoven gives you wings.  Ha, when I saw how well he played, how effortless his playing was, I was more than astonished.  This man is the most impressive pianist I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of impressive pianists.  If I get a shot of endorphins playing Beethoven the way I play him –not perfect by any stretch of the imagination—what kind of dose would one get playing Beethoven with unerring precision?

I find my understanding of other composers keeps being impacted by what I heard in June 2012.  The Bruckner CD I reviewed yesterday has me thinking again of pace.  Goodyear plays some pieces faster than anyone, not because he’s showing off (although haha wow it’s impressive), but because he’s trying to show us how to play this music right.  I think his understanding of the Hammerklavier sonata is not just cogent, but inarguable when you listen to his performance.  Everyone else sounds laboured after Goodyear.  I found myself thinking the same thing listening to Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Bruckner 6th, that the ponderous approach of Furtwangler or Solti, while conventional and within the usual boundaries of how one interprets Bruckner does the composer no favours.  He’s not Mahler. He’s not Wagner, yet playing him slowly, seeking depths makes him seem lugubrious, vacuous even.  It’s the same problem that I encountered after hearing Norrington’s recordings in the late 80s and early 90s.  I grew up listening to Klemperer’s Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Beethoven, Mahler: and now find it quaint and idiosyncratic. It’s a music of nostalgia for my youth, but not precisely what it used to be, when i understood these to be interpretations of depth.

Click for more information about the set

I’ve had the pleasure of reading Stewart Goodyear’s commentaries in the liner notes to his magnificent set of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas.   Let me say in passing, what a wonderful achievement, just to write these commentaries, the eye-witness account of a great player sharing his relationship with this wonderful music.  I experience something like the glamour of a brush with a movie-star, as though Goodyear is Roger Ebert or Hedda Hopper, getting up close & personal with these stars: but the glamorous stars are the sonatas themselves, that Goodyear knows with an intimacy to make one blush.

When you  read these notes one can’t help noticing that the man is not simply playing, but advocating.  He is inside Beethoven as if he were the composer’s lawyer.  No the composer is not being sued, nor is he in any danger of losing his immortality.  Yet the interpretations from Goodyear make a different case for Beethoven, re-frame him and the entire century’s music by implication.  The implicit connection between bel canto and Wagner –just to offer one vector we could follow, a connection that the composer speaks of, even as interpreters flounder in any attempt to make the connection—is much more readily available when one plays Wagner or Beethoven with some sense of Rossini in mind, a composer who is like the link between the two.  I laugh as I picture how some people I know –pompous people who snort and make loud noises as a kind of non-verbal preamble to dismissive remarks, as though they were Zeus about to hurl a thunderbolt… except instead they’re just noisy i guess—would reject this.

I cling to the memory of Richard Bradshaw, a very under-rated musician whose Debussy & Wagner were among my most cherished memories at the COC.  At one of the Opera Exchange discussions, I recall Bradshaw saying that the trouble with the way many people conduct is that the players with their various solos, playing leit-motivs all seem to want their 15 minutes of fame.   It was such a charming and under-stated way of pointing to the way the music seems to be heavily laden with meaning, with motifs, with climaxes, that can also be achieved at a faster tempo, if not for the ham-actors of the orchestra, hogging the spotlight.   I am not about to offer scholarly backing for these assertions.  It’s late and I want to finish what I am saying about Goodyear, which means my parenthetical digression about tempi & Bradshaw needs to be concluded.  Just as this paragraph is interminable, seeking your attention, so too with those parenthetical passages in Wagner, done at slower tempi with rubati.

Goodyear is clean and forthright with Beethoven, in the same way.

I’ve been reading new comments from Goodyear via Facebook –and am honoured by his friendship –that are the natural outpouring of someone re-visiting last year’s epic journey, bemused afresh.  This time he knows he can do it and understands how the music revives him.  I regret that I can’t be there, but that won’t stop me from thinking about Beethoven again.  I’ll play some sonatas –as I did last year—for that endorphin rush, and also in search of some of Goodyear’s effects (I wish I could play as fast…!).

Goodyear is exploring consciousness & beauty, but instead of climbing mountains, he flies on the wings of 32 piano sonatas.  Enlightened by music,  he is The Beethoven Guru.

Posted in Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays | Leave a comment

Bruckner 6 Nézet-Séguin, Orchestre Métropolitain

Posted on June 7, 2013 by barczablog

I’ve been listening to Bruckner’s 6th Symphony, a recent ATMA Classique release by the Orchestre Métropolitain conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Not so long ago YN-M was a youngster seeking to make a name for himself, a relative unknown.  And Now?

Well of course he’s still young,  But the very sophisticated crowd at Parterre.com selected YN-S their Maestro of the Year.

Today’s post on Norman Lebrecht’s blog gives a good indication of how far he’s come, conducting three far-flung orchestras, namely Rotterdam Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra in addition to his Orchestre Métropolitain in Montréal.

What’s surely not lost on the management at these orchestras is that as their conductor’s star rises, so goes the orchestra.  At one time the orchestra of note in this country was L’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, known for a series of wonderful recordings with their then music-director Charles Dutoit. They weren’t important because they were Canadian, they were simply important, period.  I can’t help wondering whether someone behind the scenes –if not YN-S himself—is aware of the competition.

Click image for more information

That’s the context in which I’ve been listening to their Bruckner 6.  This is not a work designed to exploit the conductor’s fame; quite the contrary.  It’s nerdy programming that makes the case for the conductor as a hard-nose interpreter, an obscure work you never hear in the concert hall.  It’s somewhat thankless, considering how difficult it is to pull off.  Who picks this kind of rep unless they have something to say?  It’s not a choice that’s likely to leap off the shelves, because Bruckner simply doesn’t have that kind of fan-base (although maybe YN-S does…?).  First and foremost, it’s another wonderful showcase for OM, as are the other Bruckner symphonies they’ve undertaken previously.  But it’s probably a better move than recording yet another version of a well-known piece by one of the romantic composers.  I admire the choice.

But admirable as i see the choice, I may be the wrong person to review this.  I believe it was CS Lewis who once said that you should only let those who love & understand such genres as mystery novels or science fiction to review such works.  He had a point.  I recall the dreadful review in a Toronto newspaper, bored with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner mostly because he had no sympathy for dystopian sci-fi.

You see, I don’t really like Bruckner.  I’ve tried to like him, have listened to most of his symphonies (portions of all of them), and have left him on a kind of back burner, waiting for the magic to come, and it’s been a long time coming.  Eventually, so my thinking goes, I will find my way inside the music, but in the meantime I have been very busy with other composers.

So maybe you shouldn’t take seriously my review of this recording of the Bruckner 6.  Every other version I’ve heard seems to plod as though it were a Clydesdale trying to canter. Bruckner has a kind of earnest innocence, like a Billy Graham crusade in a massive stadium with a bad sound system. It’s very hard to make this piece cohere into something that doesn’t seem overblown.  Like good rock-n-roll, the simplicity requires a kind of conviction and purity to bring it to life, and it also needs phenomenal energy.  YN-S does something rather bold to my ear, as the music really moves.  Its supple muscularity is almost unrecognizable as Bruckner, and makes the composer sound like a young man for a change, charged with an energy that’s almost sexual.

The first movement is phenomenally clean, playing that makes this recording a good candidate to be one you’d take into a stereo shop when you want to audition a good sound system. There are lovely little instrumental solos of plaintive beauty, followed by explosive tuttis with astonishing precision.  This movement has another function –as well as the closing movemenet—on days when the temperature soars, as a virtual air-conditioner.  How?  In several places I experienced profound shivers of excitement.

And while we’re talking about the last movement, i noticed something I didn’t notice before, that sounds like a send-up of the “liebestod”, a kind of pyramid built from Wagner’s melody. Because it’s Bruckner i have to take this seriously, in a composer who wouldn’t quote his hero idly nor accidentally.  I am still trying to decode it, but in the meantime, the final minute is a tremendous affirmation.  Of what i have no idea, but i’ll take it, mysterious as it is.

The movements in between are fabulous.  The second movement is my favourite, a wonderfully intense composition that works no matter who conducts.  Whether it unfolds slowly or more quickly, Bruckner takes us deep into the heart of the matter.  Again YN-S has things moving at a good pace, and employs a subtly understated beginning.  Movement three is a charming scherzo, going yet again from mysterious opening to broad eruptions from brass choirs blasting through the clouds like shafts of sunlight seen painted onto antique stained glass.

It’s not just YN-S though. The orchestra plays with wonderful clarity and precision.  I don’t want to be cynical, but if there is an actual strategic purpose to these Bruckner recordings–objectives such as demonstrating the orchestra’s chops, showing us that YN-S has come of age and that we can expect great things in future– then that purpose is being fulfilled. I spoke of rock music earlier, in thinking of honest simplicity, vividness that’s sharply painted.  Bruckner is a composer who to me always seemed to take his time, not so much saying big words, as small words in a big voice spoken slowly, whose rhetoric is glacial compared to the quicksilver of Mahler in works of equivalent scale.  But maybe I have to revise some of my thinking as that’s not how he comes across in this portrayal.  Instead he’s more of a populist politician or a country preacher, a cagey fighter quiet as rope-a-dope, suddenly erupting in powerful punches to your solar plexus.  This is powerful testimony, as direct as a photograph of a mountain range or a sunset.  And when OM paint Bruckner, it’s a flattering portrait indeed.

And need i add, this is a Bruckner cycle that i must explore further.  Previously YN-S and the OM recorded Bruckner Symphonies 4, 7, 8 and 9.  I am glad that I’m being encouraged to hear Bruckner in a new way.  I don’t think I will underestimate him again.

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment