I was listening to a Chopin Waltz played on the radio as it came to its brilliant conclusion. The host said something under her breath, not entirely complimentary.
“Why” she asked “does it build to that big loud bang at the end?”
Why indeed.
The thing is, every piano piece, whether we’re talking about a Ligeti Etude or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is a kind of puzzle, to be solved in the interpretation. And if the performance raises questions like the one posed by our host? Then they’re not playing it right. You should be solving the puzzle, not making new ones that you impose on your audience.
Yes this is the same one the host was asking about.
Chopin has this lovely thing he does on the last page. Notice how it gets quieter and quieter, subtly in the lower part of the instrument, making you lean forward in your seat out of sheer curiosity. It’s implicitly crying out for the release that comes: in the big climactic note at the top of the instrument.
It builds inexorably, or should seem to do so. But it needs to feel necessary, inevitable. If the climax isn’t organic, isn’t grown naturally from what came before? instead of satisfying release, we will find that loud note awkward, painful, unpleasant.
…very much as the radio host did. She was right btw.
That’s the funny thing. You know you’re playing it right if it sounds good, feels organic.
The version you see here doesn’t say “ff”, but does demand that you get louder.
I’m no geologist. But I can’t help connecting two phenomena.
The first one is simply the Scarborough Bluffs. They’re a beautiful formation, a tourist attraction. They’re made of sand.
Are they strong? Yes and no. Sometimes big chunks of the Bluffs collapse. For example this past weekend there was a report of a part of the sand cliffs collapsing. It makes for dramatic moments as you can see in this video.
There is another thing that is going on that you may not be aware of.
In this summer of the pandemic, people have not been able to have their usual forms of recreation & fun. For one reason or another, we’re seeing a transformation of my beloved Bluffs neighbourhood, at the bottom of Brimley Road.
This is where I live and I love living here.
But this summer with the pandemic it’s different. We’re seeing huge crowds. Huge? Imagine every street jammed full of cars, lines of hundreds of people, meaning mom, dad, and the kids, walking down to the water. Every weekend the number of people flocking down to the lake seems to grow bigger & bigger. And no wonder, when it’s such a beautiful place.
More people in cars & buses, enormous amounts of traffic, means more vibration. In any other part of the city that wouldn’t matter. But this isn’t a normal landscape, not at all. Our bluffs are made of sand.
Is it a coincidence that in this busy summer, when large numbers of people in their vehicles might be causing vibrations, that there are incidents of collapsing sand in the Bluffs? Maybe the incidents are nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps normal.
But perhaps someone –an expert, an authority– should investigate this.
The Toronto Symphony concert performance of Thaïs, recently released on Chandos, has me wishing we could see & hear more from Jules Massenet, the opera’s composer. I begin to understand why the late Stuart Hamilton in his time with Opera in Concert produced a dozen operas by Massenet for Toronto audiences: including this one by the way. He would have said that Massenet is under-rated, his operas deserving to be heard & staged more often.
There are elements to the story that may remind you of other operas. A man seeks to resist the temptations of the flesh. A woman embodies those temptations. Onstage or in the score we encounter communities embodying diametrically opposite approaches to life & to pleasure. Unlike Tannhaüser or Salome, there is a great deal more ambiguity to the text, some balance to this opera that doesn’t demand that you take sides or change your beliefs.
I’ve been having a great time exploring this opera from two sides:
Listening to the TSO recording
Reading the Anatole France novel (1889) that is the source for the opera (1894), in its libretto adapted by Louis Gallet
This is a pleasure I discovered in grad school, when teachers wanted a comparison between operatic adaptations and the original. Sometimes the source is so similar as to be mistaken for a libretto, as we see with Pelléas et Mélisande. Maeterlinck was not amused that he was identified as a librettist. Sometimes the divergence is significant, the tone altered, variances among characters & in the way the piece is assembled as we see in Merimée’s Carmen.
I mention this because I stumbled upon a complete version of Anatole France’s novel Thaïs online in an English translation that you can download here. It’s wonderful to read it while listening to the TSO recording of Massenet’s opera.
When you turn a novel into an opera, inevitably you have to omit some of it. There’s no way to include everything in the two or three hours onstage. And so when one of the characters engages in lengthy philosophical discussions somehow you have to capture that essence instantaneously. Nobody wants to hear all that philosophy onstage. It’s one of the qualities of opera that anticipates film, the necessity for economy. We see it for instance in Verdi’s Otello, when he skips a big part of Shakespeare’s original play, grabbing us from the first nasty note of the storm.
There was no way Massenet & Gallet could capture the subtleties of France’s novel. The enormous exposition that tells us who Thaïs was before she became a courtesan & an actress –including her baptism—is missing from the opera. Does it matter? I’m not sure. I think it would make the opera far more interesting, far deeper, if they had somehow managed to get this into the story, that the eventual Saint Thaïs of Egypt was baptized, at a time when Christians were secretive, hiding from persecution. The opera instead keeps its focus on her as an object of obsession, both in her community & in the eyes of Athanaël, the monk who would save her. Given that choice perhaps her internal adventure is expendable.
A producer of Thaïs can have their cake & eat it too, because the work offers one opportunities to put beautiful bodies onstage dancing & or posing in varying degrees of undress, even as the story includes protagonists who reject that philosophy. One can come to the opera as a Christian or a committed sensualist, considering the games the opera plays with its audience, inviting our gaze and exploiting our interest while trying to have it both ways with characters who deny their sensuality. With some operas you lose a great deal in making it a virtual performance,… But I’m not sure that Thais is one of those operas. The drama is largely in the head already, a conflict between different philosophies, different visions of how to live a life.
The composer created two large parts at the centre of the work. Thaïs is a soprano, a courtesan of Venus, eventually a saint. Athanaël, the baritone, is a monk from a religious order. Athanaël is warned by his friend Nicias not to offend Venus, one of the places where the libretto follows the novel closely. In the opera Nicias says “Crains d’offenser Vénus, la puissante Déesse! Elle se vengera!” (or “Beware of offending Venus, the powerful goddess! She will avenge herself”) His cautionary prophecy tells all you need to know about how this story will unfold. Thaïs and Athanaël move in precisely opposite directions. She is the courtesan who gives up her riches & her life of pleasure (celebrating Venus), persuaded by the monk to choose instead a life of poverty & self-denial, eventually canonized as a saint. The monk Athanaël who lures her away from her hedonistic life to become a nun, becomes progressively more obsessed with her as a sensual object of contemplation. And of course with an audio recording as with a concert performance all of that is left to the imagination. Massenet’s score has exotic touches, a subtle delicacy & sweetness to inspire your imagination without being especially lurid or obvious.
You may have already heard a little bit of this recording played on the radio, namely the well –known violin solo known as the “Meditation”. I heard it the other day played by concertmaster Jonathan Crow, both because the TSO’s recording of Thaïs has already become a best-seller, and of course because it sounds so beautiful.
Sir Andrew Davis is a bit of a wysiwig conductor. What you see is what you get. Davis gets a wonderful committed sound from the TSO, big & bold when necessary but often with a child-like simplicity that makes me admire Massenet more and more. The textures are as transparent as the clothing covering the dancing girls. We can always hear the singers, the climactic moments are powerful, but never overdone. Davis makes a wonderful case for the opera & the composer. At times Massenet’s dramaturgy is subtle, at other times? you can see the wheels turning & the gears shifting. Davis pushes his soloists to the limit, to be dramatic & encouraged to compete with the orchestra. In the big moments that works well, and so what if it’s not terribly subtle.
The principals? Joshua Hopkins as Athanaël sings beautifully. He has a lovely line, a lyric voice that’s very smooth in the middle, not totally convincing at the top, as the highest notes don’t quite blossom & grow as one would hope. The way it quiets & tightens at the very top suggests he isn’t quite right for this role, perhaps better off in lighter roles such as Figaro. But this sound is apt for the obsessive monk. I think Erin Wall’s Thaïs is perfect the way the opera is written, given that all the amazing subtext I’m finding in the France novel is missing from the score. She seems to give up her life almost on a whim, won over by the passionate energy of a stranger who demands that she abandon herself to his guidance, like a spiritual Svengali. Wall is up to the challenges of the role, hitting all the notes. Anthony Staples as Athanaël’s friend Nicias has a lovely direct sound, perhaps a bit lighter than what the role requires in an opera house, but a perfect match for the TSO.
David Fallis makes his contribution in getting a wonderfully ethereal sound from the chorus (members of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir) in the first part of the opera and again towards the end.
You can find out more about the TSO recording of Thaïs on Chandos here.
I couldn’t put it down, and no that’s not just a figure of speech. I confess it did take me past midnight, reading 200+ pages, skipping nothing, re-reading a few key passages. We bought the book because we expect to pass it around in the family, knowing there’s interest.
Her uncle Donald & his supporters can’t be too happy with this book.
It’s a bit of a literary train—wreck. You can’t take your eyes off the unfolding disaster, and there it was this morning on CNN. I found myself looking at the players a bit differently, watching AG Barr answering questions. I think I understand the subtexts, as though this 42 month horror show were a psychological thriller. Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t be reached for comment.
Having a psychologist write about her own family might be interesting to begin with, if you didn’t already know the principals. Let me review the dramatis personae. Frederick Trump (“Fred” in the book) & Mary had five children, namely Maryanne (born 1937), Frederick or “Freddy” in the book (died in 1981) to distinguish him from ”Fred”, Elizabeth (born 1942), Donald (born 1946) and Robert (born 1949). Mary Trump was one of Freddy’s children, making her niece to Donald & grand-daughter of Fred Trump.
I heard an interviewer asking her why, why now, why this way.
If you’ve read the book you’ll know. Freddy is the older brother, who might have been expected to be the heir & logical leader of the family business. In the story we read, Fred and Freddy can’t seem to connect, although I suspect Fred’s version of this story would be different than Mary’s take. I find it very persuasive, given that Mary is relatively dispassionate in her prose, aiming to be factual. She’s a psychologist, and one of the few people in her family with real rather than fake credentials. I found it easy to roar through the book in one day, because it doesn’t disgress or go off on tangents. Of course we can hardly be surprised that Freddy’s daughter would seek to vindicate her dad, who opted out, first in a brief career flying jets for TWA, but gradually sinking deeper & deeper into alcoholism.
The pressure Freddy lived with is palpable in Mary’s account. She doesn’t sentimentalize.
Fred and Donald, meanwhile, seem to be on the same page of their dysfunctional story. From Mary’s perspective Donald is a complete liar & fake, whose image was a fabrication of the father. It’s then no shock to see on CNN this morning that everyone in the current administration are performers & fakers. Their chief skills are their ability to answer critiques. AG Barr’s reply to interrogation are consistent with what we read in the book.
The book is not a happy read, even if it does seem reasonable. But it lays everything bare, makes the news lucid rather than incomprehensible. I think any American reading this book will be voting Democrat. It’s compelling even if it is also profoundly disgusting.
I was thinking after reading this that getting Biden as a president would be like resetting a computer to defaults. Even if you lose a lot you restore the default settings because your machine is messed up, and the alternative is unthinkable. It’s especially ironic considering Trump’s 2016 slogan “Make America Great Again”. I think that’s very much what Biden wants, even if a red MAGA hat signifies an entirely different kind of “greatness” than what Biden & his supporters seek.
On my visit today my mother asked me to bring her a book from another room, which she was going to read later. And then she pulled out something else and started to read to me in Hungarian, asking me if I understood.
I answered “parts”. I was listening to a poem in Hungarian. I wasn’t picking up all the allusions or meanings. When she starts remembering & storytelling I do my best to just listen, and try not to interrupt the flow.
She told me the story of the book.
During the siege of Budapest (at the end of 1944), my father used to visit her daily. She described the adventure, how he’d shelter close to each building, methodical, carefully finding his way over to visit her.
There was a bookstore that had been hit.
She described how he looked at the damage, books scattered about everywhere. Perhaps inside? Or outside. I don’t know whether this was a bombed out store or a place that was largely intact but with its windows destroyed.
As I sat listening to the tale, I realize I was like a 5 year old, my mouth agape, spellbound.
She held up a book for me.
He had looked at the books scattered about. And had picked up this one.
I saw the title, “Orosz Költök Antológiája”. This is the book she had quoted to me, a brief verse.
“Orosz” means Russian.
I confirmed: “so these poems were originally in Russian but translated into Hungarian”…?
She nodded.
At this time when Russians and Nazis were fighting over the city, perhaps it was a good omen, to find this? Yes, in time the truth would emerge, that the Russians could be every bit as rapacious as the Nazis. But at this point? no one knew that yet.
And so he brought it to her…
He’s been gone a long time.
But there it is, a prized possession, a memory that’s very much alive in her hands.
I shouldn’t have needed a book to wake me up to the nuances & subtleties of my many connections to the University of Toronto. But it’s a bit like a family album, these beautiful pictures of loved ones to remind me of who I was, where I came from and ultimately who I really am. This shiny volume is a most unexpected source of inspiration.
I’m speaking of Larry Wayne Richards’ campus guide to University of Toronto, from the Princeton Architectural Press. The recent second edition was given to me as a gift, something I left on a shelf for awhile but am only now properly appreciating.
Can a book featuring architecture make you healthier? It can if you start doing daily walks around your community. My gym has been closed for months due to the pandemic. But never fear, there’s still this beautiful neighbourhood to walk through.
This is a book with a series of walking tours on an enclosed series of maps.
And so I’ve been going across the campus, walking up Spadina Avenue or down Huron St, across Hoskin, down Philosopher’s Walk usually in the early part of the day, before it gets too warm and when there’s plenty of shade to allow me to hide from the sun. The campus is especially quiet right now with the current lockdown, stilled but alive & expectant, awaiting rebirth. In some ways it’s the perfect time to sample views of these buildings from front, back, sideways, contemplating the meaning of it all.
Richards’ book is very comprehensive as it touches on every single building, each and every place on the different campuses, a good chunk of our city in fact. It’s a lot like a travel guide. That may be its strength but must also be its chief weakness. It can’t supply the meaning that goes with each part of the institution. That ultimately comes from each of us in our lived relationship to each part. I remember where I was when I saw Northrop Frye speak or Jon Vickers sing, the gallery where I was struck dumb by Kent Monkman’s paintings. The University of Toronto has shaped & shaken me many times over the years.
Is the updating of a book like this one a bit like painting a bridge, where you have to immediately start over again as soon as you’re done? Perhaps they can’t cover everything, as the book omits the George Ignatieff Theatre that was added to the Gerald Larkin Building sometime around 1980, nor is there any mention of Lu Massey’s name on the Studio Theatre behind Robarts on Glen Morris. I saw an error, as the lovely little house I know as 123 St George St was identified only as #23, an address that doesn’t exist, likely due to a simple typo that, alas, gets replicated in the caption to the photo of the building & on the walking tour map (but shown in its correct location next door to 121 St George St). But oh my there must be an enormous number of details to track in every department or discipline, and lots of fussy people like me each with our own version of history & quibbles about what is or is not considered a priority. There are over 150 buildings even without the little ones that are under the radar. And I can see how there is a political subtext to what is or is not included in a book like this one, as though Professor Richards has to somehow decide which of the clamoring children like me in the crowd will get his attention. The stories recounted here are of the official variety, the tales etched into the building’s stones, to identify the founders & builders.
A book like this is an ambitious undertaking, a handsome reminder & a keepsake. I will keep walking and staring from the outside, while using the book as a reference guide when I want to look up the details and the history, peering at the map for variations on my daily walking tours. I look forward to the day when we are once again permitted to go inside these wonderful places. In the meantime I won’t be lost. Not only do I have the guide but I carry my memories inside my head.
When we speak of old films we’re usually looking at images of performers who died long ago. Some died young like Marilyn Monroe or James Dean. Some had long full lives like Jimmy Stewart or Ginger Rogers.
There was a bit of an anomaly for awhile, in a film I treasure as a personal favorite. It might shock you to think that until recently three different stars of the 1935 Midsummernight’s Dream directed by Max Reinhardt with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold were still alive: until recently that is.
Mickey Rooney was alive until 2014, the first to leave us & youngest of the three stars I have in mind, passing at the age of 94.
Dancer & choreographer Nini Theilade lived past her 102nd birthday, passing in 2018.
And today Olivia de Havilland departed us in her sleep. She just had her 104th birthday at the beginning of July.
Dick Powell & Olivia De Havilland
Rooney was Puck.
Theilade was the principal female dancer in two extended ballet sequences, with one or two lines delivered in her accented English.
De Havilland was Hermia.
The film feels like a relic not just because this isn’t how we do Shakespeare anymore. I find it to be one of the most beautiful black & white films I’ve ever seen, and it sounds every bit as remarkable. Korngold adapted his score from Mendelssohn’s music composed in the middle of the 19th century.
I’m framing this analysis around Sam my dog. She’s a 13+ year old rescue, and in my opinion amazingly well-behaved.
Sometimes she’ll occupy the ottoman beside the piano, allowing her to read along with me if she so desires (no I don’t think she knows how to read music). Or I’ll be playing, and she’ll go to her den under the body of the piano especially with one of the big loud pieces, like the 8th of Dvorak’s Op 46 Slavonic Dances, or when I’m playing & singing something from a Wagner opera.
I take it as a compliment.
Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Beethoven.
Since encountering Stewart Goodyear’s Beethoven Marathon back in 2012 I have been in the habit of going through multiple compositions, intrigued by what I think I see in the sequence. It started with multiple sonatas, but lately –since Goodyear’s recording of the concertos—I’ll play from a lovely book I have, collecting the concerti, with big readable pages that are easy to turn.
So there I was on a quiet afternoon with Sam under the piano in her den. I didn’t want to be too loud. And so I thought to play a series of softer pieces.
What if…? Yes it was a preposterous idea. Instead of playing sonata after sonata or concerto after concerto, what if I were to play each of the slow movements from the concertos in turn?And that’s how I stumbled on the pattern.
Now of course in the world of Beethoven scholarship I doubt this is news to anyone. You might think I chose to bring Sam along on my voyage of discovery to blunt the edge of possible criticism, either to soften the critics’ hearts (as people tend to be nicer when there’s a cute dog in the picture) OR perhaps when they’re afraid of the snarly beast.
She is both (that is, cute but sometimes snarly…). I have a neighbour who nicknamed her “Cujo” for the way she barks at him.
Be that as it may, this is exactly as it happened. As I’m playing super gently–the first concerto slow movement, then the second concerto slow movement, and then the third’s slow movement– I wonder. Has anyone every pointed out that they’re very similar? No it’s not an earth-shaking revelation. But they all begin with a very similar chord (at least that’s whats you hear when you reduce it for the piano), with a melody beginning on the mediant, the third note of the scale. What was weird was how the 4th concerto –which is the one that’s exceptional in its shape—seemed to confirm the pattern. For the 4th concerto it’s the opening movement with its slow piano introduction: again starting with that chord. And when we get to the 5th concerto, that’s more conventional in shape (faster louder outer movements, with a slower softer movement in the middle: like the first three concerti), ….and there it is again! The same chord to begin.
You think maybe Beethoven likes that chord? Sam wasn’t complaining of course.
That chord turns up a whole lot of other places, so much so that one might be tempted to call it his favorite.
I don’t deny –indeed I confess it proudly and without hesitation—that this is a literal-minded approach to the anthology, playing through from beginning to end as though the composer sat down and wrote it like a story with episodes. With some composers their readiness to return again and again to the same idea is front & centre. Mahler’s symphonies are in some respects like drafts for one piece of music, revised and reshaped over and over. At times I see something of this in Beethoven too.
I suddenly remembered a melody in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. We hear it in the overtures to the earlier versions of the opera, signaling that yes this is an important theme. We will hear it in the 2nd act when we meet Florestan the imprisoned hero. In a soliloquy he tells us about his predicament. After a recitative introduction (crying out about the darkness of his prison cell), he begins to sing about his life.
In des Lebens Frühlingstagen ist das Glück von mir gefloh’n; Wahrheit wagt’ ich kühn zu sagen, und die Ketten sind mein Lohn. Willig duld’ ich alle Schmerzen, ende schmählich meine Bahn; süßer Trost in meinem Herzen: meine Pflicht hab’ ich getan! In the springtime of my life, happiness has fled from me; I dare to tell the truth boldly, and the chains are my reward. I willingly tolerate all pain, shamefully end my path; sweet consolation in my heart: I have done my duty!
What follows is faster & more intense as you might expect from the stage-directions:
(in einer an Wahnsinn grenzenden, jedoch ruhigen Begeisterung)
(In a fit of madness but peacefully… )
Und spür’ ich nicht linde, sanft säuselnde Luft? und ist nicht mein Grab mir erhellet? Ich seh’, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet, – ein Engel, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich, der führt mich zur Freiheit in’s himmlische Reich. And don’t I feel gentle, softly whispering air? and isn’t my grave lit up for me? I see how an angel in a perfumed cloud stands comfortably at my side – an angel, Leonore, the wife who leads me to freedom in the heavenly realm. (Er sinkt erschöpft von der letzten Gemütsbewegung auf den Felsensitz nieder, seine Hände verhüllen sein Gesicht.) (He sinks exhausted down on the rock, his hands cover his face.)
As Beethoven shows us Florestan despairing in prison how intriguing that he chose to begin with that same melodic pattern, as in the chord that I have been talking about. I am tempted to think of Florestan’s predicament as Beethoven’s own (and wouldn’t it sound apt, for Beethoven to say “In the springtime of my life, happiness has fled from me“), alone & despairing. Does he identify with his hero? I think he does. The romantic artist is ultimately about empathy taken to its extreme, namely identification. No wonder that the composer expresses it this way.
And he goes on to build to a great exultant climax, an ecstatic vision of rescue by his angel Leonore: his wife. As it turns out in the story she will indeed be the agent of his rescue.
As I was tidying my office today, I fell into a book.
You know how it is. You open it and are seduced or abducted, suddenly lost to yourself, deep in the book.
While Jim Fisher’s The Thoughtful Leader: A Model of Integrative Leadership (2016) might be a book about approaches to being a boss in the business world from a professor at the Rotman School of Management, it’s very suggestive to me, a person straddling worlds. I may be a manager at the University of Toronto but I’m also a musician & scholar. I’ve long been fascinated by the parallels between different disciplines, convinced that they should be talking to one another, informing one another. For example what can psychology & psychotherapy teach the realms of business management or collaborative artistic disciplines?
I sometimes wonder how to understand someone like the Canadian Opera Company’s General Director Alexander Neef.
a business man in the arts world?
Or
an artistic leader in the business world?
That headline could refer to me or to Fisher. In his introduction he says the following:
In fact, when I started my career, I would have said that leaders are more likely to be born, not made, and that leadership was more about character than learnable skills. It was only in the teaching part of my life- interacting with students from around the world, younger and older, in all kinds of enterprises—that I came to find a more practical and useful definition and understanding of leadership. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that leadership is actually a teachable skill.
That is what I meant by agnostic. Yes maybe it’s the wrong word or sounds too harsh to apply to him. But I’m coming at this after a lifetime of hearing about gifted artists (had one in the family in fact), geniuses (I went to UTS after all), …born leaders.
There’s no question that some people show promise early, standing out from their peers. Once you heard him play you wouldn’t underestimate Mozart. I’m okay with the use of the word “talent” to identify someone who is so gifted as to show ability from the very beginning.
My problem with the word is when it becomes a short-cut or worse.
Suppose we seize on what Fisher was talking about, namely leadership as a teachable skill. I think his capsule summary of his earlier beliefs on the subject – that leaders are more likely to be born, not made, and that leadership was more about character than learnable skills—might be a reflection of a time when leadership was not well understood. In previous generations, when theories of management had not yet embraced a multi-disciplinary approach, especially in listening to psychologists, then of course the process was not yet understood.
What is a leader? a magician who can lead? And so when it’s a mystery we place the good practitioner on a pedestal and call them “talented”.
In the book we encounter a paradigm shift: that one can learn how to be leader. Fisher’s model isn’t the only model out there although it’s a good one. But that’s what the discipline has become nowadays, as it studies & learns across multiple disciplines.
It’s very exciting.
I am inclined to think that the same sort of thing should be applied to the various disciplines in the arts. Yes some people start sooner & of course they gain confidence from their success. But one can learn how to act, dance, sing, toot, tint… you name it.
So I mean that I’m an agnostic as far as the word “talent” is concerned, as I think it’s unhelpful. I’ve seen performers give brilliant auditions, that sadly were the best thing that artist did on the whole project, as we looked back wondering: wtf? I wonder, is that failure to progress a snapshot of a paradigm in need of revision: not unlike the one from the management world? It’s not enough to sound good at the beginning. One has to work, to collaborate.
While I love magic & mystery, a rehearsal process should not be so mysterious that we don’t know what we’re going to get.
No I don’t mean everyone can play as well as Stewart Goodyear or Yuja Wang, who are exceptional.
But I do think anyone can play the piano or sing or draw. The idea of talent (or more to the point, the idea that someone might be “untalented”) used to inhibit people, preventing them from going very far in their studies. The old textbook ideas about leadership posited tall men with big voices, precluding more inclusive possibilities.
I hope that crippling inhibition will vanish. I am an agnostic about the importance of talent or the old-school type of leader. But I do believe in creativity & work.
One gets the menu a few days in advance, then places orders. And one then picks up amazing cuisine.
Erika ordered this a few days ago, seeking to replicate something from earlier this summer. When she’s this certain? I don’t argue.
“Sure, order one for me too.”
Ribs on top of a layer of rice & beans. The bigger container is the extra slaw for $3
So the dinner was ribs on a bed of rice & beans, with a slaw for $20 plus an extra side of slaw for $3 for us to share.
Speaking as a big eater, I barely managed to finish, and I am thrilled. I accompanied the ribs & slaw & rice/beans with Konzelmann Shiraz.
I am on my third glass –don’t worry mom I won’t drive anywhere – as I try to capture the experience.
The camera is invaluable for this. Notice how much you get (above picture). Notice how dry the ribs are in this picture.
If I could somehow photograph my insides, I’d show you how amazing I feel. This isn’t like any ribs I’ve ever eaten. They’re clean & dry, with subtlety & spice.
We can’t be a sad deprived wasteland, not if it was a friend in the west end who told me about The Kingston Social. Previously at their recommendation I had tried the lamb shank & had a lovely barbecued salmon. Today took it to a higher level.
barczablog 