As long as there are stars above you

Ah. 

This week. 

So, on top of plane crashes, bombings and missiles, starvation, the latest spate of nonsense from south of the border, there have been the deaths of Sly Stone (Sly and the Family Stone) and Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys).

We've been hearing a lot of "Everyday People", which is no hardship; I've always loved the song. It seems even more pertinent now than in the late sixties.

"Ooh-sha-sha, we gotta live together!" exhorted Sly, something the Creature in the White House doesn't get, and wouldn't believe, if he did.

Here's a splendid cover from Playing for Change, from about nine years ago, filmed just before the Creature got in the first time, judging from a couple of key Washington, DC locations.  And with the death of Wilson, there are hundreds of covers of "God Only Knows" flooding on to social media in tribute. 

My favourite Beach Boy song happens to be "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", but I fully understand. 

"God Only Knows" is the song Paul McCartney says he wishes he had written, and then there's its eternal niche at the closing of Love, Actually, and in the soundtrack of countless weddings.  That's a sort of double paradox:  Love, Actually isn't actually about love, and the lyrics of "God Only Knows" contain strangely unmatrimonial sentiments:  "I may not always love you . . . . If you should ever leave me . . . ."  

It is a helluva song, though, and currently, this is my favourite non-Beach-Boys version, recorded ten years ago in Toronto by Choir! Choir! Choir! (with a nice focus for the altos, for a change!).

That's how you and I will be

I had never heard this song, until a couple of weeks ago. 

This is odd, considering that I'm familiar with Billy Joel, and have been a fan of the King's Singers for some time. 

 Looking up the song, I find that it's on the last original album Joel released, and the year was 1993. That explains a lot; I had a one-year-old daughter, and wasn't spending that much time listening to the radio. 

Apparently, Joel began this as a prelude to another song in the style of a Gregorian Chant, before turning it into a tribute to his own young daughter. 

The arrangement here, by Philip Lawson, was created especially for an earlier incarnation of the King's Singer nearly twenty years ago. The current members are singing here, carefully distanced from Voces8, another a cappella British group, founded in 2003, about the same time the King's Singers first began singing this song.

Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes 

And save these questions for another day 

I think I know what you've been asking me 

I think you know what I've been trying to say 

I promised I would never leave you 

Then you should always know 

Wherever you may go, no matter where you are 

I never will be far away 

Goodnight my angel, now it's time to sleep 

And still so many things I want to say 

Remember all the songs you sang for me 

When we went sailing on an emerald bay 

And like a boat out on the ocean I'm rocking you to sleep 

The water's dark and deep, inside this ancient heart 

You'll always be a part of me 

Goodnight my angel, now it's time to dream 

And dream how wonderful your life will be 

Someday your child may cry, and if you sing this lullaby 

Then in your heart there will always be a part of me 

Someday we'll all be gone 

But lullabies go on and on 

They never die 

That's how you and I will be

A room of one's own

When Virginia Woolf was speaking of "a room of one's own", she was, of course, speaking of women.

The need for men to have such a room has been acknowledged for centuries, but I won't begrudge the Spooky Men's Chorus in this dreamy celebration of the man-cave, which, somehow feels "Solstic-y" and Christmassy.  It's probably the candles.

The "Spooky Men" are Aussies, if you didn't pick this up from the visuals.

Hey, it's my birthday - which means I've got chores

Talk to you tomorrow. (Oh wait. That's elder daughter's birthday...)

Algorithm arrhythmia

It's been almost three months since I decided to resurrect Spotify at the behest of elder daughter.

It's been interesting. I get two weekly playlists: one called "Discover", which are tracks that are not necessarily new, but Spotify thinks might be new to me; and "Radar Release", which includes newly released tracks by artists in whom I've shown an interest, either by "liking" songs, or "following" the artist, in social-media-speak.

I try to listen to both playlists, because the whole point of the exercise is my desire to expand my listening, but it's a helluva lot of music, and I don't always get through it all, especially since I am also sent six (6!) playlists each day, comprised of stuff I've "liked", or even just listened to. Each playlist is based on four to six artists, so that it is sort of themed, roughly, in my case to alternative rock, folk, with some innings into glam rock, and singer/songwriter stuff. It is, of course, my favourite music, on the whole, but some of it is quite repetitive, and the "new" stuff I'm sent is slightly skewed towards country music. Not surprising, I suppose, given that I like folk, and folk and country often tend to lean into each other.

That's algorithm for ya.

Today, however, I got something different. One of my playlists was entirely given over to an Early Music/choral/Mozart/ mix. Fifty tracks of lutes, madrigals, requiems, and the occasional pop song reworked in acapella. Tallis Scholars, King Singers, Oxford Camerata, Bryn Terfel, and, of course, Baltimore Consort.

Like a greedy kid in an ice cream parlour, I downed it all at one sitting.

Heaven knows what this will do to the algorithm. I'd better listen to the Stone Roses-based playlist tomorrow.

Choral comprehension

The point has been made - many, many times - that the chord structure in Pachelbel's Canon is in the chord structure of many popular songs.  (Actually, back in my Prairie-Home-Companion-listening days, the very same point was made about Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".)

However, it's still great fun, and I ran across this video this week.

Incidentally, the choir here is the rather famous Crouch End Chorus, from North London.  I have a copy of the album they recorded with Ray Davies of a selection of classic Kinks songs.

However the earliest pot-shot at Pachelbel that I can recall is this YouTube classic from about ten years ago.  It was viral then, and perhaps enough time has elapsed that I can share it here:


Between these two offerings, there are well over a dozen songs -- although, frankly, I think they're stretching a bit with "Let It Be"...

A little fight music

Not long after the current President of the United States was inaugurated, Bernice King, daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, posted a list of guidelines for coping with the coming chaos. She evidently wasn't the originator, as she speaks of "wise advice circulating", but she was definitely taking the high road.

So, the following is definitely not the high road, but halfway through that man's administration (which is probably a misnomer in itself), I can't help but find this - oh, I dunno - a relief?

Be warned, the lyrics are simple, but profane:

Perpetual light

On the morning of my nicest birthdays in a long time, I headed down Linden street, which has been in a perpetual state of spring since January.

They've just planted one of these in front of our apartment building and the tag is still on it, so I know that this glorious melding of scarlet leaves and dangling white bells is a japonica ("Mountain Fire" variety, I think).

This has been their week.  The relay of cherry blossomings across the city is coming to an end; pink magnolias are littering the sidewalks now, and the star magnolias are constellating all over the place.

And this birthday morning was perfection.  My kind of perfection.  I perfected it with some happy noodling on my family history timelines, then we strolled out -- the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter, and I -- to rendezvous with a pal at a deconsecrated church where the Tallis Scholars were appearing in Victoria for the very first time.

As the singers entered, there was a powerful wall of applause -- as if they'd already performed.

An expectant silence, and then -- a creamy blend of ten voices - two in each vocal range - pouring out Josquin, Palastrina, and other choral composers of the 15th to 16th centuries.

I nearly burst into tears.

They didn't sing this, and some of the singers were different, but it will give you an idea.

There were two items from the twentieth century. The first from Arvo Part (famous for his heart-rending Spiegel im Spiegel).  This was called The Woman with the Alabaster Box -- a sort of tone poem based on the gospel story of the woman reproached for "wasting" the expensive oil on anointing Jesus.  (After the concert, I reminded younger daughter of the version of the same story that is part of Jesus Christ Superstar.)

During the intermission, I was reminded, yet again, that I'm in Victoria.  A woman approached me, head cocked to one side, saying my name in a tentative manner.  She apparently remembered me from my hospice volunteer days - of which there were several.  She definitely remember elder daughter, who was something of a hospice mascot as an infant and toddler, so I could place this lady in time, but not quite in face.  I gazed into her eyes and saw vestiges of familiarity, inwardly marveling at her ability to recognize me after all this time and too abashed to ask her last name.

I'd also recognized one of the singers from last summer's ChamberFest in Ottawa.  He'd been one of the members of Cinquecento  - another transporting musical experience.  Elder daughter confirmed that he also sings with the Tallis Scholars, and that he's "very gracious and very British".

With the second half came the second 20th century composition, surrounded by beautiful, more ancient numbers - mostly masses for noble patrons and patronesses who had died five centuries ago, with lots of  "Dies irae" and "Let light perpetual shine upon them".

But this was a song for a young woman who had died in a cycling accident when elder daughter was one year old.  A family friend of the composer, she had loved Shakespeare, poetry, and drama.  It was extraordinary to hear "Song for Athene" by John Tavener sung by only ten voices -- especially given that the bass continuo was performed by one person, who seemed to not pause for breath during the entire seven-minute piece.

I don't have access to a recording of the Tallis Scholars singing this, but here's a very lovely recent rendition:
When the last note died away, the applause rose amid rolling stamping.

And we moved out into the late afternoon, down the cool but sunny streets, to my favourite Italian restaurant, where I ate risotto, and was toasted by my husband, younger daughter, and good friend in the light of the candles and fireplace.  Not perpetual, but few lovely things are.

A complex tapestry of smooth silk

I really didn't want to go out last night, and as usual, when this happens, I ended up being so glad I did.

Elder daughter works for the Ottawa Chamberfest, so we have season tickets, of course. Still jet-lagged, I clambered ponderously up into the balcony of Dominion-Chalmers United Church, the sanctuary glowing golden in the early evening sun of midsummer to hear a quintet specializing in early music called Cinquecento. I imagined they might be something like the King's Singers.

Well, not quite.

Five men duly appeared below, in dark but casual suits with open-necked shirts in muted shades of blue, green, silver, rose, and purple. They passed a tuning fork like a cigarette between them, opened their mouths and the most full and beautiful notes flowed out and filled the church.

They were singing, mostly in Latin, pieces by 16th century English composers: Tallis, Byrd, and Tye. All the pieces were ethereal and lovely, but I particularly liked a Tallis Vespers (or Compline?) prayer Te lucis ante terminum (sung in two different settings, at different points of the concert) which begins with the voices singing plainsong before splitting off into complex skeins of colour.

The English translation, which says in part: ". . .From all ill dreams defend our eyes/ From nightly fears and fantasies/ Tread underfoot our ghostly foe . . . ." had a certain appeal for me.

I'm still a little bit in outgoing Victoria mode, so at intermission, I struck up a conversation with the fellow in our pew, whom I'd noticed drinking in the music with eyes closed. It turned out he's in a choir, and he had interesting observations about how the quintet spent the first three numbers subtly adjusting to the scope and acoustics of the church. Remarkably he had not heard of the 40 Part Motet at the National Gallery. (Gee, I hope it's still there.)

I don't often stand for standing ovations, because I think Ottawa audience stand for pretty well everything. I stood this time. They gave an encore of a 16th century setting of Ave Maria.

It wasn't this one, but it's the only video I can find of Cinquecento in action. It was recorded last year. It's beautiful.

A pillar of fire

While waiting for a Chamberfest concert to begin at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, I glanced over from my seat in the left gallery, and saw the evening sun catching the ornate plllar.

'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word

So, CBC Music posted a link on my Facebook wall from their "archives", because I've "liked" them. (Because I do.)

This is an a cappella group from Finland called Rajaton and while I listened to this simply magnificent version of "Under Pressure", I had to find out whose these people were, and when Googling, the National Arts Centre came up. That's when I decided to check our tickets for this season.


We get to see Rajaton performing a concert of songs by Queen in the new year!

Things are looking up.

And Christmas is definitely coming. Talk about "under pressure"...

Over the pop

I've never been much of a fan of epic movies. I find them a bit overblown, lacking in levity, and too damn long.

However, younger daughter loves movies and music, and especially movie-music, so we had tickets for a National Arts Centre Orchestra pop concert celebrating the theme music of about fifteen larger-than-life films. I'd seen about five of them, including Titanic, which isn't my favourite movie - there are too many moments when I want to hurl things at the screen - but which had wonderful art direction and, let's face it, a beautiful score by James Horner. This isn't quite what we heard. We didn't have a soprano soloist, got some other incidental music as well, and, alas, were subjected to a full-throated choral rendering of "My Heart Will Go On".

The rest of the concert was just as beautifully performed, but epic movie themes, much like the movies they accompany, are a much of a muchness. As the woman behind me in the line-up for the ladies' room put it at intermission, lots of ooohing and ahhhing from the choir.

The same couldn't be said of the concert's opening.

We have a subscription to Pops, again, due to younger daughter's love of jazz, pop, and movies, so we're familiar with the Pops Principal Conductor Jack Everly and knew something was different the moment he walked onstage. Usually spritely and jovial, he now said a few quiet words about Paris, then turned to the orchestra and combined choirs behind him.

"Here we go; I've been expecting this," said the Resident Fan Boy, quickly rising. I hurriedly joined him because if it's one thing I know, it's that you get to your feet if you can when a national anthem is playing. I don't have a video of the NACO playing the Marseillaise, nor of the Ottawa Choral Society and the Ottawa Festival chorus singing it, but it sounded pretty splendid. Almost epic.

Things I learned during March Break

The corridors leading to the exhibits at the National
Gallery. It's a slow incline and is rarely this deserted.

March Break is usually pretty grim in Hades, but younger daughter gets two weeks off from her independent school.  We generally spend the first week catching up on movies, because the museums are crammed with kids from the regular school system -- usually in March Break day camps, so they're there under duress and often with not quite enough supervision. It can be a bit of a zoo.

In the second week, we hit the museums because Hades, being The National Capital, is rife with them. We found them well-attended (lots of university and school groups doing special tours and scavenger hunts), but less zoological.

Younger daughter has been snappish and short-tempered.  For the past five years, the catch-phrase in our household has been:  "Is it autism or adolescence?"  This year an exacerbating factor has been The Winter That Won't Leave.  The whole city has been in the doldrums for over a month.  We've actually had longer winters and colder winters, but this one has had a depressing persistent sameness that has worn everyone down.

Younger daughter seems to be in perpetual fear of another White Easter, like the one we had in 2008. Elder daughter flew off with her class to Europe between blizzards and enthusiastically described the turquoise waters off Cassis as I held the phone in my slackening hand and gazed out at the three-foot drifts on the deck.  Mind you, Easter was early that year and is not until late April this year, so we should be safe.  That's what I keep telling younger daughter.

Anyway, we must grasp what grace and beauty we can, even in the midst of this off-white (and downright dirty) limbo in which we find ourselves.  Keats tells me that all I need to know is that beauty and truth are one and the same, so here are things I've learned during March Break:

1.  John Ruskin, whom I knew superficially as a writer and critic, was one hell of a sketcher and watercolourist.  There's a visiting exhibit about him at the National Gallery of Canada this "spring".  Here's an overview of the exhibition, which focuses mainly on his architectural preservation work. The video excludes, alas, his amazing nature drawings and paintings.  I've dabbled in watercolour and know that the crispness and detail here ain't easy in that medium. The fellows here do natter on a bit; I'd just focus on the paintings and ignore the first couple of minutes. Ruskin was a photographer too -- did you know that?  In short, I went to the gallery feeling vaguely interested and came away stunned.  If you're in Ottawa before May 11th, do go see it!

2.  The 40 Part Motet art installation by artist Janet Cardiff has been to the National Gallery before, because  a)  it is amazing; and b)  the gallery has an actual historical chapel restored and reconstructed off the indoor garden which is the ideal space to set up forty individual speakers so you can wander around or sit in the centre of a flood of Thomas Tallis.  This video is in a less ideal space, but the roaming camera gives you an idea of how you can get close to the separate voices: 

However, that is not what I learned.

I've had a sore knee since before Christmas and am beginning to despair that it will ever entirely go away, so I had to sit down and rest while the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter zoomed off to the Modern galleries. The motet is on repeat, of course and I gradually became aware that the babble in the Rideau Chapel was rather louder than it should be for the half a dozen people visiting at the time. I realized that the installation includes the conversation of the singers as they wait to begin. I got up and limped around the circle of speakers, hearing someone warming up, two baritones joking and shooting the breeze, etc. Then the singing began again, in small groups taking turns before all forty voices filled the chapel with tsunamis of sound.

Gosh.

3. The renaming of the Museum of Civilization which, as I've mentioned in a previous post, has annoyed elder daughter, has changed it not one whit.  We made it in to see a rather unimpressive exhibit called "Snow"(which is about snow), and I discovered I'd actually seen the IMAX film on Kenya before.  However, they have a wonderful new bistro, an extra balm to the spirit since the food in the downstairs cafeteria has been dropping precipitously in quality over the past few years.

4.  The Museum of Nature, a favourite of younger daughter's due to its beautifully renovated exhibits on wildlife, marine life, and dinosaurs (also its close proximity to the Elgin Street Diner), has actually quite a beautiful basement, featuring what they call a Stone Wall Gallery and a 3D theatre. In our past visits we've always used the upper floor washrooms, so this was a pleasant surprise.  We'll have to take in a film sometime.

5. I already knew from past experience, that sometimes one of the most interesting (and indeed devastating) exhibits can be hiding down the little corridor just behind the grim but clean washrooms beyond the Hall of Honour at the Canadian War Museum (another rather inexplicable favourite of younger daughter).  This time we were lucky to catch a tiny display devoted to Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank and their work recording the plight of Japanese-Americans (Adams) and Japanese-Canadians (Frank) -  when citizens of the USA and Canada were rounded up, dispossessed, and placed in internment camps because they or their ancestors happened to be Japanese.  I had long been familiar with the photography of Ansel Adams; I even attempted to replicate his famous photo of the church in Bodega, California when I was staying there the summer before the advent of elder daughter, but I was unfamiliar with this aspect of his work and knew nothing, I'm afraid, of Leonard Frank.  This was the last week of the display; I'm glad we saw it.  (And am even more hopping mad about the subject.)

6. Being close to the Bytowne Cinema, we have seen the collection of Oscar-nominated animated shorts in past year and enjoyed it again this year.  However, I've never seen the nominated short live-action films, and after seeing this batch, I'd like to do it again next year, though I really wish we could see these compilations before the awards ceremony.

Three of the films are about half an hour each, one is about fifteen minutes and one is about eight minutes. As with the feature films, it's difficult to say which one is "best", because it's very much an apple and oranges situation.

Helium, the Danish winner of the Oscar, is a gentle film about a children's hospice which I sat through dry-eyed until the very last image which hit me in the solar plexus and left me struggling for control while waiting for the next film.   The Voorman Problem (England) is one of the shorter films; it feels very much like something from The Twilight Zone and stars Martin Freeman as a psychologist confronting a prisoner who claims to be a deity.  Do I Have to Do Everything? is also very short, very funny and features a Finnish family struggling through disasters to get to a wedding.  The Spanish production That Wasn't Me was the hardest to stomach, being about child soldiers and serving up a graphic rape scene which I wasn't expecting, sitting there with my seventeen-year-old special needs daughter.

The film that continues to live with me is Just Before Losing Everything which takes a seemingly ordinary day in small-town France and gradually heightens the tension as a woman's break for safety from her abusive husband leads to and through her workplace.  The understated performances and the ambiguous ending are haunting, as is the knowledge that this is happening around the corner, every day.

So, while truth and beauty cannot removed the sting of a relentless winter, nor the heartbreak of a young girl who clearly didn't want to go back to school, I can only imagine how bleak March would have been without some helpings of food for the soul.

Perhaps it's better not to imagine it.

Conducting a musical experiment

Somehow, during December, I managed to miss a series of "holiday" videos posted at the CBC web-site.  I used quotation marks because so far, these videos have little to do with Christmas.

But that's okay.  As winter persists, beauty and brightness are never inappropriate or time-sensitive.  Let's start with a social experiment in a West Coast shopping mall.  You could say the experiment was conducted. It features the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, which can be enjoyed at any point of the year, so why not now?

Can you guess why Bono said no?

Last summer, I posted a very funny video called "Haters" by
Isabel Fay, but it wasn't until months later that I had a look at some of her other films, mostly while I was avoiding things I ought to have been doing. (I do that a lot.) I'd like to show you two gems.

The first is the story about how Isabel and her director Lee York entered a film into the LA Comedy Shorts Festival, then remembered they didn't have clearance to use the soundtrack, a choral version of U2's "With or Without You". After trying and failing to get permission, they came up with a very clever way to show their film without getting hauled into court:

Now, at the close of this video, Isabel tells us that they still couldn't actually show their film because U2 was still refusing to give them clearance. Evidently, they eventually got permission; the original award-winning short is now up at Isabel's channel at YouTube.

When I watched it, I thought I could guess why Bono initially said "no". Why don't you watch it and do some guessing yourself?

I enjoyed this immensely, by the way, yet, unlike several YouTube commenters, I felt some sympathy for U2 as well, although I admit I have never heard their reasons.

Xmas Eve

I've never cared much for writing Christmas as "Xmas", but you may have gathered that I've been loosely doing a sort of alphabetical theme this month. This is because by the end of November I had only posted seventy-four posts and I'm just obsessive enough to want to have written at least one hundred posts per year. Faced with twenty-six posts wanting, I thought: What the a-b-c...

Christmas Eve here in Hades has been a mixture of busy and quiet. Younger daughter, who has been ill this past week, made it clear that she wanted to go out, a sure sign she's getting better. (Naturally, I feel a sore throat coming on.) So out we went to see Arthur Christmas which was pretty charming, actually. Hard to go wrong with a film made by the Wallace and Gromit team, voiced by the likes of Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Hugh Laurie and Imelda Staunton among many others.

When we emerged from the multiplex, the western horizon was an amber glow, and younger daughter impatient to get home: "C'mon! It's dark!" We grabbed a half-filled bus and hurried through the Rideau Centre which seemed to be full of women in hajib, all shops but the snack bars and the drug store shuttered up.

Christmas is tomorrow. Our gifts are wrapped; the tourtière is in the freezer. The best thing for now is a song in a John Rutter setting, the anti-Semitic lyrics of the original mercifully expunged, leaving a lilting, lovely choir piece. These young ladies are in the Oxford High School Caritas, in Oxford, Michigan.


May you dance, too.