Silician Sketchbook

So what would compel me to fish out my clarinet from underneath a desk, 7 years since having last closed it? Nothing short of a surprise performance to pay tribute to a retiring high school music teacher. That is to say, retiring from teaching high school music, but “graduating” to a university music program. I’m not too inclined to name names — got to keep this place marginally anonymous — but Google is really a click away.

I think that, if you were going to show up to play, then you likely spent at least a good 4 years playing one instrument, and from what I saw from the only rehearsal the day before the event, that kind of experience is hard to lose. The moment the band attempted its first run at Lyric Essay (Donald Coakley) after tuning, there was a very real sense that we could pull this stunt off.

Us alumni had help. The thing that goes first with lack of practice is technique, and nothing that we played was too demanding overall, and what tricky spots there were could be faked since it wasn’t a prominent section. There were quite a few people who continued music through university, several of them becoming music teachers in their own right, and we were also supplemented by current high school music students in parts where we were understaffed.

Most had the benefit of seeing these pieces before, although it was mostly sight-reading for me. We performed Lyric Essay, an abridged version Children’s March (Percy Grainger), and Ross Roy (Jacob de Haan). I had never seen the first, I had played a different (and easier) arrangement of the second in the past, and my memory is fuzzy on the third. It’s a grade 10 piece, or advanced grade 9, and I may have played it in class, but I don’t think it was something I played in serious rehearsal or concert.

I took a demotion to second clarinet, but the firsts continued to play after they graduated, whereas I clearly had not. Took for one for the team, and got to not embarrass myself to boot.

Saturday night was largely successful. Completely surprise was achieved, no mean feat considering that the entire music department and the wife was in on it. There was an elaborate story to drag him into the school involving a friend with a broken down car, and a non-existent volleyball game as an excuse for all of the cars in the school parking lot.

But our first piece of the night, Children’s March was shaky In the run-up to the evening, we held a quick half-hour refresher and played through it, and I was stunned to hear the band fall apart in the middle. At least a third of us got lost in one of those cascading effects where people came in when they weren’t supposed to.

There was a disturbing drop in volume as people took the most appropriate action and waited for a landmark section to come back in, and we recovered. It didn’t happen the night before, but it happened again during the real thing. It might have been a combination of nerves and the addition of new students, as there were a bunch of faces that I hadn’t seen during rehearsal. Anyway, two scary moments.

We managed to get our act together for a “guest of honour” conduction of Lyric Essay, and it went off without incident, being not technically demanding and all. In between pieces, staff, former staff (plus former head of the music department), former students, and friends all went to the microphone to speak. At turns touching and hilarious, the night was a class act, the same as was demanded in the past.

Ross Roy was freaking amazing, or “not bad for 80-something people playing together for the second time in two days.” Afterwards, he said that it was expected. After all, we were students of great bands. I think he might have a point.

But if nothing else, winging it is a lot of fun.

Except I can’t handle hills.

Prior to Thursday, I hadn’t opened my clarinet case in 7 years. I know that the past couple days I kept saying 6, but neglected to remember that I fast tracked. Despite the age, it was in the condition as I remembered it, with the exception of really stiff cork tendons on all of the parts. Even the reeds in the case hadn’t aged. At all. I hadn’t exactly kept my clarinet case in a cool and dry place, but I suppose that it was both cool and dry enough, and the case afforded some additional margin, and my clarinet itself is plastic.

Don’t boo me or anything. I was a competent player, but a career in clarinet never really crossed my mind. Now that I cared to look at my clarinet’s make and model, turns out it’s a Vito Reso-Tone 3, one of the better known plastic clarinets. It’s second-hand, purchased approaching 11 years ago for $250 at the time, about what it would have cost to rent the same clarinet for 2 years. It could use some reconditioning now, or even 7 years ago, but I’m not sure when I’m going to play it again, if ever.

It was my first time going to Massey Hall and I got a bit lost as a result. I emerged from the correct exit from Queen Station, but without something as handy as a map, and took the long way around by walking around the block.

Part of the confusion stemmed from having the wrong expectation as to its size. When founded my guesstimate by using Roy Thomson Hall as a reference, which is pretty large and stands alone for the most part. Massey Hall in contrast is much more nondescript and blends in with a cluster of similarly sized brick buildings.

After a bit of thinking, I think I would be partial to going to VGL again were it to come to town. I just wouldn’t pay $80 to do so. And I’d like to hear Kingdom Heart 2′s Passion and maybe some Command and Conquer / Red Alert music, but that’s secondary.

Eighty dollars is a steep price to pay to hear a mix of pre-recorded music and live orchestra. Compound that with the fact that the orchestra rehearsed as a group the day of the performance, and I thought it showed. There were obvious instances where the orchestra was not together either with each other or the pre-recorded bits.

Later, the organizer of the group I “went” with told me something that makes it sound as if the musicians didn’t quite know what they were getting into. I noticed the aftermath, when during one of Martin Leung’s performances one of the cellists got up and left, returning before he finished. It turns out that the piece before, foam that I thought was confetti was sprinkled down on the stage. That cellist found herself constantly pausing to wipe the foam off the cello’s strings, and there’s no telling what effect any liquid exposure could have to a string instrument.

The cellist gave the conductor these dirty looks the whole time and, according to my friend, left to probably chew out the stage manager.

I guess when I hear live orchestra being pitched to me, I immediately set certain standards for things like technical proficiency, co-ordination, and sound balance, and the latter two were sorely missed that night.

The same applies to Martin Leung, as technically accomplished as he is. If you want to get really serious about performance, give the man at least a mic’ed upright piano. A digital keyboard with its flimsy stand, and a typical chair, is not an optimal performance platform. As it was, he was pretty casual on things like hammer octaves, but when things are loud and fast one can pedal things away and the casual fan won’t notice, or just be more impressed with seeing hammer octaves live.

Because I’m a big Hikk-tard, one of the highlights for me was the performance of Hikari known as Simple and Clean for the english version of Kingdom Hearts. The real highlight, though, was the Coronation/Baba Yetu arrangement from Civilization IV. It was far the most inspirational, best integrated with the video game footage since it was all ancient history and epic structure building. Even though the soloist flubbed his part.

After going on YouTube and looking for what a real performance would sound like, I have come to the conclusion that in general it’s a pretty difficult part to pull off. It’s in Swahili, for one, and the sound balance has to be pretty near perfect because it’s not supposed to be too loud. The best performance of this arrangement was from the Hollywood Bowl, and it may have very well been the original game singers present. The next best performance of Baba Yetu isn’t even from VGL (which is kind of sad), but from the Valencia HS choir. The only problem is that the backing orchestra was pretty terrible and on many occasions the interjecting lines come in late.

I think that what with the contest events, video game footage of mostly terrible game play (the Sonic the Hedgehog footage is obviously bad even to those who have never played the games), not so perfect performances, and a bit of rabble rousing from the MC, this was really a kind of fan service for video gamers. VGL caters to the kind that will go to YouTube and watch video game music videos just like how I’d go to YouTube or Stage6 and watch anime music videos.

I’m not putting down those people, but I’m likely to think twice before spending a significant amount of money for something that’s better and free (provided it’s not taken down due to copyright complaint).

A buddy and I stood outside Roy Thomson Hall for two hours on Saturday. We stood where the map is centered, a bit north of Wellington near the left octagonal structure. The line had run out the entrance, out Simcoe, along King, down the east side of the concert hall, and down the stairs to where we were. It would eventually snake back north towards King, and go around the oval back down towards Wellington, behind that left octagonal thing.

And despite the line, I think pretty much everyone got in. At least those who were in line when the doors opened. There were still people arriving at 3 pm thinking that no one would be there because, you know, it’s only Oscar Peterson and it’s only a free concert.

They gave out tickets. Tickets! It seemed like overkill, even if it was just to make sure people didn’t steal seats. I’m keeping that and the program guide as collector’s items.

I sat in the balcony, house-left. Decent view, with the left side being blocked only when people rose to give standing ovations. A black and white close up of Oscar Peterson hung at the center on a large projection screen. A large portrait photo with his daughter Celine at 5 years old during a London concert sat on the left beside his Dusseldorf grand piano. Another grand piano, a drum kit, amps for bass and electric guitar was on the right. A microphone was at the centre for soloists and tall microphone stands were at the back for the choir at the end.

The choir was sitting in the choir lofts (where we sat for Firebird) for about a third or so of the concert, then disappeared to warm up.

As for the concert, you can decide for yourself, since CBC Radio 2 is hosting the concert audio, but do it within a year since that’s the hosting length. I’m not that into jazz, but pro performers are pro performers.

In terms of mood, the concert was generally sombre. The playing of OP’s 1985 Berlin performance was the most energetic point, and no one ever matched that going forward, opting for more reflective pieces.

On that note, Herbie Hancock’s piano performance was decidedly non-jazz. It was…Impressionism almost, but he ventured into the realm of atonality or just really complicated polyharmony that I didn’t grasp. The amount of audience coughs was noticeably higher and I don’t think it was that enthusiastically received.

He burned us electrical engineers, though. Burned us good. It was his major until he decided to become follow OP’s footsteps. If it wasn’t for a record he’d heard that had OP as pianist, he would have wound up as “just another electrical/electronics engineer.”

:/

You’re not supposed to record the concert or take photographs, but that didn’t stop anybody. Some guy had a compact video recorder out during the performances, the guy beside me had a small digital camera.

The flashes really came out when Herbie stepped on stage. I understand why, but it’s still disrespectful. The man took a red-eye flight (and then had to leave right after his performance) not to wave to his fans and have them photograph him.

The concert was supposed to be about 2 hours long and wound up closer to 2.5. On the subway trip home some obviously drunk guy got on at Bloor and sat beside us, where he proceeded to talk to himself and to us even though we didn’t reply. Maybe he imagined us talking back? He almost exclusively muttered and was generally incomprehensible. Drunk at 7 in the evening, ’nuff said. My friend noted it was a small miracle that he knew to get off at Davisville.

My short string of finals was capped by a concert, where the Kirov Orchestra performed the pieces noted above. They followed with 3 encore pieces, but sitting up in the choir loft I couldn’t make out their titles since the conductor turned to face the general audience when he spoke (and he didn’t say the title of the third).

Choir loft is a sweet place to be, effectively behind the orchestra. Our seats were in Row C, probably more descriptively known as Bench Row. It wasn’t even bolted down, that’s how awesome it was. There was a good amount of leg room. We also got a good dose of brass, if that’s your thing.

I went with 3 others. Choir loft seats only opened up a few days ago, apparently, and tsoundcheck had them at steep discount, even after the $7.50 service charge for ordering by phone.

My prior exposure to The Firebird was select passages featured in Fantasia 2000, and maybe whatever I heard (and subsequently forgot) while studying the listening excerpts for History 5. Prior exposure to The Rite of Spring was even more limited, to about a few bars in the polyrhythmic introduction.

When the orchestra walked in, the oboist had a tuner for his 440 Hz. I don’t know if that counts as cheating or not, or goes against the spirit of the tradition. You could always get around that by using that tuner in the warm-up room, but I can understand wanting to be tuned for the venue, not the warm-up room.

After the orchestra tunes and warms up for a few seconds, we all waited for the conductor to step on stage. It always irks me to hear all that “discreet” coughing. I’m at home with silence, so polite coughing is superfluous in my view, and there can’t be that many sick people in the audience despite the fact that it’s winter.

First up was Firebird in its original ballet score glory. I came away with the impression that the whole thing was fairly demanding. It’s long — at almost an hour with no break between movements — and intense for most of that length. Loud sections were incredibly loud, and they added two trumpets for the final push. No chairs, they were just there to bring the power at the end. So in general, the Kirov Orchestra does loud pretty well, but I don’t feel that they kept things as tight as they could have when things got busy, loud busy or simmering busy.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the Fantasia 2000 recordings, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had the benefit of multiple takes (if they needed them), but when the going got hectic, one could still hear very clean lines even if those lines were intense runs. In fact, they were made more intense because they were clean. Kirov, in contrast, had moments when things just kind of smeared together, sounding like a wash.

It’s probably not something the general audience hears clearly, but for us in the choir loft, the conductor’s grunting was distracting. Glenn Gould hummed to himself, Valery Gergiev grunts. There were grunts right off the bat. Loud passages might be acceptable, but in the quiet ones? No thanks.

Rite of Spring calls for more players, so those extra trumpets were added, as well as two more (French) horns that did double duty as euphoniums. Several of the performers had two instruments, like clarinet and basis clarinet, or clarinet and sopranino saxophone (I’m pretty sure I saw one, even though it’s not in the score), bassoon and contrabassoon.

It could be because it was getting late, but I found myself losing interest at some point past the halfway mark. We agreed that it was a gutsy piece even today, never mind 94 years ago, yet I fell off the aggression train. Part of the reason has to do with the fact that it’s almost unceasing in its hostility, and without any other direction my brain simply shut down. The performance itself felt more together overall than Firebird, but Firebird was a much more engaging listen.

After Rite of Spring, and after an encore, the conductor took a bow, the orchestra took a bow, and then the conductor walked off the stage, and would then come back with his jacket off, take a bow, etc, walk off the stage, then come back again with his jacket on. I don’t quite understand this.

I got a lift home, saving me a token. w00t. It’s a real word now, dontcha know.