Ron Sexsmith waved goodnight to me.

Tonight we went to see our friend Mike Evin's EP release party. His new disc is a set of love songs, and very awesome. It was a good show, a mix of Mike solo, with his girlfriend Sarah, and the full band. Two of the guys who played in the band are also in Ron Sexsmith's band, so he showed up to hear the show, too.

We ended up sitting with the guy who tunes Mike's piano. He's blind, so after the show I led him over to where Mike was chatting with people so they could chat. Mark, the tuner, started talking with the drummer, Don Kerr, also the producer for Mike's album, also Ron Sexsmith's drummer.

A few minutes later Capella and I decided it was time to go home, so we went and got our coats on. On the way to the door, Capella stopped to say goodnight to Sarah. I was a few feet away and wanted to save a little time on our way out, so I waved goodnight. But Sarah was standing directly in front of Sexsmith and Don, who returned my wave, as did Ron Sexsmith.

Embarrassing and exciting, all rolled into one.

Ron Sexsmith waved goodnight to me.

Revolutionary

We went out to a movie Saturday night. It was an Australian film, part of a weekend of films from down under. It was called Kenny, about a guy who works for a portable toilet company. A bit Chrsitopher Guest... If you get a chance to see it, go.

On the bus ride home the route makes a left turn. There was a car that had stopped past the stop line, making it difficult for the bus driver to make his turn. He stopped and stuck his head out the window to educate the driver on the rules of the road. I couldn't hear the driver, but the conversation ended with the bus driver saying, "Bite me!"

This story could've happened anywhere in the world. I've seen it in Boston many times. But in Toronto the story ends with the bus driver apologizing to the riders by saying, "Sorry about that. People get a license and they think they're God." [If you read this story out loud to anyone, sorry should be pronounced 'sore-ee'.]

Another bus story: last week Capella and I were waiting for a bus at the depot. It was cold, and there was a bus sitting at the far end, its driver twiddling his thumbs. On the digital sign at the front of the bus, the route number and name alternated with the word "REVOLUTIONARY." Another bus pulled in, and the driver took pity on us and waved us on so we could come out of the cold. We asked him about the other bus's sign, and he explained that the electronic signs come with a few preset words and phrases. Apparently some of the drivers like to have random phrases flash on the signs when they drive.

On vacation & sick

Always works that way, doesn't it?

Floating in a cloud, playing music.

Yesterday I played a lunch time concert at the Richard Bradshaw Ampitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. It actually only sounds slightly less cool than it is. It's the staircase of the new opera house, but they've designed it very well, and have a fantastic piano. Twice a week there are free concerts at noon, and they're so popular they have to turn people away.

The stage is on the third balcony level, and most of the audience sits on a wide staircase leading up to the fourth balcony level. The rest of the audience sits on the fourth balcony level looking over the back and sides of the stage area. I felt a little intimidated, being surrounded on all sides like that, but more like a rock star than anything.

Even though we weren't paid, I've never been treated better by management for any concert. Someone met us at the stage door and walked us to the green room. While the piano tuner finished his work (someone in our quartet recognized him as "the slow blind guy"), she took us on a tour of the opera house. After our hour and a half sound check there were good sandwiches, fruit, and bottled water waiting for us in the green room. And the audience was packed, attentive, and appreciative. On my way out four old ladies stopped me to shake my hand and say how much they enjoyed the concert.

The whole experience with this quartet was very intense. I was asked to play with them about two weeks ago when their violist decided to take an audition in New York on the same day as the concert. So I was given the music, and we started rehearsing. On Thursday (5 days before the concert) we had a coaching on the middle two movements of the piece- they had worked on this last semester, but only had lessons on the first movement. On Friday we played the last movement for the Tokyo String Quartet & tried to learn everything they had to teach us. A little hard when four guys are telling you slightly different things all at once, but fantastic nevertheless. (A side note: one of the few things the Conservatory does very, very well is all of the masterclasses they arrange with international artists. Not many schools can say they get this many people to come give classes.)

So anyway, that's just about everything I've been doing since I got married. That, and Nathan and I brewed batch #2 of beer today. Our first batch we christened Fail Ale, aka What Ales You. This one's supposed to be an IPA, but needs a good name.

As for the title- the walls of the front half of the opera house are thick plate glass. The main stairs leading up to the ampitheatre are also glass, giving the feeling of being suspended over the street.

Phone call which interrupted my practising this afternoon:

telephone: "Hi, I'm calling from the Toronto Star. Is Mr. or Mrs. Sherwood there?"
me: "I'm sorry, Mr. Sherwood isn't home."

Which is, I guess, now a lie. Woo-hoo!

ketchup

Capella and I got married last weekend in Montreal. I'm not sure why, but I hadn't discussed any of the preparations here.

We're still feeling overwhelmed by all the love. We've conservatively guessed that we had about 200 hugs that day from almost all of the people we really care about. Impossible to properly express my gratitude and love to everyone. Thanks for the beautiful singing.

We went to Quebec City for a few days for a little honeymoon. We both speak french passibly well, but there's no way we'd pass for native speakers. In the off-season between New Year's and Carnival, however, it was good enough that most people continued speaking French to us. The night we arrived we went out to a little pub with a great beer list and ordered some food. Capella explained her allergy to nuts, and when our food was served the waitress clearly explained that my fries had been fried in peanut oil, and that Capella shouldn't touch them.

A little while later when our waitress passed by, I asked for some ketchup (in French, of course). From that point on, she spoke to us exclusively in English. There wasn't anything funny about how I asked the question. It's just that only an anglophone would ask for ketchup with his fries.

Happy New Year from Montreal

In Quebec, there are some ideoms that you don't find in France. For instance,

bonne journée = have a good day, or
bonne soirée = have a good evening.

Today, people have been wishing me "bonne année," which is equivalent to "happy new year," but you're all smart enough to follow the pattern and translate directly.

Alors, bonne année à tous!

JB

On Christmas Eve we baked a turkey. We meant to eat at 5, but it wasn't ready until about 7. We turned down the lights, lit some candles, and put on James Brown's Funky Christmas. I woke up the next morning and checked my email to find out he had died early Christmas morning. Some YouTube finds:

A hyper version of Sex Machine, with Maceo Parker "makin' it funky"

J.B. crooning like I've never heard. It gets started about 45 seconds in.

Prisoner of Love.

Popcorn. And the smoothest footwork ever.

Surfin' bird

I've been thinking a lot about the audiences for classical music lately, and what performers and organisers need to do to reach out more. This afternoon I came across this post discussing an article by Randall Thompson on the classical music audience in 1950. Thought-provoking, for sure.

Update: I wrote Randall Thompson, but I meant Virgil Thomson, the friend of Aaron Copland (and part of the so-called gay-fiosi of American music).

Viola-in' around

I feel good.

My semester's done. On Tuesday I played a mock orchestra audition that went pretty well. Everything was acceptable- a couple of excerpts were pretty good, actually, and a few were a bit uninspired...

Earlier this evening I played a short recital. The first half was Bach's sixth 'cello suite. When I began the concert the audience was only 4 people - Capella, my teacher, my pianist, and a former student of my teacher who had just had a lesson. I had some trouble settling in & making music... By the fourth movement (the Sarabande- a slow elegant dance) a few more people had come in and that helped a lot. Capella said later that she didn't want the movement to end... which is cool for a few reasons- I was feeling pretty good while I was playing- thinking about how to play each phrase as it happened... so that Capella enjoying it the most means that I wasn't entirely fooling myself.

It made me very happy that some new Toronto friends came and enjoyed the concert. Jim, Anna, and Finn, who we lived with when we first moved up (for a few months, actually- from July to October), their neighbors (who listened to me practice all summer), a friend of Sage's that we met last week finally (hi Sage), and two pop musicians (by which I mean non-classical. not really pop at all, really... ) who are friends of Jim's - all these people came. It was awesome. Jim and Finn came in in the middle, and Finn listened quiet as a mouse until the fourth movement, when he started talking about wanting to go play hockey. Capella and I met Jim and Finn at the park two weeks ago when Finn went skating for the first time.

The second half was a sonata by Julius Roentgen, a Dutch/German composer who lived shortly after Brahms, and is some distant relative of the discoverer of the X-ray, Wilhelm Roentgen. And that's how I use my physics degree.

In other news, Nathan and I brewed a batch of beer about two months ago. Last week we finally bottled it, and tried a bottle then (the bottle was a funny shape and the capper wouldn't fit). It was warm, uncarbonated, and tasted like watery Molson with a really nasty kick at the end. Yesterday I put one bottle in the fridge for an hour, and it was good. Not watery, cold, carbonated, and the nasty kick has been largely subdued. I think we'll have a Coor's Lite blind taste test (which should give you a rough idea how it tastes). But it's recognizably beer, which is very, very exciting. And none of the bottles exploded.

Song of the week: (Only Wanna) Brush My Teeth by Mike Evin. One of the sweetest songs I've ever heard. And I'm not just saying that because Mike & Sarah came to my concert tonight.