Singing In A Quartet

Posted by riverwriter on Sep 30th, 2008 | 0 comments

Tomorrow night, for the first time, I will be practising with an established quartet. I have sung another quartets, and I have really liked the experience. Usually, I have sung the lead part (the melody), but this time. I will be singing the baritone part.

Among barbershoppers, the bari part is a good-natured joke. What we sing sounds really weird. When the arranger sets up each phrase, he gives the melody to the Lead, the Bass harmonizes with the Lead, the Tenor harmonizes with the Lead, and the Bari gets the notes that complete the chord. The result of this arrangement is that, if you hear the Bari part all by itself it sounds like a dirge for somebody who died a really terrible death, slowly, at the hands of a flesh eating alien. But, if you sing the Barry part, you understand that it is a unique way to hear the music from an incredible point of view.

The reason that this opportunity came up is that the previous Barrie died and his replacement, who is a better musician than I am, decided (as best I can determine). That’s singing in a quartet would demand too much of his time. I am thankful for that decision, because it gives me a chance. As I told the fellows when they asked me if I wanted to sing with them: I would sing any part to get into a quartet. This has been a dream of mine for a long time. I am really looking forward to it.

Wish me luck.

What Scares Me

Posted by riverwriter on Sep 28th, 2008 | 5 comments

What scares me is that my current Conservative MP is a nice guy, a good man about the constituency, and the odds-on favorite to win the next election. This scares me, because in our current political system in Canada, our government is a dictatorship run by one man: the Prime Minister. Our MP has really no function in Ottawa except to vote for anything our Prime Minister decides to do and to take part in the insane screaming matches that seem to be the other main business of the House.

The Prime Minister is put into office, not by direct vote, but by virtue of how many MPs in his party are elected. So if our constituents are shortsighted enough to elect good old Guy Lauzon, they are de facto electing a Prime Minister with an extremely negative narrow focus that ignores our massive environmental problems, our massive cultural industry, our pacifist history, our sane foreign policies—in favor of kissing up to the USA by subsidizing big industry, the exploiting the oil sands, hyperextending our ill-equipped armed forces into war instead of peacekeeping, and enlarging the globalization of everybody else, to the detriment of us and our jobs.

What scares me is that Harper has indicated that anything that does not interest him in his limited purview is a possible subject for cuts. That could include anything cultural, apparently, as he seems to have no sense of humour, no sense of grace, no sense of culture outside his narrow sphere, which may not extend much beyond the Calgary Stampede. I foresee cuts to the CBC, Canada Council, Foreign Affairs, education, arts, language. I see us massively losing jobs to the East and Middle East, exploiting and exporting more and more raw materials and resources to the USA, until we join them as a poor cousin.

What scares me even more is that anyone will be elected Prime Minister. Our system of government is totally screwed. We need checks and balances.

What happened in Ontario, when Mike Harris was Premier can very easily happen to Canada: healthcare, education, culture, Indian relations were all systematically destroyed by that stupid, stupid man and his cabal, some of whom have significant power with Stephen Harper.

God help us all.

Family news: Shannon Cowan’s novel short-listed

Posted by riverwriter on Sep 26th, 2008 | 1 comment

Shannon Cowan and Teegan

Shannon Cowan’s Young Adult novel, Tin Angel (978-1-897073-68-1), has been Shortlisted for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. This award, which was established in 1988 in memory of the respected historian and children’s author, Geoffrey Bilson, is given annually to the Canadian author of an outstanding work of historical fiction for young people. The winner will be chosen on November 6, 2008. For more information, visit bookcentre.ca

Congratulations, Shannon!

Shannon is the daughter of my sister Penny and her husband, Bill Cowan. She is married to Patrick Walshe, and is mother to Zaira and Teegan. They live in Errington, Vancouver Island. Tin Angel is her second novel.

Review: I Claudia by Kristen Thomson

Posted by riverwriter on Sep 24th, 2008 | 0 comments

When I see the dreaded words, “This show has no intermission” outside the auditorium, my heart sinks as I begin having second thoughts about making the hour-plus drive from Cornwall to Ottawa, dropping a hundred dollars and change on dinner (not to mention the price of gas), all to culminate in watching a one-act play flip by. Give me two or three act play every time, or let me stay home.

Except this time.

I Claudia is a delightful one-woman show performed in mask by Liisa Repo-Martell. The masks, by Abdelkader Farrah, are distinctive, witty creations that, along with the costumes, not only distinguish among the characters but, particularly in the case of Claudia, the focal character, cleverly depict what the character thinks of herself.

Teenage angst can be a very funny subject for a non-teenagers (among whom I number myself) and that is the case here: Claudia is a very insightful character with a dramatic-comic back story about her father’s impending wedding to an airhead.

While the script managed to engage me, the character changes/costume changes really slow things down, in spite of artful attempts to make them interesting; they really should be speeded up.

The start of the play was somewhat puzzling: as the lights dimmed, I could see what appeared to be a late patron arriving at the entrance to the house, which is downstage left; then he walked onto the stage and disappeared through the curtains at the back. I thought this was establishing the fourth walland the setting itself, a stage. But it turned out that the setting was primarily a school basement, and the character was the janitor. Maybe that worked, but I found the time the janitor spent indistinctly behind the curtains served no purpose. Otherwise, he did indeed establish the setting and gave us some basis for understanding who Claudia was.

I don’t know whether I was out of it or the script failed me a bit, but I found the wedding confusing. I wasn’t certain whether this was Claudia’s mother’s wedding or her father’s wedding. The distinction was made clear at the end, but I had difficulty distinguishing between the mother and the girlfriend. it took an after-play discussion to set me straight.

The title’s allusion to Robert Graves’ epic Roman novel with almost the same title was fun and a sly dig at the politics of Claudia’s family.

Was it worth the trip? Yes, this time. But I hope we aren’t having another season of one-acters at GCTC.

Deadly Ignorance

Posted by riverwriter on Sep 24th, 2008 | 3 comments

Harper thinks the arts
are practised by rich farts
who drive in limousines
to galas most obscene.

He doesn’t realize
the arts are little guys
and girls of every station
who work across this nation

at jobs for minimum wage
to put their art on stage.
They practice, draft, revise,
compose, rehearse, devise,

and live a life devoid
of things the rich enjoy
just so they can say
“I’m better at this today.”

Know these are the ones you’ve stunned
by cutting off arts funds:
and you should really note
we are cutting off your vote

not just because you’ve screwed us—
for that is merely human—
screw us and you screw our country
and for that we are unforgiving.