SVI 2013

Another SVI has come and gone. This year a lot of the organizing fell to me, since my mom moved away last fall. So I found myself doing my usual Suzuki-parenting, plus a lot of the this-and-that volunteer stuff I've usually added to that, plus the lion's share of the administration. I confess I didn't sleep a whole lot.

For the first time Fiona got included in the chamber music program. That meant she was in the same program as Sophie and Noah, though they were all in different quartets. Noah and Sophie had worked hard to reschedule their shifts at work to clear time for SVI, and I was a little worried about how they would transition from that grown-up world of employment amongst adults to a music camp with kids -- one that included their baby sister. But it was fine. Fiona fits in with teens pretty well, and the older kids were of course pretty lovely with the younger ones. They're Suzuki kids after all ... they've grown up in communities of fellow music students where mutual support, regardless of age and level, is the norm.

 The opening chamber orchestra performance was a string version of Handel's "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba," which showcased the experienced violinists and violists and gave the less advanced cellists a manageable role. It was a cheerful and energetic start to the main SVI week.

We had about the same number of students as the past couple of years: just over 80. And as is normal for us, a huge proportion of the students, almost three quarters, are repeat enrolees. It makes the whole thing feel even more like a family reunion than it would otherwise. But every year there are some new families shuffled into the deck, and new friendships that spring up. So much magic, both musically and socially.

Sophie and Noah have not officially been studying their instruments for the past year or two. They've continued to play when called upon, whether with the occasional regional orchestra, or trio gigs around town, but haven't been practicing regularly or working on solo repertoire. It was a tough call whether to enrol them, but they both said they'd like to be involved and were willing to work to master their music and contribute as much as they could.

And they did. And they pulled out solo repertoire to work on in master class. Sophie dug into the Mozart G Major Violin Concerto, and Noah pulled out the Bloch Suite Hebraique Romanza. They learned their chamber music and orchestra parts well and worked hard. They enjoyed the week a lot. Maybe not enough to continue working on their own throughout the year, but it was valuable for them to see that they could still use their music, and still take up active study where they'd left off and make progress.

The faculty were mostly people we knew from past years. Favourite people of ours. More of that family reunion feeling. We hung out at the faculty lounge, and Erin joined us after work for Happy Hour. One night we went star-gazing with Erin and Noah's former teachers from Calgary. Just what we needed: an even later night than usual. But it was totally worth it, and very memorable.

Erin joined in the orchestra at the Faculty Concert, and played concertmaster in the Faculty Orchestra at tutti night. The evening activities were at least available to her. She was working long days at the café, where things were the busiest they'd been all summer by a long shot, thanks to all the business generated by SVI.

Noah's quartet did a great job of a couple of movements of the Tchaikowsky Quartet No. 1, and also an arrangement of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. Sophie was in a quintet playing Mozart K. 516 quintet in B-flat. Fiona took up viola to play the Mozart K. 157 quartet in C Major. The senior orchestra managed the Holst St. Paul's Suite. And the senior repertoire class of violins and violas did a Michael MacLean Tango.

Together with the new artistic director and the other local co-organizer, I felt pretty good about the whole endeavour. I learned some things about scheduling, and communication, and about the need for delegation. My mom arrived before the last day and seemed pretty pleased to see that the whole thing had proceeded fairly smoothly and that people seemed happy.

So yeah, there will be a tenth year. We're thinking ahead already.

Music Explorers

Fiona has that gene, the one that instinctively attracts her to young children. How tragic that she's the one of my children with no younger siblings. However, she makes up for it when she's out and about: she gravitates to young kids, and they gravitate to her. She's done a little bit of mother's helpful type babysitting (supervising kids while their mother is busy doing something else in the vicinity), and she's been asking for opportunities to volunteer with the preschool set for a while.

This week in our community there is an introductory music program called Music Explorers for children 3-6. It's like a music-focused kindergarten, in the true kinder garten sense: a warm, developmentally appropriate place for play and exploration and creativity with time outdoors in the garden and beyond. Fiona offered to come in for a show and tell with her violin, and the instructors were thrilled. They also suggested that she might be interested in coming earlier in the week to enjoy a walk led by a bird call expert, and to provide an extra pair of eyes and hands to help with supervision of the children on the walk. She thought that sounded lovely.

One of the instructors hasn't been well, so Fiona's small contribution to the week has ended up being much larger. Along with an older teen friend she's now attending the whole program as a helper, and the presence of these two older girls is enabling the secondary teacher to manage as the sole teacher for a portion of the morning. They move furniture, prepare snacks, put away equipment, interact with the children, help with the group singing and rhythm activities and help with supervision.

Today was the day for show & tell on the violin. Fiona talked a bit about her violin learning, and about how the violin works, and then played "Sing a Song of Sixpence," which the kids had been singing each day, for them to sing along. She played a duet with a cellist friend. And then she managed a long line of eager kids as they each took a turn of their own with a tenth-sized violin she had brought along for the purpose.

She and I had talked in advance about how to manage this. We knew she would only have a minute or so with each child to avoid the others getting frustrated with waiting their turn, so I suggested not worrying about bow-holds at all and simply allowing them to grab the frog of the bow any which-way. Instead she should focus on good violin position, keeping the instrument safe, and then let them make a few open string sounds.

And she did brilliantly! She set up their posture nicely, and they co-operated so well with her. She also managed the line well, keeping each child's turn to just the right length and reminding those waiting that their turns were coming very soon. They were thrilled to be able to hold and scrub a bit on a real violin, and they loved that it was another kid who was showing them. I don't think an experienced Suzuki teacher could have done any better with one-minute mini-lessons for a pile of young children.

40th Anniversary SSSG Trip

This year was the 40th anniversary of the Suzuki program I grew up in. The program back "home," in Ontario, a place I left in 1981, where none of us lived for a while but where my sister and my mom now live again. A few months ago I had been warned that I was expected to attend the celebration at the end of April. As one who tends not to do a good job of maintaining old relationships, I tend to balk at the prospect of school and college reunions. I live more in the here and now. I'm not much of one for nostalgia. But this was different. I wanted to go. 

Fiona, my sister and me puzzling over quartet music

My brothers were both coming. So were the kids who were part of the chamber group I grew up with. Unlike my friends in high school, my relationships with these kids had been an authentic part of who I was then ... a part that had stayed with me even through the years of no contact. Now we were all pushing 50. Wow.

Erin was still in exams in Montreal. Noah and Sophie were off on tour with their choir during the week that overlapped with the beginning of the anniversary celebration. So Fiona and I decided to go just the two of us, leaving Chuck to work and to be the parent after Sophie and Noah returned. We would attend the gala weekend, then drive up to Montreal after Erin's last exam was over and use our rental vehicle to help Erin move from the "mansion" where she's lived the past two years to a tiny bachelor apartment in the student ghetto. And then the three of us would fly home together.

The weekend was amazing, from the family time with siblings and raucous restaurant meals to the gala catered dinner, the alumni performance I was part of to the final performance that involved alumni, alumni offspring (i.e. Fiona) and all current students playing together at the big new (to me) performing arts centre.

Me, my two brothers, Fiona, my mom and my sister at the banquet

Afterwards there was more family time, and we spent time at my mom's jamming with some string quartets. Fiona even got to play along for a movement with the big people.

Backstage at the performing arts centre with a veritable flock of Bach Double-ists

And then -- what were we thinking?! -- we drove through Toronto and all the way out past Ottawa to Montreal. We cleaned the heck out of Erin's old place, packed her stuff, drove through traffic-and-construction-clogged downtown Montreal back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with our little compact car, delivering boxes and piles of things. And cleaned more, and slept on the floor, again. And cleaned more and drove more through downtown. And then bashed our way back through rush hours in Canada's two largest cities once more a day and a half after driving east. We escaped without any real mishaps and miraculously no parking tickets. 

We arrived home very tired, two of us with crashing head colds, but delighted to have been able to attend. Reconnecting with family and friends was amazing. Fiona was a wonderful travelling companion; she put up with everything happily and loved meeting everyone, whether she knew who they were or not. And it was lovely to see where Erin is ensconced in Montreal. 

Most of the living room floor at Erin's new place. Did I mention it is small?

NYO Redux

If ever ever wondered whether we were doing the right thing sending Erin off to live on her own in a big faraway city while still a high schooler, her experience at NYO is providing some resounding reassurance. Last summer, before she moved away, she participated in Canada's National Youth Orchestra. She did well. She worked hard. She enjoyed the thrill of playing in such a high level ensemble. It was like discovering a secret world where people were as weird about music as she was. She had found her tribe! It was a heady experience. All these other music students, and not only had they been putting as much passion into their music as she had, they were in home environments where they were getting similarly intensive nurturing of their abilities. She had the sense, I think, of being swept up in a wonderful, exciting river of activity that felt like the right place for her, but gosh, it was flowing fast and strong, and so many of the other people around her seemed to have been swimming in similar rivers for years.

 

This summer she's back at NYO and she's in such a totally different place musically. She's completely comfortable with her abilities, she knows the gig, she arrived primed to dive fully and completely into the specialized experience it offers, she is getting so much positive feedback about her progress. The coaches who know her from last year are very impressed by the transformation. "I've been taking lessons," she said. "Yes, that helps" was the amused response. At least some of them were aware of her geographic challenges in the past. Actually, one of them had offered her a free lesson in the public school auditorium of a neighbouring village during a cold and desolate February supper-hour 18 months ago when his chamber ensemble was here on tour. So yes, he understood where she lived.


While last year she held her own in the depths of the violin section, this year she's been placed right up front of the first violins for the majority of the major works: concertmaster, second or third chair. Amazing what getting appropriate private teaching on a weekly basis will do for a motivated kid who hasn't had that opportunity for years.

 And she's feeling completely in her element. But the mono-diet of orchestral rehearsals, while stimulating, is beginning to leave her hungry for other stuff. She can't wait to have more time to practice, to try out some composition ideas, to get lessons with her teacher, to dive into music academics like theory and history, to work on excerpts for her ensemble placement audition at McGill. 

The down-side: she needs a new instrument, having musically far outgrown the violin she's had since she was 13. It was fine back when she was learning the Monti Csardas. For a kid who will be knocking back Tchaikovsky and Paganini this fall it's not nearly enough. Oh well, it's not like we needed a new minivan, not really.

Corazón

Corazón, how we love thee! 

For parents this ensemble is like an insurance plan for the souls of their teenagers. Priceless.

Graduating

We have Erin home for almost four days. She made the trip back from Montreal for her high school graduation weekend. While she's been living there this year studying violin and playing in an orchestra, she's officially still been a student within our local school district, earning credit towards her graduation diploma through independent study in a variety of formats.

Even in her earlier high school years she had been enrolled technically full-time but granted credit for a lot of her home-based learning, working at the school part-time mostly in the independent study program, and doing an occasional in-the-classroom credit. So she didn't feel a strong sense of connection and loyalty to her fellow graduates, but with scholarship and bursary awards influencing the decision we decided it was the right thing to have her return and participate in the hoopla.

The trip back has been short, because she's got her last violin lesson of the year and her last orchestra concert in the next week. She'll write two of her three final exams at the school tomorrow, and then we'll make the four-hour drive to our airport of choice to get her on the plane.

I grew up in what would have been called a small city, but which in my current rural environment would be considered quite large indeed, and my high school graduating class was about 400 in number. Graduation was a minor event. I don't honestly recall whether I participated or not. I think I have a vague memory of crossing the stage at school to receive something, but it may be that I'm recalling some other awards assembly.

Well, things are rather different where we live now. Erin's grad class is seven in number. It's possible that only three of them may ever take another academic course in their lives. For this community and for the grad class itself, the completion of high school is a momentous event. The grads have been planning and fund-raising all year. Families may spend several hundred dollars on dresses and accoutrements. Extended family arrive from far and wide. Grad gifts by parents can include things like vehicles, and it seems it's not unusual for casual friends to present graduates with gifts.

A large portion of the community attends the Grad Ceremony. There are numerous scholarships distributed amongst the tiny number of graduates. Each graduate walks to the stage like a rock star, complete with personalized soundtrack a biographical sketch. There are childhood and baby photos projected on a huge screen to the accompaniment of yet another personalized soundtrack. The class history is presented, with a detailed accounting of the highlights of each of the thirteen years of school. There's also a Promenade of Graduates and Escorts at a school assembly the day before. And the night before there's a Banquet for graduates and up to twenty of their invited guests. A dance follows. There are extended photo sessions at the gardens for grads, family and friends. There's a Grad Tea after the actual ceremony to which the community is invited. And it all wraps up with a huge boozy party that night.

Our family has scant proclivity for celebratory hoopla at the best of times, but with our unconventional educational choices, Erin's nominal but essentially very-part-time participation in school for just the past four years, and her departure to begin the next big step in her education having taken place a year ago, it all felt a little odd. To not take it seriously, to not ooze enthusiasm and excitement, would seem like a slap in the face of community values. But really, we couldn't bring ourselves to put it all on to the nines.

So we tried to walk a middle line. We submitted the baby photos, she chose her soundtrack music. She bought a grad dress ($40, including shipping, off eBay). She returned to BC. She participated. She invited her immediate family to the grad banquet. She did the Promenade at the school assembly, with her brother as a stand-in "escort." She smiled and looked beautiful and comfortable on stage during the epic-length ceremony.

Sophie and Noah had their final three Corazón performances during the Grad Ceremony ... in Nelson. So they didn't attend: only Fiona, Chuck and I were there. We didn't even bring a camera, though we toyed with the idea of bringing one as a prop just so we wouldn't look bad.

And after the ceremony we peeled out after a few minutes at the Tea and went to Nelson to catch a Corazón performance. Erin got the chance to hug all the Corazón people she'd been missing all year, and then we went out to dinner, picked up the local Corazón kids after their final performance, drove home late and skipped the booze-up.

Erin netted the better part of $4K in scholarship money at the Grad Ceremony. Combined with her cushy admission scholarship from McGill, she's sitting pretty. She'll spend the summer at Canada's National Youth Orchestra again. And then in the fall she'll finally be enrolled in the BMus Performance program at McGill, where she'll be able to continue studying with her wonderful teacher and will be able to have the full immersion in music in an academic environment.

This past year has certainly not been without its challenges. The organizational wrinkles that come of having a legal minor living several provinces away with neither a host family nor an educational institution to provide support are not to be underestimated. But she has coped admirably, and thrived musically and personally. And the net result is that she is miles ahead of typical high school graduates in terms of preparedness for living and studying on her own next year.

She knows the city. She knows her teacher. Her solo repertoire is planned out for the next year. She has a great place to live and knows the intricacies of the transit system. She knows how to get health care. She knows the good grocery stores. She knows the dodgy neighbourhoods, the friendly cafés, the quirky laundry machines. She knows where to easily get printer cartridges and bow rehairs and how to shop and cook and clean and organize for herself. She knows how to structure her time for practicing, study, exercise and daily-living tasks. She has a network of friends and acquaintances within and outside of the McGill Faculty of Music.

Now it just remains to enjoy her summer at NYO and dive headlong into university.

Postscript mommy brag: Upon snooping in the letters describing her local scholarships, it appears she won the one for the student with the top marks. And I only heard via her school principal, who was in touch with her violin teacher that Erin's McGill audition placed her #3 in a field over over 50 at what is currently the best-regarded string performance program in the country.

Summit Strings Cuba Concert

Summit Strings began in 2008 when our most senior local violin and viola students began playing ensemble music together on a regular basis. It has evolved as students moved away, moved on, graduated or what-have-you. For a couple of years we had a tight group of five, and they anchored the first half of a community concert last year. There are only three of them now. All three sing in Corazón too, which is kind of neat, and the older two will be participating in the big choir trip to Cuba next month. Sophie isn't eligible based on her age, but we hope she'll be able to do cool trips in future years.

They decided that a full-length concert would be a good way to raise money for the trip to Cuba. Sophie, good sport that she is, was fine with doing all the work required to support the others. I did some arranging and gleaning and transposing, vetting repertoire (a lot of it new, though some recycled from previous years) with their input. And then we spent the winter rehearsing. There was a nadir in motivation in November, but they rallied and as it got closer to performance time there was some real energy and excitement there. It was a big program with lots of varied repertoire. Not all of it was challenging, but some of it definitely was, and the sheer volume of music they had to get to know made for some pretty long, hard-working rehearsals.

Noah and Danika put together a poster-board presentation about the choir, about Cuba, and about the trip the group will be doing. We cooked a bunch of Cuban-inspired appetizers for intermission, designed and printed tickets, wrote and submitted ads and press releases, created posters and plastered the community. And we came up with background information to introduce the music.

It was a packed house, and the fund-raising proceeds were beyond what we expected. The community was so generous and supportive. It was a wonderful performance with lots of good feeling surrounding it.

Recital time

It's been a challenging year musically for all three kids. Erin moved away, and though the other kids would never articulate that she was a motivating force in their music studies, she certainly "normalized" diligent daily practicing around our house. Not only that, but as a member of the Suzuki group class and of Summit Strings she had provided herself as one of the scarce "advanced role models" in our little musical backwater. 

Sophie started school full-time in September. And she joined Corazón Youth Choir. Both of which have enriched her life in many ways, but have also eaten up the lion's share of her creative energy and time. The lifestyle change involved in going to school is not to be under-estimated. And so, with very little time and motivation going into her violin, she decided to drop lessons last fall. She continued to prepare ensemble music for the Summit Strings concert which was a huge program they presented a couple of weeks ago.

She's continuing to mess around with her violin, working on some little Kreisler pieces that she likes, and she's asked for occasional coaching from me or her grandmother. She plans to get back to working consistently on her violin and would like to attend SVI this summer. For this recital she chose to play "Meditation from Thais" with her Summit Strings sidekick Danika. It was an oldie for both of them, easy to pull out and perform without too much polishing work required. It's tough to play in unison with just one other person; I thought they did an excellent job.

Noah had an almost full-time course load at school last semester and the lifestyle change struck him amidships as well. He had a viola lesson on September 9th and that was the end of it. He had been getting monthly or bimonthly lessons in Calgary for the previous two years but he had always hated the travel and felt guilty about the scanty work he'd done between lessons. We were taking Erin, so bringing him along was no big deal and he tolerated it. But this year, with his work ethic on viola still suffering, Erin moved away and no one providing us with a very good reason to drive for two days every month, we decided to just let the lessons go. 

Like Sophie, he's continued to be committed to the Summit Strings ensemble music and performances. And he did a couple of Symphony gigs with me in Cranbrook, where he showed a lot of improvement in orchestral skills and confidence. But as for practicing solo repertoire, that pretty much stopped last August. Yet he pulled out the first movement of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, which he had almost finished learning the notes of last summer, and in his usual infuriating way put a mere couple of hours of practicing into bringing up to a fair degree of polish. It's a really big piece, both technically and musically. He did some masterful work with it in very short order.

Fiona continues to take weekly lessons with her grandmother. And for the most part she practices. But with Erin moved away and Noah and Sophie spending so little time on their instruments and doing so many exciting things away from home and away from Fiona, it has been hard to stay motivated. More so than the other kids Fiona's interests have always been socially driven to an extent: she loves doing things in part because the people she loves also like doing them. But she is beginning to figure out that violin playing has value for herself as an individual, not just as a member of a musically active sibship. And so she keeps working away, is looking forward to SVI and continues to practice most days. She played the first movement from Handel Sonata No. 3 in F Major.

Voices West and lupine wall

Fiona and I painted this along the wall of Sophie's bedroom while she was gone to a choral festival in Edmonton. We had hoped to do it on her birthday while she was at school, but there was a power failure that day, and not only were things dark and cold in the room as a result, but we were quite challenged just pulling together a birthday dinner and the requisitioned coconut cream pie. Fortunately the power came on just before supper and we squeezed in the pie baking. The crust, incidentally, was awesome -- the best I've ever made by a good shot, I think.

So we postponed the lupine painting until Sophie and Noah had left for Voices West. The call was to meet the bus at 5:30 am in Nelson, so needless to say we sent them the night before. They went down with a friend and stayed overnight at the hostel. Not much sleep was had, of course. Then they spent about 12 raucous hours on the tour bus, and thereafter headed to rehearsals! Thus began a weekend of ecstatic energy ... and sleep deprivation.

Here is the mass choir performing the next morning at the Remembrance Day ceremony:



And the group lunch at a large restaurant the next day:



The final concert was that evening, and then it was back on the bus the next morning for another 12 hours. The concert videos are still pending. By all accounts it was the most amazing experience: a love-fest of great voices and amazing young people. I am so grateful that my kids have the opportunity to be part of Corazón.

A Symphony Year

Noah has now completed a year's worth of concerts with the Symphony of the Kootenays. This year, with Erin gone, he's the only student member. His mom plays in the second violins and even though she'd rather play viola, she enjoys it.

And what a difference a year makes! Can you see him there, to the right of the violinist, in front of the double bass? He's relaxed, smiling slightly, wearing his orchestra gear complete with black suit jacket, shiny shoes and bow tie. And he actually looks like he knows what he's doing, even at the first rehearsal.

As an aside: Noah hit on the idea of adding a beak and eyes to his trilby hat and wearing his orchestra tux to go out for Hallowe'en as a penguin. He looked great ... but then his beak fell off. So he tucked away the eyes and beak and carried on trick-or-treating, carrying a pseudo-briefcase black bag and telling people he was "the 1%." Precious few of them got it, but he still got plenty of candy. I thought it was hilarious.

Anyway, in the symphony he's much better at matching bowings, changing fingerings, picking up the non-verbal stuff, learning and adapting on the fly during the intensive rehearsal schedule that starts just the day before the performance and leaves no time to practice. He's not intimidated by the repertoire, or the experience.

We had a very fun program this past weekend: opera pops given a wild comedic flair by Natalie Choquette. Some great classical music standards, some pretty impressive singing and acting, and a fluttering array of almost twenty different pieces from Saint-Saens to Puccini, Rossini, Mozart and Gershwin.

Family Chamber Music

It's family reunion time here in the Kootenays. Amidst all the food and banter and hiking and paddling and running and bouncing on the trampoline and swimming and basking in the sun and talking late into the evenings, there's also chamber music.

Erin, my sister Anna, my brother Jonathan, Noah.

My three kids filling out the upper strings in a Mozart 2-viola quintet. Not shown: my sister-in-law Emma on 2nd viola and my brother Jeremy on cello.

Parry "English Suite": Sophie and Erin on 1st, Fiona on 2nd.

Me on 2nd viola, with all of my siblings and my two eldest kids.

SVI 2011

Another Suzuki Valhalla Institute has come and gone in a whirlwind. It was odd not having Erin around being part of it. And several other members of her cohort of advanced students had also moved on, so the next bunch of kids became more senior and thrived in their new roles. 

Fiona moved up to the advanced orchestra and the advanced group class this year. She did some good preparatory work for the orchestra and coped well with the demanding repertoire. Group class ended up focusing a lot on advanced bowing techniques like spiccato, sautillé and ricochet. She had just moved up to a nice hand-me-down quarter-sized violin about three weeks before and I hadn't really appreciated how cheap the bow was until I tried to use it myself to figure out how to advise her about the bowing exercises. It was a fibreglass clunker completely incapable of bouncing. Fortunately the luthier in residence had a much better bow in stock. A couple of hundred dollars later Fiona was doing and pretty passable quadruple ricochet!

Sophie played second violin opposite Noah in a two-viola quintet (the Mozart g minor), as part of the Advanced Chamber Music program. She was socially very much like a teenager amongst that group of awesome young musicians, fitting in beautifully and enjoying the mileu. She was in the advanced orchestra and group class and had a very productive master class with a teacher she got along well with. She performed the Monti Csardas on recital and did a great job. She loved being out and about during the days and the evenings, having a full social life and a busy musical schedule.

Noah was also in the thick of things socially as part of the Advanced Chamber Music program and although he would have loved to have Erin around to be part of the whole thing, in some ways it was fabulous for him to be able to shine a little brighter as a musician and as a bright, funny, compassionate and increasingly adult-like young person. He is playing just beautifully and actually worked hard on his solo viola repertoire during the week, with motivation left over to carry him forward. He has really struggled with motivation for the past couple of years, so this was nice to see. He had a wonderful affinity for his master class teacher and made some really great strides with his Schubert Arpeggione Sonata.

Her summer

This is where Erin is living right now. Curiously enough it's the same university residence system I lived in when I first left home. Almost, but not quite, the same building.

I dropped her off at the airport a couple of weeks ago. The day before we'd arrived in Kelowna in time to do some shopping. She bought herself an iPhone 4. Three and a half years ago we bought a family cellphone that was a low-end dinosaur even then. Erin has used it during her various travels so far, but it was time to move on. She needs a phone of her own, something with more functionality. She won't have a land line next year, so the cellphone will be it. She needed a few gizmos to take with her for the summer and the fall: an iPod for listening to repertoire (hers had died a couple of months earlier), a metronome, a GPS device to keep her found when running and managing public transit, a camera, an alarm clock. The iPhone is all those things, and more. She subscribed with a Montreal number, so she's all set.

For the summer she's in Ontario, on the UWO campus. She arrived without any difficulty. NYO staff picked her up at the airport. Sweet! She's sharing a room with nice violist whom she really likes. She has 6-10 hours of music programming a day. She's trying to practice 3 hours and run 5k each day in addition to that. Within three days of heady music immersion she was saying that it felt like she'd been there her whole life already. She's lost her sense of time. Days seem like weeks. The intensity of the musical and social experience is playing tricks on her mind like that. She's found friends to run with. She performed the complete Haydn Sunrise Quartet today, and loves her quartet-mates. Everyone is awesome -- they're so musically capable, so motivated, so friendly and unassuming. There are occasional swing dance sessions for recreation. Meals are veggie-friendly and delicious if you stay with the salad bar.

The schedule shifts from mostly strings / mostly chamber music to a full symphonic focus in the next couple of days.

In short, she's thrilled. She's in her element, with young people just like her. If you're in Ontario, Quebec or the Maritimes (or even New Hampshire) you may be able to catch the NYO in performance somewhere on their tour schedule.

Second market and other bits of news

Quick update from the second market. Despite the dreary weather (cool and raining on and off all day) Fiona sold out her teas again quickly (proceeds: $25, initial investment now recouped), and Sophie, who had taken huge quantities of candy with her, sold almost all of it. Just a couple of lollipops left, one gift jar, half a dozen loonie bags. I think she sold about $80 worth. She was thrilled but also a little overwhelmed to think how much candy-making this project will require to be sustainable on a weekly basis.

We will have to skip the next market as we'll be taking Erin to put her on a plane to NYO that day, so that gives both girls some breathing room in the production schedule. This is particularly good as Sophie is waiting on a Canada Post delivery of more natural flavour oils and lollipop sticks, and with the rotating postal strikes that are currently taking place it may take a few extra days to arrive.

I managed to get out to meet my running group for a quick 10k this morning. I've joined a running club based 45 km to the east of here, in the hope of being able to join some of their Friday long trail runs. (And, truth be told, because I wanted to be able to buy one of their awesome club jackets). I did a fabulour long run with them three weeks ago; then Beauty and the Beast got in the way. More on that later. Anyway, today they were coming this way to run a trail almost in my backyard. I ran out along the trail to meet them at their end, then ran back with them as far as the spur back to my house. It was a soggy run what with the rain, and I ran at the front because I had to be home soon, so it was fast and tiring. But I made it back in time to get Sophie and Fiona to the market.

From there Erin and I went to a meeting at the school. We're all trying to perform a delicate dance: keeping everything kosher and honest, supporting Erin in her ambitious musical plans, letting her live elsewhere to get musical training, while also maximizing her chance of cleaning up a bunch of post-secondary scholarship money next spring through the local school district, and getting her all the academic requirements she needs for admission to her program of choice in 2012. So she's officially "travelling" to Montreal a few times next year (and also, incidentally, travelling to China with her Montreal-based orchestra). Her permanent address is here in New Denver, and for reasons of scholarship eligibility her school enrollment will be split between the bricks-and-mortar school she has "attended" the past three years and the DL program that her siblings are part of. She'll write her midterms in January, after the China trip, when we'll have her home for a family Festivus celebration (in lieu of Christmas).

Ah, yes, Beauty and the Beast. Erin and I for some strange reason enthusiastically volunteered to commit to playing in the pit orchestra for a full-scale high school and community production of this musical in Nelson. The orchestra was all adults, mostly very good amateurs or semi-pros, all volunteering. Great bunch of people. Erin's first experience playing in a pit, and it was a true pit ... a tiny cave directly beneath the stage, wired with mics and monitors and such. It was so much fun! Partly to have the time together playing reasonably challenging music mostly solo on each of the two violin parts, partly because of the feisty, fun company of the other players in the pit, and partly because of the trickle-down energy and enthusiasm of the cast, many of whom were friends of Erin's. But my, it was a lot of driving and a lot of time.

Now Erin is back to practicing Mahler, Richard Strauss, Tchaikowsky and Shostakovich symphony music and Haydn quartet movements in preparation for her NYO summer. We're still working on Montreal plans but she was enthusiastically accepted into the orchestra she wanted to join, and things are looking more hopeful all of a sudden on the accommodation front. It also looks like her current slate of school courses, plus the 3 she'd planned to do next year, will satisfy McGill University when she applies next winter.

Mother's Day Concert

Need I say more? It was a great concert. They are great kids. The music was fabulous. And then after it was over, Erin and Sophie did a quick presto-change-o and became choral accompanist and soprano and did the community choir performance as well.

Corazón

The recording above was made at their first performance of the season, a couple of weeks ago in Silverton. That's Erin you see in the title frame, second from the left in front. Noah figures a few times in the course of the video, one of the guys in the front row. The performance was pretty good considering where they were in their preparations i.e. just starting to pull things together for their tour and main hometown concerts next month. Zulu Mama is one of their "just have fun" songs; even though it's not one of the most polished or impressive ones, I put this one up because it shows their happiness so clearly.

Over the past week they've been through some really intensive rehearsing, workshopping and participating while on the road at the Banff Festival. They sang one of the Showcase Concerts, as their reputation from previous years secured them this honour. By all accounts they were tremendously successful.

I got an email from the manager shortly after picking my kids up off the tour bus in Nelson and driving them home. "Your funny, bright, caring, responsible kids made the Banff trip really amazing," he wrote. "There was a really remarkable session with an adjudicator which I am sure they will tell you about." Indeed, they had told me right away. The adjudicator had been brought to tears during their main festival performance. During their adjudication session she mentioned how moved she had been earlier, and how special the dynamic within the choir seemed to be. "Tell me about your director," she asked. "Who is this Allison?" And members of the choir began pouring out comments with all the warmth and love and caring they feel, speaking about how strongly they feel bound together by her leadership in this endeavour. And before long Allison was in tears, and so was half the choir. Including, I suspect, many of the guys.

This is a youth choir in a small rural town of 10,000. Not a city of a hundred thousand with a robust system of feeder choirs where the senior choir skims off the cream of the crop of scores of experienced singers. Allison accepts almost any teen who is keen and can sing in tune. No prior experience is required, no note-reading is necessary. And somehow, out of this  motley and unseasoned crew she pulls together a group that produces a sound in turns so joyful, tightly honed, caring, emotive, austere, attentive, exhuberant. My kids are so blessed. This will be Erin's last season with Corazón. Next year may be Sophie's first, and one more of Noah's many. I hope the choir is still going strong when Fiona is a teen.

Dvorak Symphony

Last weekend Noah, Erin and I, together with another long-time local student and friend, headed off for another weekend at with the Symphony. Noah had done one previous program with this group, Erin and I had done two and it was J.'s first. The program was bigger and meatier this time, though, with two big works by Dvorak: the Symphony No. 8 in G Major and the Cello Concerto.





On Friday we took the terrific and free Osprey ferry across Kootenay Lake, meeting up with a few other orchestra members on board, and then continued to drive on eastwards to Cranbrook where we checked into our truly lovely motel room and headed out to the first of three rehearsals at the theatre. We had a performance on Saturday night in Cranbrook, and then on Sunday headed west and home again, convening that evening at the theatre in Nelson for a second performance. It was nice to play for the "home crowd." Chuck, Fiona and Sophie had never heard the orchestra so this was their chance. 
I put together the above video as part of Noah's virtual portfolio for his Orchestra 10 high school credit through our DL program. Unfortunately you can't see either Noah or Erin in the video; Chuck, who manned the camcorder, was in Row 2, eyes at stage level and with a very minimal view of anyone other than the front-row players. You can see me from time to time (playing 2nd violin next to the white-haired violist in the front row) and I did my best to intersperse some other video and stills of Noah with the concert footage. At least you get to see him in his suit and tie, purchased especially for this orchestral gig! And hopefully you get a taste of how exciting it is for kids who have mostly cut their orchestral teeth in a tiny entry-level community string orchestra to have a first rehearsal on Friday and play a performance like this two days later! 

Montreal visit

Random wrought-iron work

Erin and I went to Montreal together this past week. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, how it was that she went last fall to "check out the University and get some lessons" and came back saying that she needed to move there now.

Well, not really. I already understand where her cravings for the move come from. I understood the allure of independent living. And I understood the lack of appropriate musical opportunities she's been dealing with in our hometown for the last three or four years. We made this trip to try to develop some understanding of how the logistics of such a move might work. Still, I was genuinely curious to see the city and its musical opportunities through Erin's eyes.

Day One in Montreal was the most telling. We walked around in the morning to check out some apartment possibilities. Oh my! Even on a frigid late-March day, with the accumulated trash of an entire winter revealing itself in the remnants of dirty frozen slush on the sidewalks, the heritage and character of this city revealed itself. People live in apartments above restaurants, boutiques and cafés. They live in row houses with astonishing turrets, wrought-iron spiral and straight staircases, colours and stonework and huge high ceilings. And dumps and dives and rickety fire escapes and tiny one-room studios with sloping floors. But character is everywhere!

Row houses near Carré St-Louis

Erin had a lesson scheduled that first afternoon with one of the teachers she had worked with last fall. We walked from our cute little B&B near the university to the teacher's home on the Plateau. I sat in on the lesson. The working relationship the two of them had was amazing. They clearly like each other a lot, and Erin responded so well, and with such good humour, respect and focus, to everything she was asked to do. She played her new repertoire (Wieniawski Concerto #2 and the Bach g minor Sonata) and there was an excellent mix of repertoire-specific musical polishing, technical development suggestions and instruction about practicing technique. So much to leave with after just an hour! I kept imagining "What if Erin could get this kind of lesson every week? Would she ever go places!" That was when I really understood why Erin came home from her Montreal visit last fall telling me that she needed to move now.

Possibly Erin's future home?

At the end the teacher told me that Erin is a very special student with incredible promise, and that I needed to make sure that she had a very good teacher for next year, her last pre-university year. I reminded her about our remote location and the unavailability of regular lessons and ensemble experience, and told her about Erin's hope to live and study in Montreal next year. Erin had alluded to this in her e-mail but hadn't been very specific about it. Would she consider taking Erin as a private student, outside of her McGill teaching? She said that doesn't really teach a private studio (she has one private student), and is very busy and doesn't yet know her schedule for next year, so she wasn't able to promise, but she said she would very much like to. Very much. By the end it sounded like an almost-for-sure to me.

We also met her husband, a world-renowned violin maker, as she sent us to him for a sound-post adjustment. Erin had spent a lot of time in Calgary over the past several months trying to get some acoustical issues with her violin ironed out, with only partial short-term benefit. A few minutes in this Montreal workshop and everything was perfect! He too was extremely encouraging about Erin's playing after hearing her try out the adjustments he had made. He asked who she studied with. We explained we were from BC and had just been trying to talk his wife into taking Erin on as a student. He promised to try to twist her arm for us!

We met some friends and friends-of-friends here and there, met with my brother and sister-in-law who drove up from Ottawa for the day to meet us, and Erin had another lesson, this time with the concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony. (He was very positive about her ability, and it seems would be willing to teacher her regularly, but the interpersonal chemistry didn't feel like it was there the way it was with the other teacher.) We ate bagels, travelled the metro, wandered around a bunch of different streets and neighbourhoods. And we talked to the conductor of the most advanced Montreal youth orchestra, who agreed that given the logistics of travelling from BC to Montreal to play for 20 minutes at the beginning of May, a DVD audition would be sufficient -- a wonderful option to have procured.

So ... a few leads, a lot of possibilities, and a feeling that we're moving forward with the right contacts towards the kind of experience Erin has been needing for some time.

Update....

email received by Erin this evening:

"It was a pleasure to see you again! I have to tell you that my husband was very impressed by you and your playing ... he came back home encouraging me to take you as a student (usually he wants me to be less busy); that means that if you decide to join my studio next year , I will make sure to keep a place for you."


Woot!

She's in!

Yesterday we aborted our trip to Calgary after 6 hours on the road, getting turned back by avalanche closures on the passes. And then we went for a night-time run in town and a couple of hours at the gym. So she was still sleeping at 9 this morning when the phone rang.

I woke her up and handed her the phone.

I wasn't even thinking about anything a few minutes later when she showed up in the living room looking like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Guilty smirk and all.

"What?" I asked.

"I got in," she said.

National Youth Orchestra starts June 18.

Seventeen years of awesome

You may have noticed that as the years roll by I post less and less about my older kids. That's because I sense that they don't necessarily want every moment of their lives chronicled in public through their parents' eyes. They're their own people, and they have strong sense of privacy about things that are personal and important to them. I don't want to intrude on that.

The other day Erin asked me (with a smirk) why I hadn't done a post around her birthday, "You know, the one you do about each of us on our birthdays about how awesome we are and everything?"

I don't actually do birthday posts like that, at least not anymore, but that sounded like invitation to me. And it got me thinking about how awesome my big girl really is. Especially in the past few months. So here we go...

She's still tenacious and driven relentlessly to pursue her own precise agenda. Things were very foul indeed around here when her violin was misbehaving due to sound post issues. When she accidentally oversleeps, or gets blisters, or can't find something, or runs out of time for practicing, or someone walks off with the black wet-erase marker (never mind that the other 14 colours are sitting right there) she is no fun to be around.

But so much is truly sweetness and light around here with her lately. She gets up early of her own accord. She is working diligently at coursework for school, knocking off courses quickly and efficiently.  She earns amazing grades. She is fit and healthy, spending up to two hours a day at the gym and/or running. Lately she eats vegetables like they're going out of style. She's working hard on the violin. She's been accompanying the local Suzuki students in their performance pieces and is the (well-paid) accompanist for the local community choir and does a fabulous job for them. She comes cheerfully to Suzuki group class to support the younger less advanced students. She's got a pretty nice relationship with each of her younger siblings. She doesn't do drugs or hang out with wayward friends. She's sure of who she is and what she wants to do. She's confident and capable but humble, and she doesn't look down on people who are less capable than she is. She writes short stories that leave her Writing 12 teacher's mouth agape in awe.

How sad that just when they become easy, fun and helpful they want to move away from home...