Good Morning EST Time-Zoners

Today, there is no song of the day. Instead I urge you, esteemed reader, to check out recordings of the pieces I will be writing about!

On the evening of the last day of this year's April, I went to Canada's National Arts Centre with my closest friends. I happen to frequent the NAC, actually. In an effort to get younger people into classical music, the executives of the NAC made tickets to any classical concert cost an absurdly low price for anyone under 29 years old. But this time I had lucked out even further. My best friend – R.Z, let's call him – is in the capital university's music program and often gets free tickets to concerts from colleagues, professors, or the department. And when he lucked upon four tickets to see a performance of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, he invited me, and his girlfriend L.M, and our other good friend T.S. And by a third stroke of good fortune, it happened that the performance we went to was a breathtaking display of musicianship.

The afternoon began with a tour. We met on the R.Z's campus and he gave us a tour of the music building. It's a wide, six story building with a pinkish-orange brick exterior and long rows of tall windows that separated each story, except for the last one, which had pebbled aggregate panels of the exact same colour as the bricks on the side where the windows   would be. It had no flourish or design, and it was suspended above the ground by pillars that created a landing for the entrance, but also made the place look like a parking complex. Overall, the building is alright, but I didn't doubt R.Z when he told me that senior students are often surprised to hear that there's a music building. After we left the building, we walked just to the other side of the campus where the city's O-Train awaited us. This, I am very envious of. This campus is in the heart of the capital city and has a train running right through it that goes throughout the whole city, takes you wherever you need to go. My campus is far from the centre of a smaller, more shoddy city, and instead of a train, we only have the infuriatingly unreliable city buses. What really sealed it was that the train ride was incredibly pleasant. The cabin was quiet, smelled fine, and didn't shake a bit.

We took the train over to Chinatown, just a couple stops away. There we laughed and talked and walked over to a Korean BBQ restaurant that R.Z and L.M like. It was an all-you-can-eat spot, but we had to pay for what we didn't finish. An enticing challenge for us students. We split the bill three ways – T.S and I paid for our own selves, R.Z paid for L.M. We enjoyed plenty of rice and meat and a few Asahi beers (here I discovered my taste for Japanese beers). It also happened that none of us had eaten yet that day, so we ordered quite a bit. It was my first time experiencing KBBQ and I found it quite fun. I stepped out for a smoke at some point (a bad habit for sure, but one that I reduced to only something I only do socially). When I came back, I found it difficult to keep eating. Nicotine is an appetite suppressant after all, but having ignored that, I handicapped my own ability to finish my meal. Eventually, we all had very little left on our plates. Thankfully, our waiter deemed it little enough to not charge us extra and we paid gratefully and left. Afterwards, we washed away the taste of meat and beer with a walk to the NAC and a cigar. I had brought a Dominican cigar that I bought in a Tobacco shop over in my city, and we (with the exception of L.M) passed the cigar around. It was my friends' first time smoking a cigar, and I showed them how. It was a cheap cigar, and it wasn't stored in the most ideal environment, and the weather was just a little too windy and cold to have an excellent smoking experience, so it mustn't have been easy for beginners to try, but they did anyhow. T.S kept puffing too hard and choking on the smoke and R.Z wrestled with the concept of "puff, but don't inhale." They both quickly figured it out however, and we got halfway through the cigar when we reached the statue of Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson with his piano on the corner of Elgin and Albert streets. The statue has a speaker behind it that played Oscar's recordings when people walked nearby. We took pictures with it, R.Z and T.S tried to name the songs that came on the speaker. I was about to put the cigar out when R.Z convinced me it would be a waste. We both knew it's wrong to relight a cigar, but etiquette be damned when you've no coin in your purse.

We walked into the NAC, had a coffee to refresh us, and found our seats. The show started with the opener: Venezuelan guest pianist Gabriela Montero lead the orchestra along with a contemporary piece called Kintsugi by Salina Fisher. As you can surely surmise by the name, the piece is meant to be of far-oriental tradition. To my occidental ear, it sounded like it would belong in the category of Japanese Gagaku music: a type of traditional music, the name of which literally means "elegant music." The name pretty much sums up what it sounds like. Nice as it was, I didn't particularly care for it. I've always appreciated traditional Japanese music, but I never gone out of my way to listen to it. Come to think of it, there's something funny about opening for a Tchaikovsky symphony with something like that. Despite all that, I found the opportunity to compare traditional Eastern and Western music exciting. What I found (and mind you, I know essentially nothing about this Gagaku music) was that they're quite opposite indeed. Western classical music feels like a gallant hero's journey, or a folk story, or a fairy tale, or the retelling of a battle. The melody leads, the harmony follows steadfast. A straight march towards a theme or message, wherein each instrument follows the conductor in lockstep and with precise tuning and rhythm! All to the same frequency – all after the first chair – links, zwo, drei, vier! Small wonders that Fascism is attributed to Europeans. Japanese music, on the other hand, feels like a melody lead by a harmony – like a melody that is far more interested in exploring the harmony than itself. This type of music has no conductor, and is unconcerned with things like being in tune or on time. It's not the hero's journey, but the echo of each step he takes throughout. It's the ebb and the flow of waters disturbed. Montero's imitation of the Japanese was by no means pale, but in comparison to her encore, it was paler than a Geisha. After briefly retreating backstage, Montero returned to her piano and addressed the crowd. Turns out, she had a ritual of performing the same encore after any show, wherein she asks the crowd to name two songs that she would improvise a mashup of on the spot. One man stood up and sung with a start: "dunn dunn dun-dunn," it was Wagner's Here Comes the Bride. Another man stood and hummed aloud: "hmm hmm hm-hmm," it was Chopin's Furenal March. Very much on the theme of juxtaposition, our guest pianist here was tasked with combining the mournful lament of a sickly yet violent romanticist with the wedding march of an "enthusiastic mimomaniac." Yet even under the handicap of improvisation, Montero did this with ease. I was amazed, but not as much as my pianist friend who had come along with me, whose jaw was agape when I turned to him. After the encore, my friends and I were so impressed that I wanted to see if I could arrange a little surprise for my pianist friend. During the intermission, I went out into the hall and asked an employee what the odds are that a regular audience member could meet with the performers after the show. He didn't know the answer, so he advised that I seek out the floor manager, and so I did. After searching and asking around for a few minutes, I did not find her, but rather, one of her assistants found me. It was brought to his attention that someone was seeking the manager, so he asked me what I wanted from her. I explained to him I was after a chance to meet the musicians, but he told me that no such thing was allowed for regular audience members. Fie! I bowed slightly and thanked him for his time, with a smile affected by a slight embarrassment. I understood this was simply a security measure, so I didn't want to be difficult. I returned to my seat just as the musicians were finishing tuning up for the second half of the show. 

Now, the orchestra itself was fine in this instance. The musicians themselves were fantastic, and you could tell that they all knew each other well. But the show was stolen that night by conductress Gemma New. An impressive conductress from New Zealand, incredibly talented despite only being 38 which is rather young for any conductor, especially the kind that plays in the capital cities of faraway countries. I've always regarded conductors and judges as very similar. A judge needs to first be an esteemed lawyer with an incontestable understanding of legal theory and history, and a conductor must first be armed with an intimate understanding of all the orchestral instruments. And New was more than just that. Her conducting that night was utterly electrifying. In fact, she was the most possessed and passionate conductor I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. At times, her arms moved through the air in absolute unison with the violins, as though she was bowing the very air. During the pizzicato in the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth, she moved her baton with the precision of a fencer. (I should know, I am one after all, although my skill as a fencer is grey in comparison to hers as a conductress; I fear what she could do to my epée with her baton!) During the finale, she galloped from stomping like a marching band leader to carefully stepping like a ballet dancer all with the delicate attention and balance of a trapeze walker. Her range of motion was betrayed no lack of practice, and her expressiveness through it all – swinging, waving, jumping, stomping around her podium – sealed her as a virtuoso.

Though I was certain she was plenty aware of her talents, and I am not qualified to be a judge of music, I was still so shocked and impressed by her performance that I was compelled to write her a letter of praise. So I found her management team's email, and I wrote my thoughts, which was written just about exactly like my recollection of her performance above. I wrote it on the car ride back to R.Z's place. Although I expected no response at all, I was very excited to see that, the next morning, after I woke up on R.Z's couch, I had actually received an email in response from the management team! They thanked my compliments and assured that New will be very satisfied with my praises. Although, they mistook me for a woman due to my name and addressed me as Ms.

Ridiculous, how long this blog turned out to be. If you did read this far, then I consider that the utmost compliment to me, so please DM me your mailing address so I may repay your generous attention with figgy pudding and letters I kiss with lipstick. I don't know. Whatever. It's getting rather late and I wrote this whole blog in a random burst of focus and creativity. However before you leave, beautiful reader, I bid you to go and check out those pieces I wrote about! Or perhaps find recordings of Gemma New or Gabriela Montero performing. And please do let me know in the comments if you made it this far, I'd like to know who did. ^^

Farewell,

Ivpiter

ivpiter@Cyberia :~$ systemctl poweroff