I'm writing this on an Apple Mac that Chris' colleague Craik has kindly lent me for a while so that I can try it out; it's a novelty for me to be typing while sitting on a park bench. I haven't had the use of a laptop for the last several years. This one, though an early, and apparently almost obsolete edition of the iBook, seems far more sophisticated than the last laptop I used. We're at the fountain end of Confederation Park opposite the Lord Elgin Hotel. At the other end of the park Turkish music is being loudly amplified. A Turkish festival is taking place in tents and booths over there, where Turkish coffee and snacks are for sale, along with Turkish mosaics and other souvenirs of the country, as in Istanbul's Kapah Carsi. Earlier today I picked up a couple of leaflets, one about Istanbul and one about the religious sites in Turkey: Cradle of Faiths. I learned that Noah is supposed to have landed his Ark within the borders of what is now Turkey and that, because of their birthplaces, Abraham, St Paul and Santa Claus, had they been born later in history, would all have been Turks. Turkey is the home of the Whirling Dervishes and the poet Yunus Emre, but the city of Ankara (or Ancyra) was founded by the Celts (during the 4th century BC). I only knew about the Celts who settled in places like Brittany and Wales.
Chris and I are waiting for the start of the next Chamber Music Concert and in the meantime I thought I'd better record the previous one, or else I'll fail to keep up with this week's experiences which I suspect are going to be many.
While the audience was lining up for this afternoon's concert a man with a microphone approached wearing a label saying “Mark Nerenberg, artist”. He was recording people's voices in the queue with a view to making an “electronic composition” out of these sound snippets: all the sounds of the Chamber Music Festival, he said. He interviewed me briefly, so my voice will be on file for the compilation; I'm no good at ad-libbing though and couldn't think of anything original to say. Pity Chris wasn't with me; he's much better at it.
The concert was phenomenal, featuring the Jeunes Etoiles Montantes of the Ottawa area, some of the rising stars (representing the future of Chamber Music!) very young indeed, but all of them already up to professional standard. They'd been chosen to perform by the Gryphon Trio and other directors of the Chamber Music Festival during five hours of auditions. The Tutti Musik trio were the most striking stars, dressed for the occasion in black matching waistcoats with tails, shining with sequins: violinist Kerson Leong and his 13 year old elder brother Stanley with his first adult-sized cello, with another adolescent boy, Hayes Leo, on the piano to play Frank Bridge's Saltarello. Chris and I have heard them perform once before, younger still, at one of the Child Haven Galas. Kerson and Hayes were awarded a monetary prize after today's concert, their playing was so outstanding. I thought of little Mozart playing to the kings and emperors! He must have had that same look of absorption on his face while he played. Three young women played the oboe / played the harp / sang and a lovely little girl (Anita Pari who also plays cello, it seems) opened the concert with a couple of piano solos: two movements of a Haydn Sonata very musically rendered and the Golliwog's Cakewalk by Debussy. There was even a trombone trio of two young men and a girl, with another a girl joining them on the tuba to make it a quartet. They played an arrangement of a Bach Prelude from "The 48". It never fails to give me a thrill to see the youngest generations getting up to things like this.
When I get home I'll cut and paste this into my blog. We can't get Internet connection out of doors but the computer works fine! I'm finishing this post with it balanced on my lap as I sit on my folding stool outside St John the Evangelist's church, in the queue for tonight's concert which I'll report in the following post.
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