I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't use it for ranting. Rants, after all, are usually much more satisfying to write than to read. So I haven't posted the last few days because I didn't think I could hold back....now I'm going to try, but I guarantee that there will be a serious rantstravaganza in the next post or two - I'll at least try to make it funny and informative. Oh, the suspense.

Meanwhile, it's funny proposing programmes of Early Brass to conductors - a task crucial to this trip which I'm finally tackling these days - because even though in the 16th Century it was much more common to hear brass in the church and in the streets than strings, yet it's something of a specialty item in modern concerts. Oh, we did a brass programme last year, mustn't repeat ourselves. Our violin colleagues don't have this problem; no one says - oh, the last programme had violins, so let's do something different this time. No, no, violins every concert and it goes unquestioned, while we brass players have to wait around a year and a half between gigs from the same group. And they wonder why we try to charge more?

Last weekend, a visit to family in Kitchener and Toronto provided many delightful moments of all-engaging cuteness. My nephews are 1, 2 and 4 and I remember now how important it can be to have kids around in order to keep perspective on the world.

Now back to Diruta's 1593 treatise on organ playing. I'm writing a paper as part of Ph.D. applications and I decided, remembering back to the recording sessions 6 weeks ago, to investigate how using big loud metal organs as the usual accompaniment instrument in Italy in the 16th Century affects singing and playing. Remember that? I see that Il Transilvano is written in a dialogue style, like the Morely and many other treatises. Why don't we do this for academic papers anymore?

Oh, and Happy St. Andrew's Day to all Scots out there...you're probably asleep by now!

I was walking down the street in Verdun on Sunday (I'd left the computer adapter in the café - oops!) when I saw some sweaters on a rack outside a shop for $2.99. Slave-labour, I thought, and checked the tags: "Made in Canada" - and discounted from $40... so I bought two. It was only when I got home and threw all my sweaters in a pile that I looked at them together and realized, to my utter shock and horror that: Ladies and Gentlemen, the TGV collection is now complete!

The TGV Collection

Alas, how many times have I complained about the hideous purple and orange which accost the traveler? Of course, one can pay an extra few euros and upgrade to first class, which doesn't constitute an improvement in service or space allowance but the seats are lime green instead. Could've been worse: Could've been Thalys...!

Sunday afternoon I tried Bubble Tea for the first time - interesting, even tasty, but altogether I can only rate it not bad as I can't say I got excited about little goopy black balls coming up my straw, supposedly the best part. The seaweed salad and tofu that it came with was amazing though.

Yesterday another Montreal Early Brass reading session with lots of Rore and Andrea Gabrieli. Renaissance music is more and more exciting to play - I hope you find the same after you've read the book that's second on the list here. (Don't know why there's a picture of "The Economist's Oath!") Regarding the book first on this list, it's brought me much pleasure and made for excellent conversation with fellow musicians. As a little thank you, this afternoon I made a Tiramisù for Bruce Haynes and will eat it with him tomorrow.

In case you needed reminding....

I'm pretty well set up here at Le Victoria, a café crêperie chocolatier on Wellington St. in Verdun:


The past few days have been a good balance between visiting, Ph.D. stuff, concert admin, getting exercise, playing sackbut, and listening to others play. Normally these things don't balance out very well at all, so that's quite refreshing!

Coming back from Ottawa on Wednesday night, I met someone who had been on the bus for three days - come from Calgary. 20 or so, he didn't know any French but was heading to Mont Tremblant to learn some and find some work for the winter, traveling with a few bags of clothes, a bus ticket (that's "coach" to UK folk) and some hope. Quite sleep-deprived by the time we started chatting in line for the bus, he was starting to doubt the whole thing though - a state of mind not helped by another 20-year old telling him she thought he was pretty crazy. I, on the other hand, was reminded how tired and terrified I was, sitting underground in the Zurich airport train station on Sept. 29th, 2004, with two suitcases full of myriad odds and ends, all my family and friends an ocean and the entire country of France away. I remember sitting there waiting for the Basel train, suddenly remembering that I had a chocolate chip cookie that mom had bought me at the airport. Never was a cookie so comforting as that one, I savoured every bite. Now, when we got off the bus in Montreal, where this traveler would have to wait all night for the next bus to Tremblant, I told him that I admired his courage and gave him one of the chocolate bars I'd brought from Switzerland before saying goodbye.

Thursday: more singing from original notation and more sackbuttery, and then nothing at all. I went to bed extra extra early, which might account for why yesterday was so good. I had some time at the library, then met a friend for coffee, went to a harpsichord recital, then picked up a bicycle from a friend in Westmount and biked the 13 km back home, almost all of which was along bike paths protected from the road with concrete dividers - a nice addition to the Montreal infrastructure! Being back on a bicycle was great - I'd forgotten about that level of endorphins, which I re-acheived this morning biking to the Metro station with a very strong headwind. It's a north-west wind again, bringing arctic air: a proper crisp Canadian winterness which doesn't mess with the blue sky. Thank goodness though for the little headband I bought the other day: my ears are still on.

This morning a bit of hard-core practising to get in shape for the upcoming Vespers. It's been good to have some time off, but after a gentle warm-up I threw myself into some Bartolomeo de Selma dulcian music for a challenge. I find often that my face will figure out what it needs to do better if I concentrate on making music than if I am thinking directly about technical things. Do other instrumentalists feel the same?

After the bike to the Metro, I was frustrated to find a 5-place bike rack with 10 bikes in it and no-bike signs on all the poles. So I brought my bike with me on the train. Oh well. I had sort of decided by then that today was a good day, but this note stuck to the inside window of the metro train cemented it for me:

Random Cheer on a Saturday Morning
(...would this be considered litter in Basel?)

Gone Fishin'.

The last two days were mini Indian Summer, so what luck to have planned yesterday to be out in the canoe with my Dad. We chose as our lake Big Rideau, the lake we went to almost every summer when I was growing up, where we'd caught lots of fish, where I'd learned to fillet them, and where I would spend afternoons catching frogs and whiddling sticks and all those things kids do when brought to some place without television. It was a good choice too, because as we got closer, the clear day became misty. When we got to the water we couldn't see more than 10 meters or so...we might have hesitated to launch into another lake in a whiteout, but on this stretch of Big Rideau we knew well enough that the shoreline would always tell us where we were.

Mist and Glasswater, Hogg Bay

We drove into an access road and saw a white-tailed deer almost right away, then a muskrat. We launched at the Lally Homestead, the ruins of an 1860's farm situated in Murphy's Point Provincial Park. It also lies on the Rideau Trail, which runs from Ottawa to Kingston (as does the lake and canal system), and we had to park the car at the trailhead and portage in. Here's me carrying the canoe, which is made of Kevlar and very light at around 23 kg.

Portaging the Canoe

We headed onto the lake in the mist, only to be surrounded by the calls of all the dozens of Canada geese who were shocked at our presence.

Canada Geese in the Mist

We cast a few lines near the beach, where we've caught many a largemouth Bass, but there was nothing at all, so we headed down the bay to the narrows which open up onto the main part of Big Rideau:


The mist was starting to clear to reveal a gorgeous blue sky, so we headed to one of the canoe-in camping sites for lunch. Again, a walk down memory lane as I've spent weeks of my life at a favourite site, where now we set up the stove and made pea soup and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches.

On the beach at the canoe-in site

When we left, we noted that the water was incredibly clear, and the rocks on the bottom were covered in zebra mussels - a recent addition to the Rideau ecosystem. These sharp little beasts eat by filtering food out of water and each mussel can filter up to a liter a day. In these quantities, entire lakes are being filtered every day, which explains why the water was so clear.

Zebra Mussel Infestation

The canoe out to the old boathouse, where the pike normally live hasn't changed at all, except that it seems shorter every time. The coastline is covered in wind-swept pines, birches, and the big granite rocks which characterize the Canadian Shield.

Coastline on the Canadian Shield

It's hardly wilderness though. Cottage country rather. Once we left the boundaries of the provincial park, there were cottages spaced out along the lakeshore. This one had an Inukshuk to greet the paddlers-by.

Inukshuk

Even by the old boathouse, there was not only a distinct lack of nibbling going on on the part of the fish, but no signs of life beneath the water at all. There were even a few flies sunbathing o the surface. We did see a few loons though, and on the way back to the homestead, came across this muskrat lodge (which we'd passed in the morning but hadn't seen in the mist).

Muskrat Lodge

With still no sign of fish, we went to the beach again to see if at least there were minnows, shiners or perch. Nothing. Today I read that all fish will seek out deeper water once the weather cools, so our assumption that coolness by the shores would bring the trout out of their depths was simply false. Oh well. The paddle was lovely, and we weren't the only sign of disappointed fishing expeditions on the lake:

Red and White Bobber in a Tree

On the way home, we passed many a tumbledown grey barn and some silos and I thought to myself that, actually, North American architecture is really interesting. It was Gawain who pointed out a few weeks ago that front porches are not common elsewhere, and it's in North America that timber frame houses have undergone a revival since the 1970's, mixing the old German tradition with new techniques and new materials, allowing for large insulated windows and such. We really have our own style now - so why don't we celebrate it?

Today it is rainy and blustery and I'm sitting inside drinking tea. I did get out earlier on, with amusing results: as a countermeasure to the grey and cold ennui, I made an impulse purchase and am now the proud owner of a small purple ukulele. I bought it because I think it's important to keep music-making on an amateur level in my life, just do it for fun and not for money. Having harpsichords in every practice room at the Schola served that purpose - 10 minutes of random preluding in a sackbut break would leave me full of gumption again. I've already been in touch with a Basel fidel player who will give me some leftover gut strings...now I just need to find a gamba or theorbo player, cook them supper, and learn how to tie frets so that I can play in tune.

A Grey Barn and Farmhouse

Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off on the fourteenth of November.

This little history lesson was recorded in 1956 in Campbeltown, and given to me by David McGuinness.

I finished the grant application and triumphantly mailed it off on Wednesday. If I don't get any money, I still feel a sense of triumph for handing it in in the first place, it was a lot of work and a lot of waking up of old brain cells. Now onto some papers to form part of my McGill Ph.D. application - at least I'm quite excited about some topics and have a bit of momentum.

On Thursday I went to the weekly singing off of facsimile session first thing in the morning. Almost everyone had a coffee but me and I must remember to bring one of my own next time - it was rather tortuous to watch! The singing was great fun though: I can't find an interesting-looking motet right now, but here's a very good song printed by the same printer, Ottaviano Petrucci to give you an idea what it looks like. Not that different from modern notation actually.


Then I did my first hour and a half of my life teaching a group lesson on sackbut, which was very fun and I'm pleased I get to do it twice more in preparation for McGill's performance of the Monteverdi vespers. I've been working on explaining meantone temperament to melody instrument players - I'll post a link when I come up with a web page (there are others if you look around, but geared to keyboardists).

I needed to stay in downtown Montreal for a talk that Iain Fenlon was giving later that evening, so in the meantime I did what I've been meaning to do in a long time: I climbed the mountain. Sitting in a café, I noticed the sun was already going down (it was just gone four!) so I left at a quick pace. The first step was to locate the hole in the fence behind the residences that leads to the mountain path. Sounds exciting, but it's become much more of an official way into the park since my days...

Not really a secret path anymore

I marched up the path and the many steps, seeing the sky behind me grow purple through the trees, and reached the top in time to miss the sun but still catch its glorious colours in the west. The moon was out too.

Piazza at the top of Mount Royal

I stood on top of the mountain, taking in the view through dusk and into twilight, pondering this city and the hills and the ("mighty") St. Lawrence in the distance. I was pleased when after 10 minutes or so I ran across the bronze book that tells about Jacques Cartier standing in the same place, doing the exact same thing whilst looking out over the village of Hochelaga in 1535.

Sunset over Hochelaga.

Twilight falls over Montreal

Peel Street and the Mighty St. Lawrence

As often happens, I got distracted by having my camera in my hands and took silhouette pictures on the way down.

You can almost see the other side of the moon.

Iain Fenlon's talk was fascinating, painting a picture of Venice in the 1570's by describing the visit of Henry III of France followed by the Plague outbreak which devastated the city. He spoke again the next day on music printing in Spain, the study of historical margin notes and of trade routes. He was quite a good story-teller and managed to make both talks lively and informative and give me hope that a Ph.D. really is a good idea. Where is still up in the air though.

Now, unchained from my computer for a brief time, I'm off to go have second breakfast near McGill, and then will make my way to Ottawa to do some visiting. If the weather holds up tomorrow or Tuesday, I might even head out onto Big Rideau Lake in the canoe and do some fishing with my Dad.

I've been in Canada almost two weeks now and I still wake up every morning at 5 or 6 (or 4 right after the time change) - what's up with that? I lay in bed this morning feeling grumpy about that and the fact that I'm still struggling to complete my grant application due tomorrow when I had a wonderful realization: I've been writing for days about rhetoric and the expressive powers of music but seem to have forgotten its practical applications...

There aren't a lot of tracks which can reverse the feeling of having gotten (UK: when in Canada...) up on the wrong side of the bed, but the Martyrs/O Lusty May set on Concerto Caledonia's album Spring Any Day Now does the trick. Every time. I think it's because it starts out quite grumpy, and then quite protestant, and then it secretly changes (can you find the spot?) to one of the most joyful things you'll ever hear. And, sometimes only meantone will do. Trust me on this one.

I took a Greyhound to Ottawa on Saturday and here's what I saw at the bus station diner. I thought it was a menu, but then realized that it was a shopping list.

I'll have the Frozen Chicken Breasts and Moutarde, Please.

Just finishing off a toasted St. Viateur Bagel while my coffee brews. I need to write a grant application today, but first I need to do something restful to divide this crazy life into bite-sized chunks. A walk up the mountain would be an option, but given the cold and cloud, updating my blog is most appealing.

After painstakingly explaining to my European friends that Canadian October is pretty normal and one can't expect snow until a few weeks yet, I woke up on Sunday morning to this view out the window:

Snowy Rooftops in Longueuil

Oh well. Sunday's concert was lots of fun - I've always wanted to do an all Biber and Schmelzer programme and this one was really well-balanced. I got to play top trombone on the instrumental stuff and bottom trumpet of 4 on a Motet and Magnificat. I love playing bass parts generally because you can give direction to the whole ensemble and , and while I had only 4 notes to choose from, it was never boring because I had to figure out which notes were more important than others - a decision which would boom moments later through St. Léon de Westmount! I'd like to do more of that...

After catching up with friends post-concert and celebrating Shannon Mercer's awesome recital with La Nef two nights before, we sang in Shannon's birthday as off-key as only musicians can: no two pitch levels the same, please!

Monday morning I went down to a car-rental place only to find that even though my Swiss License - which has no expiry date - says "Permis de Conduire," no one will accept it here as the rest is in German. Boo. But the car rental company transferred the reservation to a branch near where Gawain was staying and we hit the road in an hour. We didn't go to St-Georges or St-Nicolas or St-Redempteur.

It was hard not to drive straight on towards the
mountains and find a casse-croute in Tadoussac

How very odd that when a European comes to Canada, I want to show them the most European part of our country. But Québec City is very beautiful even from the first view through the city gates.

Toque knitted by my mom and main street

Lunch consisted of Pea Soup, Poutine, Tourtière and Maple Syrup pie with local beer, one of the many gastronomical successes of the week. After last week in Germany, where it's considered a bit cheeky to order tap water and not something expensive from a bottle, it was astonishing to both Gawain and I how Canadian restaurants keep coming around and topping up our glasses of tap water, which came often unordered. But it's maybe more necessary here too - the air is so dry and the forced-air heating so ubiquitous that it's very hard to stay hydrated at the best of times. I suppose with such a thirsty population and excellent microbreweries all over, this probably helps to keep public drunkenness down too.

Cheers

Lots of calories to burn off, let the wandering begin! Our first stop was an Inuit Art Gallery where we got explanations of Inukshuk and other stone and bone sculpture from very far North of here. In a little alleyway, we came across this bronze figure of a Log Driver, reminiscent of the NFB short, Log Driver's Waltz, which Gawain and Kirsty saw for the first time as a prelude to a film about Morris dancing in their village hall in East Knoyle. I'm quite pleased that if I hum a few measures, Peter gets it stuck in his head, and that Dawn was able to sing along the other night in the pub. Methinks I'm home!

I'm not sure that it's business of yours
but I DO like to Waltz with the Log-Driver!

We then headed up to the plains of Abraham, where the English scaled the cliffs in the dead of night and took Canada from the French. Sort of.

Château Frontenac and The Mighty St. Lawrence

We thought we'd seen it all at dusk and were about to head back when we looked over a little lookout and, what's that? There was a whole Basse Ville under us. So we wandered down to the most charming part of Québec city.

What's that?

The Old Old City, with snow on a rooftop

Bemoaning our lack of hunger whilst surrounded by lovely cafes and bistros, we wandered in here for a coffee and got instead enticed by the fish soup and salad with rabbit livers. And coffee.

At the sign of the prancing rabbit

Then it was time to go back to Montreal.

Montreal has been lovely too, there's been a lot of going places by foot and making pilgrimages to sample local cuisine. Here is a complete meal from Schwartz's Charcuterie Hébraïque:


And some typical multi-coloured façades:

Winter backed away eventually too. I was a bit late for the fiery reds, but the yellows in the park were still there and still impressive. In Switzerland they don't tend to let the leaves stay on the ground long enough to give off their distinctive scent or be kicked around by pedestrians.



Tuesday afternoon I was looking around the plateau for a place to have a coffee when someone on the street said "You must go to Club Social, it's the best." And indeed, it was the best coffee I've had in the past few months. May I say? While I have had some really mediocre roadside filter coffee since arriving here, every time I've gone for a cappuccino the quality has been at least as good as in Switzerland. Yey!

Yesterday the early brass of Montreal got together and we did a reading session a7 (Matt Jennejohn was there too but had to dash off before we could take a photo). Reading sessions both vocal and instrumental are a common occurrence around these parts.

Montreal Early Brass and Gawain