Revisting Mozart by way of the National Arts Centre
6:11PM, January 23, 2010 - [Permalink]
Up until the end of September, classical music didn't really figure very much into my day to day life, although fifteen years ago I did listen to it with some regularity. Fortunately, the universe decided that I needed to be re-introduced to it by way of the National Arts Centre's Orchestra.
A few days before the event, I was kindly invited by JCovert of the National Arts Centre (NAC) to attend Mozart's Final Piano Concerto Beyond the Score® (originally produced by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra).
Unfortunately, Tracey was unable to come with me due to client appointments she had previously made for the custom sewing aspect of her business.
Some other local bloggers were invited to attend as well, such as (in order I ran into them) Bambi Blue, SimonSage, Suzemuse (who kindly texted me from four meters away), AlienDaddy and FenderGurl.
Prior to taking our seats, we were taken aside by Daphne Burt who gave us a run down on how the evening would go - tried to not use the word "mimes" when describing one aspect of the performance, a bit of history of the NAC, and pointed out the "Nixon room", which during his visit to Ottawa in April 1972 (I was two weeks old) was declared by the Secret Service to be the most secure location at the NAC in case of.. well, I'm not sure - maybe a bar fight? This is Canada, after all. Back on topic.
The evening was split into two parts; the first was spend going through the concerto, one section (movement?) at a time, with the narrator (Bill Richardson), and an actor playing the part of Mozart (Pierre Brault) giving the audience details about the music itself, as to what was taking place in that era, and what potentially Mozart was thinking about when he wrote specific parts.
This must have been very difficult for the orchestra - play a bit, pause, play a bit more, more pausing, then playing again, over and over. The start-stop-restart-stop nature would drive me batty.
After a brief intermission in which I wandered around the lobby eavesdropping to get a sense of what the audience thought (quite positive), and then I looked for Suzemuse and friends, who were busy shooting video and tweeting.
The second half of the show the NAC's Orchestra got to play the entire piece all the way through, which after the insight provided in the first half, I throughly enjoyed.
After the performance, we were treated to a tour backstage - which for me, he who salivates at the sight of DVD extras - was fantastic, where we learned that about the Fortepiano that the NAC borrowed from Ottawa U, and some of the challenges with putting on such an event, and then listening to Pierre Brault acknowledge that the future of reviews for performances is many individual voices, while surrounded by photos of many of those who have worked at NAC.
More photos can be found in my Flickr set. And, as a special treat, thanks the the folks at the NAC who kindly allowed me to record from my front shirt pocket using my handy-dandy iPhone, a couple of minutes of audio for your listening pleasure:
I waited a while to see if this experience would affect my long-term music-listening habits, and I'm pleased to report that it actually has. In the past few of months, I now regularly move out of my "Tom's music" playlist, which is where my daily listening comes from - it's a hugely variable range of tunes (Lacuna Coil, Sting, Moby, Pink Floyd, Megadeth, Bjork, Johnny Cash, Daft Punk, Underworld, Epica) and into my "Classical" playlist, which is largely popular classical, but I'm working on expanding that (suggestions are welcome!), as it seems to have found a place in my life.
Predominantly, it seems that I listen to classical when I'm pensive, or need to clear my mind so that I can focus on a new task, or to wind down.
One of the difficult things I have found with classical music is that it's hard to find the "good stuff" - most places that sell music online provide a thirty second preview, which is almost entirely useless for classical. In many cases, the first thirty seconds are spent slowly warming up to the piece which doesn't give me much of an indicator as to what to expect.
Currently, I rely on two sources of daily free music - the eMusic and Magnatunes' daily free song, both of which are occasionally classical in nature. But beyond that, I turn to you, my readers; Any suggestions?
A month off? That's insane! ... and strongly recommended
5:01PM, September 25, 2009 - [Permalink]
As some of you know, I've had a pretty rough year thus far, so when August rolled around, I was completely ready for some time away from the real world; three blissful weeks in Algonquin park, followed by a bit of hiding out in Ottawa, and then a side trip to Toronto for a long weekend to attend our first real convention, FanExpo, which I'll cover in a separate post.
First off, the photos from the trip are up on Flickr, but there is also a short video:
Once we arrived in Algonquin park and got our camping permits, we were made aware that (for the second year), there was a bear warning for our area, which isn't a big deal - we keep a *very* clean campsite, so bears have never bothered us.
The first few days were good - my little sister and her daughter came up and stayed with us for a few days, which was an excellent opportunity to get to know Kiokiane better. I probably wasn't the greatest host - I was sleeping twelve hours at a time, and spending a significant amount of my "waking" hours lying in a hammock, blowing through Tom Clancy books like a tornado through a deep-south trailer park - at a rate of four to five hundred pages per day.
After a few days of recharging my batteries, I finally managed to start interacting more seriously with Tracey, Jenn and Kiokiane. On one day, Kiokiane even helped me wash the canoe.
One night, Tracey woke me up because she could hear a bear going through someone's open-topped trailer, opening the coolers and food (stupidly) stored there. Funny thing, bears - they are strong and can climb into things, even trailers with walls a few feet high. The bear came by the next night, visiting a site a little further away, and then pretty much didn't cause any trouble for us. Clean site = no trouble (99.99% of the time).
This was followed up by my friend Mark and his family coming up, but they stayed on a different site (in the 400s!), but it worked out quite well; we all had dinner and a fire on our site one night, the second we went to theirs, and a pancake breakfast on our site the day they left. All round, a good time was had, and it was fun to get to know Mark's family better.
The following week was chocked full with more relaxing and goofing off, interspersed with canoe trips and walks about the area. We also made a brief trip into Whitney, to pick up some fresh supplies. We also visited the Mad Musher restaurant, now smoke-free, had lunch, and took advantage of the free Wi-Fi.
The Perseids meteor shower made its annual appearance for some wonderful entertainment for a few nights, although they did have to compete with the rising near-full moon, and the glow of the milky way galaxy.
At the end of the week, Tracey's nephews Matt and Warren came up for a couple of days, mostly doing what we'd been doing beforehand, hanging out, reading and relaxing.
More relaxing, paddling, walking and goofing followed.
Thursday night Gailene and Lindsay came up to visit amidst a bit of a rainstorm, which quite suddenly became quite exciting when the wind blew up, came close to knocking our dining tent down, but did lift one of the tarps off it's poles, so I got rather wet. Fortunately, we were somewhat sheltered by trees between us and the lake. Others were not as fortunate - there were damaged tarps and tents around. Once we had settled back in, we could hear the sound of chainsaws in the distance - a sure sign of downed trees. Fortunately, no one was injured, but an outhouse was hit by a tree, a picnic table was smashed in half, and someone in the 200's had their canoe damaged by a tree, that I suspect that they just abandoned. [CBC News]
Worth noting; the wind that hit us came from the west. The downed trees fell in the opposite direction, so we got rolled over by a rotating mass of air at least 300 metres wide.
The remainder of the trip was lovely and pretty uneventful - quiet walks, some paddling around, reading in hammocks, star gazing, the usual fun. After twenty two days in the park, we came back to Ottawa, unpacked, went to the Museum of Science and Technology, took in District 9 (an outstanding film), and then went off to FanExpo with our friends Greg and Sue, which was a fantastic time (more on that later, maybe).
The 25 pound (11.33 kg) Challenge
4:55AM, November 27, 2008 - [Permalink]
For most of my life, I've been overweight to varying degrees. As a child I can clearly remembering my grandma buying pants for me that were "husky" size. At the time, I thought it just was something cool, but it was for overweight kids. Looking back at some very old (and non-digital) photos, I was a pudgy kid, probably not terribly so, compared to the kids today, but still. Even when I was running 20 KM per day, I was overweight. Like, what the hell?
The precedent was set.
Sometime in 2003, I topped out at 270 pounds (122 KG) and freaked out. My body mass index was 38.7 and started to work on eating healthier. Tracey also wanted to lose weight, so we worked on it together and we managed to loose a pile of weight - I bottomed out at 161 pounds (73 KG).The problem was, I lost the weight *too fast*, and I developed gallstones, which I can tell you under no uncertain terms are no fun whatsoever. I managed to dodge the bullet of having surgery to remove my gallbladder (I like it exactly where it is, thank you very much). An epic battle of was waged to rid me of the gallstones, which I totally won, but that's another story.
Over this summer, Tracey and I both crept up in weight, due to our being real busy with work, bad food planning, and lots of yummy order-in.
That brings us to now.
When we got back from our lovely vacation, it was time to get back into eating healthily, with smaller portions, and less processed foods.Back in July, I did up a post and video about my Easy Soup that I'd started to make.
After about two months of careful eating, calorie counting and meal-planning, I have lost 14 pounds, reaching 180 pounds (81.6 KG).
The Challenge:
So here's what I'm thinking; My target weight is 155 pounds (70.3 KG), which I believe to be safely attainable by continuing on the road I'm on, and probably arriving there by March or April. I would like to specifically challenge David Peralty, a friend who writes for more web sites that I have kilos to loose, to loose his first twenty five pounds while I loose my last twenty five (which is from my understanding, the hardest).This is not a race to see who can loose the weight - I'd be happy if he could loose the 25 at the same pace I am. This is about supporting each other while we work on eating healthier, exercising more, and loosing weight along the way.
In fact, I think I'd open this up to anyone else who'd like to participate. I've added my current weight and latest exercise on the right hand side of the blog so you can all keep an eye on me. To participate, send me an email with your blog, and I'll add it to the list of participants.
What you need to do:
Currently, I update my weight and exercise on the side of my blog, so I think it would be reasonable to ask for at least weekly updates on your own blog or twitter account (try using the hashtag #25lbs) or other publicly accessible location on the Internet. I'll take a photo of me on the scale and post it to Flickr. Actually, I have created a Flickr Group so we can all do this, keep it clean, kids. I'll be linking to your blog/Twitter/etc, so I wouldn't mind a link back to this post:What I am doing
I'm obsessive about counting (points to my M&M Colour Distribution Research Project), so I count my weight, my caloric intake, and my exercise. I use a white board on our fridge, and some custom-built database freakyness, but Tracey uses About.com's Calorie Count web site, which works very well. Tracey's account and mine. Admittedly, I don't update mine much, but this is about what works for you.As I mentioned before, We've been focusing on meal planing (soup!), healthy portions *and* food, and exercise. I'm going to start getting back into regularly doing Push-ups, sit-ups and leg-lifts.
Hopefully, with my tracking software, and some encouragement from y'all, I can get back into the rhythm.
Lastly, this doesn't end when I/we loose our twenty five (or whatever amount, really) pounds. Once it comes off, it stay's off. Sure, we'll fall down from time to time, but you get back up and get back to it.
List of Participants
- Me (goal: 25 lbs)
- Tracey Vibert (goal 20 lbs)
- David Peralty (goal 25 lbs
- SuzeMuse (goal 20 lbs)
Additionally, there is now a Flickr Group with discussions, thanks to David for getting the discussions started.
Looking for an older entry? Try visiting the Archive, which contains all of the entries, newest to oldest.
