Bach Walk - Happy Birthday, JSB!

On Saturday, March 21, as part of the international Bach in the Subways (bachinthesubways.com) celebration of J.S. Bach's 330th birthday, three short concerts were held at three churches in Toronto.

The first was at 2 pm, at the beautiful St. Andrew's, at King and Simcoe. Here is the interior, looking towards the altar:

(All pictures taken with my smartphone, so please excuse their quality!)

We were entertained by the Church's director of Music, Dan Bickle, who played five of Bach's organ pieces and chorales. He was supposed to have shared the recital with his daughter, soprano Leslie Bickle, but she was ill at that time, so the programme had to be altered slightly. Nevertheless, Dan performed well on his own at the organ.
I made a point of sitting near him in the balcony, and could watch him at work. The last piece, the Prelude and Fugue in A, was particularly challenging, as it required as much dexterity from his feet (on the pedals) as it did from his hands!



Then, it was on (and up) for the 3 pm recital at the Church of the Holy Trinity, at the Eaton Centre, which also has a lovely interior:

As you can see, they set up some extra seats closer to the organ, which were needed, because there would be more of a crowd for this segment.
The organ is about middle left above, and here is a closer look at it:

It's a Freres Casavant organ from about 1970 (installed at this church in 2009), and similar in size and construction to what Bach himself may have used.
The organist here was Ian Grundy, who played seven pieces, including the well-known chorale "Sleepers, Wake," and another challenging piece to end off, the "Dorian" Toccata in D Minor.



Then, across and down, to the spectacular Metropolitan United Church, at Queen and Church Streets, for the 4 pm segment. This church was the biggest of them all, with a grand neo-Gothic interior:

The organ here is another Freres Casavant model, from 1930, only much larger than the other two - in fact, it's the largest organ in Canada. They can roll it out from the choir to the centre of the apse for occasions like this, and it's quite a sight:

The organist here was Dr. Patricia Wright, the church's director of music for nearly 30 years. She played five selections - organ pieces and chorales - with, once again, the challenging final piece being the showcase, the "St. Anne" fugue in E-flat Major.


After this concert, there was birthday cake and punch for everyone (numbering at least 100 by this time), offered by the Toronto Centre of the Royal Canadian College of Organists.

All three musicians then had a chance to relax and chat with each other, and with those in attendance:

L-R: Ian Grundy, Patricia Wright, Dan Bickle (sorry again about quality of picture, but you get the idea).

All in all, a great way to spend an afternoon, and a wonderful idea to celebrate the birth of one of music's great geniuses.

As they may have said to the man himself, "Gute Zum Geburtstag, Johann!"

"Covert Affairs" is Canceled

I saw an article recently that said there would be a sale of properties from the recently canceled series Covert Affairs.
This was somewhat sad news for me. I had watched this series from its first season, and there were a couple of reasons why:

Piper Perabo
I've been intrigued by this lovely actress ever since seeing the (original) poster for the movie Lost and Delirious - a group shot of the entire cast. I was enchanted by the big, questioning eyes and wide, sensuous lips of this girl, before I even knew her name. To be honest, I've never even seen the movie, but her face in that poster stuck with me for years.
Here's a still (from Covert Affairs) that is similar to that first image I had of her:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3287449856/nm0005305/

She had done quite a few movies since then, including Coyote Ugly (didn't see it) and The Prestige (saw it), so when I found out about this series, I wanted to check it out.
I won't review the series or anything, but suffice to say, if I hadn't enjoyed it, I wouldn't have stuck with it for five seasons. I particularly admired the last couple of seasons (when, interestingly enough, Ms. Perabo herself was one of the executive producers), as the series took a darker, grittier turn, and there was more intensity and violence than before. So, to see her character, Annie Walker, described merely as "sassy" in the article above was rather annoying.
I remember her recent turn in Looper, also (again, a small role), and will be interested to find out what the future holds for Piper Perabo.

(Unrelated: I also enjoyed the quirky touch of titling individual episodes with song titles from rockers like Led Zeppelin, REM and David Bowie.)


Now, on to the second reason I enjoyed the show:

Toronto Plays Every City

University Ave. (at Queen W.) stands in for Constitution Ave. In Washington DC, for an episode in the last season.

I'm pretty familiar with this city by now, and it's fun to watch an episode of Covert Affairs or, say, Beauty and the Beast, and play "spot the location." Toronto has stood in for New York City, Washington DC, Boston, even Paris! I was delighted by one scene where Annie Walker enters the Louvre by the I.M. Pei pyramid entrance (a place I'm lucky to have been to myself), and when she gets inside, it's one of the rooms in the Art Gallery of Ontario! The magic of editing...
Or, when she enters a convention centre in Stockholm, Sweden, and the interior is the Four Seasons Centre; when a subway station and pedestrian overpass in Essen, Germany are actually the Yorkdale station; or when she's driving along a street, apparently in Washington DC, and a TTC streetcar is visible through the passenger window!
I could go on, but you get the point (I'll probably talk more about this phenomenon in future postings).

In summary, I'm sorry to see this series end. It got to be a habit with me to watch it (even catching most of one season online), and I'll miss seeing Annie, Augie, Joan and the rest. Good luck to all involved.

Weasel Words Part I

This may not be an original (or correct) term for this type of language abuse, but it's the one I've always used. You mostly see these terms in advertising and/or marketing. Some examples:

"Up to/as much as x% off," usually formatted as, e.g.,
UP TO 50% OFF!

It's a completely meaningless phrase - "up to 50%" can mean 1%, 5%, or 0.5%, but guess what part of that phrase your eyes go to immediately?
A few months ago, when the Target chain of stores went belly-up here in Canada, they put on a big clearance "sale," advertising "up to 30% off," and people grumbled when there was hardly anything in the store that was actually 30% off! Target only did what stores have been doing for decades, and folks still fell for it. Well, sadder but wiser, eh?

Other examples of this time-tested practice:

"As low as $x.00!" Another meaningless phrase - the price doesn't have to be that low (and most likely isn't), but it could be!

"Starting at $x.00!" A friend of mine actually thought that meant the highest price, and that they went down from there. Dear, dear.

My favourite comedian of all time, the late George Carlin, has lots to say about these types of words, and if you check him out, make sure you catch what he has to say about "chocolatey." It's short, but bang on!

That's all for now. I'm sure there'll be more to come...

Words We Don't Use Anymore Part I

Whither, meaning, "where is x going," or, "where goes x."

An outdated term now, and considered overly literary, poetic or pretentious by today's standards. Still, it's a lovely-sounding word, and shorter to use than either of the meanings above.

Some may remember that the very first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus was titled, "Whither Canada?" This was meant as a parody of pretentious TV newsmagazine episode titles, and there was nothing in the episode about Canada at all! (Though there was turmoil here - particularly in Quebec - in the late 1960s, and it may well have been a topic on current affairs programs of the day).
So the word "whither" was likely used in fun for that episode way back in 1969, as it would be today - though fewer people now probably know what it means.