Life of a Canadian Artist

I saw IGOR's FireBIRD Suite on Friday Feb12 2010 !

Okay I'm about a day late on this post in the Life of a Canadian Artist, but this time of year I generally find my self writing endless proposals and booking all my shows for the upcoming season (two of these submission packages are due tomorrow!). As a result I usually have to sacrifice my drawing schedule for a couple of weeks in Feb. in order to handle all the bureaucratic paper pushing. Anyways I said to hades with it all this morning and put together this little sketch.


This drawing was inspired by a sequence of unusual and amazing circumstances which befell me over the past few days. I recently met my new house mates of whom I was previously informed were musicians. Naturally I rolled my eyes at the thought expecting a couple of pot-head techno DJ's or some wannabe fashion model mick jagoff impersonators, (I live in Kensington Market and this is pretty much all we ever get around here). So I finally bump into these fellas outside our home and they were actually nice and well spoken individuals. I told them of the rumours I'd heard regarding their profession asked them what kind of music they played. "WE ARE CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL PERCUSSIONISTS" and I replied "Edgar Varese!" and Ed , my new house mate responded "Ionization!". If you don't know what I'm talking about look it up. One thing led to another and a few short days later I received a pair of tickets to see Ed & Dan play the "Firebird suite" at Toronto's new and magnificent KOERNER HALL.

Ed and Dan are part of The Royal Conservatory Orchestra of the Glenn Gould School and it rocked. The show consisted of 4 musical pieces including Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No1. in D major, Op 25 "Classique", a little watery throwback to nineteen century, Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor, which I was unfamiliar with but am no longer (this stuff makes Sun Ra look like a Republican!) and a beautifully sung french piece entitled Sheherazade by composer Maurice Ravel. The show closed with the feature Igor Stravinsky's Firebird suite. The Firebird was (and always is) ridiculous. I haven't enjoyed myself so much in a long time ( rarely escaping my studio workload )and highly recommend any who have the opportunity to get out to the new Conservatory and experience some of this crazy music! THANKS Ed & Dan and orchestra and IGOR!!!

This is a picture of the hall from the program, really wish there was an orchestra playing though I think it would have looked way more interesting.



I've got a couple of other sketches & stories regarding this music/experience however I''ll have to save them for another day ... my application deadlines approach showing no signs of mercy