Music and theatre in Stratford, July 2010

Stratford Summer Music
National Youth Orchestra of Canada, July 25
The NYOC had prepared a special program for Statford because they were scheduled to perform with Ben Heppner. Unfortunately, Mr. Heppner was unable to perform, due to the demanding programs he had scheduled earlier in the week. Instead of substituting the program with one of the two programs the NYOC are currently touring with, they played a shortened concert with no intermission.

The concert opened with the Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The conductor, Jacques Lacombe, took the fugato section at a brisk pace. The orchestra managed to keep up, though it sounded a little tentative at times. There were nice dynamic contrasts throughout, and the violins produced a suitably beefy tone for Wagner.

Scheherazade came off as the best performance of the night. Much of the section playing was commendable, and notable contributions were made by the first clarinet, David Lemelin, and from the first horn, Marie-Sonja Cotineau, who, judging by the applause at the end, was also a crowd favourite. The percussion section playing was particularly fine.

In honour of the 10th annivesary of the Stratford Summer Music Festival, the concert ended with an amusing arrangement by Jacques Lacombe of Bolero interwoven with “Happy Birthday”.

Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Kiss me Kate, July 27
It seems to be the season for absent singers. We were eager to see the much talked-about performance of Chilina Kennedy (Lois Lane/Bianca). Ms. Kennedy gave memorable performances last season as Philia in A Funny Thing Happened at the Way to the Forum, and as Maria in West Side Story. However, for the July 27 performance, her role was taken by Eran Goodyear. Our disappointment lasted only until Ms. Goodyear took the stage, and proceeded to give a dynamite performance as the brash hoofer. We initially thought that Ms. Goodyear must have been covering the part for some time, but later learned that this was her first night.

The casts of the Stratford musicals are notable both for their depth and star power. Juan Chioran (Fred Graham/Petruchio) and Monique Lund (Lilli Vanessi/Bianca) gave alternately funny and touching performances in the principal roles. Mr. Chioran displayed wonderful physical comedy skills, hamming it up only within the boundaries of character and plot, and Ms. Lund’s performance of “So in Love” was a highlight of the evening. As an audience killer, “Brush up your Shakespeare” is hard to top. Steve Ross and Cliff Saunders (First Man, Second Man) sang the single entendres in deadpan style, with choreography that was, um, compact.

15 Books

My friend Ted Durnin tagged me on Facebook with the 15 books meme. Here’s the chain letter part:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose…”

OK Ted, here goes.  I’ve linked the titles to OCLC’s WorldCat, so, if any of these sound interesting, hopefully you can find them in a library near you.

1. American pastoral / Philip Roth
   I didn’t expect this story from the author of Portnoy’s Complaint.  The author introduces a central theme, the perseverance of the Swede, the central character, and repeats this theme throughout, with only the barest of development.  On the surface, it’s a pastoral, repetitive in the way Schubert’s Great C major symphony is repetitive.  However, there is loss and madness in a second theme, revolving around his daughter.  I found this novel difficult, moving, and ultimately frustrating.  It sticks with me, so it’s on the list.
2. A frolic of his own / William Gaddis
   Gaddis uses several different writing devices (a play, depositions, legal options) to tell the story of Oscar Crouch, a would-be playwright and the son of a famous judge.  Oscar is involved in several apparently frivolous lawsuits, including one in which he sues himself.
3. Little rascal / Sterling North
   The first book I remember reading by myself…it was only 79 pages long??  It’s about a boy who has a pet raccoon, and their merry adventures together.  As the raccoon gets older, he begins to realize that he has to set it free.  Boy, did I cry.
4. Breakfast of champions / Kurt Vonnegut
   I went through a Vonnegut phase in my early twenties, and this was my favourite of the half dozen I read.  I still have a few on my shelf that I haven’t read…gifts, mostly, from people who knew me best when I really liked Vonnegut.  I’m not sure I could go back to read the rest of his works.
5. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin / Gordon S. Wood
   The best history book I’ve ever read, but I haven’t read that much history, so maybe that’s not saying too much.
6. Shake hands with the Devil / Romeo Dellaire and Brent Beardsley
   This was a book club book.  I really have to get that book club going again.
7. For keeps : 30 years at the cinema / Pauline Kael
   I’ve been reading these same articles for years now.  Pauline and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I enjoy the way she makes her case about why I should or shouldn’t like a movie.  She convinced me about Citizen Kane.
8. Perl cookbook / Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington
   Clear, concise, and I like the cookbook-example format.  Maybe Programming Perl is a better book, but you’ll have a better chance of understanding it with these examples and explanations.
9. The joy of cooking / Ethan Becker, Irma von Starkloff Rombauer, and Marion Rombauer Becker
   As I say to Kristin whenever she has a food question, the answer is in the Joy of Cooking.  Latest proof: “how should I prepare rhubarb?”
10. My name is Asher Lev / Chiam Potok
    Additional reading for high school English.  A few years later, I read a review that said it was naive, insincere, and fundamentally phoney in its portrayal of both painting and Hasidic Jews.  As Nigel Tufnel might say, “That’s just nitpicking, isn’t it?”
11. Pride and prejudice / Jane Austen
    I liked this so much that I bought a set of Jane Austen’s works.  In fact, I’m looking at them as they sit, unread, on my shelf, and I think they’re actually scowling at me.
12. Lolita / Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
    That Humbert Humbert is one amusing monster.
13. Crime and punishment / Feodor Dostoevsky
    I read this on my Palm Pilot.  Really.
14. Baker’s biographical dictionary of musicians, 7th ed. / Nicolas Slonimsky
    Where else can you find Herbert von Karajan’s Nazi membership numbers?  (He joined the party twice: once in Germany and once in Austria.)  After reading about Paul Wittgenstein in a recent  New Yorker book review, I rushed to get more details from Baker’s.  This is the only time I can remember being disappointed that Slonimsky didn’t have all the dirt, but maybe I need a newer edition.
15. The big sleep / Raymond Chandler
    “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved, and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”

    Best opening ever.

Facebook application idea #26: X-country skiing

Today while X-country skiing, I thought about making a post to my Facebook account afterwards, to let my friends know which trails I skiied. And since the trails all have colours, it would be nice to have something graphical in the post. At this point, I begin to think that an application is in order…

This application will

• Let you track which trails you ski, when you ski them, and, optionally, the times.
• Tabulate the trails you ski, and provide a cumulative number of kilometers you ski.
• Publish stories to your friends’ pages to let them know you’ve been skiing.
• Show you which friends are also skiing, and how you’re doing in comparison to them (distance, times).
• Make comments about the different trails and rate them on a scale.
• Let you vouch for a friend’s time.
• Show the requisite Google ads to generate a little income.

At first I was thinking of doing this for the North Bay Nordic Ski Club, but I could make it more generalized so you could add additional clubs and trails.

The local club has boards up for several “clubs”. One is for the longest trail, which is the green trail, so the club challenges each other to see who can ski the most green trails in the season. There is another board for the “all trails club”, and a few others.

The North Bay Nordic Ski Club has a web page, so I’d provide links there, naturally (by the way, the club uses Joomla! as it’s CMS).  It would be nice to embed some information into the Facebook application (their trail report page, for example).  If there was a standardized format, it would be nice to import that data into the application. I could do it now, but it would mean some ugly screen-scraping. But then again, I’d be sacrificing localization for generalization…I couldn’t very well do this for other ski clubs. Maybe just links to trail conditions and your local club home page.

Looking at what’s out there already , I see Nike+ Running Monitor has something like this for running. Plus they’ve got an iPhone / iPod Touch app you can use to upload your results. Nice. I don’t see any cross-country skiing apps, somehow downhill and snowboarding apps are more popular. I took a quick look at the Snowdays application, but it just tracks the number of days you ski.

So what’s the end goal of this application? If these little competitive, one-upmanship Facebook widgets can drive me to improve my Tetris game, maybe they could get me out on the ski trails more often.

Incidentally, I did a brown and a gold today.

When is a Reuben not a Reuben?

I’m not opposed to substitutions in cooking. I make them fairly liberally myself. But at some point, you can make so many substitutions that you’ve created something completely new. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes…

We were at the Inn on the Bay in downtown North Bay, and a colleague had ordered a Reuben sandwich. It was busy, and the service was slow. When it finally arrived, the sandwich was not served on Pumpernickel, but on rye. Fair enough, that’s a commmon substitute. The meat was corned beef, and the cheese was Swiss. All good so far. But they used mustard instead of Thousand island dressing. Now, you can use Russian dressing in a pinch. I wouldn’t advise it myself, but I’m sure you’re capable of making those kinds of decisions responsibly. But mustard?

And then…horrors…they substituted cole slaw for the saurkraut. I was flabbergasted. I have since learned that this substitute changes the Reuben into a “Rachel” sandwich.

Now that’s change not to be taken lightly.