Saturday 1 August 2009

driving back to Halifax from Caraquet
Just after writing Thursday’s entry I got bitten by a spider in Shediac …

It wasn't too late when we arrived in sunny Caraquet, surrounded by windsurfers and very good places to eat.

melodica and clarinet jam over a 17c Italian ground getting out of hand

one configuration of the rhythm section had Nick and me sharing an organ bench so that he could leave his percussion station and play harmonium 

We spent so much time in rehearsal that our planned swim didn’t happen, but the lunchtime food at Café Phare made up for it. The most perfect seafood chowder I think I’ve tasted meant that I had to have a dessert as well, which was a cheesecake exactly as it should be, but better. Our photographer waitress Julie came to the gig too. Instead of going swimming, I inducted Suzie into the techniques of melodica tuning and the drying out of reed plates: not as much fun, but melodica playing brings with it its own disciplines.

Lunch was supremely good today at Grains de folie too, where again I succumbed to dessert (which normally I’d never do before a gig), in this case an improved banana: improved by slicing it in half and surrounding it with choux pastry, custard, cream and icing. Vive la banane.

There plenty of random occurrences in the gig itself, all lovingly captured by CBC Radio-Canada: lots of opportunities to take advantage the Oblique Strategy which reads ‘Honour thine error as a hidden intention’. (I’ve been reading this.) But a concert that attempts to make a coherent whole out of a repertoire of tango/early Italian/Scottish/Acadian/klezmer is always going to take some risks. We also fitted in three pieces from the George Bowie MS that I’d found in the NLS a month or two ago – the Scots Chaconne in particular is really good fun, but not in any way easy.

happy band post-gig

"Mince alors!" is only funny in Scotland

We found another portable Estey organ in the church, which had been left there by some nuns (so we were told …): if we’d been able to find the priest, we’d have negotiated a price and left with it in the car to take to Nick’s.  But we couldn’t find him anywhere, so we had to settle for taking it outside and photographing it with its distant cousin which we’d borrowed from DG.

Post-gig beer was a particular pleasure, accompanied by lobster rolls and fries. It wasn’t until this point that I found out that Mark was a qualified Alexander teacher. We eventually left Caraquet two hours later than intended. If you were in Caraquet, you would leave later than intended too.