Wednesday 5 August 2009

Starbucks, Elgin St, Ottawa
Yesterday was always going to be the busy one. We convened in my suite for breakfast and headed over to St Brigid’s so that I could get the harpsichord to somewhere approaching 440 and 1/6 comma meantone, and we could rehearse a bit in the downstairs space.  It’s been nice to spend a whole week playing in meantone: there’s something very soothing about playing half-decent major thirds, and they also make even a less-than-brilliant harpsichord sound much better.

Then it was back to the hotel for an essential nap.

We had a good couple of hours’ rehearsal time in the main space upstairs which gave us a chance to work out where we're all going to be on stage, and this was progressing fairly well until the CBC producer noted that the stereo picture on the broadcast was turning out a bit lop-sided. After a good 20 minutes of us trying different formations with less and less good grace, I finally suggested that perhaps the stereo picture should really be CBC’s problem rather than ours. When the producer told us that the sound of the broadcast “to the whole nation” was part of our responsibility, I finally snapped and offered the alternative view that we were primarily responsible to the people who’d paid to see us play, and that perhaps CBC themselves could be responsible for broadcasting this to the rest of Canada in an acceptable format. We had quite enough responsibilities already, thank you very much. I didn’t sign the contract that they sprang on me on the day either, as it was ‘all rights’, so I wonder if the scheduled broadcast at the end of this month will happen …

Our knight in shining armour, Marie B, arrived cheerily to tune, and to take DG and me out for a walk in the rain to get us out of the building and improve his frame of mind. There was a variety of food on offer at the back of the downstairs venue, so I didn’t even have to go out to get myself a backstage curry.

Gig no.1 was good fun. For such an enormous, imposing-looking space, the acoustic seemed good, and the audience laughed at all our jokes, which always helps. DG quipped that we were only playing the CPE Bach trio sonata because it was in our contract that we had to play some ‘real chamber music’, following this off-mic with ‘OK guys, let’s get this over with’. Then we all realised that we’d better play it really well if we weren’t going to look very stupid.  The Martin harpsichord had the wonderful motto on the lid ‘indocta manu noli me tangere’ – as an audience member correctly shouted out, this means “untutored hands, do not touch me” – I offered the suggestion that this would also make a useful tattoo: where you put it is up to you.

By the concert itself I had just about (but not quite) mastered the short octave (broken octave really) on the harpsichord, which with its keyboard shifted up to the 440 position was the wrong way round: the sharps were at the front half of the keys, and the octaves at the back. So some of the basslines came out unexpectedly angular, or in at least one case unexpectedly amusing.

Globe-trotting sackbut impresario Catherine Motuz and Jennifer broughtus beers afterwards (I was saving mine for later), then we went downstairs to an audience who were really up for having a good time, and kept us playing for nearly another two hours. Chris was showered with flowers and presented with whisky when at midnight it became his birthday (five years ago he was also sung Happy Birthday by the audience in Ottawa – and then again by a barbershop quartet in the Manx Bar afterwards). There are far too many moments to remember, but some of my favourites were … DG’s octave violin intro to ‘Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog’, which so much resembled Purple Haze that someone shouted out ‘Jimi Hendrix!’; the amazing 16ft Sub Bass on the big Estey harmonium which growled and farted just the right way in Hacky Honey, while the 4ft on the top sounded like violin feedback (Hendrix again); and asking the audience to express their desire for us to keep playing by buying us beer – after an initial response of ‘Are you serious?’ this worked.  

It’s a very interesting dynamic, playing sometimes delicate music acoustically to a crowd who are up for exuberance. DG and I both found ourselves instinctively playing more quietly when the audience clapped along – not that we minded them clapping, but it masked what we were doing, and while participation and enthusiasm are great, listening is good too. It’s a difficult line to walk without a PA, but the acoustic in the space was so good that I’m sure we were right to play without mics.

my instruments had flowers on ...

It was also interesting to monitor our different responses to a crowd who are really up for hearing a load of fast tunes. I’m very happy to play fast tunes, but then within about a minute my resistance kicks in and my desire to fight the session mentality takes over. I think Chris is far more at home in exuberant crowd-pleasing mode, and DG is somewhere in the middle, gently subverting the session atmosphere by playing outrageous things on whichever violin is in his hands at the time.

The late night series at St Brigid's was, incredibly, sponsored by a brand of chin rest, so Chris pointed out that DG was using their lucrative invisible model …

We finally left well after 1am, and repaired to my suite.Catherine joined us, to make up for her wimping out when we invited her to party with us in June 2004 after a gig with Suzie in the Montréal Baroque Festival. To be fair, she was working for the festival that time round.

later, Ottawa airport
Somehow DG and I were both awake enough this morning to have breakfast out on my balcony before he left – Chris had already gone for an early flight. Then I was off to Starbucks to catch up with a few days’ worth of unanswered email, before Jennifer came with her customary efficiency to deliver me here – it’s always good to get a perspective on a festival from someone who’s involved in the endless day-to-day running about making things happen. Jennifer’s perspective is particularly entertaining ... but now I hope I’m exhausted enough to get on the plane and fall asleep.

balcony breakfast