STEREO LIVE #2 - a journey

It's the evening before our second Stereo Live show in Toronto. It's been an incredible ride this season, planning, booking, organizing, and presenting a new series in Toronto. I love this city, and whenever I am home it is so fun to be able to make music with the musicians that I admire and love. April is a busy month for me, because I'm part of a rather long awesome run with Opera Atelier, a baroque opera company in Toronto that is performing seven shows of Orpheus & Eurodice. Before those shows however, we have many rehearsals, including a wandelprobe, which was tonight, a tech, a dress, and then finally - opening night which will be on April 9th. Also constantly planning and organizing the next project, tour, rehearsal, record, etc as a freelance musician, is always exciting too. I'm also going to be part of a great chamber music concert with Jeanne Lamon, a mentor and friend who has been directing the Tafelmusik baroque orchestra for decades. We will be performing together with a few other friends on April 18th - actually the same day as the closing of the Opera. Another thing with us musicians sometimes, we book all kinds of things whenever we can - and sometimes they are quite tight! An Opera at 4:30 PM and a chamber music performance at 8:00 PM in the same city though, is definitely possible, and according to google maps they are only about 10 kilometers apart... I'm hoping for a ride, i'm not gonna lie. The end of the month involves some more shows with my band the Wooden Sky - it is always incredible getting on the road and making music with these guys. We have been on stage together hundreds of times now, and it feels so good - AND it keeps getting better!!! Anyways... back to Stereo Live! The reason I was tempted to write down a few words this evening, even after an incredibly long day, is that it was also simply an incredible day. Keith and I, who started this little series together, invited Morris Ertman from the Rosebud Theatre of the Arts to come to Toronto and join us for our 2nd show which is tomorrow at 3:00 PM. We will be performing the Seven Last Words, by Haydn, the string quartet version. Well, today was a big rehearsal day for us, workshopping the piece - and what you might not realize, is that the piece is often done with narration, with someone speaking, or announcing the words as they happen in the score. Well, Morris has written a story for us this week, about the seven last words, and when we ran it through today it was just totally incredible. Music to me is always a story. Whether it's an obvious one, or a made up one, or an old one, or one from the past, or about the future, or just even the beginnings of one, it always takes me somewhere, someplace, somehow. Morris today brought a whole new component to the string quartet version of the Seven Last Words by Haydn to me today. He manages to weave us through the words, while telling a story, and mentioning all kinds of details, yet also keeping it as a big picture. I am so excited to share this journey with those of you that can make it to the performance tomorrow. I also hope that you enjoy the piece as much as i have enjoyed working on it this week. We have two shows this weekend. April 3rd at 3:00 PM at the Campbell House Museum, and also April 4th at 8:00 PM at the Little Trinity Church. Links can be found below... 

the string quartet will consist of myself, Keith Hamm, Chris Verrette, and Rachel Desoer.

Campbell House - April 3rd
Little Trinity Church - April 4th