Caught Between a Rock and a Harp Place. The Canadian Tenors Christmas Concert.

Nope. Not at typo. There really was a harp on stage I was really caught out. I was vastly embarrassed to find myself in the very front row of the Canadian Tenors and Vancouver Island Symphony Christmas Concert last night. No! I thought I was in row 4, close enough to enjoy all the action and catch the best sound. But instead, they took the first several rows of seats out to accommodate the orchestra. What I thought was row 4 or 5 was row 1. And when I say row 1, I say 2 feet away from the toes of the boy’s shoes.  No, two feet is an exaggeration. It was maybe 1 horizontal foot and 3 vertical. I was mortified.

Not that it is about me people cause it surely isn’t and it was a sold out house and the boys are nothing if not professional. But. Gotta be a little bit like having your third grade teacher breathing down your neck during your doctoral exam. Jeepers. I actually contemplated trying to trade seats with someone further back.  Lil Dude said I was overreacting and reminded me that the guys are professionals.  And they already knew I was there as we ran into them on the ferry. Where I told them we were in row 4.

Okay, of course they are professionals, but jeepers, I don’t want to be the one to prove that Angel Boy can handle distraction.  Cause, not proud of it, but I am a distracting person. All thru I keep thinking okay, good, I got a little smile and a nod but they are doing great and sending it out into the house and so maybe not so distracting as I thought. Then -  post performance he tells me that he was aware he was of me sitting, like right there, and all the things it stirred up in his mind about his past and stuff. Rats. I was hoping my fears were all ego. Oh well. Next time I'll try and sit further back.

Hey, maybe we all learned something new from the unusual juxtaposition of past and present.  I am a fan, after all, so don't expect an unbiased review.  Though come to think of it all reviews are biased, aren't they, otherwise they wouldn't be reviews, they'd be summaries. But I digress, I do plan some vacation time and creative renewal around the expense of seeing these guys for three reasons.

First, they are brilliant musicians and the music makes me feel better about myself and the universe I inhabit. I just does. And given my natural penchant for melancholy, I need that.

Second, their mastery inspires the pursuit of my own. I strive to be as good at what I do as they are. Transforming people’s mood, perceptions, beliefs and maybe actions? Sounds like the goal of an artist’s life to me. 

Three, I met one of these artists when he was a child, a pivotal place in his life where he found himself elevated first and foremost beyond his peers into the rarified and highly demanding life of professional opera. It was also a pivotal place for me. It was the same time I started writing. I remember him from then. He remembers me. We are connected in a strange and entirely inexplicable way. We give context to each other's artistic experience. Okay, that sounds a bit pompous, and is probably punctuated incorrectly, but I still think it's true.

Einstein says time and space are illusion and certainly there are moments when I am watching Angel Boy sing when I can’t tell if he is ten, thirty or sixty. But ever and always, he reminds me of what happens when talent, hard work and a positive mind-set meld.

So okay. Not about me. About the Canadian Tenors - Fraser, Vic, Remi and Clifton. About their music. Which was truly sensational.

Not only do the Canadian Tenors rock, but they attract some fine-ass musicians to the party.  The Vancouver Island Symphony was spot on. On guitar, bass and drums were other fine, fine musicians who may never forgive me for not remembering their names, but I will try to make up with extra chocolate just for them next time I attend a performance. Hard to judge the sound levels from my strange seating placement but hey the group’s manager consulted me on my opinion after the show. And didn’t that do lots for my ego despite not really being able to give him accurate data. It is very important to know that they question, and listen, and strive for perfection. Hey Jeff! Happy to attend future performances as your ears!

Mark Camilleri, the pianist and musical director doesn’t play the piano so much as he dances it. If ever you have the chance to see them live, don’t limit your attention to the eye candy down front, check out the piano player doing his thing. Dancing with the piano. You may have seen and heard a great pianist command his instrument, but I guaran-fracking- tee you that you have never beheld the like of this young man dancing his piano.

“The Perfect Gift” the Canadian Tenors’ Christmas release is so worth buying I don’t even know how to begin to describe it. I own one and have five on order. By the way Clifton, I got hugs and I got smiles, and I even got kisses. But when you saw me you actually capped your pen and hugged me instead of signing my CD.  Shameful professional practice. But I forgive you. I will most certainly give you an opportunity to make it up to me. And I repeat, an unbiased review this ain’t. 

Further, I could be detailed and glowing about each stand-out performance of the night. And perhaps I should since they all delivered moments worthy of mention. 

Yeah, that’s me cold and impartial reviewer. Yet, hah! If you know me at all, you know I wouldn’t and couldn’t cite them without the musical and artistic excellence that is there. Because I can’t. I won’t. I’m funny that way. Cut my perception of artistic excellence on Dame Margo Fonteyn and Mikhail Baryshnikov and the Kirov ballet and Kiri Te Kanawa and Antonio Pappano and Judith Forst and David Pittsinger and Richard Margison. All of whom, with one exception I have met.  Don’t know who they are? That’s what Google was invented for kids.  My fatal flaw is attraction to genius.  Why is it fatal and why a flaw? For another post.

Suffice it to say, for me, stand out moments musically and performance wise at the Canadian Tenors December 5, 2009 performance at the Port Theatre, Nanaimo, BC Canada –

• Because we Believe – I’m a sucker for the lyrics, kinda my theme song
• Adagio – brilliant music, brilliantly interpreted
• Instrument of Peace – extraordinary arrangement of timeless hope and untouchable beauty
• Clifton Murray taking his space with humour and humility as an equal with his peers, his solo of Wintersong was just lovely. Warm, wistful, a bit sexy, well, a lot sexy, and achingly sweet, bye and bye. Gosh, I look forward to hearing you in future.
•  Victor Micallef – Yep. I stood up for his solo. Had too. Unwritten rule in our highly critical and unforgiving world.  When someone delivers all – you get off your butt, even if you stand-alone., not that I did actually stand alone. Now I don’t leap to my feet with the herd. Always been a bit ornery and stubbornly butt-in-chair about that.  It's a big butt, takes a lot to motivate it to move. O Sole Mio. A purple piece, a chestnut as it were in the halls of opera, but with...
•  Mark Camelleri at the piano and Victor at the microphone--I can truly say that the Neapolitan Sun shone upon us all at that moment. And I understood in a wholly new way, the relationship between composer, singer and accompanist. This alchemy, this magic – a perfect moment of live musical performance.  Joins my Pantheon.  The whole of which, if you are oh, so lucky, some day I will reveal. (and laughing at my apparent opera expertise. I think that was the song, but hey I am an opera fan, NOT an opera buff, and with no program and only my middle-aged memory to rely on…)
•  Remigio Pereira – Now, you may not know it, but Remi is a Guitar God. Fine, don’t believe it at your peril. Just remember you heard it from me first. Fine you may have heard it before, whatever, it's my blog.  Took me 6 months to master the way he plays Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah on guitar. When I see him pick up the guitar on stage it makes me extra happy over and above the extra happy I already feel at being in the audience in the first place.  In fact when the lovely handsomeness of Fraser Walters got in the way of me examining a flamenco strumming pattern, I was highly put out.
•  Last in this list, but never least in my heart, Fraser Walters and a song that I have never heard before “Mary Did You Know”. Not an easy song. Not a tried and true universally loved song. But oh my. When Fraser sings it is never just pretty, though it is often sweetly so, it is never just perfectly pitched, though it is always so - the little burr in his voice tonight elevated the depth of the question. The man can phrase a song like no one alive.

Together, as I stood in line to have my CD signed (the stuffed Moose with the Canadian Tenors t-shirt in my purse and out of embarrassment’s way) I listened to the favorite songs and moments of the crowd. I wonder if most critics ever avail themselves of the overheard lobby and bathroom comments? In the end who cares what they said and it’s my blog and no-one is paying me for anything!

Highlights for me:

Because we Believe

Instrument of Peace

O Holy Night

Silent Night

Wintersong

O Sole Mio

Mary Did you Know

O Viens Emmanuel (nice Remi!)

And not fair to mention their rendition of Hallelujah which, bye the bye is my bedtime song. And I will forgive them not doing What Child is This, my all time favorite Christmas song, since it is on the CD “The Perfect Gift”.

And no, i didn't quite describe every song in the program as a HIGHLIGHT. Well, fine, almost. 


So no. I am not am impartial critic, how could I be? But I am a writer to whom truth is important. This is my truth. The concert was a cherished memory. The Canadian Tenors  “The Perfect Gift” – a great holiday CD. Take a chance, download them from iTunes, buy “The Perfect Gift” for your parents and be astonished and captivated by their sound for yourself.