National Arts Centre Orchestra
Carrie posted in Recreation on October 30th, 2008
Currently, the NAC orchestra is on a tour of western Canada. The entire orchestra. All 109 members. And since the Yukon is in the west, they came up here to do a concert. They actually have their own plane because they have to fly all their instruments around the country!
So the conductors of the All City Concert Band, with whom I’m playing the trombone, organised some instrument workshops with various musicians from the orchestra. Yesterday we had an hour long brass workshop with the bass trombone player from the orchestra who instructed us on all kinds of techniques and practicing and things we should consider. We didn’t get to do much playing (but that’s to be expected in such a workshop) but it was really interesting to get some tips from a professional musician.
But it was also a media circus!! There were reporters there from all kinds of newspapers (not just local…I heard someone was interviewed for the Globe and Mail) and television and radio! There were cameras all over the place, snapping pictures, wrestling for a good position, and even, I couldn’t believe it, interrupting the workshop to ask if we were going to play something soon because they needed to get a clip of it! The workshop leader was kind of taken aback but reluctantly agreed to whip something out for the cameras. Just before it began I was running around trying to get ready and got stopped by a radio person asking to do an interview. Caught off guard, I came up with some lame answers to her lame questions (”What do you hope to learn today?” Uhh well if I knew that, I would be learning it today…) and then did my best to ignore the cameras in our faces and the people moving in and out of the room all the time.
But the reporter did have one interesting question “Moving to a small town like Whitehorse, did you ever expect to have such an opportunity to work with professional musicians?” Of course I answered “Oh no this is just so wonderful!” right on cue, but had I had my wits about me a bit more I would have given it some thought and pointed out that while I never would have expected to play with the orchestra, I certainly wasn’t surprised. Because it seems that living in a community such as Whitehorse, these amazingly intimate opportunities do arise every once in a while, and when they do, you have a greater chance to participate. I don’t think I would EVER have had the chance to play with the NAC orchestra if I lived in Toronto or even Ottawa! Because coming up here was so special, they agreed to speak with the high school music teachers and run some one-hour clinics. There are plenty of professional musicians in Toronto though so no need to go out of their way there. In Whitehorse, it feels almost like the poor children of Africa who get to meet all these movie stars coming through on charity. “I may live in a grass hut but I’ve sat on Angelina’s lap!” That feeling was only augmented by the all the media there taking pictures of the beautifully sophisticated NAC orchestra taking the time to work with the poor people who have to live in the North, way up here with all the polar bears and igloos. How nice of them…
Okay that makes me sound super bitter but I’m definitely not! I’m super grateful that they would take some time out their strictly regimented unionised schedule to do that. After all, they did come all this way…But the point is I disagree with the radio host: when big stuff happens in Whitehorse, it happens to you. It just doesn’t often happen in Whitehorse. I’ll reinforce this with the example of the White Stripes who did a concert last summer. I didn’t get tickets because it was in the Arts Centre which is pretty small and there just weren’t enough. Well Meg and Jack White heard that most people couldn’t get tickets so they decided to do a little jam session in LePage Park for anyone who was around. We only had about an hour’s notice and you had to hear about it through word of mouth, but word got around and there I stood along with 200 of my closest friends half expecting the whole thing to be a big prank, when Meg and Jack White hopped out of a minivan and walked up on the stage with a guitar and tambourine and played a few songs for us! Can’t say that would ever have happened in Toronto, or that I would have even cared. So cool things happen to little people in Whitehorse.
Today, though, I chaperoned the students as they attended a special morning concert put on by the orchestra all about Beethoven. They sold out of tickets for the full concert last night but I was fortunate to have the right connections and get a “chaperone” job at the student concert. It was super well organised and thought out. They had a dude dressed up as Beethoven who comes walking down the aisle during the first piece and gets up on stage and tells the students a bit about himself. He has this funny banter with the conductor about what to play next and they do some clips of some of his pieces and he’ll interrupt them pointing out certain things to remember etc etc so actually we learned a lot more about the music than what’s just in the programme notes. Then the conductor introduces him to the modern hearing aid so that he can hear the music and he’s so happy etc etc. It was really well written and extremely well delivered by this actor and the conductor. The kids also had a chance to play along with the orchestra on recorders which they brought from school. The music was projected up on to a screen above the stage and the kids in the audience hammered through Ode To Joy along with the orchestra and the rest of us got to sing along. So it was a really great experience for the kids and as the conductor said, “Now you can tell people that you’ve played with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.” Certainly couldn’t tell people that if I had been in Toronto.
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