Divertimento has another great concert coming up April 25 and 26. The feeling is a little different from the last show. To give you some idea, here’s the poster:
You can use the QR code to order tickets.
Category: Music
Given how I make music, this could have gone under Tech. 🙂
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A good concert.
We had another fun concert — the music was hard, but the result was rewarding. We had a great turnout on Saturday.
Now we’ve got to start practicing for the next show. Here’s what we’ll be playing:
- Dvorak, The Wild Dove tone poem Op. 110 — I hadn’t heard this one before. It looks mostly ok for the cellos, but definitely has some fast bits.
- Chaminade, Concertino for flute and orchestra — This looks particularly challenging for the first flute.
- Brahms, Symphony no. 4 — I have played this one with Divertimento before. I remember having to take many shortcuts last time; we’ll see if I can do any better this time around. 🙂
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Divertimento concert incoming
It’s less than two weeks until the next Divertimento Orchestra concert. The program this time is incredible; it’s literally some of the hardest music we’ve ever played. Definitely worth seeing.
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Cicada Sound
In case anyone who reads this blog is a eurorack gearhead in Ottawa, I’d like to make a plug for a (relatively) new music store I discovered recently.
Cicada Sound
1198 Bank St
Ottawa, ON K1S 3Y1
613-909-4124I was, in fact, pointed at them by someone from L&M because I had been bemoaning the fact that they no longer had any eurorack modules on display. The person I was chatting with suggested I check out this new store, and wow am I ever glad they did! I also greatly appreciate a vendor that will send you somewhere else when they can’t satisfy your needs. Thanks, L&M!
Cicada Sound has a range of synths and some guitars, etc. but their main focus seems to be eurorack gear, which is something I have been desperately looking for in Ottawa. As you can see from the picture, they have lots of modules set up and wired into workstations with headphones on each, so you can actually figure out what the modules sound like before buying them. Woot!
In the spirit of “putting your money where your mouth is”, I purchased a Cre8Audio NiftyKEYZ modular case+keyboard from them. After some fiddling here’s a picture with it filled with some of my eurorack modules:
I really like this device. I can honestly say that this is the nicest euroack controller I have ever used. It has some things I’d tweak if I had access to the firmware, but really it’s great.
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Another season for Divertimento
The first rehearsal for the Fall 2023 Divertimento concerts was last Thursday.
The program is…
- Brahms, Academic Festival Overture, Op.80
- Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op.21 (1st mvt only)
(Laura D’Souza piano soloist) - Gounod, Faust: Ballet Music
- Chausson, Symphony in B♭, Op.20, 35 minutes
Most of these we’ve played in previous seasons, but there’s a ton of good music here. The Chausson, in particular, has some great cello parts.
The soloist for the Piano Concerto won the honour of playing with us by taking first place at the Ottawa Piano Festival in May of this year.
Concert dates are November 10 and 11. Hope to see you there.
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Divertimento Spring 2018 Concert
[man, I really have to blog more often]
The Divertimento Orchestra in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, is proud to present a program of Czech music, this Thursday and Friday (April 20 & 21, 2018) starting at 8PM. The concert venue is:
Woodroffe United Church,
207 Woodroffe Ave.The program is going to be great:
- Smetana — The Moldau
- This piece, originally titled “Vltava”, is a beautiful tone painting that charts the course of the Vltava river. It has a very busy and difficult cello part.
- Dvořák — Slavonic Dances, Op. 46
- These dances are wonderful, exuberant splashes of music. They contain numerous parts that are extremely difficult to play.
- Dvořák — Symphony No. 9 “from the New World”
- I love this symphony. The oboe part at the start of the second movement is definitely on my “goosebumps” list.
Tickets prices are…
Adults: $20
Students/Seniors: $10
Children 13 and under: FREEPlease come listen to some wonderful music, including my minor contributions from the back of the cello section.
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Divertimento Spring Concert
It’s that time again! I’m very pleased to say that I will be playing in the Spring Concert of the Divertimento Orchestra, April 28th and 29th, 2017. We’re playing three pieces:
- Halifax Harbour by Elizabeth Raum
- As part of the Canada 150 celebration, we will be playing this fun piece (with a great cello part 😉 ) by Canadian composer Elizabeth Raum. Shhhh! Rumour has it that depending on the night, you might see her in the audience.
- Tres Danzas Españolas by Enrique Granados
- Enrique Granados was born the 27th of July 1867, 150 years ago. The three pieces that we’ll be playing are orchestral arrangements (by J. Lamote de Grignon) of three of the “12 Danzas Españolas” a piano work published in 1890. There’s a strong Spanish feel and some great solo playing (not by me <g>).
- Symphony No. 3 in Eb, Op. 97 “Rhenish” by Robert Schumann
- This Schumann Symphony is big, deep music, with complexities that you probably don’t hear on the first listen through. It really wasn’t until I’d played the cello part in context that I felt like I understood it. Very cool!
All and all, it should be an excellent show. And given my recent health issues, I’m particularly glad that I’ll be able to participate. By all means, come and give us a listen.
Here’s the poster for the show. Feel free to print this out and post it wherever people might see it. We love playing for a full house!
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Psst… Track 8?
Not sure how many people downloaded the [HBDI]:four album, but for those that did if you were sharp eyed (eared?) you would have noticed it was missing track 8. I have since rectified this omission and the complete album can be downloaded by clicking on the album title on that page.
The missing track is called “New Dream”:
(If your browser doesn’t support in line audio. Click here to play or download it.)
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I know, I know. I haven’t been posting.
This is yet another of those posts that starts out by apologizing for not keeping up with the blog. Believe me, I’m more frustrated than you are that it’s been so long since I last posted.
The thing is, my life has been busy, to the point where I haven’t even been finding the time to keep up with 140 character tweets, let alone full blog posts.
Anyway, here are some highlights…
New role at work
In addition to being the Eclipse Project PMC lead, I have now taken on a significant architectural role working on the “IBM DevOps Services powered by JazzHub”. This is a new property that provides project hosting, including online development (based on Orion), tracking and planning support, etc., which is intended to be the premiere environment for building applications that are part of the “IBM BlueMix” platform-as-a-service. What’s even cooler about this is that it can be used for free. Definitely check it out.
Just finished a Divertimento concert
*sigh*. Yes, it would have made more sense to talk about it ahead of time. Oh well. This was the orchestra’s 30th anniversary concert, and it was an awesome program:
- J. Strauss — Die Fledermaus Overture
- Mozart — Violin Concerto No. 5, K.218
- Brahms — Symphony No. 4 Op. 98
The concert was sponsored by the Austrian Embassy including bringing in the soloist for the Mozart, one Daniel Auner, who is a truly excellent up-and-coming violinist. Even though we only had a single rehearsal with him, I felt like he helped us achieve a recognizably stronger understanding of the music.
I bought a car
A Fiat Abarth. I haven’t actually received it yet — It’s still being built — but I expect it will show up some time in the next couple of weeks. For now, here’s a shot of basically what it will look like:
It’s very small, but I verified that it will hold my cello case with the back seats folded down, so we’re good. Zero to 100 KPH in 6.9 seconds. I’m excited :-).
