Lucrezia Borgia

November 12, 2011 //
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Dramatic irony is one of those storytelling techniques we all learn about in high school, and I haven’t thought about it much since then – except to enjoy it, when it’s used effectively, and even then, I don’t sit there and think, “This is a really great example of dramatic irony.”

But I’ve been thinking a lot about dramatic irony this week. This afternoon, on CBC Radio 2‘s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, I’ll be presenting Lucrezia Borgia by Gaetano Donizetti. It’s a paragon when it comes to the tension and emotional impact that dramatic irony can confer. Especially when the incredible Edita Gruberová is in the title role.

For it’s the music which amps up the power of Donizetti’s plot line (which he adapted from a play by Victor Hugo, which in turn describes a fictional episode in the life of the real historical figure, Lucrezia Borgia.)

Usually, when the audience is in on something (as is always the case with dramatic irony) it has been well and duly tipped off: for example, in Romeo and Juliet, we all know Juliet’s not dead; she’s merely taken a sleeping potion, even if the rest of the characters (save the friar) are unawares.

But in the Prologue of Lucrezia Borgia, it’s never revealed to the audience that Gennaro’s long-lost mother is in fact Lucrezia. Sure, it’s blatantly obvious, if you’re paying attention. It may as well have been written into the script. But it wasn’t, and this creates an opportunity for Donizetti to tell you with the music. When Lucrezia first spots Gennaro asleep by the side of the canal in Venice, the tenderness with which she sings is unmistakable. It’s unconditional, maternal love. Donizetti captures her restraint, too, in the music: she can’t tell Gennaro when he wakes and tells her about his long-lost mother. And Donizetti captures her anguish too.

A mere reading of the plot doesn’t impart the effectiveness of this particular example of dramatic irony. The story itself isn’t what impresses. Here, it’s all about the music. A kind of musical irony – shall we call it operatic irony? (Or, perhaps better – melodramatic irony.)

In Gruberová’s voice, it’s all the more heartrending. If you’ve the opportunity to watch it, I highly recommend the documentary “The Art of Bel Canto”, all about the ageless Gruberová, and the amazing operatic career that has already spanned four decades. Towards the end of the above clip from this doc, there’s an example of just how powerful the end of Lucrezia Borgia can be in her hands.

 

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Categories Music, On the air, Radio

RPM.fm

October 26, 2011 //
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RPM.fm is a fantastic new website devoted to covering indigenous music, operated out of a small office in Vancouver’s Chinatown, in the heart of Coast Salish Territories.

For the past couple of months it’s been my honour and privilege to work with the team over at RPM.fm creating and producing the RPM Podcast, Season 1. So far, there are nine episodes covering various genres and topics, like the music of the North Coast, or New Traditional music, or Native Hip-Hop. Check ‘em all out – you’ll discover fabulous new music by artists with whom you may not be familiar, and hear some pretty interesting stories as well.

Episode 10 will go live Wednesday, November 2nd.

On a personal note – ever since I heard (and fell in love with) Robbie Robertson‘s Music for the Native Americans as a teenager, I’ve listened avidly to the wide array of musics created by the indigenous peoples of North America. They straddle a unique position, culturally: they are creators of music in a variety of genres, but they also carry a common cultural background and history to the music they create that is particular to this part of the world. My friends at RPM call the whole thing Indigenous Music Culture. It defies categorization: it’s not “native music”, yet it is; it’s rock, or it’s hip hop, or country, or traditional music – yet it all belongs under the same umbrella. And yet it belongs also to the broader musical subculture of each genre as well, that may have nothing to do with being indigenous.

In this way the music of the indigenous cultures of North America, for me, offers us a useful and interesting metaphor: that non-Natives and Natives share some elements of the same music (not to mention the same land), while being simultaneously different and yet having many things in common.

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Authentic

August 8, 2011 //
0

I love the idea of music that is tied to specific places. It’s a stimulating challenge for a composer: to try and write music that somehow evokes or captures a place.

That’s one of the things I wanted to do when I was approached by Neworld Theatre to write the music for C.E. Gatchalian‘s new podplay, Authentic, which was released today and is available from the Neworld Theatre website.

(What’s a podplay? It’s a play you experience while walking a particular route, in a specific place, through your earphones. There’s a great explanation here.)

Authentic is a love story between two men from very different cities, a Vancouverite and a New Yorker. The script is gorgeous, highly evocative, and the performances (by actors Marco Soriano and Bob Frazer) are very compelling. It was a privilege to work with this material.

I strove to create a musical flow that had two contrasting motifs within it: two motifs that would reflect the differences between the two cities, but that could also meld into each other. The Adagietto from Gustav Mahler‘s 5th Symphony plays a part in the story, so I wanted to incorporate snippets from that lovely, famous melody into the music for this play, as well; and, finally, because it is a play that unfolds along two of downtown Vancouver’s busiest streets, Seymour and Richards, I wanted city sounds to make up a part of the music too.

Authentic is best enjoyed while walking the route for which it is written, but of course, you don’t have to be in downtown Vancouver to give it a listen.

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The Subcontinental, Part 2: Bhangra

August 7, 2011 //
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The Vancouver area is a bhangra hotbed. It’s one of the world’s capitals of bhangra, thanks to the large Punjabi community that has already lived here for several generations. Some of the world’s biggest bhangra stars call Surrey, BC home. And each year Vancouver hosts the City of Bhangra Festival, a celebration featuring performances, symposia, and an international bhangra dance competition.

The 2009 edition of City of Bhangra – or, as it was then known, the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration – takes centre stage in this documentary I produced and directed for CBC Radio & ABC Radio National, which was rebroadcast today on CBC’s Inside the Music.

If you missed it, you can listen to it in full right here:

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Categories Docs, Music, Radio

The First Journalist

August 5, 2011 //
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I must confess I didn’t really know anything about the Ancient Greek author and historian Thucydides until a marvellous opportunity to learn all about him landed in my lap.

Nicola Luksic is a fantastic journalist and producer with CBC Radio in Toronto, and a wonderful person with whom to collaborate. Nicola’s produced some of the finest programs to hit the airwaves in the past few years, including And Sometimes Y, The Bottom Line, the double Gabriel-Award-winning 2010-11 season of Tapestry, and many more.

This past season Nicola also wrote & produced a documentary for CBC’s Ideas about Thucydides, and I was thrilled when she asked me to select scoring music and do the sound mix. With the help of the APM music production library, I tried to create an atmosphere that would immerse listeners in the world of Ancient Athens, Sparta, and the Peloponnesian War.

LISTEN HERE to Nicola’s excellent doc, Thucydides: The First Journalist.

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Categories Docs, Radio

The Subcontinental, Part 1: Bollywood

July 31, 2011 //
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A couple of years ago I produced & directed two audio documentaries on the music of the Indian Subcontinent for CBC Radio in Canada and ABC Radio National in Australia.

Episode 1, about the music of Bollywood, was rebroadcast today on CBC Radio across Canada. But if you missed it, fret not! You can listen to it in its entirety right here, below. Episode 2: Bhangra airs next Sunday on Inside the Music.

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Categories Docs, Music, Radio

On the Coast

July 19, 2011 //
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For the next week and a half I’ll be filling in for host Stephen Quinn on CBC Radio Vancouver’s afternoon drive show, On the Coast – an enormous privilege, and I’m terribly excited!

I’ve been very busy of late. On top of On the Coast, I’ve been working on a number of projects. You’ll see more posts in the coming days and weeks devoted to some of them:

  • Signal to Noise: my audio piece, commissioned as one of the first winners of In the Dark Radio’s Sound Bank grant programme in London, England. LISTEN HERE
  • RPM.fm: a fantastic new website devoted to indigenous music culture. I’m producing their podcast. LISTEN HERE
  • Authentic: I’ve written music for one of Neworld Theatre’s PodPlays, “Authentic”, by C.E. Gatchalian, to be launched August 8. READ MORE
  • Thucydides: I had the opportunity to do the sound design for Nicola Luksic’s excellent Ideas documentary on CBC Radio 1, “Thucidydes: the First Journalist.” READ MORE
  • And last but not least, 8-part series The Wire: the Impact of Electricity on Music, Peabody Award and Prix Italia winner, is at long last made available for on-demand listening online, thanks to CBC’s “And The Winner is…” LISTEN HERE

I’ll get around to writing a proper post for each of these, but in the meantime, hope you can join me for On the Coast!

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Categories On the air

The Bones of the Earth

May 16, 2011 //
3

CLICK HERE to listen to Gros Morne: The Bones of the Earth – my feature documentary about how the theory of plate tectonics found firm footing in Gros Morne National Park, in Western Newfoundland.

UPDATE: Bones of the Earth wins Gold Medal at New York Festivals!

2011 marks the 100th anniversary of Parks Canada.

In Western Newfoundland, there’s a national park that holds the key to one of the most important scientific ideas of our times.

Gros Morne National Park is kind of like the Galápagos of geology – you might go to the Galápagos to experience first-hand the wonder of biology and the theory of evolution. In Gros Morne, you can experience first-hand the wonder of geology and the theory of plate tectonics.

Instead of looking out for Darwin’s finches and giant tortoises you’ll come face-to-face with vistas and rock formations that will take your breath away.

About a year ago, I was lucky enough to go to Gros Morne with my microphones to capture the echo of a continental dance that happened 500 million years ago.

My colleague (and great friend) Chris Brookes and I sought out that echo in the words of geologists, artists, musicians and poets, and in the sounds of the park itself.

We composed music based on the field recordings, too. (Listen to excerpts from the original soundtrack.)

Then we wove it all together, along with poetry by Don McKay and traditional Newfoundland music performed by Daniel Payne, Jean Hewson and Christina Smith.

The result is a documentary called Gros Morne: The Bones of the Earth, and you can listen on-demand, whenever you like, HERE.

This documentary was produced with the support of Parks Canada, and sometime this summer, a longer version, presented by Shelagh Rogers, will be available in Gros Morne National Park and online.

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Of Mics and Men

March 19, 2011 //
2

I love recording things. Capturing moments in time. Working in radio is like being a photographer of sound.

Microphones are like best friends. They’re reliable. They don’t lie. They tell you exactly what happened. Who said what. How it all went down.

Recently on CBC Radio’s DNTO, I joined Sook-Yin Lee to tell the story of the day my mic let me down.

It happened a few years ago when I was producing a CBC summer show called Subcultures.  Host Hal Niedzviecki and I were in backcountry BC, “embedded”, I guess you could say, in the subculture of cryptozoologists – people who spend the better part of their waking hours in the pursuit of mythical creatures, like the Ogopogo or the Sasquatch (aka Bigfoot).

That morning might have been the breakthrough cryptozoologists were waiting for, because we might have nearly recorded the sound of a Sasquatch snuffling.

The Land Rover you see dangling off the side of the road in the photo above is part of the story. (It was much worse than it looks in the photo. Sasquatch hunter Thomas and I were almost fish food.)

Here’s the rest of the story:

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Cricket Mania

February 17, 2011 //
2

For years now, I’ve been experiencing the onset of a slow love affair with cricket. Maybe it’s because I love puzzles (especially the cryptic kind), and here in North America, cricket is usually shrouded in mystery.  It’s viewed as baseball’s exotic, off-kilter cousin whose rules are just a bit too cryptic to figure out, thank you very much, especially if there’s a baseball game on.

As it turns out, just as with cryptic crosswords, puzzling through the rules of cricket offers great satisfaction.  Now that I have a clue what’s happening on the pitch, I can hardly tear myself away.  And the language!  Can any other sport compete with googlies, doosras, yorkers, maiden overs and ducks?

There’s a kind of poetry to cricket.  In honour of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, about to begin in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, here’s my mini-doc on how I came to love the sport:

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And my guide to Team Canada appears in this week’s edition of Eye Weekly in Toronto.

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