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All about Alumni
The Two of Us
Angela Cox-Daly
and Ross Daly
Angela Cox-Daly and Ross Daly are professional musicians, and
have been performing as a duo for 30 years. They met as
teens at the Royal Conservatory of Music, where they both
played violin and viola. They attended U of T’s Faculty of
Music, graduating in 1987, and now live in Kitchener,
Ontario, with three musical kids.
Ross: I started playing violin when I was 11. By the time I was
12, I knew that I wanted to be a musician and marry a musician
– specifically, a violin player. To seal this, I bought a double
violin case and waited patiently for my future wife and music
partner to fill it. When I met Angela, I was dating another girl
who played violin. Three years later, when my girlfriend broke
up with me, I was devastated – but Angela was delighted. Eight
days after graduating from U of T, we got married.
I love Angela because she always sees the bright side of
things without being blind to the not-so-bright, and knows
how to turn ordinary moments into extraordinary ones.
The kids sometimes get embarrassed and ask their mother
to “calm down.” They just don’t appreciate yet her marvellous
gift for seeing life’s wonders.
Angela: Ross once got a call from someone asking him if he
could play Latin music. “Sure,” he said, and afterward asked
Angela Cox-Daly and Ross Daly performing at Roy Thomson Hall in
Toronto, in 2008
me, “What’s Latin music” He knew nothing about the genre
that he had agreed to perform. In one week, he learned how
to play the upright bass, studied a new kind of music, got a
band together, played the restaurant and turned the gig into
a recurring event. I love Ross’s adventurousness.
He’s also a fantastic arranger. He arranged and scored the
music for full symphony orchestra to accompany an ABBA
and Bee Gees tribute show. It took him 400 hours to create
the arrangements. I never thought I’d be playing anything
other than classical music and here I am doing crazy things –
like performing ABBA and Bee Gees music all over the world.
I have Ross to thank for that.
top photo: courtesy of ross daly; bottom: cindy Blažević
Since its beginning as a daring experiment
in economic collaboration, the European Union
has grown into a sprawling, cross-continent
merger, transforming daily life for millions of people.
But what about those who remain outside the
new Europe – citizens of the Balkans, for example
What do they think about the EU And how do
they think their lives will change once their countries
gain admittance to this exclusive club
It’s a question, oddly, that politicians rarely ask.
But a pair of Canadian artists did. Cindy Blažević
(BA 1999 TRIN) and Pascal Paquette, a former
U of T staff member, spent a summer travelling the
Balkans interviewing and photographing residents.
They, along with 13 other artists, have created
a kind of emotional map of the region – through
text, photos, audio and video at www.theculturelobby.com
– that conveys the hopes and fears of
regular folk as their countries prepare for accession.
The people shown here, from southern Serbia,
blamed former leader Slobodan Milošević for
making their country a pariah. “[He] ruined us,” they
said. And what do they want from EU membership
“Better government.” – Scott Anderson
winter 2011 51