Volume 25 Issue 8 - May / June 2020

Whether, for how long, and to what extent our
various musical lives can survive a total lockdown is
anybody’s guess, but today I’m feeling optimistic.
Neither of my two lifetime musical projects has yet been
interrupted:
1) Bridging the language and culture gap for young Canadian
performers, by providing some of my favorite European vocal
works with singable new English texts. Done so far:
Brahms: Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52. Monteverdi: Ballo delle
ingrate. Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart & Salieri. Schuetz: Johannes-
Passion; Weihnachts-Historie. And most recently (while selfisolating)
Shostakovich: Babi Yar (not yet performed).
2) Expanding the everyday teaching and learning of music,
currently heavily slanted towards performance training, to include
thoughtfully-designed computer-assisted exercises in composing,
as well as guided listening to more than the latest pop hits. For the
latter, I am actively looking for individual and institutional partners,
and taking steps to insure that software development work
can continue.
NICK STORRING
I wear a number of hats in the music community. I’m primarily a
composer and musician, but work as critic, curator/presenter, and
publicist.
Just as COVID-19 was ramping up, American imprint Orange
Milk Records released my sixth full-length recording entitled
My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell digitally and on LP/CD,
composed in my home studio by overdubbing my own performances
on a wide variety of instruments. On the writing end of
things, I’m a regular contributor with Musicworks Magazine and
my work has also appeared in publications such as the Wire and
Exclaim! I’ve been the guest curator of the Canadian Music Centre’s
CMC Presents Series for the past two seasons, and have also devised
programs for Soundstreams, the Music Gallery, New Adventures in
Sound Art, and my own independent productions.
Publicity is the newest facet of my career, but it is expanding
rapidly. Most of the work I’ve been doing has provided support to
Canadian artists and events within my orbit.
For the most part I’ve actually been very fortunate in terms of the
impact of COVID-19 on my various endeavours thus far. In a funny
way, I feel as though it has created a receptive climate for recorded
music and that’s had a positive impact on the critical reception of
my own record. That’s been tremendously heartening.
For the most part I’ve actually
been very fortunate in terms of
the impact of COVID-19 on my
various endeavours thus far. In a
funny way, I feel as though it has
created a receptive climate for
recorded music and that’s been
tremendously heartening.
There are a few things that have been suspended: a collaboration
with multidisciplinary artist Gary Kirkham and vocalists
Bó Bardos and Pam Patel; Yvonne Ng has been working on a new
full-length quintet dance entitled Wéi since 2017 and the plan had
been to premiere it in the coming half-year. Thin Edge New Music
Collective and I have been working (very slowly) on an album of
my chamber music with Jean Martin at the controls. We’ve already
recorded over half and hour of music, and it would be nice to
wrap it up.
There’s not really much that can be done to prepare this work in
any way, except to remain positive, and I’ve been doing my utmost
in that domain.
Instead, I’ve been continuing with other work of various kinds,
publicizing new and forthcoming recordings by various artists,
mixing some intriguing new recordings from multi-instrumentalist
Colin Fisher that will no doubt surface, and been writing
various grants for clients.
I also recently started a solo piece for baroque cello for Elinor
Frey that poses an interesting challenge. As a cellist myself, I’m
trying to imagine the music away from the cello as much as
possible, to prevent my own habits and limitations on the instrument
from seeping through. I want to be writing for her, her
interpretive gifts, and her instrument, rather than merely transcribing
myself.
Apart from that: various studio pieces, including a set where
everything is recorded through those cheap humbucker pickups
that one mounts in acoustic guitars for amplification. They only
respond to the vibration of magnetic metals, which makes for a
strange cocktail of serious restriction and peculiar sonic possibilities—everything
from a Slinky to barbecue skewers, from tape
measures to steel wool.
To find me: My website www.nickstorring.ca offers the most
thorough overview; my Soundcloud serves as a kind of audio scrapbook:
https://soundcloud.com/nick_storring; and my commercial
recordings are all available from my Bandcamp: http://nickstorring.bandcamp.com/
CHRISTINA PETROWSKA QUILICO
I am a concert pianist and a full
professor of Piano Performance
and Musicology at York University.
I am speaking for myself.
What’s been taken away from
me most at this moment is peace
of mind and family vacations. I
had been planning to take some
time away from work and piano
to spend time with my family and
go on vacation. I had booked time
away from professional concerts
and work to do so.
Instead, except for FaceTime
and Skype, I will be home isolated
and learning new repertoire (four
concertos for future performances
and recordings, and music for a
solo CD recording and performance)
after I finish grading and
adjudicating two music competitions
online. I will also be
preparing PowerPoint lectures for
online teaching in the fall.
You can always find me at
York University email. Check the
Faculty profiles or on my website
www.christinapetrowskaquilico.
com and my channel on YouTube.
I am always adding new videos of
performances.
What’s been taken away from
me most at this moment is
peace of mind and family
vacations. I had been
planning to take some time
away from work and piano
to spend time with my family
and go on vacation.
thewholenote.com May and June 2020 | 13