Volume 26 Issue 8 - July and August 2021

The craft that will see us through
“You have to understand that no one
puts their children in a boat unless the
water is safer than the land.”
That line of poetry smacked me
between the eyes early in 2018. It is
from a poem, “Home” by Somali-
British poet Warsan Shire, London’s first
Young Poet Laureate. I heard it in the
context of a Tafelmusik concert titled Safe
Haven, created by ensemble member
Alison Mackay, “exploring the influence
of refugees on the music and culture of
Baroque Europe and Canada today.”
In that one line of poetry those two
worlds, 400 years apart, collided: waiting on beaches for frail craft in search of safety and
giving back to the places where they found safe haven as much as they got. The 400-yearold
version of it fits nicely into a settler version of history. The 21st-century eastern
Mediterranean version, maybe not so readily for the people already settled here.
It was an interesting construct, but what did it take to transform it from a notional exercise
into a raw truth that could not be rationalized or equivocated – into a truth we accepted
no matter how uncomfortable? Part of it, as in Warshan Shire’s poem, was the indelible
memory for most of us of one photograph, three years earlier, of one child lying dead on an
eastern Mediterranean beach – Alan Kurdi – that defied abstraction, gave a name and a face
to a truth, and took inaction off the table as an option.
How many more children’s graves will have to be found, here, today, for the truth to take
general hold the same way?
Wendalyn Bartley’s conversation with Claude Schryer this issue digs into a parallel point:
how do you practise your craft at something with an esoteric name like “acoustic ecology”
in the face of a climate crisis demanding action? “Valorizing nature” is part of the answer,
Schryer says.
“Valorizing art” is the other part, I’d say. It means artists taking all those tricks of the
trade they’ve learned these past 16 months – new ways to get their voices out there; to feel
alive; to work together; maybe even make a difference or two. And now’s the time to lash
all those newfound competencies to the mast of some big truths that need to be shouted to
the treetops.
So here we are, dry land maybe in sight: stowaways, refugees, hostages, passengers and
crew (depending on the craft we’re in).
Thanks as always for reading what we have made. It’s bristling with wit and grit and
inventiveness. (Oh, and music.)
Hang in. We intend to do the same.
publisher@thewholenote.com
SUMMER 2021
Worth the (virtual)
drive … ?
That’s the big question
So here we are again, on the cusp of
summer, with what has to be the
most eccentric collection of listings
information ever assembled for the festivals
section of our summer print issue.
Listings
In other years, we’d have painstakingly
separated out summer festival/series listings
from one-off concerts. And we’d have had
separate sections for GTA and Beyond GTA listings.
And for concerts, music theatre, clubs,
workshops, etc. This year? Gone.
Gone too is our most fundamental principle:
that we only list events that have a live musical
component.
What you get instead is a reflection of the
ways our musical community is coming
up with to stay in touch with you, their
audiences.
So, for the time being anyway, it means that,
rather than our print listings being the wheelhouse
of what we do, it’s our online weekly
listings updates that give you the best chance
of keeping up. Sign up for our weekly listings
updates, and every weekend we send
you updated listings covering the following
six weeks or so, reflecting everything we
found out since the Tuesday before (including
changes and cancellations). Good news.
It’s good news for musicians and presenters
too. If a musical event fits our niche (and our
range is getting wider), it qualifies. As long
as it is a public event, with a specific date
and start time attached to it, it can be live,
livestreamed, on-demand … or any combination
of these.
Bottom right hand corner of our website
homepage is where you sign up.
See Green Pages, page 24
August 5 to 29
Isabel Bayrakdarian/
Gryphon Trio, August 5
Infusion Baroque, August 21
TorQ Percussion Quartet, August 22
Stewart Goodyear, August 28
Jens Lindemann, August 29
519.271.2101 / 1.866.288.4313
stratfordsummermusic.ca
thewholenote.com July and August 2021 | 7