Volume 29 Issue 4 | February & March 2024

The WholeNote
VOLUME 29 NO 4
FEBRUARY & MARCH 2024
IN THIS EDITION
STORIES AND INTERVIEWS
Wendalyn Bartley, MJ Buell, Stephanie Conn,
Jennifer Parr, Sharna Searle, David Perlman,
Sophia Perlman, Lydia Perović, Colin Story
CD Reviewers
Larry Beckwith, Sophie Bisson, Stuart Broomer,
Daniel Foley, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi,
Richard Haskell, Fraser Jackson, Kati Kiilaspea,
Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Cheryl
Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Ivana Popovic,
Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Andrew Scott,
Andrew Timar, Yoshi Maclear Wall, Ken Waxman,
Matthew Whitfield
Proofreading
David Olds, John Sharpe
Listings Team
John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Sophia Perlman,
Colin Story
Design Team
Kevin King, Susan Sinclair
Circulation Team
Dave Bell, Jack Buell, Jane Dalziel, Bruno Difilippo,
Carl Finkle, Vito Gallucci, James Harris, Bob
Jerome, Marianela Lopez, Miguel Brito-Lopez,
Chris Malcolm, Sheila McCoy, Lorna Nevison,
Janet O’Brien, Kathryn Sabo, Tom Sepp,
Angie Todesco
DEADLINES
Weekly Online Listings Updates
6pm every Tuesday for weekend posting
for Volume 29 No. 5, APRIL & MAY 2024
Print listings deadline:
6pm Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Print advertising, reservation deadline:
6pm Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Web advertising can be booked at any time
PUBLICATION DATES
VOLUME 29 includes six print editions:
September 2023 (Aug 29);
October & November (Sept 26);
December & January (Nov 28);
February & March (Jan 30);
April & May (Mar 26);
Summer (May 28)
Printed in Canada
Couto Printing & Publishing Services
an Ontario government agency
un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario
FOR OPENERS
What’s in a word?
I
remember a while back, during Wimbledon maybe, a well-known violinist on the
local scene (concertmaster for more than one orchestra) going on a Facebook rant
about tennis, specifically the scoring system. His complaint was not about the way
the scoring works – first to four points wins you a game (except you have to win by two
points); first to six games wins you a set (except you have to win by two games); and a
match is typically “best of three sets”, except in “major” tournaments, when the men
play “best-of-five-set” matches, which can consequently end up running longer than
Lohengrin.
But I digress. As I already said, Steve’s rant wasn’t about the scoring system itself, it was
about the words intoned by priestly umpires to keep track of the score: why, he asked, say
things like “15-love, 30-love, 30-15, 30-all, 40-30, game” when you could just say “1-0,
2-0, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, game” instead?
It turned into one of those Facebook standoffs with lifelong lovers of the “sport of kings”
berating the soulless Steve as roundly as though he were trying to eliminate Latin from
the Mass; and on the other side of the net, his supporters praising his advocacy of the
vernacular as a way of preventing those new to the sport feeling like intruders at some
Masonic rite.
As best as I can remember, noone on either side of this “you’re taking the ‘love’ out of
tennis” spat, suggested that tampering with tennis’ liturgy would be like changing adagio
ma non troppo, e molto espressivo in a concert note for Beethoven’s Op.131 string quartet
to something like slowly (but not too much), and with great feeling.
Now there’s a thought. What about it, Steve?
Quavers and crotchets
I clambered aboard this particular train of thought, by the way, as a result of musing
about the pros and cons of different conventions for naming music notes: the quaintly
mysterious ones I learned at age eight (“quavers”, “crotchets”, “minims” and “semibreves”);
and the more mundane but practical language of eighth-, quarter-, half- and
whole notes that now prevails. As a child, I could even wrap my brain around semiquavers,
at a pinch. But demisemiquaver – “a note played for 1⁄32 of the duration of a
whole note (or semibreve)”, Wikipedia calls it – had me hiding from my piano lessons in
the treehouse in the backyard.
I actually have a lot more to say, at the very back of the magazine, about breves and
semibreves – as a metaphor for the path that is our best hope of ensuring a viable future,
potentially for many years to come, for both main strands of what we have brought to the
local music scene for the last 29 years. But don’t rush! After all, it’s the content between
this Opener and that Backstory that makes the real case for why our carrying on, with
renewed vitality, would be a useful thing.
T'KARONTO
For thousands of years before European settlement, T’karonto (The Meeting Place)
was part of the traditional territory of many Nations, including the Mississaugas
of the Credit River, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the
Wendat peoples, and remains their home to this day, as it now is for many diverse First
Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples.
This Meeting Place lies within the territory governed by the Sewatokwa’tshera’t (Dish
with One Spoon) treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee
– a Treaty which bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent
Indigenous Nations and Peoples, and all newcomers are invited into this treaty in the
spirit of peace, friendship, respect and reconciliation. We are grateful to live and work
here, helping spread the word about the healing power of music in this place.
8 | February & March 2024 thewholenote.com