Civitas, New Music, Bramwell Tovey, Sean Rossiter & Don Harron
Monday, January 19, 2015
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| Don Harron 1924-2015 - Bramwell Tovey 1953 - Sean Rossiter 1946-2015 |
On my left by my computer monitor is my copy of Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea – Why the Greeks Matter. I have been thinking plenty about the Greeks (the ancient ones) since Thursday’s memorial to SeanRossiter at Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden.
I attended something similar in 1991 after the death of Harvey Southam a man I had worked with when he edited his local business magazine Equity. I went to his memorial at Christ Church Cathedral knowing what I would experience. It was a memorial in which I did not see anybody who was not white and the minister talked eloquently about summers in Qualicum. I knew then that our city had changed.
On Thursday I noticed one black woman, Constance Barnes
and one Chinese man, architect Joe Wai. I saw a South Asian man whom I did not
know. The rest at the event were all mostly aging white men and women. It was
definitely one day that did not have to predict a different and rapidly configuration of the
polis.
I use that Greek word on purpose. I could never live or
retire in the country. I am a city man used to living in big cities, Buenos
Aires and Mexico City, old cities, Veracruz and new cities, Austin. I have yet
to make up my mind about Vancouver.
It is patently obvious that the first humans who lived in
caves could not have a city. But their social activities made the men group
together to hunt while the women (who had yet to predict the birth of Gloria
Steinem) stayed in the cave to weave and cook. The city as what we know as a
city had to wait for these folks to domesticate animals and plant grains. Then
they stayed put and cities happened.
For the Ancient Greeks, particularly the Athenians, there
was no such thing as a country or a homeland (it had to wait for that uncouth not-quite
Greek, Alexander to do so). They lived in their polis or city-state. To quote
Cahill:
The continual buzz of conversation, the orotund sounds of
the orators, the shrill shouts from the symposia – this steady drumbeat of
opinion, controversy, and conflict, could everywhere be heard. The agora (market place) was not just a
daily display of fish and farm goods; it was an everyday market of ideas, the
place citizens used as if it were their daily newspaper, complete with
salacious headlines, breaking news, columns, and editorials. For more formal
occasions, there nestled besides the Acropolis the hill of the Pnyx, where
thousands of citizens voted in the Assembly. They faced the bēma (speaker’s platform)
and, behind the speaker, the ever-changing backdrop of Athens itself. Though
there were wooden benches, set into the steps of the hill, participants were
too taken up by the proceedings to bother to sit down. The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklēsia , the same word used
in the New Testament for Church (and
it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word,
which connoted equal participation in all deliberations by all members, came to
designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia - which would have seemed
patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times, who
believed themselves to be equal members of their
Assembly.
Sean Rossiter and his involvement in the Vancouver Urbanarium Society (a very active civic institution that fizzled out in the
late 90s, brought architects, city planners and politicians to discuss civic
issues that mattered to all as citizens. Many of these lectures or symposiums
happened in a lovely auditorium called the Judge White Auditorium which was
inside what was then the Robson Square Media Centre. That auditorium disappeared
from public view when the University of British Columbia decided it needed a
presence in our city. This presence is either unknown by most of the citizens
of this city (who are patently aware of the active participation of Simon
Fraser University not only in what used to be the Sears department store by the
waterfront, but also in what was Woodward’s) or as evanescent as the
development of jet packs to liberate us from land-based congestion.
Sean Rossiter brought to us an understanding of what was
going on in City Hall from 1975 until 1991 in his Vancouver Magazine column 12th & Cambie.
While I was a friend of this man who made me feel part of
the city I never discussed his taste for music, art, theatre or dance. We
shared stories about the city as a liveable place. It was he who called me up
one day to recommend (I obeyed) to tell me that urbanist Jane Jacobs was in
town and that I should photograph her.
When I arrived in Vancouver with my Canadian wife and two
Mexican-born daughters it was CBC Radio and Television that informed me on the
correct pronunciation of Newfoundland. It was CBC TV that first exposed me to
the wonders of Guy Lafleur. Working as a
stills photographer at the new CBC building on Hamilton Street helped me feel I
was part not only of a city but of a country.
The best source of information about Canada came to me in
my darkroom in the morning when I listened to Don Harron’s CBC Radio program
Morningside. I had a particular liking for his delicate good taste and charm. Harron
filled in the huge gaps I had about Canada.
Years later I was invited into a trailer booth to watch a
man direct all the cameras of a Hockey Night in Canada game. This seemed more
complex (it surely was) than being an air traffic controller. At about the same time my friend CBC
cameraman Mike Varga, during a trip I made to Edmonton to photograph doomed Vancouver Canucks Bill LaForge for article for Vancouver Magazine, invited me to sit inside his camera booth by
the ice. The man on the other side sitting on a bench stared at me (I had photographed
him a few months before) was Wayne Gretzky. It was then that I began to feel
Canadian.
The polis of the Greeks wasn’t all about politics and
civic duties (for those few, we have to admit, who were citizens in a
city-state full of slaves) it was also about drama and music and dance. The
Greeks had yet to put the arts into compartments. It was all art.
Going to the four-day New Music Festival, the second one, at the Orpheum
put me into that exciting contact into a very active arts scene full of Canadian
composers who in spite of their excellence somehow make their music accessible
and non-alienating. It is a wonder to watch and listen to so many musicians who
could play anywhere in the world (and many do) but choose to stay in Vancouver.
It is Bramwell Tovey, much adored in New York City who
chooses to stay in this city even though we all know and he made us patently aware
that our CBC, our Mother Corporation, has aged into irrelevancy. We long lost
the Radio Orchestra. It was in 2008 that Canadian violinist James Ehnes won
Canada's first Grammy for best instrumental solo performance (with orchestra)
for his recording with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra called Barber/Korngold/Walton: Violin Concertos.
It was produced by Denise Ball and the very famous (for those of us who know
him) sound engineer Don Harder for CBC Records. Since 2008 there has been no
further collaboration. Mr. Harder these days is more often seen playing the bagpipes
in his lovely kilt- an obvious loss to the musical framework of our city.
CBC Radio (and what follows is the personal opinion of
this Philistine) now is a radio scape of middle-of-the road, eminently forgettable
popular (un?) music, banal programs with the exceptions of the excellent Ideas and the most intelligent program in
radio The Debaters. The rest come me via on the hour or half-our news when I am
in my car. The only reason for ever watching the local news on CBC TV, was to
listen and to enjoy the presence of Gloria Macarenko. Was she moved aside to
bring in ethnic talent from the East?
The continuing slide of our once fine daily, the Vancouver Sun, seems to mimic the CBC as it, too, is becoming irrelevant in spite of still having some very good and serious columnists. Gone recently is my friend Rick Ouston whom Malcolm Parry at Vancouver Magazine used to assign to write about the state of newspapers in our city in what is now a distant past.
The continuing slide of our once fine daily, the Vancouver Sun, seems to mimic the CBC as it, too, is becoming irrelevant in spite of still having some very good and serious columnists. Gone recently is my friend Rick Ouston whom Malcolm Parry at Vancouver Magazine used to assign to write about the state of newspapers in our city in what is now a distant past.
Watching Tovey conduct, watching him enthuse about the
music we are about to listen to, seeing how he is championing real Canadian
musical talent using an accessibility based on wit and charm is a pleasure that
more of us should value and appreciate.
I have considered myself a snob for too many years (to my
detriment). I have championed baroque music and modern dance. I might tell you
I refuse to go to another Nutcracker. But it took this last weekend, and
particularly this Sunday, for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra to teach me the
value of the sound of 5 basses tuned down to a lower register, an explanation
by Ottawa composer Kelly-Marie Murphy (Black
Sand) as to what a lion’s roar percussion thing was composer and to enjoy a
composition based on the feeling of touching sand glass (Sea Glass Music) by composer and bassist Frederick Schipizky. Furthermore
in future night trips to Seattle as I drive as close to the speed limit as I can
through that startling under-the-freeway-freeway in the city that I have not
only the bridge crossing music crossing music of the Clash’s London Calling but
most of Murphy’s composition with their nicely loud and fast tempos with definitive
drum solos.
And in the end it was Bramwell Tovey’s brand of cultural
civitas that made me feel that there might be some hope for our city. After
all, he has three more years to involve us in his city and make it also ours.
Wikipedia
While I may sound positive so far I see in our immediate future a retreat of us all to our caves. Do we live in a city and take advantage of what our city can offer? Or do we live in our homes, indulge in social media, eschew actual human contact and listen to music on earphones all by ourselves? Do we listen to comfortable and predictable music while willing to indulge in the varied cuisine of Vancouver and not much else? Have we given up on our CBC, ready to see our Vancouver Art Gallery move with the detritus of stuff we are rarely moved to explore? Do we know who or current city Poet Laureate is? Are we willing to go to modern dance while appreciating the discipline of classical ballet?
