Since we officially began gardening in our Athlone Street house in 1986 my wife soon became a Master Gardener and a FOG (Friend of the Garden at UBC). With fewer official gardening activities I had more time to learn about plants. I know considerably lots of useless facts about hostas, roses, ferns and trees.

Slide soft you silver floods

And ev'ry Spring

Within these shady woods;

Let no bird sing,

Slide soft you silver floods

And ev'ry Spring

Within these shady woods;

Let no bird sing,

But from this grove a turtle dove

Be seen to couple with his love:

But silence on each dale and mountain dwell,

Whilst that I weeping bid my love farewell.

You nymphs of Thetis' train,

You mermaids fair

That on these shores do plane

Your seagreen hair,

As you in trammels knit your locks

Weep ye, and force the craggy rocks

In heavy murmurs through broad shores tell

How that I weeping bid my love farewell.

Henry Lawes - 1595-1662

On November 28, 2008 I heard Olivier Messiaen’s A Quartet for the End of Time.

In 1964 in Buenos Aires I was offered a taste of marvelous peach yoghurt.

Tonight I heard an Early Music Vancouver presentation of Songs of an English Cavalier with  the French group La Rêveuse featuring American tenor Jeffrey Thompson at the Orpheum Annex.

All of the above are first times. First times (that first love and many more firsts) by definition happen only once and if the experience is a pleasant one they can only be topped with new ones.

One who would disagree is La Rêveuse harpsichordist, Bertrand Cuiller who has played versions of tonight’s concert many times. He told me that he never gets bored and every time is almost a first time as he discovers new insights that he might have overlooked in previous concerts.

I am not too sure of this but since I am not a musician I will believe him. I can assert that as a photographer who has taken thousands of photographs, every time I point my camera on a human subject I experience a thrill that almost matches a first time.

Bertrand Cuiller, Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot & Jeffrey Thompson

The concert opened with a grand, everybody-on-stage pre-concert talk moderated by Early Music Vancouver Artistic Director MatthewWhite.

Since White is an extremely reputable counter tenor he knows about singers and singing. He can identify with other baroque singers and can ask the right questions or interject with smart stuff.

As I heard this active panel (a super excited Jeffret Thompson) and the more staid Frenchies I thought of Jesuit Pierre Teilhard deChardin’s Phenomenon of Man which I read sometime in 1964 in Buenos Aires. In it Chardin explains how Darwin’s evolution works in a special way. He says that you must picture a dense wall with a small round hole. At the hole you throw a small ball. The chances that the ball will go through it are slim. But if you have a bagful of balls and you throw them all at once a few will get through. Evolutionary progress works in that manner.

In my years in Vancouver I have noticed a steady slide of excellence into mediocrity. You rarely get large examples of passion and virtuosic performance. And when it happens few will be aware as our media has retracted to near oblivion.

I have noticed how Early Music Vancouver, Turning PointEnsemble, the VSO under Branwell Tovey, the Pacific Baroque Orchestra under Alexander Weimann have changed my ill perception of my city’s cultural affairs. Four men, Matthew White, Turning Point’s Owen Underhill, Alexander Weimann and Bramwell Tovey have all thrown lots of balls on that evolutionary hole of excellence.

What has transpired is an anting up of quality and performance. We are getting the best performers from around the world and local musicians, some very good ones are following suit.

In short the musical standards in our city have notched up because these men (and the women who perform in these orchestras) demand perfection.

Last night’s Songs of an English Cavalier was a night that amply proved my suspicions. And before I forget I must add people like Emily Molnar at Ballet BC and Arty Gordon at the Arts Umbrella Dance Company and our theatrical directors like Bill Millerd at the Arts Club Theatre Company and Christopher Gaze at Bard on the Beach who are doing the same anting up at dance and theatre.

The panel told us that the English composers (mostly Henry Lawes, 1595 -1662) were at a crossroad between the polyphonic Renaissance period and the monophonic Baroque. Just like other crossroad (transitional) composers like Haydn and Mozart (neither Baroque nor Classical) can be boring if performed in some standard manner, many think that Hawes and company in the same vein. “Not so,” say Mathew White and Jeffrey Thompson. With attitude and passion Hawes and Haydn are exciting and fresh today as when their music was first performed.

To me it is ironical that here we had a concert of rare (to a Vancouver audience) English music played so well by a French group and sung by Rochester-born American Thompson. Part of the irony was explained by Benjamin Perrot who mentioned that the fortunes of lutes and lutenists had suffered a decline in the 17^th century in England until it all changed with the arrival of French lutenist Jacques Gaultier to England in 1617. The lute and lute playing became a new craze.

I must point out that rarely can you hear the sounds (the beautiful sounds) of a theorbo (a very big lute) as it is usually drowned out by violins and cellos. But with Cuiller’s laid back harpsichord and Florence Bolton’s viola da gamba (and that special small treble viola da gamba) this was a real trio and  treat to my ears, especially so since I was up front next to the stage.

This first time will have a close second time. As I drive on Sunday morning on my way to photograph virtuoso baroque violinist Monica Huggett in Portland I will be listening to the dynamic quartet's music on my car radio. This second time will be helped by the images of the four as they performed last night. The music will provide me with fine memories. But as John Irving wrote in The World According to Garp, "Imagination is better than memory."

That Frenchman from Calvados, Bertrand Cuiller would smile and agree.

the viola da gamba

The theorbo

The treble viola da gamba

the treble viola da gamba

Garden purists, sometimes called snobs consider that the only colours in a garden should be white or blue. My wife Rosemary was one of those. At one time anything red, orange or yellow was banned from our communal battle-ground garden. Two roses softened her up. One was the very orange Rosa ‘Westerland’ and the yellow single tea rose (single tea roses are snobbish) Rosa ‘Mrs.Oakley Fisher’. 

But remnants for that desire for blue still remain with her. Anybody with a basic knowledge of gardening would know that plants with blue flowers are in short supply. This is why we have aconitums and the difficult to grow Meconopsis betonicifolia  and  delphiniums which need full sun. Full sun is just about disappeared in our garden because our neighbour’s (they rent) encroaching large trees.

Cooke selected the bluest (or closest to blue) augustinii he could find and renamed it after our famous Vancouver Blue Poppy Lady.

I had a tiny bit of my cervix cut out this morning. It was a preventative procedure to remove pre-cancerous cells. The nurse was very careful to stress that the cells were not cancer. I was a bit sad because I have always been oddly proud of my cervix. I looked forward to the end of a pap smear when the doctor would say, “Looks healthy!” Like when the dental hygienist tells you you’ve been doing a good job flossing, I felt comforted and a bit self-congratulatory. But the last time I had a pap she said, “Looks like high grade dysplasia”, hence the procedure. And I know it’s not directly my fault, but I can’t help but feel as though I should have flossed more.

I can’t think of the red shawl without thinking of mothers, and then my mother and how much I miss her. Particularly on days like today, when I have little bits of my cervix cut off, because that seems like a mom thing. My dad took me to the appointment, which I was very grateful for. And afterwards he asked me if I wanted a coffee, which I did. I didn’t really want to drink the coffee, but I wanted to hold it, and to smell it, and to remember something a barista said to me one rainy morning – that coffee heals the darkness of the pre-dawn.

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Bob Mercer – Editor – Musician - Friend

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