John Eliot Gardiner - 1980 - Don Harder, Paul Luchkow & Glenys Webster - June 2002

When I was teaching high school in Mexico City in the early 70s my students thought I could read lips as they knew that my mother was almost deaf. I could not read lips but could hear my students talking at the back of the class because I had a keen ear. I have not lost it.

In 2006 there was a week of little concerts at the CBC’s Studio One celebrating the 250 birthday of Mozart. In one of them the Borealis Quartet was playing. I was near the front row. I noticed something amazing. If I looked at the violinist I could hear the sound of the violin coming straight to me. And this was the case for the other instruments.

I asked CBC Classical Music Producer, George Laverock to tell me about  the excellence of the sound of the room. He told me it had no parallel in Canada and that its only competition was a room in Los Angeles.

Architect  Paul Merrick, who built the Vancouver CBC building in 1975, and won a Governor General’s Award for it, recently sent me an email with some info on Studio One:

To get to your specific question regarding Studio One, I recall that it was in particular to have been a performance studio- with separate public access from outside, and having qualities suited to a chamber orchestra, or a public debate, but accommodating of course , the ability to support a television production of whatever was at hand.

The television cameras at that time- the early days of television- were very large, needed a high level of light- from sources that generated a great deal of heat, that required a great deal of cooling, that had to be delivered VERY quietly - therefore the very large ducts, with the fan units as remote as possible, therefor the form of the building.

Beyond that it is an extrusion- with the land left over at the south being seen as expansion space.

He did not add the beauty of the wood panelling on the west side of the room.

CBC Vancouver Studio One (my early 2006 blog)

Former CBC sound man, Don Harder, answered my question on his take on Studio One quite honestly:

I really can’t comment on the current state of Studio One. I haven’t stepped in the door for about 8 years.

I do know that they occasionally rent it out for film scoring, so it still can operate as a recording studio. Last I heard, the big digital console was getting pretty flakey. Those things need a lot of maintenance, and the Corp doesn’t have many guys left who can keep it in shape.

All the Corp has used it for is all staff meetings.

Violinist Marc Destrubé (he was the Concertmaster of the Former CBC Vancouver Orchestra) told me, “Make sure that if you write about the studio that you write the number as One. It is Studio One.”

On May 6 1980 I went to a concert called A Little Lunch Music at the Orpheum with my two daughters Alexandra and Hilary. It was the CBC Vancouver Orchestra headed by John Eliot Gardiner (in Vancouver until 1983). Gardiner introduced  us and to Vancouver the sound of baroque string instruments. I wrote about that here.

I had one interesting photographic assignment around that time which was to photograph the orchestra rehearsing at Studio One. I also had the delightful experience of taking photographs of Gardiner by a harpsichord.

The Ornamental Twiddles of a Baroque Orchestra

Few now in Vancouver know who Gardiner was or that his project beginning in August of 2000 was to record every one of Bach’s Cantatas. This he did.

While Studio One is a former jewel in the Crown Corporation, I cannot avoid mentioning the other jewel, not a former in the least. It is Don Harder, the busiest sound man in our city, and who knows where, beyond.

I like to brag that the CBC had the best hockey cameraman in Canada (thus in the world) in Michael Varga who started working at the CBC in 1973.

Michael Varga

And I like to brag about Don Harder has to be the best sound recording engineer anywhere in our nation.

Don Harder - The Distillation of Perfect Sound

Some years ago Gidon Kremer and a group came to Vancouver and played Ástor Piazzolla’s little opera María de Buenos Aires at the Chan. By then I had Kremer’s CD recording. By services rendered, the CBC gave me a recording of the performance done by Don Harder. Harder’s version is lively and wonderful (and better). In 1986 when Piazzolla played at Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island you can guess who recorded that performance. For further services rendered I have it too!

Ten years ago, at a home concert in West Van, I was sitting next to Harder. The music was very loud. I told Harder that it had to be at least 120 decibels. Harder took out his iPhone and corrected me, “It’s 145.”

Few might know that when Cecilia Bartoli sang in Vancouver she found Harder so competent that she asked him if he would accompany her to Europe to record. Our ever-faithful to the CBC Don Harder turned her down.

I called Marc Destrubé and asked him to confirm stories I had heard that Studio One is now used for storage. While we were talking he went to the Studio One website and gave me the real goods. While it would seem the space is no longer used for little concerts as I was told by Paul Merrick, it is indeed used.

Here is the website: Studio One

 For me the real tragedy here is Don Harder’s confession that he has not been in the Studio One for 8 years. 

The two jewels should meet again. 

A Lot of Hot Air

The Densification of Paul Merrick's CBC 

The Children of the Mother Corp are now orphans

Paul Merrick's CBC - I love the little light leaks!

In Argentina we say that the devil knows more not because he is the devil but because he is an old man. At age 80 I qualify.

In the late 80s as an Artist/Teacher for the Outreach Program of Emily Carr I went to many places in the interior. Twice I went to the mining town of Cassiar. They would never mention what they mined there as it was the toxic asbestos.

Cassiar - the Product

Alex in Cassiar. BC  late 80s

I was experimenting with a photographic technique called Extended Range Night Photography:

Empty Tomb 

High Dynamic Range the Easy Way

The process (it could only be done with b+w film) involved using Kodak Tri-X exposed at f-5.6 for 35 seconds, right after sundown. I then had to develop the film in a slow working developer called Kodak Technidol. This resulted in pictures in which the highlights (such as street lights) were not completely overexposed while still holding some detail in the shadows. Of course now in this 21^st century digital cameras can mimic and get shadow detail without blowing out the highlights.

 When Vancouver Magazine art director Chris Dahl found out of this he directed me to photograph all the buildings involving architect Ned Pratt and his associates (Ron Thom and Paul Merrick) for a Sean Rossiter article on Ned Pratt. While I was known as a portrait photographer thanks to Dahl & Rossiter I took lots of architecture photographs, may with my swivel lens panoramic cameras.

Sean Rossiter - A Constant Ache in My Heart 

Sean Rossiter - my obituary

Paul Merrick's CBC

In the process I fell more in love with Merrick’s CBC building and in particular with his pyramidal skylights.

Alas in all the modifications in these years to the building that won a Governor General’s Award the skylights are gone.

 If we had serious, critical journalism in Vancouver and if Sean Rossiter were alive I would propose we work on an essay pointing out how Vancouver has no respect for its older buildings and much less for the architects that built them.

The Main Post Office, of later International Style had extremely high ceilings in which I could imagine clouds being up there. There were banks of the loveliest stainless steel postal boxes. These are gone. The building has the original façade and the inside has been gutted for the Amazon landlords. I jokingly point out with tongue not so firmly in cheek that the CBC might one day be the Google Building.

Few now know that the original Eaton’s on Granville and Robson that became Sears and then Nordstrom’s was designed by eminent LA architect (a fellow Argie) Cesar Pelli (died in 2019) and that one of the black towers on Georgia is also his.

I wonder if anybody now has any idea who Bruno Freschi, Arthur Erickson, Ned Prat, Ron Thom and Bing Thom did for a living.

We live in a city with a poor memory and lack of respect for its past. My friend, architect Abraham Rogatnick, told me a year before he died, “I am not long for this world and I am glad.”

 At age 80 I concur.

7mm snail from my garden - 9 March 2023

My departed friend Mark Budgen was always ahead of his time. It was back in the other century that saw what was going to happen to communication and how it would eventually become communication interruptus.

The Age of Missed Communication

Mark Budgen

I called him one day. He answered, “Alex I cannot talk to you because I am monitoring a fax.” More recently a Guadalajara friend answered, “I am at my ophthalmologist’s. I‘ll call you later.”

If the fax was the cutting edge tech equipment of the past century and now forgotten except for a few doctors and lawyers I believe that the scanner is on its way to oblivion and to share it with the fax.

For me my Epson Perfection V700 Photo is equipment in my office as important as all my film cameras and my two digital Fujis.

With the scanner I have now 3000 of my garden plant scans that I call scanographs  which makes me a scanographer.

Senecio cineraria & Rosemary's yellow crocus 9 March 2023

Rebecca came to help me clean the garden today in preparation for spring. While at it I discovered this 7mm little snail shell.

No photographer that I know has a macro lens that could possibly do justice to this lovely little beast. The modern scanner exceeds the capability of what used to be our school microscopes.

 In Spanish a snail is called a caracol. The word also means a spiral.

With the International Women’s Day about over today 8 March 2023, for me there is only one woman in my thoughts. That is Rosemary.

It occurred to me that in this century the concept of femininity is far gone or modified beyond recognition to a man who is now 80..

My Rosemary was feminine. She was, obvious to me, a lovely woman. I would like to add another qualifying term for her. She was a dainty woman. She was small, slim and her voice was just right.

Because my mother tongue is Spanish, and with time in my hands, I decided to think of a term in Spanish, equal to that of dainty.

There is no word. The closest is delicado (male) and delicada (female). The word is usually connected to someone of delicate health. Delicado is also a brand of oval cigarettes. After those connections I drew a blank except that Delicado is a Bossa Nova song. And there is another song by the same name composed by Colombian Tito Ávila:

Como estatua de marfil

Suave y frágil at tocar

Yo te acaricio tiernamente

Yo sé bien que tu serás mi suerte

Like a marble statue

Soft and fragile at touch

I caress you tenderly

I know well that you will be my luck

(my translation)

Those lyrics are for me all about my Rosemary. She was indeed my luck in meeting her and any success in my life is due to her.

Returning to dainty, everything she did, she did in a small way but somehow the results were always big.

While I am a liberal at heart I cling to the idea that we should keep sexually specific words like aviatrix, dominatrix and even that Pan American Airways era term, stewardess.

 In that past century, when we men could use the word lady, there was this, "A lady is a woman that makes a man feel like a gentleman."

To those words I must add dainty and I would be insulted if someone were to call me a dainty man!

Sarah 5 March 2023

Age has been a stigma for a long time. In Latin American countries we have a deprecative term for a woman in her 40s. We call her a cuarentona. While one could use the term cincuentona for a woman in her 50s the expression is hardly used.

In our neck of the woods we have an equivalent expression we write or tell women of a certain age, "You still look good."

When I was about to be 40 I told my Rosemary that I was going to get an asymmetrical haircut. She warned me, “Remember you are about to be 40.”

My new friend Sarah (she of the luminous skin) is about to be 40 and wanted me to take her photograph. I suggested that we use the theme of becoming 40 in our photo session.

There is nothing worse than the photographer that insists one doing stuff only in his way. Luckily in my years I have learned to listen. She posed in my piano room on the red psychiatric couch. We took some pictures with the piano.  She plays  the piano. At one point she leaned on the top of the piano and suggested I take a photograph. There are other lovely photographs of her but I will start this blog with that unlit shot taken with my Fuji X-E3. Somehow it conveys the state of her being as she prepares to be a cuarentona.

Many of the portraits I took of her involve an on-purpose-severe-under-exposure with that Fuji. I discovered this a few years ago and I now use it as part of my multi techniques. The last photograph  one here is an example.