Saturday, December 10, 2011

From our garden December 9 2011

Mambrú

Mambrú se fue a la guerra,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
Mambrú se fue a la guerra,
no se cuándo vendrá,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
no se cuándo vendrá.

Vendrá para la pascua,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
vendrá para la pascua,
o para Navidad,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
o para Navidad.

La Navidad se pasa,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
la Navidad se pasa
y Mambrú no vuelve más,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
Mambrú no vuelve más.

Mambrú se ha muerto en guerra,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
Mambrú se ha muerto en guerra,
lo llevan a enterrar,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
lo llevan a enterrar.

Con cuatro oficiales,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
con cuatro oficiales
y un cura sacristán,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
y un cura sacristán.

Arriba de su tumba,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
arriba de su tumba
un pajarito va,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
un pajarito va.

Cantando el pío pío,
chiribín, chiribín, chin chin,
cantando el pío pío,
y el pío pío pa,
ja ja ja, ja ja ja,
y el pío pío pa.


The above song, one I sang often as a boy in Argentina and in Mexico, is related to the connections between the former Spanish colonies in the New World and the 18th century War of Spanish Succession. It seems it was composed after the battle of Malplaquet (1709) in which the English defeated the French. Even though the French had lost they thought that the great English general, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough had died in the battle. The happy song is dedicated to him. The song's melody appears to be even older. According to Chateaubriand it is of Arabic origin and it came to France during the crusades. The song was popular during Louis XVI’s reign. One of the Dauphin’s maids used to sing it. From Versailles it eventually reached Spain via the Bourbons but the name Marlborough deteriorated to the easier to pronounce Mambrú. It was particularly popular with little girls who sang it during games of hopscotch.

A rough translation of the song begins with the line

Mambrú went to war and we do not know when he will return.


One of the lines is appropriate to our coming season:

He might come back for Easter or for Christmas.
Christmas is over and he does not return, He will never return.

And of course we children were completely captivated by that funny line of nonsense:

Chiribín, chiribín chin chin.



All the above is but an overture and justification for placing a scan of some of the plants in our late December garden. During the Peninsular War, when Wellington finally landed with his troops in Portugal and moved into Spain, he, little by little, pushed the French out of Spain. He sent the King of Spain packing (Napoleon’s brother Joseph), who few would know went to live in exile and in splendor in New Jersey! This took time and many of the battles were bloody. The Spaniards prefer to think that the French left in a hurry without saying goodbye. My guess is that it was King Joseph who left in a hurry.

To this day despedirse a la francesa (to leave without saying goodbye) is an expression we use in Spanish speaking countries to describe rude people while at the same time (those of us who know) twist the noses of the French to remind them of their defeat! On the other hand you never want to remind the Spaniards how all the gold of Peru and Mexico went down the drain, and the Spanish empire, too, in their long and eventual defeat in Flanders in the 17th century.

Our plants have been sensitive to manners and this batch in my scan are of plants that in spite of a wet and cold late fall are saying goodbye to us in a most polite fashion.

audio version of Mambrú

Friday, December 09, 2011

Sara-Jeanne Hosie

I have been married for 43 years but every once in a while I make this statement, “I would leave my Rosemary on the spot for Charlotte Rampling or Molly Parker.”

It is a kind of joke in the family but they have no idea on how serious I could be about it!  I must now add the name of Sara-Jeanne Hosie to that list.

Last June I had an inkling of this sentiment when my granddaughter Rebecca and I saw a production of A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline at the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage. Both Rebecca and I were dazzled by Sara-Jeanne Hosie’s performance. From afar, somewhere in the middle row, I experienced that pristine, almost forgotten feeling of noticing that new girl in the front row when I might have been in a grade 8 class back in the early days of the Ed Sullivan Show. I wrote about it here.

I must report that I felt a bit of trepidation in my anticipation of meeting up, my granddaughter in tow, with Sara-Jeanne Hosie last Thursday afternoon before a performance of White Christmas. It was 6:15 and Arts Club publicist Nicole McLuckie (a charming and beautiful redhead) had sent, she had other commitments, her colleague Laura Shand (an equally charming and beautiful redhead) led us to the front row of the empty Stanley where soon enough Ms Hosie showed up. I was first surprised that she had very short hair. She wears a beautiful flowing wig for when she sings the torch song Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me. I must add that the dress is very tight and very glamorous. I had to enquire.

This is what Hosie told me, “There is such a quick costume change that somebody (she did not mention who the lucky lad was) has to zip me up backstage in the wings. It is tight.”

I must pause here to say that my impression of Hosie back in June when she was Patsy Cline, was reinforced by her speaking voice. She is a mezzo-soprano (with a presence and diction, and not speech impediment I might add, that would not make her 21st century material for CBC Radio job, alas!) who as little girl, when answering the phone people confused her for her mother. It was as a young girl, around 9 when she had her first big chance of her show business career. She was invited by Ann Mortifee for a trip to show the Canadian flag, and some Canadian singing and dancing, too, in the old Soviet Union. Unlike Americans our Canadian contingent handed out an extremely rare and prized commodity to the young people – bubble gum instead of chocolate.

When Ms Hosie talked to me and looked at me with her big black eyes, I was thinking, “Charlotte and Molly, move over.”

She was most gracious and warm with Rebecca who immediately fell under her spell. They both sat down to chat while I put away my photographic equipment.

It is my hope that someday Rebecca might appreciate these recent opportunities as much as I do appreciate in meeting Sara-Jeanne Hosie in the flesh.



This is supposed to be a review of White Christmas so I will proceed.

Any film or show that features anything like a top hat, a cane and tap dancing is enough to make me close my eyes or turn off the TV. Of late I have come to tolerate musicals (so many do have that top hat song and dance act) and grudgingly I am accepting tap dancing as a necessary evil if it will bring me the likes of Sara-Jeanne who had the class not to tap dance (everybody else did except, too, Allan Gray who plays General Henry Waverly). Hosie did inform me that she was itching to tap dance as she dances well! Luckily for me she was not given that opportunity!

The dance numbers, featuring lots of  tap dancing, were very well choreographed by Valerie Easton whom I first met as a jazz dancer in the early 80s at the CBC’s variety show for which I was the hired stills photographer. I asked Hosie about this fact that actors and actresses now must not only act but they must sing and dance (and if the recent performances of the Penelopiad attest) now are making actors, and actresses learn to also play instruments. Hosie said this is a recent development.

Watching and listening to a musical at the Arts Club (and also at the Vancouver Playhouse) means that the musical accompaniment will be an excellent and professional band of local musicians. The orchestra had Bruce Kellett and Doug Balfour on keyboards, Graham Boyle on percussion (I remember him from years ago that the Classical Joint) Henry Christian trumpet (did he play with Tommy Bank’s Orchestra back in my CBC days?), Tom Colclough on clarinet/saxophone and Neil Nicholson on trombone.

This White Christmas shared with my 14 year old granddaughter, who was elengantly dressed to the teeth (I wore a suit) will be a Christmas that I will not forget. The thrill of having met Sara-Jeanne Hosie who made me feel like a crazed and besotted young teenager is something that will linger for a long time.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Guest blog by Rebecca Anne Stewart, 14.




Christmas isn't what it’s supposed to be anymore. So many people have this idea that Christmas is about the presents, or that it is a time you don't have to wake up feeling groggy to go to school. I usually wake up around 5:30 to straighten my hair and apply makeup. I can skip that during Christmas.

To me Christmas is about sharing and really spending as much quality time with the people I love. The Arts Club Theatre production of White Christmas (my first viewing but the Arts Club’s 100th anniversary showing, on opening night, Wednesday December 7) really captured that aspect of one of our most famous holidays.

The setting and costumes were spot-on, reminiscing the fifties and its lore, from the glamorous dresses to the dapper men in suits it felt like I had time travelled, everything felt so real. But I will have to ask my grandfather to tell me all about Ed Sullivan and his show.

The music, composed by Irving Berlin, was something new to me. I had never heard of him before and I felt it was a gift to get to hear him for the first time. It’s feel-good music that people of all ages can enjoy. It brought tears to the eyes of the older people and made little kids happily clap and dance in their seats.

Sara-Jeanne Hosie (I first discovered her in her warm impersonation of Patsy Cline last June when my grandfather and I saw her in Dean Regan’s production of A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline at the Granville Island Stage),  plays the dazzling but straight-laced Betty Haynes, in White Christmas. I had the opportunity to talk to her before a performance in a strangely silent, empty and dark Stanley, that the best part of being in White Christmas was that at the ending scene when the company sang White Christmas. She said, "You really reach out to the audience when you’re up on stage, and you can see people with tears running down their cheeks and you can see families come together and just enjoy themselves."

I feel that White Christmas really did all that for me plus it gave me a warm feeling that every Christmas should give. As I said before, Christmas is about sharing and the Arts Club Theatre really shared something special with me this holiday season.


White Christmas at the Stanley Industrial Stage plays until December 28, 2011

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Rachel Ditor - Dramaturg

My wife Rosemary and I went to the opening of the Arts Club Theatre’s production of The Patron Saint of Stanley Park last year. We enjoyed it, particularly as the story, by Hiro Kanagawa, was a new one and Vancouver was central to it. It was about Christmas and much more so, as no Christmas songs or carols were featured even though Santa made a brief appearance! But we quickly forgot about the play and it became a haze of many other plays that we saw after and before.

But not so the second time around. You see it has all to do with the fact that last Monday, I went to this year’s opening of it at the Granville Island Review Stage, with my granddaughter Rebecca, 14. She cried before we got to Granville Island and then she cried during the performance. This will be a play that will live in my memory for a long time and I could almost guarantee in my granddaughter’s too.

The path to Monday’s  tearful affair began a week before when Rebecca and I went to visit the Arts Club Theatre Company’s resident dramaturg, Rachel Ditor, at her nicely appointed and most intimate apartment, a stone throw’s from the Stanley Theatre.

We both quickly found out what a dramaturg does. The shortest definition would be that it is a person (most diplomatic and patient a person) who is the go-between a playwright and the needs of a theatre company and its director. It seems that this process, in some cases can go on for five years. This patience was manifest in the ease that Ditor explained to my Rebecca what she does. In particular she said something that left me perplexed. She said that in working with The Patron Saint of Stanley Park’s creator, Hiro Kanagawa, she found him not very sentimental! And yet the play is full of the sentimentality of the bygone days before Guinness money built the First Narrow’s Bridge over Burrard Inlet. I did not want to ask as she was talking to Rebecca and not to me. I was Rebecca’s photographer! Rebecca was in her best behaviour and she almost matched Ditor’s sophisticated presence. Rebecca's poise was to fade away by Monday.



The day of the play when I went to pick up Rebecca there was a great operatic type of hullabaloo that resulted in my daughter taking possession of Rebecca’s digital texting device. She cried and stomped her feet in the car and kicked every one of the flexible orange posts (with her new UGG type boots, natch!) all the way from the parking lot to the Review Stage.

By the time we sat down by the bar and my friend Christopher Dafoe and his wife Carol came up to me to say hello, Rebecca was a mess of streaked makeup and surly silence.

Things picked up a tad when we sat down as CBC’s Margaret Gallagher (Hot Air) was next to her. There is no way anybody could possibly be serious and depressed with her around! Then the lights went out and the play began.

I must at this point place here a disclaimer; I happen to love passionately anything connected with the DeHavilland DCH-2 Beaver float plane. The Patron Saint of Stanly Park has two ephemeral protagonists. One is completely invisible but audible, the De Havilland Beaver and the other appears as a ghost, Derik Metz. The latter you can hear in a perfectly clear, wonderful, believable and soothing voice. Derek Metz plays the ghost father of the two angst-ridden children (one a teenager, Valsy Bergeron as Jennifer and Joseph Gustafson as her younger brother Josh). As an aside, Derik Metz would never be able to get a job in that new and “edgy” 21st century CBC as he does have that wonderful voice, and, worst of all, shows no sign of a speech impediment!

Since Skookum Pete, nicely and gruffly played by Brian Linds, has special connections (a sort of prototypical form of Wi-Fi) with De Havilland Beavers flying over Stanley Park, I immediately connected with Kanagawa’s play.

Had I moved to live in North Vancouver years ago I would now be dead. I do not live in North Van! Every time I do cross (watch out, I drive a silver 2007 Chevrolet Malibu) the First Narrows Bridge I look up when I listen to the unmistakable put-put noise of the Beaver’s Pratt & Whitney radial engine. Long ago I would have crashed my car!

Hiro Kanagawa's play has everything a Christmas play should have. It is sentimental, wonderful and it has a sort of happy ending. But there is more to it beyond special effects that rival the old BC Hydro Building lit up at night 30 years ago.

It has all to do with the nuclear family of the two children and Jillian Fargey as their mother Marcia. Their father, Kevin has not returned since a trip up (he was a commercial pilot flying float planes) on Christmas Eve a year before. The family is attempting to cope and Fargey is the patient and understanding mother (all torn up inside, nonetheless) who tries to rein in her children from their despair and loss.

Fargey seemed exactly like my ever patient daughter Hilary, and Josh, my younger granddaughter Lauren who Jennifer (my Rebecca) maligns and mistreats as only teenagers can. Josh and Jennifer fought over a laptop which brought not so fond memories of a trip to Texas in July with the two girls in the back seat of our Malibu fighting for the very same thing.

Watching Valsy Bergeron’s performance (as she dealt with her brother and mother) was exactly what I had experienced moments before at Rebecca’s home. It was an uncanny parallel beyond any imitation. I was afraid to look at Rebecca. I wondered what she was thinking as the drama unfolded on stage.

Kevin (Derek Metz) comes back in several shapes and forms to talk and set straight his family. It was when he was talking to Jennifer (Valsy Bergeron) that tears began to run down Rebecca.

After the show Rebecca and Rachel Ditor exchanged on the moments when they both had cried. I asked Rebecca what she thought of Bergeron’s performance. Marcia kept pushing back Jennifer’s long hair, obviously straightened every morning as most girls of that age do these days. And Jennifer would defiantly pull it forward again. Her makeup was identical to my Rebecca’s.

Rebecca said that her performance was over-the-top and not believable. I begged to differ so I enquired as to Valsy Bergeron’s age. She is 15.

The Patron Saint of Stanley Park will not only entertain and transfer lots of Christmas spirit and cheer in your direction but it will also teach you a few most relevant things if there are any teenagers in your family. As I left the play I thought that only three years before I had photographed my Rebecca holding Lilly the Cat in front of a Tiko Kerr painting that featured a DeHavilland Beaver taking off from the very area that our ghostly Kevin did a few Christmas Eve’s ago.

Perhaps Rebecca’s play-induced catharsis will soften her up a bit and while she might not pose with that stuffed cat, like the children in the play, she will return to me happy again, with no kicking and crying and with her digital device tucked away for a while.


The Patron Saint of Stanley Park at the Revue Stage in Granville Island plays until December 24.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

A guest blog by my granddaughter Rebecca Stewart, 14.

Dramaturge (DRAMA-TURGE) is a professional position within a theatre or opera company that deals mainly with research and development of plays or operas. This is a definition I found on the oh-so-popular Wikipedia. It tells you in a nutshell what a dramaturge does, but I was still left with questions like, "What's the importance of a dramaturge?" I asked my english teacher. She responded with a dramatic, “What?" I was left pondering until I actually got the opportunity to meet one of these mythical creatures we call a dramaturge.

Rebecca Stewart & Rachel Ditor

Rachel Ditor, a warm and friendly woman, is the literary manager at our beloved Arts Club Theatre. She is a dramaturge who has been, over the past twenty years, working with companies all over Canada such as Playwrights Workshop Montreal, The National Arts Center and the Banff Centre's Playwrights' Colony. Along with her talent to help writers produce masterpieces, Ms. Ditor teaches dramaturgy at the University of British Columbia..

I had the pleasure of being able to meet Ditor at her home and ask her questions about being a dramaturg.[ some dramaturges like to write their profession in the French fashion, dramaturge, but Ditor opts for the German version, dramaturg.]


Rebecca Stewart: How would you explain what a dramaturg does?

Rachel Ditor: A dramaturg works with a playwright like an editor works with an author. The dramaturg will re read a playwright's work and give him or her advice on how to make it a masterpiece. Sometimes this process can take up to five years.

RS: What's your favorite part of being a dramaturg?

RD: I love working with writers. I learn a lot from writers. To help the writer I have to be in the know of what they are writing about, so I learn about many new things. With playwright Anosh Irani I had to watch countless Bollywood films and even more documentaries on the brothels of Mumbai.

RS: Could you pick a play you really enjoyed being a Dramaturg for?

RD: I got to work with Daniel MacIvor on a play called His Greatness about Tennessee Williams’s brief stay in Vancouver years ago. I really look up to MacIvor and admire him. Working with him was exciting.

RS: If there was a downside to being a dramaturg what would it be?

RD: Paper cuts! I deal with so much paper I am constantly getting them. I also get sore
eyes and stiff shoulders from reading so much. I would have to say that the worst part though is when a playwright is not happy with the final product; I feel it's my fault. Seeing an artist's ego crushed is heartbreaking.

RS: What plays are you working on at the moment ?

RD: Do you want what I have got? - A Craigslist Cantata by Bill Richardson and Veda Hill. I really recommend you come to see it next year.

RS: Jobs can be stressful, so what do you do to unwind?

RD: I come home, where it is quiet. I cook or maybe just lie on the couch and look out the window. I listen to music [During the interview we were listening to Charlie Haden's Nocturne with pianist Ernesto Rubalcava]. When I'm off work I can let my mind wander.  It’s really important to me to have that peace, some time to do nothing, it’s what keeps me sane, and creative.   
RS: To finish off, what's your connection with the play The Patron Saint of Stanley Park [now playing at the Arts Club's Granville Island Review Stage until December 24]?

RD: I am the dramaturg of that play. I got to work with playwright Hiro Kanagawa who is a joy. He has a great imagination, is intelligent and is a wonderful story teller.

Monday, December 05, 2011

Guest blog by Pacific Baroque Orchestra violinist Paul Luchkow.




“That guy looks just like a Violinist...”


Nearly 20 years ago, I was riding my bicycle on a grey Vancouver day and found myself stopped at an intersection. Waiting for the light to turn green in my favour, the words came out of nowhere...

The voice belonged to Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, and caught me completely off guard. I had heard of him but we had not yet met, and his manner of introduction was different enough from the norm that I was initially rather confused. I was indeed a violinist and had recently started playing with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, where, it turned out, Alex had seen me perform, but as most violinists are not easily identified out of their natural habitats, and because Alex has a knack for keeping people guessing, I was in unknown territory.

This encounter was the first of many with Alex, who’s secret business, I believe, is to make connections. I bumped into him on a street corner downtown recently and watched as he stood, holding court—chatting with one person, calling hello to another, waving to someone else who was off in a hurry. Alex seems to know everyone and has built a very interesting and diverse community around himself. Part of that community involves the PBO where he has served on the society's board, photographed the orchestra's musicians and been an interestingly quirky audience member for years. (Just ask him about our shoes!)

As the orchestra begins to rehearse for this coming weekend's concerts, I think of how being in community with the audience, with whom I now have made many of my own connections, makes the experience much richer for me as a performer. In many concert experiences, performers and audience are not given the chance to mingle and get to know one another. Of course, this can be more or less extreme, but one thing that I find really special about PBO is the opportunity we have (and that we make) to meet and get friendly with our audience.

The connection to our audience is an important one: in concert we are engaged in two-way communication, receiving as much from our listeners as we give. We respond to the energy in the audience much as the audience responds to what is happening on stage. You, dear concert goers, help to create the music too!

I love my job as a musician very much and it is especially because of our audience that I find it so rewarding. I enjoy working with my playing friends and colleagues, and hearing a work of music come together in rehearsal is a very special experience, but it's all for nothing if we don't have an audience to share it with.

I invite you to come and be a part of our audience this weekend and experience it for yourself!


The Pacific Baroque Orchestra

Fatto per la Notte di Natale – The Real Italian Baroque Christmas
Date: December 10, 11, 2011
Time: Saturday Dec. 10, West Van United Church ~ 7:30pm (Please note venue change)
Sunday Dec. 11, St. Mark’s Church ~ 7:30pm (Please note venue & time change)

Sunday, December 04, 2011

Paul Luchkow

For me and I would imagine for anybody else, Christmas is a tradition one spends with one’s family and friends. Since 1996 our tradition has been to spend it with my friends of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra. Through thick and thin, through good times and, now in these times of  economic adversity, they manage to prepare us, in the true meaning of the Catholic word, Advent, for a festive and glorious Christmas.

They do this with artful bowing of baroque string instruments and with the virtuoso striking of the keys of a harpsichord by its maestro, Alexander Weimann. I have to admit here that the harpsichord until recently was, for me, a humdrum instrument that I tolerated with a detached acceptance as the only way I could listen to my beloved baroque strings. But that all changed when Weimann, in his intimate pre-concert talks convinced me that the harpsichord was one of the instruments that may have ushered in, well in advance (by at least 225 years), the era of improvised jazz.

If you think that the folks at the Pacific Baroque Orchestra who this Saturday, and Sunday in a concert called Fatto per la Notte di Natale – The Real Italian Baroque Christmas will be playing the likes of such composers as Corelli, Sammartini, Manfredini, Antonacci, Ferrandini among others you might understand my excitement. Except for Corelli (one of my favourite Italian masters of the Baroque era) and for a smattering here and there of Manfredini in my past, the other guys are absolutely new to me. Jesus is coming sans Messiah!

Alexander Weimann

When I think of my attraction for baroque music, the Pacific Baroque Orchestra kind, I think of music that is played by a compact orchestra where I can discern the individual sound of each instrument. I think of the fact that the music was composes (the early Baroque) during some of the most trying moments in history when religious wars went through Europe like a plague. I think of the later Baroque as music that was composed in the Age of Enlightenment when mankind thought everything was possible through knowledge. I think that this Age of Enlightenment in Spanish so aptly called el Siglo de Las Luces, the century of light. It is light that we need in those early weeks of our rainy Vancouver.

It means that when I sit with my family, but a few couple of meters from the orchestra, this will be music I will be hearing for the first time. I see no better way to usher in my advent into Christmas and the subsequent planning for the brand new year that follows.

If the music were not enough, there is the is the fact that I will be facing my friends of the orchestra. I have followed them through the years. I have seen them change haircuts and names (bass player Nan Mackie recently asserted to me that she was now Natalie). I have noticed (before others) the signs of pregnancy and shared with them the excitement of firstborns. In a recent phone call PBO violist and wife of Paul Luckow told me (she was very excited), " Wait till you see Paul's new glasses!" 

But best of all it means that I will be able to gaze on violinist Paul Luckkow’s smile as he plays his violin with a skill the belies that easy smile. It means that I will think of his sons Max and Oscar and his violist wife Glenys and all the pleasures that they, the Pacific Baroque Orchestra and I will share in coming years.

And of course there is that harpsichord, that exciting harpsichord, too!

 The Pacific Baroque Orchestra
Fatto per la Notte di Natale – The Real Italian Baroque Christmas

Date: December 10, 11, 2011
Time: Saturday Dec. 10, West Van United Church ~ 7:30pm (Please note venue change)
Sunday Dec. 11, St. Mark’s Church ~ 7:30pm (Please note venue & time change)

The Harpsichord and Theatre
The Harpsichord maker
Don Giovanni, The Preacher, The Musical Director & The Real Estate Agent