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| Marc Destrubé & Alan Storey |
Since journalism in Vancouver became moribund some years ago the promotion of cultural events has declined. Publicists as well as journalists are now obsolete.
There is one solution to this dilemma. It is to get on cultural (music, dance, theatre, art) email lists. I am in several. Two important ones involve the leader, violinist Marc Destrubé of both the Microcosmos Quartet and La Modestine (named after Robert Louis Stevenson’s donkey on his trip through Europe).
Here are the web pages for those two groups.
Upcoming Microcosmos House Concerts and Program
I will not be missing one of the house concerts (they repeat the same concert in various homes within a week or two. It is the Microcosmos Quartet playing in the house of multi-talented artist/architect/etc Alan Storey. I wrote about a previous one at his home here.
Before I ever went to a Micrcosmos Quartet concert I would not have been caught dead listening to Béla Bártok. I found his music dissonant and cold. That all changed when I watched the quartet’s four warm musicians (with smiles on their faces) play the Bártok Quartets.
Microcosmos Quartet & Béla Bártok
These concerts are not expensive and they involve food and drinks. In the case of Storey’s house it is filled with stuff you want to ask him about.
Story is not the only NOY one-trick pony. Marc Destrubé plays both the gut-stringed baroque violin but also the modern stringed instrument. He is a born teacher so at every concert you will learn something new. It was he who told me that the horse-hair used in a violin bow is from a male horse’s tail. It seems that female horses urinate on their tales and that makes their hair unusable.
In a recent La Modestine concert, organist/harpsichordist Marco Vitale told us a fact that amazed me. It seems that in a harpsichord when the keys are pressed the instrument's mechanism goes up but is unable to come down if there is no gravity. Vitale then added, "Harpsichords cannot be played on the moon."
And because Vancouver is a city with a poor memory for its past guess who designed and built the pendulum in the Pendulum Gallery?