vol. 27: one great city
winterpeg edition
“And up above us all, leaning into sky
A golden business boy will watch the North End die
And sing I love this town
Then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim
I hate Winnipeg”
Spoiler alert: I actually love Winnipeg. This city is brimming with heritage, creativity, and culture. It’s home to Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population and that richness is felt in many of the city’s cultural outputs including Manitoba Opera, the city’s vibrant food and cafe scene, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. I’ve spent the last couple weeks (when not in rehearsal) speaking Manitoban French in Saint-Boniface, exploring breweries, bookstores, and reading the Winnipeg Free Press over coffee and cinnamon buns with my dreamy hosts. That song by The Weakerthans is beautiful and encapsulates how everyone feels about their hometown, I think. As someone who can barely tolerate hearing Toronto spoken ill of yet has a million complaints about the city, it’s easy to relate to.
It’s been a bit of a crazy couple of months, which is why this edition comes a bit later than usual. I spent a lot of January and February (inbetween choral gigs, studying for Comp exams, yoga teaching and doctoral seminars) obsessively rehearsing for a big competition at McGill with my wonderful friend and unbelievable pianist Alex Shafirov. The rehearsing paid off, as we ended up winning the competition. It was so much fun dreaming up last minute stage antics, programmatic transitions between pieces, and intricately studying and motivating every detail in each Alban Berg, Lili Boulanger, Rachmaninov, Jake Heggie, Poulenc, Handel, Massenet or Erich Korngold score. Part of the prize is we’ll be performing two concerts representing McGill in public recital series; one in Toronto next season, and one in Montreal on April 17th at 7:30pm as part of the Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur recital series at the Centre Canadien d’Architecture. (I hope you can make it!)
In Winnipeg, I’m playing Eve in Jonathan Dove’s The Walk from the Garden with the Little Opera Company of Winnipeg. It’s a one-act allegorical opera that uses the Adam and Eve story to discuss climate change, using text from the Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The piece is quite heavy, as Adam and I reminisce about how beautiful life was in the garden and how humans are responsible for ruining the earth’s beauty. Luckily there’s a bit of hope at the end but… oof it packs a punch. I’m really looking forward to sharing it with Winnipeg audiences (wish me luck for Eve’s costuming 😬).
Now that I’ve finished my comp exams, I’m finally getting a little bit of time to catch up on pleasure reading while I’m here on this contract. I’ve been reading Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries. I was originally hesitant to pick it up, since I’d read so much of it in the New York Times a few years ago (gift link). But, every line of Sheila’s writing (like almost everything I’ve read by her) hits me hard (big surprise that I’d relate to a fellow Torontonian Jewish creative/anxious 30-something divorcée…). “No one at this point in history knows how to live, so we read biographies and memoirs, hoping to get some clues,” Heti quips about the book. I’ve also been a diarist all my life, and it’s fun to see what overlaps between hers and mine. There’s a long tradition of literary journal publishing (my mum has poured over Virginia Woolf’s journals for years), so Heti is in good company. :)
Anyway, that’s all from me at the moment as it’s time to get back to rehearsal in this snowy Winterpeg of a city. :) A tiny bit more John K. Samson of The Weakerthans to round us off (since I used to listen to this song on repeat while in grade eleven and now get to live the true Weakerthans life)…
“I wait in 4/4 time
Count yellow highway lines
That you're relying on to lead you home”
Sara,
Brava! Another great piece by you. We are flying from snowy Colorado to Vancouver, BC tomorrow and I’m excited to be returning to my first Canadian home (Feb 1968). Loved the song, too—-spot on.
❤️ Ann