Heading back to Toronto
After 2 months away, Trish and I head back to Toronto this week to get ready for the next and last leg of our travels. We head off to Italy on March 31 and will spend two weeks with friends Judy and Alan over there. Then we will head to France for an additional 2 weeks before returning home and business as usual. I’m somewhat road-weary, but it has been a great experience.
I have been reviewing and considering music for the Yamaha All-Star Band which I will rehearse and direct in May. Students from across Canada have been auditioned and Steve Butterworth (Yamaha) tells me that the band looks very strong on paper. We will rehearse in Richmond BC in May and then play two concerts at MusicFest and perhaps one in Vancouver before disbanding the group. Kudos to Steve Butterworth for changing the format this year and making this a more educational effort for the students involved.
Also just heard from the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra that they want to use my arrangement of Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom for a couple of concerts and radio broadcast in May. I am glad to have anything of mine played anytime and having this little piece (it is only 4:35 in duration) played in Finland is the next best thing to being there. (Maybe the closest I ever get to being there).
It is weird though. The Hymn to Freedom arrangement was written at the behest of Doreen Rao for a special concert in New York in 1990 by a mass children’s choir (made from choirs from the US, Europe, Finland and Sweden if memory serves) and I thought the orchestral accompaniment to the choirs was a one off. (The children’s choir arrangement was done by Sepo Hovi). I didn’t do much more than write an orchestral accompaniment that would settle around the existing choral arrangement as the children had already learned the piece. If I had had free reign it would have turned out differently, but it was fun to do the work and a kick to hear 600 children and full orchestra at Carnegie Hall playing something I had written. Easily the largest ensemble I will ever write for. Now, here it is 15 years later and the chart won’t die. It has been performed by orchestras in several Canadian cities (including the Toronto Symphony) and the United States and now it will be performed overseas. You never know…