Music In the Morning

What a morning!

The rain was coming down in buckets and it was the day I had promised to meet Chaya at the Orpheum to see the CBC Radio Orchestra. She had some comp tickets and had offered one to me and one to a friend of hers.

The driving wind soon took the sail out of my dollar store relic of an umbrella and after a few blocks there were two new silver spines sticking out where the umbrella should have been.

By the time I got there, the rain had soaked through my shoes and my feet were wet but it was great to sit in the ambience of this historic theatre listening to live music again.

I had seen the CBC orchestra a few years back with friend Herb at the Chan Centre and really liked it, but the main reason I thought I might like to go today (other than simply hanging out with my daughter) was that Jane Coop was one of the 3 featured pianists.

I have heard her on record but never live, and what a skinny (think Uma Thurman in cropped hair) powerhouse…kinda cute too! She walked out in a knee length gold jacket (not to be outdone by pianist Janina Fialkowska, who, as Shelagh Rogers the CBC host noted, was dressed like Mozart).

She was debuting a piece by contemporary composer Ramona Luengen and after a virtuoso performance almost knocked herself off the piano stool with the last chord-stroke, she hit the keyboard so hard. She teetered backward momentarily and the audience took a collective breath, but she quickly regained her balance, stood, and bowed to generous applause mixed with delighted laughter at the brief comic relief (classical music concerts are sometimes so stiff and formal that they become boring, at least in my experience.)

For me the rest of the concert (piano concertos by Mozart and Mendelssohn) was a bit of a doze but it was the first of this season’s Music in the Morning series and the place was packed, mostly with seniors whose children had treated them, as my daughter had treated me…it could easily have been Saturday night.

By the time I got home I was thoroughly soaked, but they are replacing the hallway carpets in the building and there was such a racket going on I decided that I would take a bus to Army & Navy and check out their winter jacket sale. I got as far as my front sidewalk, and it was still pouring so hard that I went grocery shopping instead.

East Hastings near Main in a rain storm is not one of my favorite nature walks. So I walked up to the Safeway at Cardero and Davie.

The wet streets were littered with multicolored leaves and nearly deserted and so when I saw the thin, bearded man in the beige coat approaching, swinging a stick and singing, my attention was immediately attracted. I didn’t look too closely though as soon as I realized that every second word was a curse, and heard the anger mixed with melody.

Yet, there was no mistake…he was singing!