Movin' on up... soon.

This will probably be my last chance to post before The Move, so, without any more introduction, on into the neglected-blog-topics roundup:

Jack Mitchell encore performance

As he mentions in his Rhapsodic Tour travelblog, Jack will be giving an encore Toronto performance of his epic poem The Plains of Abraham at the Cameron House on June 29th as part of the Dominon Institute's Dominion Day party. Very retro, name-wise, and yet two days early. Crazy.

If you missed his last performance at Fort York, you should cancel whatever prosaic activity you've got planned and go hear him instead.

Livesquidinabox.com buyout scare

Well, it wasn't really a buyout scare, but hyperbole is a way of life here at Livesquidinabox.com. A few weeks ago, I received an email from Seth Godin, prolific author of best-selling marketing books and insightful blogger. He was very taken, it seems, with the Livesquidinabox logo artwork, and wanted to buy the rights to it for a new project of his own. The LSIAB management couldn't bear to part with our logo, tied as it is to our vision of powering the e-squid generation and leveraging italics. He did, however, take us up on our offer to create some new artwork for him, similar in style, so we look forward to seeing something squiddy over there in the near future. If he ends up putting it online somewhere, I'll point it out.

Finnish shouting choir recollections

Some of you asked for a review of the concert by Mieskuoro Huutajat the other week. They're so unusual that comparisons are very difficult. It was highly entertaining. The performance managed to be just the right length — short enough that it never became tedious but long enough that it was clear they didn't doubt their appeal. Confidence is clearly necessary for this kind of enterprise.

I think they were on for about 45 minutes. The novelty carried them through the first 15 minutes; the deadpan humour of their conductor propped us up through the middle 10, just as we were beginning to glaze over (he'd turn gravely to the audience, after a bout of rythmic shouting, to announce the next piece: "that was the national anthem of Denmark. Next, the national anthem of Belgium," or "now, a set of Finnish lullabyes"); for the rest of the concert, I found myself dipping into a chanting induced trance. I was finally roused when, around 10 seconds into what turned out to be their last piece, patches of the audience (eventually everyone) started to stand when they realized that the current shouting was a version of the Canadian national anthem. A clever way to get a standing ovation.

The other group, Rajaton was excellent; I bought 2 of their CDs, doubling the size of my collection of Finnish-language music. I didn't pick up Huutajat's album, but, much to my delight, they were selling copies of the documentary about the choir (pictured at right). A screening may well be in order (after The Move, of course).

Posted by madhava at June 23, 2005 04:41 PM