Last Saturday night, we attended a performance by a baroque music group in a church on Bloor Street in Toronto. Even in the plumpest of times, the music of 17ᵗʰ and early 18ᵗʰ century Europe is both an acquired taste and a deep and narrow passion. No ERAS tour for concerti grossi. Yet there were 600 other baroque fans who stood and whistled and cheered at the concert’s end just like they did at Koerner Hall the night before for Joshua Redman.
I hadn’t heard Tafelmusik in many years and was surprised that this is their 45th anniversary. As I heard its 16 musicians playing on baroque instruments like the theorboand the viola da gamba, I was struck by how daring and different their concert was. Different sections played from different parts of the church, not once, (ho hum), but often. The cellist played standing up. (When was the last time you saw a cellist who was not sitting down?) The ‘conductor’ explained every piece before it was performed. Everyone on stage was having fun.
These days every arts organization has to ‘prove its value’ by ‘embracing innovation’ and ‘reaching out to new communities’. It’s a mad rush for relevance.
They could learn from tiny Tafelmusik, which fights for relevance every time it performs – for close to half a century now. I mean, can you name an art form that would seem more irrelevant than performing music composed for European courtiers that’s 400 years old?
And yet Tafelmusik is a giant in the musical world, one of our few world-calibre Canadian musical organizations, and a symbol of what Canadians can do on the world stage.
One reason for all this is that Tafelmusik tours.
It regularly performs in the great concert halls of the world and especially Europe, where baroque music has deep roots. Indeed, it’s performed in 350 cities in 32 countries, and on Feb. 21 will announce a full slate of concerts in venues near and very very far. And lest you think they lack virtual presence, Tafelmusik has made over 80 recordings. Eighty.
Like many Canadian arts groups, Tafelmusik does all this with duct tape and baling wire. Its annual budget is $3.5 million.
So it was disheartening to read what Kim Campbell and Viggo Mortensen had to say about the need for more Ottawa funding of Canada’s top art prizes (in their case, the Glenn Gould Prize). “…after eliminating embassy cultural event budgets and cultural attachés, Canada had a change of heart in 2017. It was Canada 150 – a unique opportunity to recapture the magic of the centennial year, and to promote Canadian-ness around the world. So Canada created a dedicated cultural events budget – an unbelievably paltry $1.75-million to be shared among 174 foreign missions.”
Then in 2019, a Senate Committee issued a report strongly encouraging more support for exporting “Brand Canada” abroad.
It fell on the usual place: deaf ears.
Then last year, “Despite this, Canada eliminated the minuscule budget for Global Affairs’ little cultural diplomacy program in the 2023 budget, ending the program.”
This means in world capitals outside Canada, Canada is becoming an endangered species. True, The Canada Council and Heritage Canada have small funding programs for tours. But gone are the days when Canadian arts groups viewed the world and not just the 49th parallel as their stage.
And what will turn our endangered species into an extinct one? Not plague or pestilence, not COVID or climate change. Or even war.
But indifference.
Come on, Ottawa. 80% of life is turning up.
Meanwhile….…
1. It’s time to learn about AI Pornography. Bellingcat is the pioneer of online investigations and ‘citizen spying.” Here they tackle a once unspeakable subject that Taylor Swift is only the latest and most famous victim of.
Speaking of unspeakable, here’s what Tucker Carlson actually said in his 23-minute speech in Calgary on “Liberating Canada.” Carlson is in Russia this week to interviewVladimir Putin. As Heather Cox Richardson noted: “ The Russian Union of Journalists has said they would gladly accept Carlson as a member.”
2. Persuasive AI. Having a machine that can change our minds could be the death of us. Why, just last week, a financial services worker in Hong Kong sent $25 million to ‘deep fake colleagues’ who joined him on a Zoom call.
Speaking of death, funerals have morphed into celebrations of life, which are becoming ‘living funerals.’
3. You should be more flighty. The Wall Street Journal calls it “an alarmingly sophisticated flight tracking app. “[It]…gives its users extremely detailed estimates about how delayed their flights will actually be.” With Flighty, you could know before the pilot.
Speaking of great apps, try these: Hyperlocal Weather, birdsong, Merlin; Flightradar24; Ship finder; and Starwalk.
4. Shooting snow. In the spirit of “How does the man who drives the snowplow drive to the snowplow?”, do you ever wonder how those hot-dogger ski films get shot?
5. Blameless ‘post-mortems’. They happen with surgeons every Monday morning in “M&M” rounds (Morbidity and Mortality), and when planes crash. Which is why most surgeries succeed and nearly all planes land safely. This brief history of blame tells the story.
6. Feeling rejected? If you want to feel that even more, just submit your article to The Journal of Universal Rejection.
7. Road painters. When these diverge in a yellow wood, don’t take either.
And when genders diverge, Britain’s Stonewall LGBTQ+ worksite not only advocates banning the words “father” and “mother” (replacing them with “primary carer”), but is pushing for employees to use more than one passcard to express their different gender identities on different days.
8. Are you a polyglot? Speaking even two languages can delay dementia by 5 years. So what if you speak 30 languages?
9. Big questions. Why do female doctors cost less than male doctors? Why does Davos feel so fake? What kind of parents push their kids to take piano lessons? What’s the importance of being single? And where is corruption coruscating?
10. A beginner’s guide to Neuralink. Here’s a quick education in Elon Musk’s latest life-changing creation which last month implanted its first wireless brain chip into a human. First, their website, from which you can sign up for their clinical trials. Next, the news about Neuralink and its vast implications, good and ill. Finally, protecting ourselves from its wretched excesses.
11. What I’m liking. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary. You remember Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, about a medical doctor and murderer who helped James Murray create the dictionary? Well, this new book is about that killer and all the other British eccentrics who helped make the first great crowd-sourcing project in the world – including two other murderers.
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SPEND AN HOUR ONLINE ON MONDAY. GET A SUMMER WHOSE GLOW WILL LAST FOREVER.
Next Monday, Feb. 12 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. ET, Jean and I are hosting an online webinar about two deeply fascinating trips to hidden places and magnetic people.
With us on the webinar will be the ‘expert’ on these trips, Andrea Mandel Campbellwhose karibu adventures is leading them.
The first adventure is hiking in a hidden mountain valley and UNESCO Geopark and World Heritage Site in the Italian Alps from June 7 to 13, 2024.
The second adventure takes you kayaking and Indigenous exploration off North Vancouver Island from Aug. 23 to 29, 2024.
Last summer, Jean and I took 10 friends for a week in karibu’s wild, sublime North Vancouver Island. As I note in my 5-star TripAdvisor review: We signed on for a kayak trip; we got so much more.” Here’s what it was like.
Now, you can take this trip this August and bring your family and friends.
karibu’s mission is clear and enticing: “For the active adventurers and nature-lovers who seek raw and real experiences in some of the world’s most spectacular wild places and hidden gems, and want to keep them that way through responsible and inclusive travel. Our carefully-curated destinations celebrate what makes life truly awesome.”
So if you could do with a heap of awesomeness, join us online on February 12th to learn about these two transformative trips.
***RSVP: Just let us know we’ll see your shiny face on the Zoom screen by emailing me at bob@ramsayinc.com. We’ll send the link by noon Monday.
Onward,
Bob Ramsay