Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays Etc.

Best Wishes for 2007. Etc.

POV Part 2: Opera

So in the last post I spoke all about the city of Victoria and what I did in my spare time (of which I had very little). This post will describe the fun, challenge, etc that was my experience with the Pacific Opera Victroia's New Opera Works program (hereafter shortened to POV and NOW). This was the 5th year that POV has run NOW and the first year that they held the sessions and rehearsals in the music building on University of Victoria campus. UVic is quite a distance out of the main city core but it is on beautiful grounds. The Music building is a concrete bunker, quite obviously a leftover from the 70's but it is quite large and well staffed.

The first session held on Monday was an introductory day in which we met the fellow people in the workshop (2 other composers and 3 libretists(lyricists)) as well as the singers who were involved (many of them friends of people I knew at Western, the world of Opera and workshops is quite small). The idea behind the whole program is that 3 newspapers articles from the Sunday NY Times were selected and each composer was paired with a librettist and had to write the 1st scene (a recitative), which was due the following morning at 9am to be performed. This cyclce continue for the next two days so that eveyrbody got to work with every person and on every story. Day 2 was an aria, Day 3 a duet and Day 4, an ensemble piece, which we wrote with our orginal partner. The interetsing part was seeing how the stories developed as each partnership added to it so that when it was over we had 3, 4 scene operas about 3 stories in the headlines.

It was a fantastic experience but it was frantic. It's quite a challenge to leave UVic at 4pm and compose an entire scene for the next morning. It's also impressive to see how fast the singers involved managed to learn the music. We had a concert of everything on Saturday a few hours before I left and soon I will have a CD sent to me in the mail. Having done one workshop I can't wait to hear back from the Aldenburg/Jerwood Opera Workshop as well as the NAC(Nataional Arts Centre) Summer workshop.

In a side note... malls are insane... why don't people do their Christmas shopping earlier?
Another Victoria Picture:

POV Part 1: Victoria

I took a prop plane from Vancouver to Victoria which quite fun and then spent FIFTY DOLLARS to take a cab from Victoria Airport to the hotel. I couldn't believe how far it is from the airport to the city. That aside, Victoria is a wonderful city. It's a delightful place with quite calming weather and a much slower pace then the crazyness of Ontario. I spent my week in the Best Western Inner Harbour which was quite a good place to stay. Priced well it also included full internet service (that worked intermittenly) and a kitchenette. Having the kitchenette helped me to save quite a bit of money. The hotel included free breakfest, POV (Pacific Opera Victoria) provided lunch and the kitchenette made dinner (though I did get sick of eating hot dogs and stuff by the end of the week).

The hotel is also located relatively close to the major bus stops downtown so it was less then a 10 minute walk to grab a bus that would take me to the University of Victoria which is where most of the program occured. UVic is a beautiful campus spread out over quite a distance of the island. Located away from the city it's quite nice. Interestingly though, unlike the rapant mutant squirrels of Queens, UVic has quite a problem with rabbits. That's right, bunnies are everywhere. They apparently are such a problem that every year the university has to poison a bunch of them so they don't overbreed and die of starvation. As well, because of the bunnies, UVic had to hire more night security because Homeless people woudl come on campus and kill the bunnies for a meal. Quite interetsing to see so many bunnies:


On my way home on the first night I discovered quite the lovely surprise most of the harbour of Victoria as well as the parliment buildings have quite the light display with lots of twinkely lights on lampposts and all over the buildings. The city litteraly is glowing at night. The city of Victoria actually has quite the vibrant arts scene and I"m glad I've managed to make some contacts out there. As an added bonus I got to have a quick visit with Ming during my stopover in Vancouver on the way to Victoria, and on my way out I managed to see my cousin and her husband in Calgary during my stop over there. However my flight back was painful as it was the redeye and I was stuck next to this guy who smelled.. really bad.

Two more pictures:

Victoria Itinerary

Victoria Trip Itinerary:

Sunday December 3rd: (aboard AirCanada)
Leave Toronto Pearson(YYZ) 12:00
Arrive Vancouver(YVR) 14:05
Depart Vancouver(YVR) 16:00
Arive Victoria(YYJ) 16:27

Sunday December 3rd through Saturday December 9th:
Best Western Inner Harbour
412 Quebec Street
Victoria, BC

Saturday December 9th: (aboard WestJet)
Leave Victoria(YYJ) 17:45
Arrive Calgary(YYC) 20:03
Depart Calgary(YYC) 00:30
Arrive Toronto Pearson(YYZ) 06:17

Of course throughout this I can always be reached via email or my cell phone if anybody had a need to contact me.