Back From Toronto

I got back from Toronto last night so I can give a bit of an update on the project. First some background: over the last few years I had developed a good working relationship with a recording engineer down here in Mexico. Ken Basman was originally from Toronto and was an outstanding jazz guitarist. He was also a very talented recording engineer with his own studio and an impressive collection of microphones. Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago so I have been looking for an alternative. I just completed a piece for violin and guitar, Dark Dream, and there was another piece for violin and piano that also needed recording so I approached violinist Valerie Li, first violin with the Afiara Quartet whom I had met when they gave a number of concerts here in Mexico. She was interesting in recording the pieces with me and knew a very good recording engineer in Toronto. As Toronto is also home to some fine pianists, that made the project feasible. I just had to fly up to Toronto in December when the daytime high is often around zero! Never mind, just dress warmly.

The project was a real success. We recorded in the Glenn Gould Studio, a small concert hall in the CBC broadcast centre that is outfitted as probably the finest studio for recording classical music in Canada. We recorded two pieces, Dark Dream, which I just completed a couple of months ago, and Chase, composed three years ago. I flew into Toronto last Wednesday, getting in at 1:30 in the morning. At noon the next day I had a rehearsal with Val which was our first run-through of the piece. As she is a highly accomplished chamber music musician it went very smoothly and we largely worked out the ensemble problems. The next day I attended the rehearsal of Val with pianist Todd Yaniw for the much shorter piece, Chase. That went quite well, though I was not impressed with the beat up piano at the Conservatory. Saturday Val and I had another rehearsal of Dark Dream and Sunday we recorded both pieces at the CBC. Total rehearsal time Dark Dream: 3 1/2 hours and Chase, 1 1/2 hours. Total recording time: Dark Dream, 2 hours and Chase 1 1/2 hours. Dark Dream turned out to be about 14 minutes long and Chase about 4 minutes. I expected Dark Dream to come in at ten minutes as that is how it was originally planned. However, I rewrote the piece three or four times so it just grew!

Here is a look at the Glenn Gould Studio, named after perhaps Canada's most famous classical musician, pianist Glenn Gould who was pretty much resident in the CBC building for much of his career:

Click to enlarge

Inside the control room:

Our recording crew, Paul, technical assistant from the CBC, Pouya Hamidi, our recording engineer, and pianist Todd Yaniw. I believe that Pouya is performing a traditional invocation of the gods of recording for a successful session.

Myself, Pouya and violinist Valerie Li, getting ready to do a take:

I will have more about the actual recording in future posts.

While the recording itself went very well, there were a few unexpected challenges. As I said in a previous post, I completely forgot my charging cables for my iPhone, my Chromebook and my Kindle. They were all charged up when I left so it was not a complete disaster. In fact, the Kindle lasted the whole trip. Val had a spare iPhone charger, so that helped. But the Chromebook only lasted the whole time due to stringent rationing! I was going to do a lot more blog posting and maybe watch a few shows on Netflix, but had to keep the usage to an hour or two a day. It turned out that the Chromebook, advertised as having up to 12 hours of battery time, actually delivered about that much. However, taking an Uber to the Royal Conservatory for a rehearsal, my iPhone slipped out of my jacket pocket in the back of the cab. It took several days of phone calls and a significant tip to get the phone back. Luckily, I did! But my recommendation is to NEVER leave anything in an Uber.

On the plus side, I discovered a really good sushi restaurant near my hotel.

Sunny Toronto

Sure, it starts to get dark around 4:30 in the afternoon, but Toronto can be sunny in the winter as it was yesterday. Mind you, it was also 8 degrees below zero, so there's that. We had a rehearsal at the Royal Conservatory of Music, one of Canada's leading musical institutions. Here is a photo of the original building that has since been added on to with new construction on one side and at the back:

I also paid a little visit to the LCBO another uniquely Canadian institution. Canada, traditionally, was a bit conflicted about sinful things like alcohol, so in most provinces, sales of alcoholic beverages are tightly controlled by the government. LCBO stands for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The Quebec equivalent is the SAQ, the Societe des Alcools de Quebec (sorry, no accents on this keyboard), and in British Columbia it is the BCLDB, the BC Liquor Distribution Branch. These shameful products are usually sold out of dull, generic government buildings. On the other hand, provinces like Ontario and BC are more and more producing fine wines and are justifiably proud of them.

I ran into another wine aficionado just before coming to Toronto which reminded me of my interest in ice wines. Ice wine (Eiswien in German) was invented in Germany, by wineries in the Moselle valley. Sometimes, if you let your grapes fully ripen in late fall, which gives you those luscious late-harvest wines, you get caught by an early frost which ruins the grapes by the time they thaw out. But sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century vintners started to crush the grapes when they were still frozen which gives a highly concentrated juice as the water is taken out in the form of ice crystals. The result is a sweet, completely natural wine, balanced by good acidity. Other sweet wines, like Sauternes, are created by a fungus, referred to as "noble rot" that causes the skin of the grapes to degrade and some of the water to evaporate, again resulting in a more concentrated juice.

The two main nations that produce ice wine are Germany and recently, Canada. So I dropped by the LCBO and picked up a couple of bottles of ice wine to take back to Mexico with me. Very little of this wine is exported and, as far as I know, none to Mexico! I also picked up what I hope will be a good Barolo to go with the Christmas turkey:

Ice wine is traditionally made with the Riesling grape, but in Canada is often made with the little-known Vidal blanc grape:

Vidal blanc (or simply Vidal) is a white hybrid grape variety produced from the Vitis vinifera variety Ugni blanc (also known as Trebbiano Toscano) and another hybrid variety, Rayon d'Or (Seibel 4986). It is a very winter-hardy variety that manages to produce high sugar levels in cold climates with moderate to high acidity.

Ice wine is not cheap as the whole crop has to be picked all at once, often in the pre-dawn so the grapes are still frozen when they are crushed. Save it for a special occasion!