Toronto Star

I was up working on a theory assignment until insanely late. I was up so late I felt drunk today – througout the afternoon the room would start to spin. I made all my classes, though, which was an achievement all things considered.

I could have skipped it because there was nothing critical in my ‘Musical Toronto’ class, but I’m glad I didn’t. The course is taught by the Dean of Music, Gage Averill, who’s already badass because his background is in Caribbean music, specifically Haitian music.  He’s apparently a mean steel drum player – which legitimizes the instrument a bit, considering he’s the dean of the most prestigious music faculty in Canada. His experience is primarily from an ethnomusicology angle, though.

Gage had invited John Terauds, the main Classical Music writer for the Toronto Star to talk about music journalism. He seemed like such a hipster, and a really cool guy. It was actually useful; he went into the practical aspects of how to write for mass market print media (newspapers, magazines, etc.) One of the most interesting things he talked about is his struggle to write about music for the lay person, without using any musical language. Every musician knows what something like ‘legato’ means, and his challenge is to convey the information in an understandable and interesting way to the TO Star readership, who largely don’t give a rat’s ass about classical music. He addressed that point by describing how he approaches writing a catchy first couple of sentences to rope the reader in.

Anyway, it was interesting. Another perk to going to school in Toronto – the availability of Canada’s finest just about everything.

I’ve got an assignment due tomorrow, an essay proposal due wednesday that I’m about to start (i’m currently sitting in Robard’s library) and a quiz for orchestration thursday. I got everything done that was due today, though, and I’m about to tackle the rest, and now that i’m beginning it all seems doable and about 30 percent of my stress melted away.

Steve Soman has scurvy.

~ by scottwchris on January 30, 2007.