When we say skinny, we mean really skinny: this is our first 32-pager since Vol 4 no 10, in the summer of 1999. Classical saxophonist Daniel Rubinoff was on our cover, and the accompanying story lamented the lack of respect his instrument gets in orchestral circles.
In the issue, publisher Allan Pulker addressed his opening remarks to the fact that the previous summer faithful readers had “roundly chastised us for jumbling all the summer festival listings in with our regular concert listings.”
“Readers staying in the city resented wading through lists of interesting concerts only to find that something striking their fancy was taking place in Elora or Ottawa or Parry Sound,” he wrote. “And conversely, people joining the annual exodus to one or another place didn’t want to wade through everything either.” And he concluded by hoping that “whether city-bound or cottage-bound, this new arrangement (for the summer only!) will better meet your needs.”
The “new arrangement” didn’t interfere with Toronto’s place at the centre of the cultural universe, with a kind of horseshoe-shaped “rest of the galaxy” around it. What was new was a whole clutch of summer listings arranged not by date but alphabetically by festival.
It only sort of worked, of course, because no completely satisfactory print-only solution exists. Just ask John Sharpe, our listings editor. We go through this every year. The difference between now and 1999 is that we are safely on the other side of Y2K and digital assistance is at hand if we so choose. Check out “Tired of Scrolling?” on page 24.
This is, by the way, our 307th issue since Sept 1995, when Pulse Vol 1 No. 1 hit the streets. (See “Off to a flying start”, pages 22-23.) All but one of the 307 made it into print. The one that didn’t? February 2022. Gorgeous, whimsical, hopeful cover. There we were, all dressed up, and the pandemic door slammed shut again, leaving us with nowhere to go. That was a tough moment.
307 is a prime number, by the way, and this is, as best as I can remember, only the second time the phrase “prime number” has made it into one of my openers. Last time round, the topic was “twin primes,” and the “twins” in question were 139 and 141. A charming little editorial, if I say so myself. And useful. It pointed to ways house concerts, lovingly curated, can be integral to the larger story we need to tell: the range and variety of spaces needed for a community’s musical life to thrive. There are two contrasting stories on that theme in this issue – all the way from megahall to “nanostage”. Pages 10-13.
Back to the “why so skinny this month” question...
Simplest answer: No DISCoveries section this month. That’s a chunk of real estate. DISCoveries only arrived in our pages with Volume 6 No. 10, summer of 2001, so Vol 4 No. 10 didn’t have a DISCoveries section either. But it did have CD reviews. Thirteen of them, in fact. Back then David Parsons wrote a regular new music column for us titled “Hear and Now” – what we call “In with the New” these days. With new music presenters mostly missing from the summer action, Parsons pulled together a page of short reviews of recordings – a mix of old and newly released – that would enable listeners hungry for atonality to curate their own concerts. A lovely, unstuffily erudite piece of writing.
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com
