bannerRobert Aitken. Photo by Daniel FoleyOf late, the topic of  mentoring has been on my mind. Your Dictionary defines a mentor as “someone who guides another to greater success,” but one of my favourite quotes on this topic comes from flutist and composer, Robert Aitken: “You can only teach a person two things: how to listen, and how to teach themselves.” Particularly in this latter sense, I have experienced the joys and benefits of being mentored at various points of my life, as well as opportunities to “pay forward” what I have learned. 

Particularly memorable, in the former category were my high school band teacher, my graduate school advisor, my trainer as a new recruit at CBC Radio in 1973, and Glenn Gould, whom I worked with often in the ensuing years. 

Then, as my professional career developed, one detail of my personal history seems to have forecast how my own involvement in the role of mentor would evolve. In 1969, while still a university student, I had the good fortune to be named as a Fellow by what was then the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now The Institute for Citizens & Scholars). The panel of examiners for the Foundation was charged with the task of finding scholars entering graduate schools, whom they felt possessed the potential to become outstanding future teachers. I suppose, in retrospect, those perceptive examiners were on to something, although teaching “on the job” has always come naturally for me rather than as a formal profession.

Read more: The Rocking Horse Winner and Other Tales

bannerAt the beginning of January, I received a call from a friend of mine – a drummer – who was in the process of applying to the Master of Music program in jazz at the University of Toronto. Had he been applying last year, he might have asked me to play with him for his live audition. This year – in the midst of January’s stringent lockdown protocols – he asked me to play on his audition video. This prompted a simple question: what does auditioning for a music program in the physically distanced winter of 2021 entail?

Many WholeNote readers – whether you’re a professional musician, community orchestra member, chorister, or the best damn Betty Rizzo that ever graced the stage of an Elgin County high school – will have some experience with the audition process, in a general sense. For what this usually looks like in an academic context – and how things are different this year – here is some background, drawn from my own experiences as a university music student, as well as two years spent as the admissions and student services manager at the RCM’s Glenn Gould School, from 2015 to 2017. 

Postsecondary music program auditions are generally relatively simple affairs: applicants come to a room at an appointed time, play selections from a repertoire list assembled by the school, have a brief interview with the audition panel, and leave. The composition of the audition panel is, typically, dependent on the instrument group auditioning, and usually involves both faculty representatives (e.g. piano faculty for piano auditions) and representatives from academic leadership (e.g. a program head). The panel takes notes, discusses the auditions, and makes recommendations to an admissions committee, which then embarks on a lengthy administrative process that addresses itself to merit-based financial aid, program number targets, teacher requests, offers of acceptance and waitlist, and other decisions. 

Read more: Assessment as a Two-Way Street | Music School Auditions under Lockdown

Photo by DAVID HOWELLOne of Canada’s busiest conductors is just back from Hong Kong, where she conducted Don Quixote from a COVID-proof orchestra pit. She spoke with Lydia Perović via Zoom from her home in Guelph.

LP: Hi Judith Yan! Oh, what’s that artwork behind you? 

JY: This here is a print of Jackson Pollock. But then this round one here, this is our favourite. It’s by a Guelph-area artist, Chelsea Brant; we have two of her works. She’s fabulous. And this one over here, that’s by Amanda. [Yan’s partner Amanda Paterson, the artistic director of Oakville Ballet and Oakville School of Classical Ballet] And then there’s the dog, have you met the dog? Mexxie, come here buddy, come say hi! He’s the best. 

(Mexx the black and white Shih Tzu comes into the frame, checks out what’s going on.)

What were the last eight months like for you? I expect you had a busy start to the year, and then mid-March happened! 

Read more: Beautiful Exceptions: In conversation with Judith Yan

The Isabel Bader Centre for Performing ArtsWhen it became apparent that the pandemic was not going to be a two-month event and was in fact going to be with us for many months, Tricia Baldwin asked herself, “What can we do to amplify the voices and creativity of artists, students, creators and educators?” As the director of the Isabel Bader Centre for Performing Arts in Kingston, Ontario (known simply as “The Isabel”), Baldwin, and her colleagues, recognized not just a need, but an opportunity. The result is the IMAGINE project.

“This COVID-19 period is an excellent time for artists to immerse themselves in artistic ‘R&D’ to explore new collaborations, styles, concepts and performance practices and come out of the pandemic with enriched artistic voices,” Baldwin told me. With performance demands severely curtailed, many artists have time now to dig into projects and ideas that they might not normally have the energy and brain space to pursue. As well, performing has taken on new dimensions, hastened by the pandemic, with online presentations and streaming increasingly becoming the norm.

Baldwin and her colleagues wanted to offer The Isabel, with its state-of-the-art lighting, video and audio equipment – along with the acoustical beauty the hall is renowned for – to artists so they could learn new skills and ways of presenting their works. “We see this as an incubator, not only for new works but for new performance practices and processes,” said Baldwin. “We want to give people a safe space to work in so they can take artistic risks and try out different media.”

When the call for applications went out via getacceptd.com, The Isabel was initially planning to offer five or six spots in the program. However, they got such an enthusiastic response from the artistic community, receiving applications from a range of musicians, performers and educators with interesting ideas, that Baldwin approached the Kingston-based Ballytobin Foundation to increase the funding. Ballytobin willingly stepped up, and the result was that The Isabel was able to offer spots to 20 different groups/artists. 

Read more: Shelter from the storm: The IMAGINE project offers a safe space for artists to develop bold new...

Glenn GouldGrowing up Canadian, Torontonian and a pianist, the spirit of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as transmuted by Glenn Gould, was ever within my reach. Indeed, for a time, Bach’s masterful set of variations was inextricably linked with Gould, for Canadian and international fans alike. As for me, I was born in the year that Gould died, sharing the same dozen square miles of Toronto for less than six months before his premature death at age 50, in October of 1982. 

Bach and his keyboard music hovered in the air for many of my generation. At age ten, I had studied the piano for more than five years, and my teacher at the time professed her intense – and seemingly irrational – dislike for all things Gould, (even the lion’s share of his Bach recordings). She, like many immediate contemporaries who knew him personally and scorned his eccentric disposition, proclaimed that little of the late great pianist’s discography was worth listening to. “However,” she conceded, “a handful of recordings remain on the highest order of interpretive genius. His Goldbergs are seminal, you must discover them for yourself – but only the 1955 recording!” “What about the later, 1981 Goldbergs?” I mused to myself. No matter. To the library I went for the 1955 Gould Goldbergs. Beyond the initial awe and insight at the cosmic explication Gould commands on this recording, I was struck that day by a sense of place – a rightness of order or sonic identity – that seemed to be somehow Canadian. True, this was Bach für alle: Bach for all ears that would be lent to it from all corners of the globe, but its origins were oddly local. 

Glenn Gould Goldberg VariationsYes I know Gould made that seminal 1955 record in New York City at the Columbia Records 30th Street Studio, but his art, muse and sensibility came from elsewhere, from up north. Suffused with the voice of Bach, how could such musical utterance as Gould’s belong to just one city or country? How does a nation – a collective or an individual even – lay claim to an artist like Gould? How do we honour him and emulate his craft? How close might we get before his essence eludes us? 

Read more: Discoveries along the Goldberg Trail
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