This Ain't the Rosedale Library
When I was still in high school, some of my first ventures off my well-worn Saturday afternoon trek down Yonge St. were to the incubating nexus at Queen and Mutual streets in Toronto, where one would find facing each other Moses Znaimer's original CityTV building, the Record Pedlar, Emilio's Cafe and This Ain't the Rosedale Library – the bookstore that introduced me to writers like Harry Crews, Thomas McGuane and Jim Harrison and kept me fed with all my favourite Canadian authors and poets.
So it was a real treat this past Wednesday to be invited by Charlie Huisken and the Authors at Harbourfront Centre program to celebrate This Ain't's 30th anniversary in the illustrious company of bill bissett, Lee Ann Brown, Eileen Myles and Stuart Ross along with host Jaymz Bee. Click here to read more about the other participants.
I was a bit worried at first that I was a fish out of water amongst this company but I realized connections with each of them and there were all kinds of friends in the audience, including Dale Stafford, Lisa Downe, Clifton Joseph and Steve Venright (pictured) of Torpor Vigil fame.
In spite of a couple of technical glitches off the top, my presentation about Voyageur went very well and culminated with a performance that has been many years in coming. I've known Danny Marks for a long time. I've been a guest on his JazzFM show pre-6SN and we've talked about having the guitar on the show but we've just never gotten around to it. It was great to finally be able to put the guitar in his hands. He did an original song written about Mississippi John Hurt to bring the event to a close. My only regret is that I didn't get a photo of Danny in performance. If anyone in attendance did get a shot of Danny playing Voyageur, I'd love it if you would send me a copy.
Posted at 2:35 PM
The Graduates
Unloading Doug's gear from the rental car following a weekend festival some time this past summer, I met his neighbour, Jennifer Carter. She'd heard all about Voyageur from Doug but hadn't yet seen it in person. So right there on the little cul de sac I took the guitar out and gave her the tour. She immediately suggested that I should present the project to her graduate class in Culture and Heritage in Museum Studies program at the University of Toronto when school resumed in the fall.
This past Tuesday, Jennifer made good on her promise and I was brought in to talk to the first class of the semester. It was a fantastic group to speak to – especially because the entire class was so conversant in so many of the issues the project raises from various point of view: from cultural diversity to arts funding to regional identity to presentation strategies.
Thank you so much to Jennifer and the whole class for providing such a great opportunity to expand the discussion.
Posted at 1:13 PM
The Italian Job (8): Arrivederci Italia, Ciao!
As excited as I was to be invited to bring Voyageur to Italy, part of me was afraid that the story wouldn't resonate as it does in Canada. I am happy to say that the response was better than I ever could have dreamed and we really found a lot of common ground on Italian soil.
I do have to tell one story from the night of the final concert in which I received a new name: after the show, a young guy came up to me very excited to see the guitar and ask a few questions in English that was certainly better than my Italian. Then he asked: "Did you come to Italy because you have Italian heritage?" I was puzzled and told him I had no Italian heritage. "But your name, your second name is Italian, no?". Huh? I was more puzzled. "But they said your name was Joe Vitello!" (which means Joe Veal). That's how he heard "Jowi Taylor". We had a great laugh about it but I actually kind of like the name. Makes me want to open a bar: Joe Vitello's.
Thanks to everyone who came to meet Voyageur and all the Sindacos who welcomed us into their municipalities.
An especial thanks to Domenic Brioschi and Lidia Robba (pictured) for their extraordinary hard work, their extraordinary hospitality and for launching what I think will be an extraordinary friendship. Salute!
And finally, thanks to the amazing Don Ross, who made the connection between Six String Nation and Un Paese a Sei Corde and got this whole wonderful ball rolling. Love you, man.
jowi
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 1:00 PM
The Italian Job (7): Winding Down
Pino Forastiere's performance at Sacro Monte was such a brilliant way to end our official participation in this year's edition of Un Paese a Sei Corde. But it wasn't quite the end of the experience. Among those in attendance at Pino's concert were Davide Sgorlon and his girlfriend Marta. Davide had performed earlier in the festival but they'd come in from Torino partly to see Pino and partly to meet Voyageur. The were great folks.
After breakfast on Sunday morning, Davide spent some time in the courtyard with the guitar (and a little interference from Kiwi the half-blind beagle) and we did of few shots of him and Marta with it. Pino and Stefania headed back to Rome shortly thereafter and Dom, Doug and I headed off to meet one more Sindaco. We were back in time for one last swim in beautiful Lake Orta and then we hit the road as well – back to Zurich for the flight home to Toronto.
Thanks to Davide, Pino, Marco and all the other musicians professional and amateur who brought this piece of Canada to life in Italy like blue fairies to Pinocchio.
I'll have one more farewell post from Italy following a bit later.
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 10:16 AM
The Italian Job (6): Debut at Sacro Monte
We returned from Milano on Friday night to find that Pino Forastiere and his partner Stefania had arrived from Rome to prepare for the following night's concert. We chatted over a glass of wine for a while and then we all retired from the long day of driving.
After breakfast on Saturday, Pino asked to give Voyageur a try. It would be a bit of a test run as he'd be using it for a few songs during the evening concert. We sat together in the courtyard and I gave him a bit of background on the instrument as he retuned and ran through a few pieces. It was amazing to watch. I've noticed as I've taken the guitar across Canada that the best musicians tend not to make any pronouncements about what sort of guitar it is. Rather, they try a number of things and listen carefully to find Voyageur's natural voice. Only then do they determine where their own music and the guitar's character share common ground and that becomes the starting point for the performance or the composition.
The concert was held that night, outdoors at Sacro Monte. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, construction began in 1590 on this collection of buildings and trails designed as a kind of devotional retreat in honour of St. Francis of Assisi. And it really was a pretty magical place up on the hill behind Orta San Giulio looking over the lake and the Isola San Giulio below. It's said that this is where Nietzche underwent some kind of spiritual transformation during a two week stay in May of 1882.
It was a perfect clear night with the stars above and the lights of the villages across the lake dancing on the water. Pino's performance was perfect and I was asked to say a few words before handing Voyageur back to him for an encore. You'll find video of both moments here and here.
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 9:10 AM
The Italian Job (5): UnPluGGed
On the Friday of the Festival, we piled in the trusty Mazda 5 and headed back down to Milano. Dom had set up an event for us there at the UnPluGGed guitar shop on Via Sebastiano del Piombo. We were greeted by the entire staff upon arrival as well as a few anxious customers who had come to meet Voyageur. Among those was Marco C., to whom I took an instant liking. There was just something so friendly and open in his smile and sure enough he became the kind of default interpreter as the teaching center downstairs filled up for our presentation.
Once again, I was astonished at the depth of feeling and curiosity about the project. It was so gratifying to feel that everyone in the room understood what Six String Nation was about and wanted to participate. A feature article in the Italian guitar mag Chitarre may have helped in this somewhat.
Marco was the first to play the guitar after the presentation, followed by Fabio – one of the store owners. By the end of the afternoon, the guitar had been passed around the room and everyone in attendance had had a turn playing Voyageur. It was a real honour.
After the room cleared out, Fabio asked me to stay behind for an interview, which now posted as part of the UnPluGGEd blog.
Marco and his wife Jeanette came up to Orta San Giulio the following day to get their portraits taken so you'll see those once the Flickr galleries are up.
Thanks again to Marco and Dom for translating, to the entire staff at UnPluGGed and to all the folks who came out to meet Voyageur. It was a pleasure.
Photo by Jowi Taylor
Posted at 11:24 PM
The Italian Job (4): Meeting the Sindacos
I guess most people imagine that Italy spends a lot more money and attention on its artists than most places but I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised to learn that – unless you're Leonardo or Michaelangelo – the business of making contemporary culture happen in Italy is as much of a struggle for attention and resources as it is in Canada.
While it was a sympatico sense of culture that brought Six String Nation to Un Paese a Sei Corde, along with Voyageur we also brought some international presence and (dare I say it) clout! The festival is ostensibly a showcase for some of Italy's top guitarists but it's also a way to bring attention to Novara Province and the whole Piemonte region. It's meant to marry the ideas of culture and tourism and to build a bit of profile for some parts of the area that might otherwise be neglected. That's why the concerts during the festival are held at sites in villages all around Lake Orta. And that's why part of our daily routine at the festival was to bring the Six String Nation story to those communities that supported the event and those who still weren't sure about its value.
For the most part, we were treated like royalty. In villages such as Pella, Pettenasco, Nonio, Orta San Giulio, Cressa, Gozzano and Soriso, we were received by the Sindacos (Mayors) and delegations of various sizes including staff and members of the public at some. These are small towns so the Sindacos usually have other jobs and perform the role of mayor for a small stipend or become mayor after retirement. Over and over again we heard expressed a love of and a curiosity about Canada and that they felt honoured to have this emblem of Canada in their community.
In Canada, we have portraits of the mayors of Toronto, Port Hope and Dawson City. We already have way more portraits of Sindacos from Italy. Canadian politicians – the challenge in ON!
BTW, Doug is still processing all the photos from our trip so I don't have any of these to show just yet but I'll post galleries once they're ready.
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 6:40 PM
The Italian Job (3): Orta HQ
For the duration of Un Paese a Sei Corde, the festival is loaned a storefront space on the Via Bossi in the charming tourist town of Orta San Giulio. The front foyer acted as an information centre and registration area for our portrait feature while the larger back space functioned as a gallery and doubled as our portrait studio.
We basically spent a few hours each day here over the course of our stay – doing portraits and meeting people. On the first day, these included various dignitaries including the Mayors of Orta and Pella (just across the lake, next to Lagna) and a few friends of the Festival. After that, it was a mix of local merchants and their families, festival attendees and passersby – including a pair of arts journalists from French TV with whom we'll be following up about a possible visit there next year!
Handily, the Via Bossi is a pedestrian zone with lots of cafés around and a gelato place right next door so we weren't allowed to get too exhausted. The owner of the Café Jazz just down the lane came in for his portrait with his mother, wife and two daughters. For the next few days, I kept seeing his youngest (about 7 years old) and her grandmother walking down the lane. She greeted me in Italian each time and asked when her portraits were coming – she was pretty excited.
As soon as she's got her portraits, I'll post the our full portrait gallery from Orta San Giulio on our Flickr site.
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 1:32 PM
The Italian Job (2): Lago d'Orta
The voice of Homer Simpson on the TomTom guided us swift and sure through a maze of country roads to the sleepy village of Lagna, where we were to meet our hosts for the festival, Dom & Lidia. I made one very expensive phone call to Dom who was still 15 minutes away finishing up at a festival site but would come to meet us shortly. We made our way down the lane toward the lake and collectively gasped as the scene unfolded with every step. It was truly storybook. In some ways it was much like a Canadian lake only much warmer and with villages dotted all around it encircled by mountains. Spectacular.
This would be our home base for the next seven days.
Domenic Brioschi is an actor and impressario who runs the guitar festival (as well as a regional theatre series and a number of sustainable cultural tourism initiatives) with his wife Lidia from his ancestral home (built in 1689) next to the lake, where they also operate a B&B. Our rooms were cosy and comfortable and – with the warmth of Dom & Lidia's wonderful hospitality – it was easy to feel at home here.
We settled in at a leisurely pace, got to know our hosts a bit, and mapped out our activities for the coming week. And while it looked like a lot on paper, the pace of it all was so modulated and the surroundings so spectacular that it was hard to imagine that any of it would feel like work in the least.
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 7:00 PM
The Italian Job (1): First Days
Apologies for not posting these sooner but we had scant internet access while in Italy and I returned, of course, to a mountainous backlog of email and other business to attend to. Hmmmm.... a mountainous start to the trip and a mountainous return.
First of all, I want to thank all those who helped us do this trip in the first place: Dom Brioschi and Lidia Robba from the festival Un Paese a Sei Corde in Piemonte and the folks in Canada who supported the travel, including the Columbus Centre, the Italian Chamber of Commerce of Toronto, Grano Restaurant, Air Canada and a number of individuals who donated time, talent, services and money to help toward the costs of getting to Italy.
The first leg of the trip actually takes us to Zurich. Air Canada has a direct flight there that's considerably less expensive than the longer routes to Malpensa that connect through Frankfurt or Munich or Rome. Plus, you get to enter Italy through the gateway of the Alps and that seemed too good to pass up.
After a brief period driving around Zurich airport wondering when the GPS would kick in, we hit the road for Milano. We avoided what looked like a horrendous delay into the Gotthard tunnel and opted for the mountain pass, which was absolutely spectacular until the low cloud of the morning blocked our view of anything but the car (or horse and buggy at one point) in front of us.
Well in advance, I had booked us for two days into a hotel in Milan near the Navigli district in hopes that our efforts to generate an official Toronto/Milan sister city event might bear fruit. In the end, nothing came but it still gave us two days to acclimatize, see the sights of Milano and enjoy people watching over apertivo on the Navigli and prepare to head to the Festival on Monday, which is where my next post begins.
Photo by Sarah Gillett
Posted at 12:57 PM