The World Outside My Window
On one hand, I feel terrible that I didn't do more promotion of our event today in Sorauren Park - the park right next to the building where I live. On the other hand, the weather was so dismal that I might have felt guilty about anyone who did come out so see us.
The Sorauren Park Festival is one I'm quite close to - having run it for a couple of years before Voyageur completely took over my summers and my life. Soon after the park was completed, the festival launched as one of those sort of bleak neighbourhood beer-and-bar-band-baking-in-the-sun sort of affairs with a bouncy castle for the kids. I took it over in the belief that there was so much extraordinary talent in the neighbourhood and such an appetite for good food, good drink, good art and so on that we could build a top flight festival right in our midst. Of course, all this had to be done on a shoe string and that's not easy. We put together a fantastic team of volunteers in publicity, production, fundraising and administration to make it all happen.
You can only ask so much of people and a couple of years after my departure, people started to kind of drift in the attention to detail. The Toronto municipal workers' strike last summer pulled the plug on the festival completely, which actually served to give a much needed pause to the event. Into that pause stepped local flamenco guitar phenom Jorge Miguel, who spearheaded this year's revived version of the Festival. Jorge pulled together a terrific team of volunteers and tapped some of the great local talent in this neighbourhood. Donne Roberts, George Sawa, Jason Fowler and Jorge's own Flamenco Ensemble were all on the stage. So was the Six String Nation - briefly - unable to run the portrait feature as we'd hoped due to rain that would have seeped quickly into the backdrop and made using the softbox and strobe a bit dangerous. So we moved operations into the nearby FieldHouse but weather kept most folks away. We did manage to do a dozen or so sessions though, and those photos will be posted in the coming weeks.
Right after Donne Roberts' set, the sky really opened up and that ruled out the outdoor movie and kept Jorge, volunteers, Dino the stage guy and city staff tearing down in the pouring rain until past 1:00am!
Bad weather and disappointing turnout aside, the festival did manage to reclaim its focus and direction thanks to the new gang. Here's to better luck and better weather next year!
Thanks to Jorge, Natalie, Iggy, Tanya, Gillian, Jane & Larry, Steamwhistle Brewing, Vince Lawrence and all the other folks participating in making the festival happen as best it could this year.
Posted at 11:47 PM
Writers' Wrap
What a great experience was the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts! We had a great time doing portraits Saturday and Sunday and were able to get many new faces into our gallery, including those of Nino Ricci, Lawrence Hill, Larry Campbell, Shani Mootoo, Jack Hodgins, Elizabeth Bachinsky and others. The gallery will be up on Flickr in a few weeks. In the meantime, whew - I have a LOT of reading to do!
The presentation Sunday night went extraordinarily well. I think it may even have been my best but it was made even better by the music that followed it. First, the amazing Joe Stanton - a terrific singer-songwriter-guitarist from the Sunshine Coast - played two gorgeous songs and then further blew us all away with a brand new song written for the occasion to be played on Voyageur called "This Is Our Home" to wrap up his set. Then, the Rakish Angles - who reminded me a little of my pals the Creaking Tree String Quartet - kind of a brainy bluegrass line-up on a Django Reinhardt tip. Guitarist Dan Richter and mandolin player Simon Hocking each took a turn using Voyageur but Simon stole the evening with his revelation that he had once worked for a summer at Montreal's famed Fairmount Bagel Bakery - a shibba from which, of course, is in the guitar! In the picture, that's Boyd Norman on bass, Dan Richter on mandolin, Serena Eades on violin (nice Zeppelin quote Serena!), Simon playing Voyageur and Joe Stanton joining on the finale.
Thanks to everyone for making this such a great event for the Six String Nation: the staff and board of the Festival, all the volunteers who helped prepare, get us to and operate the portrait station, all the folks who came to get their picture taken, Talewind Books and a very special thanks to the amazing Jane Davidson for making it all happen. Hope to see you all again in beautiful Sechelt!
Posted at 9:22 PM
You might recall me mentioning Rob Burns in my post of April 19th. Rob is a guitar enthusiast from West Vancouver who set up a wonderful event for Voyageur at his in-laws' spectacular home on my last trip to the west coast. Yesterday, he really outdid himself with a whole new event for us.
After a few hours of portraits in the morning at the Rockwood Centre for the Writers' Festival, Rob picked up Doug and me and drove us up the coast to Secret Cove, where his beautifully reconditioned 1950's wooden boat took us the rest of the journey across to Thormanby Island.
Rob's brother Ken met us there and - after some relaxing, swimming, music-making and BBQ (that's Rob on the deck of the cabin just before dinner) - we made our way over to The Meadow - a clearing in the Vaughcroft subdivision of the island. There, we set up a projector and screen under a driftwood arch and borrowed a little P.A. from Larry and Karen, whose party would start after we were done. About 50 people came down to the Meadow and I did my presentation under the stars with Rob, Roger the Custodian and Dave Baker all playing a tune on Voyageur to finish the show and get people ready for the party. It was truly one of the most spectacular locations we've ever presented in and the audience was wonderful. Doug and I slept in the bunkbeds in Rob's spare room and he brought us back to Sechelt bright and early for our final day at the festival.
Thanks to Rob, Ken, Larry, Karen, Steve, Roger, Dave and Barb.
photo by Doug Nicholson
Posted at 9:48 AM