Category Music
Tinkling The Ivories
I learned to play piano as a child, though using the word “learned” might be stretching things. I wasn’t willing to practice – probably because I didn’t like the music I was being asked to learn. As an adult I understand the importance of the musical tradition, but back then I might have been a […]
Messiah
For some reason a piece of what should rightly be considered Easter music has become an annual Christmas tradition around the world. For many people the season would not seem right without taking in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. I think we have four recordings of G.F. Handel’s most famous oratorio on compact disc. We […]
The Christmas Pageant
It was the three-year-olds on stage that impressed me. Not with their cuteness, though that seemed to be what most adults were focusing on. It was their poise. I didn’t pay much attention to the song, “Away in a Manger,” I think. They weren’t singing; that was the older children’s job (further back on the […]
A Canadian National Treasure
The once rich baritone voice is a little thinner now as time has taken its toll. Some of the notes have gone wherever it is notes go when you age. The memory is no longer perfect, which means sometimes the lyrics aren’t quite right. But it is still the same voice and these are still […]
Steve Bell’s Pilgrimage – III
“We tried to get him music lessons and it just didn’t work” – Alf Bell, father of Canadian musician Steve Bell; from the documentary film Burning Ember: The Steve Bell Journey. How would you feel if video cameras followed you around for a year recording your life story? What would they show? Would you be […]
Steve Bell’s Pilgrimage II
How do you encapsulate a 25 year career? How do you celebrate a quarter of a century in music? In Steve Bell’s case it was a surprise gift, a CD of his songs recorded by some of his musical friends. He liked the gift so much he included it in his latest album, Pilgrimage, a […]
Steve Bell’s Pilgrimage I
Twenty-five years ago the word download had nothing to do with music. You heard it occasionally when a senior level of government decided to dump some responsibilities onto a lower level. They could them claim to have cut costs, though the same taxpayers were still on the hook for whatever the service was, they were […]
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
I remember going to see The Concert For Bangladesh in early 1972at the Dorval Cinema in suburban Montreal. That movie (and the triple vinyl disc album of the same name) was my introduction to pop music as a fundraiser for a good cause, though there might have been earlier efforts I was unaware of. Yesterday […]
You Turn Me On
(For some reason my phone posted this a few hours early. When you travel, sometimes the technology doesn’t travel as well as you would like.) Tonight at midnight, for the 41st consecutive year, Joni Mitchell’s song “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” will be broadcast on on Ottawa radio station CKCU-FM . It was […]
Rumours of Glory V – Not One of Those
“Our journey is driven by longing….Longing has to do with God, because what humans long for most is a relationship with the Divine. We may not be conscious of it, but we long to know God, in whatever context or guise that might mean to the individual….Only God can fill that hole.” Bruce Cockburn, Rumours […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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