Jeanne Lamon, Music Director
Ivars Taurins, Director, Chamber Choir
Chalumeau: (quoted from Colin Savage): a single-reed instrument, descended from the simple reed pipes of Greek, Roman and Middle Eastern antiquity, and produced in four sizes, three of which [were heard on Saturday night].
I, to my knowledge and recollection, have never before heard music produced by a chalumeau. I nearly swooned over the balcony when the instrument’s sweet and gentle notes lifted themselves up into the rafters of the church and floated into my consciousness.
Like the sound of tentative songbirds, the happy notes chirped and twittered, carrying me right out of my seat and back to the children when they were young. I saw Sarah sitting in front of her mirrored dresser, weaving her beautiful hair into a French braid. A few feet away from her, down the hall, Noam played on the floor with his trucks – all of them yellow – methodically making his way around the corner and into his room, his engine noises hardly perceptible to the human ear. Pabby sat on the window ledge in his bedroom, eating a peanut butter sandwich and staring out at the snow on Grafton Street, imagining himself decked out in hockey sweater #99.
My reverie extended over several years, the children growing older with the songs. (I suppose they aren’t even called songs, are they?) Sarah, hatless, knelt in her yard planting orange and yellow Gerber daisies. Noam walked in the rain down Bank Street, pushing a stroller, headed for his favourite coffee shop. Pablo sat in the hospital waiting for his radiation treatment. He was smiling and flirting with the nurses. All of the children were happy, despite everything, and the music of the chalumeau washed over me and brought relief.
Sometimes when I sit in Trinity-St. Paul’s and listen to the Tafelmusik concerts, I find myself becoming slightly annoyed. Mostly music lovers reside there, I know, and most of them are able to – many of them wanting you to know that they are able to, appalled when you are unable to – recite the piece, the period, the various orchestrations, the what not of the what-have-yous and the whos of the who’s who.
And it isn’t that I don’t care or haven’t any interest in remembering. My brain just doesn’t work that way. You can take me to a thousand Tafelmusik concerts, and I won’t be able to tell you from week to week whose music is being played, on what instruments, or when the piece was written. (If you ask me who smiled or frowned up at me; who looked wistful, tired or cheerful, or how many times the audience laughed and cried, these things I can often recall.)
My point is, I suppose, that what matters most to me is where the music takes me; how it makes me feel. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay for the experience of sitting in the balcony and listening to those songbirds; of being transported, as if by magic, to those moments with my children when we were essentially happy and well, and together. I wouldn’t trade that experience for a limitless number of lessons on composers, cantatas or even the chalumeau…however inspiring, however beautiful.
The important point, which has nothing to do with me, is that no matter your rationale or your experience, an evening spent listening to the marvellous, mellifluous mastery (how could I ignore this musical moment of meaningful alliteration?) of the Tafelmusik orchestra and choir is transformative. Life affirming and restorative, these talented, inspired musicians and singers will take you wherever you want, and need, to go, even if it’s all the way back to an apartment in Charlottetown in 1985.
