Tag Archives: Toronto

Friday Seven

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  1. Heading to a Syrian wedding today: the sacrament is this afternoon in Woodbridge and the party tonight in Etobicoke at the Edessa Banquet Hall. I won’t know many people there, but my partner-in-crime is getting less patient with loud music so it likely won’t be a late night.
  2. For a complete change of pace, we’re heading up to Wyebridge (near Midland) tomorrow morning for a Goddard family reunion. I think it’a actually referred to as the “3G” annual event, for Goddard, Gear, and Graham families. I’m looking forward to meeting some new-to-me cousins and fleshing out my family tree. Our hosts are Stephen and Frieda Goddard. Stephen is my mother’s first cousin, the son of her uncle Percy Goddard.
    Doug Townsend, Stephen and Frieda Goddard
    Doug Townsend, Stephen and Frieda Goddard

    I blogged about another branch of my Goddards here. Two brothers emigrated to the Barrie, Ontario area (John in 1970 and William in 1871). I descend from William and the branch at the link descend from John.

  3. For my book challenge this quarter (my booklist here – I won’t read them all, but it’s a goal), I’m reading a memoir by Vladimir Nabokov called Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. It’s achingly beautifully written, and I’m doing a slow, close read to enjoy it. Here’s a snippet, a memory of a young Nabokov sitting on the veranda while his nanny reads french novels to him.

    From "Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov.
    From “Speak, Memory” by Vladimir Nabokov.
  4. For my Toronto readers: I just discovered an interesting website called Tabs Toronto. It sends automated alerts any time key words that you select are identified in city government records. You can do a search and then decide whether you’d like an email alert based on it. I’ve registered for my street name, neighbourhood name, and local BIAs. It’s a great initiative intended to improve civic participation.
    TABS
  5. Every since we moved in to our house seven years ago, we’ve known that we had issues with poor air circulation (basement too cold, second floor too hot). We finally got around to having an HVAC professional in to look at our system and he gave us some good advice about improving our duct work, and noted that our AC had been incorrectly installed, effectively blocking the path of air in to the ducts. (Or something.) Our furnace maintenance people had told us that our furnace was on its last legs, and so we took the plunge and replaced both furnace and AC. What a difference. We can actually feel cool air coming out of the ducts in our upper floor. He also recommended that we put a shade or covering of some kind on the large skylight in our stairwell so that’s the next job.
  6. My last post on my Berkman ancestors got a lot of hits, and I’m hoping to get in contact with some cousins. In the meantime, I finally scanned this business card of my grandfather David’s fur company. He moved back to Ontario in the early 30s and had some retail businesses. More about that soon.

    D Berkman Fur Company
    D Berkman Fur Company
  7. My book club had an excellent discussion of Donna Tartt‘s The Goldfinch last Sunday. It got pretty high ratings for the group (average 8/10), a surprising amount of sympathy for Boris, and totally expected love for Hobie. We also sniffed at the critics who looked down their noses at the accessible writing.  We met on the patio at the lovely Grenadier Restaurant in High Park (well, the food is fine but the venue is lovely) and will meet there again next month when we move to non-fiction with The Massey Murder: The Maid, Her Master, and the Trial That Shocked a Country by Charlotte Gray.

We’ve got a long weekend here in Ontario so Sunday and Monday are going to be read-and-relax days. On Tuesday, I’m heading to Ottawa to see my mother and some friends, and then back on Friday.

Leave me some love in the comments!

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Workday Wednesday

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I’ve recently been responding to some hints on Ancestry.com, those little green leaves that tell you that there are records in their database that may contain information about ancestors in your tree. In particular, I’ve been looking at the Rycroft family, my maternal great-grandmother’s mother Eliza Rycroft.

Eliza was born in 1842 and baptised in St. Oswald’s Parish, Chester in Cheshire, England in 1842. This parish was associated with the south transept of Chester Cathedral, inside the ancient walls of the city. Her family lived on Princess Street where her father Thomas was a pawnbroker. Her mother was Sarah Purslow. Eliza married James Dobb Price (also a pawnbroker) in 1866 and they lived next door to her parents. Eliza is noted as a grocer in the 1871 census. They had four children, the second of which was my great grandmother Emily Minnie Price.

Stephen Robert Goddard and Emily Minnie Price
Stephen Robert Goddard and Emily Minnie Price

Eliza died in her late 30s and the children were split up: the elder two lived with their grandmother next door and the younger two went to live with their father’s mother and her second husband, Thomas and Mary Ruscoe, in Toxteth Park (now Liverpool), about 30 miles away. A few years later, Minnie emigrated to Canada where she met and married my great-grandfather, Stephen Robert Goddard.

What interested me yesterday morning was that it became apparent that another Rycroft family member also came to Canada, specifically, the Toronto area.

Anne Rowe (1849-1904)
Anne Rowe (1849-1904)

Eliza was the first of five children born to Thomas and Sarah. Thomas William was born in 1848; Sarah Jane was born in 1850; John Stanley Ford was born in 1851; and Annie Eliza was born in 1854. Thomas is listed as a carpenter in the 1871 census. (Sarah and Annie work with their parents as “pawn brokers assistants”. John heads off to Lancashire to be an “assistant master” in a school.) Thomas sails for Canada on the Nestorian in the summer of 1872 and six years later, marries Ann Rowe in Toronto.

By 1881, they have a toddler (Annie) who dies shortly thereafter and an infant (Stanley) and are living in St. Patrick’s Ward where Thomas continues to work as a carpenter. By 1891, they have three growing sons (Stanley, Percy, and Jamie) and Thomas is now listed as a clerk. Jamie dies the following year at age 4 of diphtheria.

In 1901, Thomas is working as a clerk in a store and making $500 per year, well above others who live on his street. Stanley is a piano maker, making $200 per year, and Percy is a machinist, $200 per year. They are now living at 261 Church St (currently in the middle of Ryerson University) and Thomas is a warden at Holy Trinity (Anglican) Church. In 1904, Ann dies of general peritonitis.

Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Square, Toronto, c 1870-5.
Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Square, Toronto, c 1870-5.

I have been unable to Thomas Sr. in the 1911 census. But death records show that he died in 1912 of heart disease. He was living at 425 Wellesley Street.

In 1904, Percy marries Jean MacPherson and they have two children in the following two years, Dorothy and John. Then they move to Watertown NY where he is a collar-maker in the harness industry. I believe that they return to Canada but I haven’t verified this yet.

Stanley Rycroft (b.1881)
Stanley Rycroft (b.1881)

Stanley marries Frances Mabel Riches in 1907 and by 1921, they are living in Parkdale at 31 Prince Rupert Ave. Stanley works at Gourlay Winter and Leeming, a piano factory and makes $1560 per year. They have two children, Frances and James. I kwow that Gourlay Winter and Leeming go out of business in the 20s, so I’m not sure where Stanley ends up (yet.)

I haven’t taken this story much further, but I know that there are lots of references to Rycrofts in the local paper from those years that I haven’t begun to explore. Even better, I likely have some Rycroft cousins on this side of the Atlantic that I haven’t met yet. If you know or are related to any of these people’s descendants, please get in touch.

 

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Family Recipe Friday: Christmas Edition

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When we cleared out my mother’s condo, I grabbed her recipe boxes with the intent of uploading the family favorites to share with my siblings.

I knew that there were a few cards in my grandmother’s handwriting that I wanted to save and possibly make. I’m one of the increasingly rare breed who love fruitcake and today share three Christmassy recipes.

The first is for Dark Christmas Cake. I recall these cakes arriving by mail (?) in Ottawa from my mother’s mom, Daisy Goddard, who lived in Toronto.

My Grandma Gear (Eva Daisy Goddard) in her kitchen on Nairn Ave, Toronto.

One day, I came home from school to find a syringe in the sink and the cake on the counter. My mother (a physician) had been injecting some kind of alcohol into it well in advance of Christmas so that it would have time to absorb the goodness. The recipe is in my grandmother’s handwiting.

Family Christmas recipes_0001

Next up is a recipe for Mince Meat from Daisy’s mother, Emily Minnie Price. Minnie was born in 1869 in Chester, England, the second of four children of James Dobb Price (bookkeeper) and his wife Eliza Rycroft (a grocer).

Emily Minnie Price
Emily Minnie Price

Minnie’s mother died in 1881 when she was twelve and she and her sister went to live with her maternal grandmother, Sarah Rycroft, and three of Sarah’s unmarried children, then in their 20s. Sarah was a pawnbroker with a shop at 26 Princess Street. The younger two children went to live with their paternal grandmother mother.

Minnie emigrated to Toronto in 1889 a couple of years after Sarah died and, two years later, married my grandfather, Stephen Robert Goddard. Here is her Mince Meat recipe: it has no instructions, just the ingredients, which was probably pretty common in those days.

A Christmas Pudding recipe labelled “Grandma Gear’s” was from my great grandmother Janet Forbes Morren. She was from Aberdeen and emigrated to Canada in 1899 where she married a Walter Gear in Calgary. Janet’s father, WIlliam Morren, was an engineer and was away a good bit of the time on steam ships. (The census regularly showed his civil parish as “Vessels”.) Janet’s mother, Barbara Gordon, died in 1886 when Janet was just eight years old, and she and her sister Margaret went to live with her older sister Williamina (who was 15 years her senior) in Edinburgh (then Leith North.) She ended up in Toronto (a long story for another time) and lived close by my grandmother and family.

Her Christmas Pudding recipe. Again, no instructions.

Family Christmas recipes_0002

Would love to hear from relatives who have stories or anecdotes about these recipes or these three women. The second and third recipe are in the same handwriting. Can anyone identify it? I hope to take a crack at the recipes in about six months.

Reading as imaginative co-creation

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As the lights darkened in the TIFF cinema Monday night, I leaned over to my friend and said “We’re so lucky to live in this city.”

We were there for the season opener of the Books in Film series. Eleanor Wachtel had just introduced Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and special guest flown in from Lahore for the screening of Mira Nair’s film based on the novel. From his brief comments before the film, it was clear this was going to be a highlight of the series.

No spoilers here. This Man Booker nominated novel is a must-read. But it was an interesting exercise in teasing out the differences between the experience of reading and that of watching a film. The novel has two basic acts: Changez (the protagonist, pronounced Chong’-iz) at Princeton and working as a financial analyst in New York City; and Changez after he returns to Lahore. The novel is written in the second person: Changez is telling his story to an American while sitting in a cafe in Lahore. We don’t know much about the American and the ending is not tidy.

In the film, there is a third act that ties the story together. There are other significant changes, and much more of a back story. Hamid stated that movie-goers don’t want to leave the cinema not knowing what “the ending” meant. But more than that, he had interesting things to say about the experience of reading versus watching a film.

In his view, a book leaves greater space for “imaginative co-creation” on the part of the reader. And particularly so in this novel where one half of the conversation is missing. Readers are required to imagine a lot, to create their own reality, to “engage in make-believe, or imaginative play for adults.”  He said that film is more “pre-chewed”, with less space for the viewer to enter into their own minds. Hamid stated that “books and film are completely different art forms.”

There was more. A discussion of the meaning of a beard. Nair’s changes to the screenplay to highlight powerful women. The importance (or not) of 9/11 in the novel. How one’s identification as part of a group can be (always is?) uncomfortable.

This was an evening to remember, and one of the reasons that I love my adopted city, and TIFF in particular. If you’re a reader and love film (and live in Toronto), single tickets are now available for this terrific series.

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Culture blast

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I love Toronto. I know, we’re the centre of the universe blah, blah, blah.

But really, these past couple of days have reminded me about the wonderful benefits of being in a large, culture-filled city, particularly in my current retired-with-grown-kids state.

The Canadian Opera Company

As a supporter of the Canadian Opera Company, I was blessed with a pass for 2 tickets to see Tuesday’s working rehearsal of Britten’s Peter Grimes. It stars great Canadian tenor Ben Heppner in the namesake role. The brother of a friend is also in it (Roger Honeywell as Bob Boles), plus a friend from choir (and voice teacher for Michael) is in the chorus (Paula Wickberg). I invited my brother to join me.

Unlike other rehearsals I’ve been to, this was early on in the process so there was lots of stopping and starting, which was great. We saw Music Director Johannes Debus put the orchestra through it’s paces, as well as tightening up timing and articulation of the chorus and the onstage drummer. We also saw some staging worked through so that, for example, Swallow could see the conductor to get his vocal cue while tumbling over and under a table (and the Nieces.) The rehearsal was also a great way to hear some of the music repeated a few times as it is new to me. I will now be able to recognize some of the the themes when we attend. We only saw Acts 2 and part of Act 3, but I’m excited to see the whole work in performance on October 5.

Last night, Zouheir and I attended a Star Talk at the Toronto Reference Library that featured an interview by Richard Ouzounian with Ben Heppner. It was a lovely surprise to see my three aunts there as well. Heppner comes across as a real family man who has managed in latter years to limit his performance schedule to 50 days per year. He said that his critics thought that this would spell the demise of his career, but he found that, the law of supply and demand came in to play here and he is in more demand (and better paid) than ever. A video of this interview should be up here within the next few days.

The COC has an excellent online listening guide and study guide for this opera. I will definitely be browsing through the latter before we see the performance.

Also in culture this week: Ai Weiwei at the AGO. Next post.

English: The Scallop The Scallop statue at Ald...
English: The Scallop The Scallop statue at Aldeburgh Suffolk. Dedicated to Benjamin Britten, who used to walk along the beach in the afternoons. Created from stainless steel by Suffolk-based artist Maggi Hambling, it stands four metres high, and was unveiled in November 2003. The piece is made up of two interlocking scallop shells, each broken, the upright shell being pierced with the words: “I hear those voices that will not be drowned”, which are taken from Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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Seven Quick Takes – Heat Wave Edition

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Seven Quick Takes Friday

  1. I have misplaced my Kobo ereader and it’s driving me crazy. I have looked everywhere and the little devil is eluding me. I’m halfway through Tender is the Night and I want to finish it up this weekend. Because it’s a download from the library, I can’t read it on the Kobo app on my iPad. The last time I recall reading on it , I was flaked out on the sofa in the kitchen, but I’ve searched all my reading nooks to no avail.
  2. I’ve made some progress on my travel journal. It was great to get the sewing machine out again, and I’ve completed the cover and a bunch of pages. I need to collect some more paper scraps, ephemera, etc to finish it up, but I’m quite happy with the work so far.

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  3. The heat. I’m really a shade plant, and I’m finding spending any amount of time outside a strain these days. My step count has gone way down and I’m starting to use antiperspirant on places that I don’t usually need it. (Curvaceous women know what I’m talking about.) We keep getting calls for storms but it’s been a dry week so far. I transplanted some herbs this morning, but the 15 minutes outside completely did me in.
  4. My wall o’ bookcases is built and filled, but they were filled randomly. So a weekend project will be to re-organize my books. I like to have fiction in alphabetical order by author and non-fiction by topic. I’m also using them for genealogy supplies and photo boxes, so there will be a couple of shelves for that as well.

    Bookcases in need of order.
    Bookcases in need of order.
  5. I had a couple of nice meals out with friends this week. On Wednesday evening, four altos from choir got together at Steak Frites on Yonge Street to catch up. We only sing from September to June so it was great to see these women again and get all the news. Yesterday, I met an old friend, Karen, from my early days in Ottawa who lives in Pickering. She’s a kindergarten teacher and has a pretty busy schedule during the academic year, so it’s great to get together in person a couple of times over the summer. We had a lovely meal at The Copper Chimney on Avenue Road as she was on her way to Waterloo to see her daughter.
  6. Michael played his first of four gigs with the Weston Silver Band this summer, where he’s been subbing on Eb Bass (tuba). They’re playing three music festivals and a fundraiser (for themselves). Last Sunday they were at Music at Fieldcote in Ancaster. Zouheir and I drove Michael and his euphonium-playing colleague Kohei Izuma out there for 5 pm, we slipped away for dinner at the Ancaster Mill, and then joined them at the concert that started at 7 pm.
    Music at Fieldcote. Michael is second from the left.

    Ancaster Mill.
    Ancaster Mill.
  7. I finally downloaded (and deleted) all 1500 photos on my iphone. I’ve been flipping through them and came across this one, taken on Yonge Street between St. Clair and Dupont.
    Ain't that the truth....
    Ain’t that the truth….

    Think on that for a while. Brought to you by The Brand Factory.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday – High and Dry.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday

  1. We were one of the lucky ones in Toronto this week: no water damage and no power outages. Didn’t even get affected by what I presume were rolling blackouts that hit my hair salon (and their tankless water heater) just as I arrived for my appointment. Luckily it was short and I didn’t need to have a cold-water shampoo. That being said, Zouheir had to walk down twenty floors to leave his building on Monday night as they had no power, and his commutes home were miserably long for a couple of days. But the humidity has broken and the city is drying out.
  2. My “nephew” Feras arrived from the LA last Saturday. I put nephew in quotation marks as he’s actually Zouheir’s first-cousin-once removed, but he calles us Amo and Tante as is the custom in the middle east (calling older family members uncle and aunt.) He’s originally from Syria, just finished high school there, and needs to learn English. Life in LA is pretty much constrained to arabic in his social circle so a summer in Toronto with a few weeks at a language school will be just the ticket to get him ready for college. Needless to say, the rain storm was somewhat alarming for him, but we assured him that this was atypical and he shouldn’t expect that kind of rain again during his stay. He’s heading up to the cottage with Alex and a passel of Alex’s friends this weekend, which should make for a grand introduction to the way young people in Canada spend their free time when there’s no internet. (I believe it may involve beer, barbecuing, and a hookah. And Alex just mentioned something about teaching Feras beer pong.)
    Feras and Zouheir whiling away some time during the big rainstorm.
    Feras and Zouheir whiling away some time during the big rainstorm.
  3. I am very excited about our upcoming trip to Istanbul in August. All signs are go for the voyage, and I’ve decided to craft a funky travel journal like this. I’ve picked up some fabric and have been collecting papers to incorporate into it. As soon as I finish up some framing projects, I’ll get started. (Pro-tip: scour thrift stores for ugly art in nice frames, make/buy new mats if necessary, and then frame the cheap but attractive art you buy when travelling. Have saved mucho dinero over buying new/pro framing.)
  4. Went to my first Fringe Festival performance yesterday, and it was fab. It was down at Theatre Passe Muraille Backstage, a one-man show called The Nature of a Bullet. Actor Nick Dipchand has been mentored by a friend of mine who encouraged me to see the show and she joined me there. Nick is a marvel, taking on a number of characters in his 50 minute performance. I’d met him a couple of times before and we had a little chat afterwards. If you’re in Toronto and don’t mind mature language, check it out.
    the_nature_of_a_bullet-250x251
    Nick Dipchand in The Nature of a Bullet.
  5. New books this week! For my birthday, my boys gave me a couple off my wish list: Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow by Anders Nilsen, a gorgeous story stitched together with emails, postcards, letters, etc., and My Canada Includes Foie Gras: A Culinary Life
    by Jacob Richler, all about his life experiences with Canadian food, starting out from his childhood at home with his father, Mordecai.
    In my ongoing fascination with the life and works of Dominick Dunne, my browsing at Value Village produced The Way We Lived
    Cover of "The Way We Lived Then : Recolle...
    Cover via Amazon

    Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper by Dunne, a gorgeous memoir containing many black and while photographs, mostly by the author. I also found a book of fashion photography and closeups of fabric designs from the 60s called Flower Power. It also came with a CD containing the designs. The clerk, thinking it was a magazine, charged me 99 cents. The fabric design pages will make great wrapping/book-making paper.

  6. It was in one of Dunne’s books that I first heard the term “walker” to designate younger men hired to accompany aging socialites around town, sort of a good-looking personal assistant/escort. In yesterday’s National Post column by Shinan Govani, he prints a help-wanted ad, purportedly placed by one Alison Eastwood (who looks too young to need one, but who am I to judge?). Check it out here.
  7. From my Facebook feed today. This dog has been trained to detect American foulbrood, some kind of disease that wipes out bees. I just love working dogs, and if you do too, go and read the whole piece here.
    bazz-beekeeper-dog
    Bazz the beekeeping dog.
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Review: The Giacomo Variations

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(c) Natalie Bauer for The Giacomo Variations
(c) Natalie Bauer for The Giacomo Variations

I was really looking forward to this event, in Toronto for four performances this weekend. It is subtitled “a chamber opera play” and stars John Malkovich and a small cast of european singers/actors. The music is Mozart, a selection of arias and other songs pulled from his opera repertoire, and the singers are accompanied by the Orchester Vienna Akademie, directed by Martin Haselböck.

The good: the concept. Casanova looks back over his life and philosophizes on various topics while remembering his conquests. Incorporating the music of Mozart, with minor changes to the ensembles and arias (and some of the text) to suit the story had thrilling possibilities. The innovative sets, three giant hooped dresses which can roll around on stage, serve as backdrops, convenient spaces for costume changes and props, were interesting.

The bad: I would have left at intermission if I didn’t feel that it could only get better. Except it didn’t.

My main issues:

  1. There is no story arc, or at least it didn’t play out as I hoped it was imagined to. We never really care about any of the characters, except perhaps a maid who escapes rape because Casanova cannot perform. In trying to combine opera and theatre, the writer seemed to have forgotten that in both those arts, story is rather important.
  2. The music was mediocre. Some of the voices were nice, but the Elgin Theatre is not a place to hear opera. Malkovich was micced, but he didn’t sing much. (And when he did, one wished he wasn’t miked.) Volume was very uneven with some arias virtually inaudible in parts. The orchestra was uninspiring. Apparently they use period instruments which perhaps explains the rather lengthy time it took them to tune at the beginning of each act. At a couple of points (I think), four members of the orchestra stood to take the chorus parts and were virtually inaudible, although micced. There were many times when the singers and orchestra were out of sync, making it seem like a rehearsal rather than a show that has run in Prague, New York, and Montreal prior to its run in Toronto. Frankly, it hurts to think the production paid to fly this orchestra across the ocean to North America, which has a wealth of musical talent from which to draw.
  3. The set looked like it had been designed for travel. The rear screen at the back of the stage was not used for anything other than a blue light that didn’t change throughout the production. Our (expensive) seats were at the edge of the hall, just behind the cross-wise aisle, and a good part of stage right was blocked by speakers and what appeared to be a monitor.
  4. The lead actress had a significant Russian accent and a tight, smiley face with very narrow emotional range. Malkovich used his usual rather flat delivery which didn’t bother me as much as it did my date. His forays into singing during a couple of the ensemble pieces, and a single solo near the end had me imagining of a cross between William Shatner and Sting.
  5. The subtitles were atrociously produced. No excuse here. They were just bad. Mistranslated. Timing out. No titles for extended periods of time. Bleh.

I wanted to like it. My date came back from a business trip expressly to attend. But it just didn’t cut it. As we left the theatre, we reflected on the riches Toronto has to offer in the music, opera, and theatre scene and that, if nothing else, this production reminded us gently that sometimes the grass is greenest right in your own back yard.

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Coming close to baritone bliss

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Photo Credit: Sim Canetty-ClarkeI attended the TSO event yesterday featuring Gerald Finley. I have followed his career with interest, if for no other reason than that we were in the same high school class. I heard him sing at the Westben Arts Festival last summer and it was a wonderful, moving, concert. I missed his performance in Dr. Atomic in Atlanta by a couple of weeks when we moved back to Toronto.

Last night, the main event was the Brahms German Requiem, Op. 45. where he was joined by Soprano Klara Ek and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. I was not familiar with much of this work except for the Mäßig bewegt (How wonderful are thy tabernacles), a choral piece that I have sung in the past. Finley did a wonderful job, although the solo parts are small. The choir was great. I wasn’t enamoured of the soprano, although excerpts I’ve listened to online are wonderful.

The first half of the program was the Canadian premiere of “Songs of Love and Sorrow” written by Peter Lieberson based on poems by Pablo Neruda. This work was premiered by Finley in Boston in 2010, and conductor Peter Oundjian noted that they were written with Finley in mind. The story behind this and Lieberson’s previous song cycle “Neruda Songs” is very touching. There is some beautiful music here and a program insert provided the text and translation for the songs, which is very powerful.

Full woman, carnal apple, hot moon, thick smell of seaweed, mud, and light in masquerade, what secret clarity opens up between your columns?
What ancient night does man touch with his senses?

Finley’s voice is so pure and strong. He sang with much emotion. This may be anathema for some, but I wish that there had been surtitles during the performance. I couldn’t take my eyes off the stage to peer at the text in my program in the dim light of the hall. But I believe my experience would have been improved with a sense of the meaning of the songs during the performance.

My companion felt that the work was a bit monotonous and I’d have to agree, possibly due to the above. Finley’s voice was sometimes swallowed up by the much-reduced orchestra behind him.

I would have to say that the Westben performance gave so much more of Finley. It was a selection of favourites from the song repertoire and was in a much more intimate setting, possibly a better way to experience what Oundjian called “one of the most extraordinary voices to hit the planet.”

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