Ntuple Indemnity

I will begin by saying that the homegrown Albertan doctrine of “shoot, shovel and shut up” applies not just to mad cows, but also to hockey games like the one last night. No, really – let’s not talk about it. The penalties alone speak for just how poisonous the atmosphere was in the Ice Palace last night – 64 minutes dished out against Calgary and 60 against Tampa – but like I said, let’s not talk about it.

What this means, though, is that there will be at least one more return to Tampa for Game 5 – a bad thing in its own right, even when home-ice advantage is not taken into consideration. I refer not to the thirty-above hockey weather or the unsportsmanlike demeanour of what can be termed a hostile fan base, both factors that run quite contrary to what one can expect of watching hockey here in Calgary, but to a far greater menace to society as a whole. Her name is Brooke Hogan.

Ms. Hogan, a Tampa native who sings the national anthems at their home games with about as much vocal ability as her father Hulk, is – and I mean no disrespect to the Harts, who are good folks with whom I once crossed paths by way of piano lessons, of all things – irrefutable proof that professional wrestlers shouldn’t breed. I say this because the way she stomps all over “O Canada” like a wounded soldier limping across the Somme would be considered grounds for war by any country with an actual military. Here’s a lesson to all the aspiring American Idol contestants out there: singing a cappella does not give you a free pass to disregard the idea of tempo, which is about as fundamental to human civilization as the concept of the number zero. Don’t believe me? Take a wave mechanics course.

Leading an audience in an anthem (keyword: leading) comes with the implication that to some extent, members of said audience will be singing along. The fact that the American arena is primarily full of Americans is irrelevant, when ten percent of all Canada is watching the live telecast. When you lead an audience in song, you never, ever push and pull the tempo to your liking. It’s bad enough that she speeds through the first stanza as if it were the Indy 500, but to pull a ritardando in the next and an accelerando in the one after that – assuming she even has the capacity to understand that this is what she’s doing, which is a leap of faith – should get her at least a ten-minute misconduct.

The bottom line is, regardless of whether or not it is intentional, Hogan’s “performance” of the Canadian anthem is nothing short of cultural mockery. History has shown that such mockery has a very real demoralizing effect – one that Calgary overcame in Game 1 on merit, but you can only stomach something like this for so long. This is no different than the raucous booing and jeering of the visiting team that seems to be such an integral part of Tampa’s sporting culture. Come Game 5, someone get the girl a metronome, or get her off the ice.

So I just returned from the first performance of Diana Krall on her latest Canadian tour at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, where she will be for another two shows. Suffice to say, she places pretty high on the list of people Nick wants to be – and while I’m halfway there piano-wise, the vocals have a long way to go. (Observe Steve as he takes the preceding statement as a cue to pose a similarly self-indulgent question to himself on his blog concerning people whom he wants to be, proceeds to laud Joe Clark and Paul Simon – not necessarily in that order – and receives a boatload of comments from his readership while the responses to this here post remains strictly in the single-digits.)

I was first introduced to Ms. Krall – or would that be Mrs. Costello? – back in 1997 or so when she released Love Scenes, which was being promoted on Bravo!, which I watched all the time because it was the only station at the time carrying Red Dwarf. As Dirk Gently would point out, everything’s connected, see. But I digress. Now, back then I had yet to become the jazz-head I am today, with the swing rhythms permanently hardwired into my brain and the corresponding pen-drumming and whatnot. In the past few years I have really come to appreciate her work, and it was a pleasure to finally see her perform live.

I won’t pretend for a moment that the Grammys (should be “Grammies”) and the like are very often legitimate, but if ever there was a deserving artist in recent years, it’s Diana Krall. It’s impressive what a controlled pianist she is when, often at the same time, she sings with one of the most recognizable voices in modern jazz, a sultry alto with an enunciation that could be described as smooth – not that my description counts for much, because she really speaks (sings?) for herself. Watching a jazz musician of her calibre – not to mention the diversity of her repertoire: everything from Irving Berlin to Joni Mitchell to her husband – is an experience in itself, in the sense that she and her band play with such professionalism, but by the very nature of their music seem as laid back as ever.

If she’s coming by you on your tour, you owe it to yourself to try and get tickets – though I warn you, that is in itself a difficult and expensive proposition. But I guarantee you it will be worth it, and even if you are not quite into contemporary jazz, this would make a more than fitting introduction.

I think I slap this label on a lot of things, each in their own mutually exclusive localized contexts, but as the song goes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

This evening I went to see the Gala Opening of the 96th Edmonton Kiwanis Music Festival on the steps of City Hall. While my own Kiwanis roots are strictly in assorted piano classes in the Calgary equivalent, which took place in March, the same principle applies – the principle here being, go support young musicians and watch some performances in the competition. I guarantee that you will find at least one, if not many instances where you can say, “Wow, I wish I could do that as a kid.”

Tonight’s concert, at which the Lieutenant-Governor Lois Hole was in attendance, featured everything from the Gartner family, a father-and-three-sons accordion quartet, to seven-year-old piano prodigy Harris Wang, who appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last year. It also featured my former high school classmate Christine Eggert, who performed Liszt’s Concert Etude No. 3 in D-flat (“Un sospiro”). Now I finally have the grounds to affirm to people that yes, she’s a phenomenal musician.

Unfortunately, I leave town before the Musical Theatre Competition at Muttart Hall (Grant McEwan College) on Sunday, but somebody out there attend for me by proxy. The festival proper runs from tomorrow to May 5th, and performances take place at Alberta College, McDougall Church and the Cosmopolitan Music Society Hall.

So for the first time this playoff season, I miss a Flames game, and it turns out to be a very watchable 4-0 drubbing in their favour. But if they keep on playing like this, I will have plenty of chances to watch them again.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is running a massive online poll in preparation for a future television feature, asking: Who is the Greatest Canadian? I may be alone in this, but my pick is Oscar Peterson. It really comes down to this: who, as a person, would I most like to be? Among the profiled suggestions, it has to go to the greatest jazz pianist of all time and all time yet to come. But lest that be the only consideration, let’s keep this in mind: who else, of everybody there, so completely and singularly defines his art? In hockey, you have cultural icons over several generations – Richard, Gretzky, Howe – even Paul Henderson is listed entirely on the basis of his goal in the Summit Series. In politics, you may have Pierre Trudeau, but by no means was he the sole contributor to everything significant in Canadian governance today; think Diefenbaker, MacDonald, Kim Campbell – well, not Campbell, unless you are the National Geographic Society. International war and peace? Dallaire, Pearson, the list goes on. Literature? Richler, Findley, Atwood – as much as they all stand out, none of them can claim to dominate the field. Even when it comes to music, as much as we all like to quote Leonard Cohen and put our heads on Paul Anka’s shoulder, there’s a world of difference between the talent that distinguishes them in the oversaturated history of popular music and the kind I’m talking about.

But Oscar Peterson: he’s a giant among giants. When it comes to musical-technical prowess, you have Glenn Gould, who basically defined how to play Bach – and he is why one should fall short of calling O.P. the greatest Canadian pianist, period – but the latter did define how to both play and arrange the likes of Berlin, Gershwin, and Rodgers. From the age of fifteen he was already an established Canadian entertainer, performing on the CBC as well as his own Montreal radio program, “Fifteen Minutes Piano Rambling”. As far as Canadian contributions go, look no further than his Canadiana Suite. There’s an anecdote that when he was young, Oscar listened to an Art Tatum record for the first time and was so intimidated he took a month off the the ivories; call it transitivity, but that’s what it’s like to listen to him today. Sometimes it’s easy to pick up a book, admire a visual work of art or listen to a recording and tell yourself, “I can do that.” With Oscar Peterson, no you can’t.

When it comes to other Canadian heroes, I would mention former Scrabble World Champion and overall freakishly good player Joel Wapnick, but sadly enough, competitive Scrabble’s cultural penetration has insofar been rather limited. He does play the piano, though. But if we are looking simply at cultural iconism, one can’t ignore Lucy Maud Montgomery, who put Prince Edward Island on the map, and the unlisted Tim Horton, who puts coffee in me to this day.

With the U-Pass referendum Yes side walking away from yesterday’s Myer Horowitz election forum beaten and bloodied, and campaigning officially ceasing tonight, the race for the 2004-2005 SU Executive has effectively come to a close. Extensive coverage can be found in both The Gateway (26 Feb/04 and 2 Mar/04) and Steve Smith’s posts on the Webboard, including several rigorous candidate interviews and two very similar Poster Slams, one being the Smith Report Card and the other being the annual Gateway feature here (Boutet/Kaszor/Berry). Expect my final endorsements soon.

On another press-related note, congratulations to Adam Rozenhart, the section editor I worked with this year on Opinion and last year on A&E, for being selected as the next Editor-In-Chief.

And now for something completely different: a few days ago, something momentous happened at game music fan site OverClocked Remix. Jeremy Soule, composer of the scores to Secret of Evermore, Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights – and best known to me as the one who infused life into Knights of the Old Republic and emulated 1980s John Williams like nobody else – had his own submission admitted after three months in the elephantine queue.

Entitled Squaresoft Variation, it is a symphonic arrangement of Nobuo Uematsu’s signature title melody to Final Fantasy VI (or III here in North America), “Terra’s Theme” – one of the true standards of video game music in the genre’s short history. This is almost the equivalent of Ted Naismith submitting something to a Tolkien fan art community website, so this is no insignificant milestone. Be sure to check out the fallout.