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2020

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Having described in my last post how we came to be lucky enough to have Martin Springett designing for us the cover of our new album – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – this post demonstrates how Martin’s design evolved from the draft pencil drawing to the finished artwork.

Martin was generous enough to keep us informed throughout the process and watching the eventual artwork slowly emerge was a fascinating and valuable lesson.

From the draft Martin drew the final outline of cover in a larger form:

He then started to fill in the detailed shading – still working only in monochrome:


…until the final form was complete:


The image was then digitised and coloured on the computer. Doing so has the significant advantage that different colour values can be tried before the final version is settled upon. Martin also added the titling and borders to turn the wonderful image of the Goddess into a CD cover.

 

At this point the artwork was sent to us – in digital form – so that we could submit it to our chosen Digital Music distributor and to work it up into a cover for physical CDs:


Martin is in a position to be able to choose from whom he accepts commissions and we are greatly honoured that agreed to design and create our album artwork for us. Do check out Martin’s splendid website – as well as that of his band – The Gardening Club.

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Album covers are like any other vehicle, they are a means of illustrating a story”.

Peter Blake

The fabulous cover for our new CD – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” was created for us by Toronto-based musician and artist – Martin Springett.

That we ended up with such an excellent and fitting cover is entirely down to the Chanteuse. She describes how it came about:

How I was connected with Martin is through a friend and work colleague of my husband’s named Joan Steacy.  Joan is an award-winning graphic novelist and instructor at Camosun College’s Comic and Graphic Arts program.  Joan was over one day and I had her listen to a track from the new ‘Anam Danu’ album.  She said the music reminded her of her friend Martin’s music, and then she explained that he was also fabulous graphic artist who had done album covers for his band, and other bands, as well as being a children’s book illustrator“.

The Chanteuse investigated Martin’s website and found that the style of his artwork fitted with thoughts that she already had in mind for the CD cover. Joan put the Chanteuse in touch with Martin – she called him and introduced us and asked if he might be prepared to take on a commission for us. Having listened to some of the tracks from our first release – “Winds of Change” – Martin most kindly and generously agreed to take on the project.

Martin and the Chanteuse engaged in an email exchange to determine the elements that the cover should include. Martin sent her examples of previous works in similar styles to those that they were discussing and the Chanteuse sent him images of Celtic designs that she had sourced.

Common ground having been agreed upon, Martin quickly came up with some initial ideas as to the form that the cover might eventually take. These lovely drawings show how it rapidly evolved. (Note that we had clearly at that point not settled on a final title for the album!).

 

 

 

Martin wrote of making the figure “more lively“; of creating “a big gesture that would flow across the square shape“. This is what he came up with:

 

We loved it and immediately gave it the thumbs up. We loved the flow and movement of the Goddess herself – we loved the elements of the circle of life that have been incorporated and we loved the way that Martin had pulled into the image ideas and themes that we had addressed in the songs on the album.

We eagerly anticipating seeing the finished cover. The process by which Martin turned his draft into the finished artwork will be the subject of my next post.

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…but not as we know it!

(Parodying a line that was never actually in Star Trek!)

There is no getting away from the fact that this is a Christmas unlike any that we have known. In fact, unless one is old enough to remember the Second World War it is highly unlikely that such a level of disruption to the normal cycle of celebration will have been experienced before. None the less, we will persevere – because that is what we do. And come next year – when much has returned to a state considerably closer to the ‘old normal’ – we may find it difficult to recall just how weird this one was.

In the meantime…

…to friends, acquaintances and gentle readers…

…from the Kickass Canada Girl and the Imperceptible Immigrant…

we wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and a Happy Hogmany!

Sláinte!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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…tells a story.

 

Well – part of one, at least!

So – what might be going in this particular picture then?

(You might wish to click on the image to see it in greater detail!)

I wrote in this forum a little earlier in the year about the wonderful live-streamed performance that we had enjoyed from the Old Vic in London of the late Brian Friel’s ‘Faith Healer‘ – one of my favourite plays.

Now – The Girl and I usually treat ourselves to a visit to the theatre at around this time of year, usually to take in something of a festive nature and very much as a prelude to the Christmas season itself.

This year, of course, there is not much on offer in this line – for the obvious reasons. The splendid Old Vic has – however – re-staged for live streaming Matthew Warchus’s production of Dickens’ immortal classic – ‘A Christmas Carol‘ – as adapted by Jack Thorne. We eagerly signed up to experience the production this Monday just past.

So – to the right of the picture above you can see our TV, showing the opening scenes of ‘A Christmas Carol‘. This is streaming live from London over Zoom. It is 7:00pm in London – 11:00am in Victoria.

To the left of the picture is our Christmas tree. That in itself has a tale behind it, which may be told in another post.

Through the windows one can see that the crisp morning air is filled with something else. Snow!

It is true that we don’t get much snow in Victoria – certainly when compared to other parts of Canada – but we do occasionally get things like this – a sudden, sharp and highly unpleasant snow storm with vigorous winds.

Now – the temperature outside on Monday was not particularly cold and, as a result, this snow was very wet. It came down hard and the gusting wind blew it into thick drifts covering everything in a short space of time. The snow froze on the branches of the many pine and fir tress in the surrounding areas and – assailed by the accompanying winds – brought down many sizeable branches, not least in our own garden.

At around midday – just as ‘A Christmas Carol’ had paused for its intermission – the power went out! This of course not only deprived us of the TV but also of our Internet connection. After some frantic scrabbling about we were able to watch the second half of the show – huddled closely together – on The Girl’s cell phone. Not quite the experience we had imagined, but we still gleaned enough to be moved anew by this excellent production.

The power was out for some four hours, as crews from BC Hydro struggled to fix the trail of faults that the storm left in its wake as it crossed the peninsula. The power finally came back on at around 4:00pm and – as it was by then getting dark – we breathed a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later we heard a loud ‘bang’ from somewhere down the street. A transformer had blown and we were plunged once again into darkness. It is at a such times that we are extremely glad that we had gas installed in the house when we moved in. Our fire in the drawing room kept us warm and we were able to cook our supper on our gas range – by the light of the new LED headlamps that The Girl had thoughtfully and recently provided for just such occasions.

By the time the power came back on some three hours later the impetus to seize the day had somewhat evaporated, so it was not that long before we headed for bed.

Rather more ‘excitement’ for one day than we had anticipated!

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Artwork by Martin SpringettSince my last update on the subject of the eagerly awaited new Anam Danu album – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – much has occurred.

The tracks have passed through the mastering process described in my last update and have been assembled into an album. Final tweaks were made and all is now as good as we can get it.

We now have a splendid and beautiful cover for the CD – the which you can see at the top of this post. This lovely piece of work was created specially for us and I will pass on the full story of how it came to be in a subsequent post.

All of this goodness has been bundled up in the approved fashion and shipped off to our Digital Music Distributor of choice. All we can do now is to sit back and wait, because the process normally takes around three to four weeks. With Christmas looming it may even take a little longer – but as you all know: “All good things…”

Once all has been through the approval mill the album will become available through all the usual digital channels.

Finally – Anam Danu now has its own website, which can be found at:

Anamdanu.com

We are pretty pleased with the way that the website has turned out, but is is conspicuously lacking in any of the usual atmospheric band shots. The reasons for that are sadly obvious; in times of pandemic trying to organise a photo shoot runs that gamut from difficult to downright foolhardy.

The website will be kept up to date with all manner of musical goings-on as things progress. Needless to say one of the first things to look for there will be the firm release dates – once we know them – as well as details as to where to find the album.

The music on this album was very much born out of this most unfortunate year. Our hope is that in this manner (as of course in many others) something good will come from it.

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Just for completeness – and who doesn’t like a little completeness – I thought I should wrap up my thread from earlier in the year about having to apply for a new Permanent Resident card (documented here and here). Well – I finally have it – and here it is:

You will notice that I have intentionally blurred some of the detail for security reasons. My face – on the other hand – usually looks like that first thing in the morning!

This is the old and now redundant card – strangely suffering from a similar lack of focus.

It struck me – as I was manipulating these images – that there is perhaps something a little perverse in having a Permanent Resident Card that must be renewed every five years.

That seems to be a whole new definition of ‘permanent’.

The instructions that came with the new card dictated that the old one should be destroyed. Naturally I did as I was directed: herewith the proof:

Hmmm! I think one of my projects for 2021 must be to try to get my citizenship sorted out.

Onward and upward!

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My tastes in music are distinctly catholic; the same being true of both popular and classical repertoires. With regard to the latter I must admit to being a romantic (actually probably true in many spheres) – the which never quite sat right with more formal classicists like my father whose interests tended toward the mathematical rather than the emotional.

I make no apologies for that…

I have a particular passion for the composers of what might be considered the golden age of British music (contentious, I know – but not the main drift of this post) – the music of Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams all being dear to my heart. Given the relatively low esteem in which English composers are held in general by comparison with the greats of classical music I sometimes wonder just what it is about this music which touches my soul in ways that, say, Mozart and Beethoven – for all their acknowledged genius – do not.

Is there some musical chauvinism at work or could it really be that there is something in the music that captures an essence of (at least part of) the country and of its peoples?

I am – of course – far from alone in my appreciation for these works. The long running British radio program – ‘Desert Island Discs‘ – for which (often celebrity) guests choose the eight recordings with which they would care to be marooned on the fictive island of the title, noted that Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending‘ was one of the most frequently chosen pieces. Indeed – when the program ran a poll of its audience’s all time favourite recordings, ‘The Lark…’ came out on top.

The reason for my musing on this subject in the midst of a British Columbian winter is that I re-watched the other day a short BBC documentary from 2012 – hosted by the late Dame Dianna Rigg – on the subject of ‘The Lark…‘.

Vaughan Williams started work on the piece in 1914 just before the outbreak of the Great War, inspired by George Meredith’s poem of the same name. In the hiatus that ensued Vaughan Williams (who was 41 at the time) served as an ambulance driver in France and Salonika. After the war he re-visited ‘The Lark…‘ with the help of the English violinist, Marie Hall, to whom the piece is dedicated. The original version of the work – scored for solo violin and piano – was premiered in December of 1920 in conjunction with the Avonmouth and Shirehampton Choral Society, at Shirehampton Public Hall, not far from Bristol.

The main feature of the 2012 documentary was a re-creation of that first performance of ‘The Lark…‘ at Shirehampton Public Hall, with the young violin virtuoso, Julia Hwang, in the staring role. The audience comprised mainly good folk of what we might call ‘a certain age’ and as the piece progressed the camera lingered on individual faces so that the viewer might best measure the effect the the work has on those with familiar sensibilities. The audience did not disappoint and no British stiff-upper-lip could disguise their emotional response to the piece.

What struck me most was that at the time of the recording, Julia Hwang was a mere fifteen years old. How could one so young give a performance with such intense detail; laden with emotions of which she must a that age surely have been innocent?

Therein – I would humbly suggest – lies the formidable power of music…

 

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I am, as I write the introduction to this post, invigilating the end-of-course exam for some thirty students (mostly of Environmental Science) who have this term been studying Computer Literacy.

I am doing so remotely here in the comfort and safely of my studio, which explains why I can be tapping away at a blog entry on the left-most screen whilst still monitoring progress and responding to any queries on the other two. There is something decidedly surreal about about the process.

Having said that – there is (and has been throughout) something decidedly surreal about the whole undertaking this term.

I feel as though I know some of these students a little, having assisted them a fair bit throughout the course, responding to questions and observations, sharing the odd joke… and, of course, they have listened to me quite a lot – maybe three hours a week.

We have – however – none of us met. I have spoken directly to some whilst trying to help them – but other than the few who have their pictures as avatars, I do not even know what most of them look like. Students prefer to communicate with lecturers by chat or email. At the most they may enable audio so that we can talk – but they don’t do video with staff (unless prevailed upon so to do) and frankly I don’t blame them. They do get to see me (should they so choose) as they voted at the start of the course for my camera to be on.

It is the lot of the teacher – of course – to meet transiently and then to wish good and prosperous lives to a constant succession of new faces. I guess it is one of the things that attracts people to teaching – the opportunity to make human contacts (and to give something useful and meaningful in return). Doing so without ever meeting face to face, however, seems somehow inadequate.

Given the alternatives in this horrid year I am not complaining. I can scarcely imagine how any of this (and a gazillion other things that we maybe take a little too much for granted) might have been effected at all some fifteen or twenty years ago – let alone back in the mists of time (as when I was a student, for example).

It may be going a little far to suggest that we are the fortunate ones.

“Tell that to the young people of today. They won’t believe you…”

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Well – not boots actually – but I could not off the top of my head think of any other footwear related couplets from which I could plagiarise a post title.

When I was a  considerably younger man I really had very little time for slippers. Now that I write that it feels like an odd thing to say; I don’t suppose than anyone actually gives time to domestic footwear. What I mean is that I didn’t feel the need for/couldn’t be bother with such things. Living in residences with carpets probably probably made a difference; we have little truck with such things here on the west coast.

I suppose also that I am now guilty of re-enforcing the stereotypes concerning such cosy domestic items – that they are only for old-folks; something your father would wear in his dotage (mine did!). I guess the truth is that I have now become (am now becoming!) that old-timer myself.

Either way – when we came to Canada half a decade ago it seemed like the right (and sensible – no-one needs cold feet) thing to do to acquire said comfy accoutrements. Further – being in Canada – they should undoubtedly take the form of Moccasins. A suitable pair was duly located – purchased – fallen in love with and worn until they fell apart.

Those are they on the left. On the right is the virtually identical pair with which I have just replaced them.

Well – if it ain’t broke…

If – on the other hand – it is broke…

When I was a  considerably younger man I really had very little time for slip-on shoes. You know – the sort of thing that doesn’t have laces (Tom Allen on ‘Mock the Week’ – “Duh! Espadrilles“).  I mean – let’s face it – shoes without laces aren’t real shoes, now – are they? Not for an English gentleman anyway (they’re called ‘loafers’ for goodness sake!).

Anyway – when we came to Canada half a decade ago and acquired not only an rather splendid inside but also a quite extensive outside  – one containing a barbecue (which the gentleman abroad is expected to use year round) and continuous and copious quantities of pine needles, etc – it suddenly made perfect sense to have some footwear that could easily be slipped on an off every time one needed to rush out to attend the grill! Of course – being in Canada – they would have to take a somewhat more rugged and substantial form than most casual English shoes (one really can’t barbecue in Hunters!). Needless to say, a suitable pair was duly located – purchased – fallen in love with and worn until they fell apart.

Those are they on the left. On the right is the virtually identical pair with which I have just replaced them.

Well – you know what they say…

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Some days – particularly at this time of year – the cold morning air is so clear that we get a quite startlingly sharp vista of Mount Baker and the mountain ranges that surround it.

At such time – even though my humble camera is unable to do the prospect justice – I can’t resist photographing it…

…or posting the results!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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