This weekend brings the peak of Summer! We’ve had the fireworks, we’ve had Pride and now the great celestial Perseid meteor show takes over…up to eighty meteors an hour and fireballs will be somehow silently whooshing over our heads this very weekend! I kid you not! So get away from the city lights if you can and enjoy the greatest show off earth…
Actually it’s a lot more mellow than that 🙂 Here’s our tune “River of Stars” for your starry enjoyment over this beautiful Summer weekend…how I wish Summer could last forever!
Seraphina (my flute) and I have been noticeably quieter this last year and a half as I continue to recover from my little accident. (I fell off my mother’s bed while clipping her toenails and went backwards into a chest of drawers! strange but true!) Although I’m not back to performing yet, I have been enjoying writing at the piano, very much. Bill asked me to collaborate with him on a piece for the jazz festival. It’s called “Lagoon,” and I’d love to share this new piece with you. I’ll be there in the back row probably, with my ear plugs and shades…but feeling very happy! Eventually we’ll get back to the Naturals recording we were working on. Can’t say exactly when. I certainly am learning a lot about the brain though, neuroplasticity and all that. Brains are cool 🙂
Hope to see you on next Sunday, June 25 at the Atrium at the Woodwards Building! Performance is at 5pm!
Thoughts of sunny haciendas and social media-ocrity sweep through my mind…
Hey aspirational! Hey blookup! Hey all you dog gone great followers and fans! Let’s Face-book it:
Oh yes, this is a truly virtual blog now! I talked to Mike.Brown and he creates the post. These are my words coming through him! Thanks, Mike. (You’re welcome! 😜 )
When I’m out with my love dove, Bill, we frequently have to contend with the horrors of corporate background music. Last night we endured two hours of repellant looped robotic music that only drinking could improve. Oh I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
Hey, come on… We’re human beings… We want to feel! To be touched… To imagine! It’s sinister how corporate decides which satellite (sat-elite?) channel will hold sway over the diners and the rest of us can just lump it. While it’s true I’m extra sensitive and still recovering from my head bonking last December, I think I’ve always been sensitive. Silence – you know, the space between the notes – can be powerful. Then, I want to put in a video clip of oh no nonononononononono leave it it’s wonderful. We will find this on YouTube…
Can’t wait to play with my Naturals again! And also check out Randall’s splash cymbal on “We are Golden”! My camera did something cool and unusual.
Are you an informed listener? Do you take the trouble to protect your ears and your musical appetite? Do you cancel your order and leave a restaurant if the manager does not turn down the Muzak?
I think I’m getting better! I spent 12 hours yesterday on the set of “Wonder”, a film with Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, among others. I had the great pleasure of chatting with Owen and meeting his radiant mother. This was the highlight of my triumphant return (lol) to “union film background” 😉 I made a new friend. A 79 year old woman named Elizabeth who was recovering from a stroke and was out for a day of work. She was a spritely spirit who could only speak a few words. We had wonderful conversations savouring these words. The word of the day was “beauuuutiful”. I noticed her difficulty with pronouncing “crazy” – her crazy came out as “crouuzy”. My inner ESL teacher came out and I was able to help her with her pronunciation so she could enjoy saying “crazy”. We put those two words together so that we could go around saying “crazy beauuuutiful.” It really was tremendous fun. I wanted to stay in touch with her but she was wrapped before me and vanished!
This is an interesting mixture of seasons… Isn’t it?
White morning glories popping out of tangled vines with red blackberries tumbling over a blue spruce.
I am here in my spot
thanking the sun for warming my back a humming bird drops by to check up on me.
Damsel flies – a low hovering wasp and dried grasses all around me you can feel the fall this summer.
The young girl who borrowed her father’s oil paints and walked out into a field to become a painter one summer day is all grown up now and still enthralled by nature. I didn’t become a painter but I did become an artist!
Here’s dad doing two things he loved – sailing and singing.
And here’s my tune, Seraphina, named after my flute. Let’s all enjoy this last part of summer! 🌞
I am so fortunate to live on Stanley Park in the spring when the trees leaf they seem to rise up and surround my balcony like a canopy filled with bird song. Zephyrs of wind move through the trees and I can sometimes hear the little children at the Pooh Corner Daycare playing capriciously and singing “Jingle Bells” at the top of their lungs!
What could be more inspiring than playing with Dino DiNicolo in a beautiful garden surrounded by trees, flowers, and art? Dino and I have done this tour for years, sometimes in the rain, which has its own special atmosphere, but we expect nothing but sunny skies. The flowers are getting ready for their great performance! Art in the Garden is a tour of 16 gardens in West Vancouver and North Vancouver with a very reasonable charge of one dollar for each garden, each one unique featuring a visual artist, a musical duo, and of course the beautiful plants and flowers that have been nurtured all year.
Dino and I are scheduled to perform:
Saturday May 28th, 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Garden #14: 2820 Marine Drive, West Vancouver
It seems to me the cherry blossoms are even more beautiful as they fall. Long lines of pink along the streets. Hallways of rosy colours and small petals that tickle the road as they pass before you. This Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival is a wonderful thing. Thanks to Linda Poole for creating it.
cherry tree
even the blind woman
picks blossoms
-Rosa Clement, Manaus, Brazil
Before I leave you with a fantastic photo of Yayoi and I, and a video clip, I’d like to let you all know I’ll be returning to the garden once again May 28-29 with the amazing bassist Dino DiNicolo.
Yayoi and I performing haiku.
This is a video of our performance at VanDusen Garden.
You’re invited to a delightful intimate performance I am involved with. This will be the world premiere of Haiku Mime, a whimsical physical interpretation of haiku poetry submitted from around the world. Weaving text read by yours truly around the expressive movements of Yayoi Hirano, I simply love the quick interplay we are able to discover as we illuminate these modern haiku poems together. Please join us and be a part of the blossoming of this novel cultural collaboration.
March 24th, 2016; 12:30pm-1:00pm at the courtyard above Burrard Skytrain Station.
Happy Year of the Monkey, everybody! Super excited that we’ve broken $2500 as we begin our final push toward the Valentine’s Day weekend! Can we double that amount by then? Only with your help! Operators are standing by to take your contributions – no matter how small bananas! 🍌
To blog, or not to blog – that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die-to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die-to sleep.
Holly Burke Music & Poetry 