Without music, life would be a mistake ...

Saturday night guitar party, 28/03/2020 (I'm top, 2nd left)
10 guitars, 15 friends, including a friend from Tokyo

"Without music, life would be a mistake." Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

I've played guitar most of my life. I started with a ukulele at age 9 (which I still play), and graduated to a 6-string acoustic guitar at age 12. I've written quite a bit about my guitar life on this blog.

Read my guitar and music posts here.

Music has lifted me up my whole life. I've made lifelong friends, even met my husband one night almost 40 years ago, because of my love of the guitar.

Author at 17, playing at a
high school coffee house

This spring as humanity finds itself in the grip of a pandemic, each of us must find solace where we can. So last night I ventured boldly with my musical friends onto the internet!

I was skeptical when a friend suggested we try it but in the end, I found joy in the deep connection I have to my friends, and to the music we have played together for decades.

That's me with my husband, top row, third from left

It was so beautiful to see everyone, all together in one place. One of us joined the party while sitting in his basement in Tokyo. One of us held his newborn son, so in one family three generations were present on the screen. Some of us were in isolation alone, some of us had our partners or children with us.

But in the end, we were all together.

It wasn't perfect. The internet was slow. Sound was intermittent. Sometimes people dropped out and had to reconnect.

Click to hear BIRCHES
With Allister Thompson

But we sang. We played. We listened. We chatted. We kicked at the darkness, as our guitar hero Bruce Cockburn once sang. We found solace in each other, and in the music we've always shared. It reminded us of warm summer nights around a campfire, of beautiful harmonies, of the passage of time and the impermanence of everything except music and friendship.

I played 3 original tunes, including The Gargoyle Shuffle. 

So find solace where you can, everyone. For me right now, it's in friends, music and a wonky internet connection.

With love to you all.

PD

When authors and editors write music together, Part 2

Birches in Summer, paper collage, by Baye Hunter

It's been two years since my first album release with my long-time editor and wonderful musician, Allister Thompson, but today is the release of album number two! I'm so honoured to share it with you.

Please enjoy Birches at Bandcamp
It's also available free here: Birches, FMA 

You'll find eight instrumental guitar pieces, in the style of Bruce Cockburn or Samuel Beam, inspired by the Canadian forest of Algonquin Park and the Haliburton Highlands.

Here's the title song: Birches 

There's a song for my sailing life, Outer Harbour, and the companion piece, Algonquin. I play both songs with Travis picking, a distinctive style I love. There are a few songs celebrating family life, including Sarah Tiptoes, written for my daughter. And there's even a tip of the hat to Lovecraft, Mountains of Madness, where Allister does some very scary stuff with his voice.

This release also includes my first vocal recording, Moonlight. I have to thank Allister for convincing me to record it, but it's a lovely song about sorrow which is also bound with love and joy. I wrote it for my sister-in-law, who had the most beautiful voice of all.

Many thanks also to Baye Hunter, another musical friend and a terrific artist, whose paper collage work, Birches in Summer, adorns the cover. You'll find more of Baye's collage and watercolour here: www.bayehunter.com

Our first release, Fifth Season (Nov/2015), has had over five thousand listens, and one song, Summer, was the Free Music Archive Song of the Day in May, 2016. Plus, many tunes have been adapted by various folks in artistic videos, you can see them on my Youtube channel (I love the one from the Netherlands the most, I think, it's the windmill).

It's always a joy to create music with my friends. Please enjoy Birches, with our gratitude.

The Gothic Gargoyle Ballet

Listen to the Gargoyle Shuffle

What would a dancing gargoyle look like, do you think? 
I can't show you, sorry, you'll have to imagine it. But I CAN let you listen to the Gargoyle Shuffle. It's a guitar piece I wrote for the description of gargoyles dancing in my children's book, The Gargoyle at the Gates (p. 91).

Click here for the Gargoyle Shuffle. Enjoy!

"Christopher ... picked up his guitar and began playing into the night. Snow was falling delicately, softening and quieting the busy city. His music lifted through the snowy air. Ambergine came out of the bushes first and stepped into the spotlight near the apple tree ... Then she started spiralling and pirouetting in the snow, dancing to the guitar music. Slowly Gargoth joined her ... and there in the snowy, strange little gothic park, Christopher watched the two ancient creatures dance and pirouette and move together in a gargoyle ballet, as the snow fell gently upon them." From The Gargoyle at the Gates, p. 91

Toronto Island gargoyle

Toronto Island gargoyle guarding his garden

Yesterday I took a walk on stormy Toronto Island with my artist friend. The gardens were all in full bloom, the rain came and went, the predominant colours were steel grey, green, purple and yellow, in people's gardens, in the water, in the sky.
My friend and I played flute and guitar in her new artist's studio in the back yard until my fingers gave out, then we walked to the beach, along the boardwalk, and through the community. I found this little gargoyle guarding a garden on Ward's island. He was too good not to share. Photos and Music, Toronto Island.

Music meets muse, in February ...

February, oh February, with your difficult middle vowels and extraneous "r", when will you be over? Last month I posted about the one thing that kept me going through a miserable January of funerals.

It was flamenco.

This month, it's music. Last week an old friend came to visit. Musician, opera-singer, and guitarist extraordinaire, he breezed in from Vancouver for a few days and well, the house was full of music, opera, and it was all hands on deck while everyone grabbed a guitar! A harmonica! A set of spoons! Something, anything, to ward off February and make some beautiful noise together.

Joni Mitchell's Hejira, figured large. Shakespeare's sonnet 18, too. As luck would have it, another old friend had a guitar party and well, worlds collided. We played for four hours straight, until my fingers gave out. We've all played guitar together for almost thirty years, and it never, ever gets old.

It was grand. It lead to an outpouring of poetry and a burst of renewed enthusiasm for a YA/Teen science fiction manuscript I'm trying to finish. I'm not a professional musician, I've never made a living from my music, but I definitely turn to song when I'm struggling with a story line, an arc, a characterization. The muse has come around unbid this month. Interesting that "muse" is 3/5 ths of the word "music." February, thou art cruel and sometimes kind.

So here are some links, to remind us that spring IS coming, and music renews us. And soon, we'll find March is upon us with her milder breezes (and fewer vowels).

Toronto Island Spring Trees Video (wherein I make some guitarish sounds accompanied by lovely spring tree photos from my artist friend Baye Hunter)

Philippa's Soundcloud page

Joni Mitchell, Hejira