It’s a pleasure to announce that, as I pack up for a new musical life in Vermont, I’ve been able to place Musical Toronto into the hands of someone with the drive, imagination and dash of recklessness to maintain and grow the site.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Michael Vincent was born in Victoria, seasoned in Montreal and last year earned a Doctorate in composition from the University of Toronto. He has experience onstage, backstage and in the audience. Most pertinently, he has spent six years with Montreal’s La Scena Musicale, doing a variety of things, including writing up the news and compiling concert listings.
Vincent is committed to keeping a conversation going about music and ideas and the performing arts in Toronto and beyond. To do so, he and his team will need an engaged community.
To start, please give him a warm round of applause for bravely taking this on.
+++
It’s been fascinating to watch people’s reactions as I tell them I’m moving to Bennington, VT on April 7. “Oh, Vermont, how nice,” is often followed by “Vermont?” said with a puzzled, if not skeptical look.
Although it is home to two colleges, the population is just under 15,000 (or nearly 20,000 if you count surrounding towns and villages). But modest size aside, Bennington is filled with people who love music and want to perform it, not just listen to it.
There’s a bit of Canadian content in the area too, including former Western University keyboard professor Sandra Mangsen, who formed the period-instrument ensemble Bennington Baroque. During my first two months, I’ll be living with Bennington Baroque violinist Kevin Bushee and his wife, in their 1807 colonial farmhouse.
I was overwhelmed by openness and warmth of all the people I met over the course of a recent week in Bennington. The experience reminded me how so many of us spend so much time and energy courting a big-name, big-city notion of success at the expense of smaller-scale satisfactions of creating close bonds in smaller communities.
It is extraordinarily difficult for anyone in the arts to survive in a big city, largely because it takes so much effort just to cover expenses. That hasn’t — and won’t — stop people from doing it. But now that I’m well past the age of caring when last call is, I’m curious to explore the possibilities of quality of life vs quantity of concerts in a place where I can buy a house for the price of two downtown Toronto condo parking spots.
I don’t have any plans to keep writing in these pages, but Michael Vincent says I’m welcome to contribute something anytime. So perhaps I’ll pop by with an update on small-town musical life once in a while.
In the meantime, in the words of Opera Atelier’s Marshall Pynkoski, my heart is filled with a gratitude words cannot possibly express for you, gentle and loyal reader, for all the people and organizations who made this Musical Toronto journey possible — and for Michael Vincent, who sees a bright future ahead.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
