Music Monday

Music Monday is on its way this coming week. It’s a big celebration of how music enriches our lives, with a special focus on music in the schools. I’m not generally a fan of our public education system. It seems to me that the emphasis is too often placed on conformity and obedience – not on developing the skills to help you learn on your own or the desire to challenge conventional wisdom and search out the new. After all, an educated population isn’t so easy to control!

I do know first hand how important a good music teacher can be. With the talented students you never really have to worry about teaching them – from my experience, they mostly learn on their own. But they do need support. You have to open a few doors, help them to keep asking the right questions and be there when they doubt themselves.

I don’t know Michel Gonneville personally, but he must be a great teacher. I do know one of his former students - André Ristic - and André is a great example of the kind of unique musical voice we like to celebrate on the Signal. He’s developed a personal language that easily handles all the contradictions and “isms” in our modern musical world. He always seems to be challenging himself and us with new ideas and new technologies. We’ll hear music from both Michel and André on Sunday night in a live concert recording from Toronto’s New Music Concerts. They put together a program of music by Michel and some of his former students – including Nicolas Gilbert, Benoit Coté, Charles-Antoine Frechette, Maxime McKinley, and Frans Ben Callado.

Frans Ben Callado is supposedly the only student ever expelled from the Conservatoire de Musique de Montreal. That type of distinction fits in better with the indie side of our musical world. Moby is the focus for our vertical tasting this weekend. He dropped out of College to pursue his musical dream and so did Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood. I hope that same fate doesn’t fall on Will Curry and the Country French. They’re all students in the music program at Wilfred Laurier and on Saturday night we’ll hear a tune from their first album.



Will Curry and the Country French.


Success is great and it’s very seductive if it comes early. But if it puts you out there too soon, before you’ve had time to fill up your tool kit and find your own creative centre, then you risk having a very short career. In the end it’s all about balance. You have to have new ideas, which are usually messy – and you need to develop the craft to do something with them.

Over the last year, we’ve done a series of city and region profiles on the Signal. And in every region we seem to have great places that support the development of young musical talent. Some are formal institutions, like Mount Royal College in Calgary (full disclosure here, my daughter’s a student there). I was amazed to hear so many Alberta musicians give credit to the environment there as they were finding their feet. Some are Festivals with long standing workshops, like the Creative Music Workshop that Jerry Granelli does at the Atlantic Jazz Festival in Halifax. I know that Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal’s Generation project has been a jumping off point for quite a few careers – and the list goes on (sorry I can’t mention them all).

So in the lead up to Music Monday, we salute all those who support the development of musical talent in our country whether it’s the elementary school teacher who inspires you to open up your mouth and sing for the very first time or the experienced Professor who’s read all the books in the library.