News, December 2008 • December 27, 2008, 12:54 PM

I just wrapped up a somewhat exhausting Christmas gig schedule, but it's something I've come to expect from one year for the next. On December 23 I accompanied the members of the Ottawa Bytown Rotary Club in their Christmas singalong; this is an annual gig that I've been doing for the last several years, typically on the last Tuesday before Christmas. On Christmas Eve I did three back-to-back masses, each at a different parish. And I had one Christmas Day mass.

As 2008 comes to a close, I'm starting up a third regular job today. St. George's Parish was looking for an organist and cantor for their 5:00 mass on Saturdays, and out of all the people who applied, I'm the only one who can do both jobs. The parish has a few minor PA-related quirks that I can work around for the time being, but for the long term I plan to shop around for a small portable mixing console to help me tailor the sound to my needs—assuming this OC Transpo strike ends soon. The mixer will also come in handy for my solo gigs.

On the band front, there's a possibility that Hotter than Ice will be getting back in the studio as early as next month. We'll be in something of a rebuilding mode as we look for a bass player and re-establish the groove we had before we went on hiatus in October 2007. Stay tuned!

Long time no see!

It's been a while since my last newsletter, and the reason is simple: while there's been some stuff going on in the last eight months, there hasn't been enough of it to fill a new entry. Until now.

First of all, Uwe Liefländer got fired from his position at St. Augustine's at the beginning of June, and my feelings about that can be summed up in two words: good riddance. I had no quarrel with the basic premise of what he was trying to do—i.e. use a more reverent and classically-oriented repertoire than what contemporary composers have written since about the time of Vatican II—but the way he was going about it ruffled a lot of feathers, not to mention my own. I could list enough grievances about him to fill a book, but suffice it to say that he was not the best fit for our parish, let alone for me. (To pastors considering hiring him, and musicians considering working with or for him, I say caveat emptor.) After he left, I took over the 4:30 mass for the summer until a new choir director, Lisa-Marie Massey, came in in mid-August. Her children's choir does material far more familiar to the congregation than what Uwe presented, with a sprinkling of contemporary material.

Meanwhile, I continue to work with the 9:00 choir at St. Augustine's and the 11:00 choir at St. Elizabeth's. Our choir at St. Augustine's is preparing for a concert that will take place on November 2. For this I'm preparing a backing track of a tune my friend Ralf sent me, Tore Aas' "I Call On Your Name", and a rendition of Vivaldi's "Gloria".

My position at Resurrection of Our Lord has dwindled down to an "as needed" basis. The choir I work with there sings at the parish's 9:30 mass, and while they would like to have me as their regular organist, that isn't possible due to conflicts with the 9:00 mass at St. Augustine's and the 11:00 mass at St. Elizabeth's. While they have since found a regular organist who can do both the rehearsals and the 9:30 mass, there are some Monday nights that he can't do the rehearsal, and they call me to fill in for him.

As for my own activities, I've been busy mainly in the administration of my music business. As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I bought a new computer at the end of December. In March I ripped all my CDs to its hard drive, and in an effort to make some shelf space available, I'm putting them into storage. In the process, I've been working for the last six months on a text file consisting of the lyrics to all the songs on these CDs; this way I won't have to pull out their storage box every time I need to look up the lyrics for a particular song on one of them.

In August I accidentally fried my IBM ThinkPad 600 laptop when I bought a power cord that turned out to have an incompatible voltage, and I've since bought an Acer Aspire 5315. Gradually, over the last couple of months, I've been programming it for as much of the ThinkPad's functionality as possible. Unfortunately, my Roland Sound Canvas card (SCP-55) won't work with Windows Vista due to driver incompatibility (Roland's most recent driver for the card is for Windows 3.1 and 95). I depend heavily on this card when I prepare and mix MIDI files for use at St. Augustine's because its organ has a sound module with the same Sound Canvas sound set. I'm looking for a way to rectify this problem, though, and I hope to have access to the Sound Canvas' sounds again within a month or so. Stay tuned!

As I begin a new year, things are looking up. As I mentioned in October, the regular organist and choir director for the 9:00 mass at St. Augustine's, Bob Boulanger, has gone into semi-retirement, and he has appointed me his successor as organist. The choir continues to sing, now under the direction of longtime choir member Joe Murray. As a result of this new position, I no longer work for Uwe Liefländer.

In addition, I have a new organist position that could last three months. Norman St. Louis, a friend of Bob's and a church musician himself, has hired me to play for three choir practices beginning February 4—and just the practices, since he knows I'm already tied up on Sunday mornings at St. Augustine's and St. Elizabeth's. In fact, he was responsible for getting me the job at St. Elizabeth's in the first place.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to gear up for my first Toronto-area gig in nearly twenty years. A couple of good friends of mine in Mississauga are getting married on May 10, and they want me to play the organ for their wedding. I've already started working on a MIDI file of a song they want me to perform at it, Kipp Lennon's "Suspension", the theme from the late 1970s TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

My computer-based recording arsenal is starting to take shape. I bought the new computer on New Year's Eve, and already I'm starting to learn how to use the Live Lite software that came with my multi-track audio card. I'm thinking of buying a few USB-based MIDI interfaces so that I have more flexibility in MIDI sound selection. The way I have things set up now, I can only access a maximum of sixteen sounds at once. The way I intend to set things up, I could theoretically access up to forty-two!

I'm starting to gain a greater exposure to European pop, thanks to a friend in Essen, Germany by the name of Ralf Waldvogel. He has introduced me to Rosenstolz and Anja Krabbe, and will soon be sending me a compilation of material from a plethora of European artists. As a result, you may soon see something of a shift in the range of European repertoire that I play. Stay tuned!