Josh is a young Jamaican-Canadian and this blog is about his music & travel adventures and anything that takes his interest. He sings bass, and studies organ, piano, violin & viola.
(This blog was last updated in April 2019, and will no longer updated in the future.)
Last Tuesday, I did the "Music at Midday" recital at St. James' Cathedral. I was asked to fill in just a week before, and I was really excited to help out.
I repeated the program for my last recital (in February) as I am still working on new pieces. My new pieces are really close to being ready, but I want to work on them some more with my teacher first.
My past performances have been arranged weeks or months in advance, so this was a new experience for me.
On Tuesday, I had a recital at the Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto.
I only just stopped having organ lessons here last month. I will miss going there each week but, I hope that I will be able to do more recitals in the future.
Stephen Boda, my new organ teacher, came to help me out for this recital. He is the Organist at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. He is excellent!
Thank you to Stephen Boda for coming out to help; thank you to Philip Eliot for recording my recital;
And a HUGE thank you to Robert Busiakiewicz for your continuing support!
And of course, thank you to everyone who came out to listen!
Last Tuesday, I did a recital at The Cathedral Church of St. James for "Music at Midday".
Philip Elliot recorded it for me and I uploaded the full recital to SoundCloud:
It was a lot more relaxed than my first two recitals and I felt better prepared, mainly because I had done it before.
Thomas Fitches came to hear me play!
The first time I met him was just a couple days before I started doing organ lessons. I heard him play at "Music at Midday" and so it is really a big deal to me that he came to hear my recital. Thank you so much for coming!
The biggest surprise was that Chrissy Quigley came to my recital! She helps to organize the Leahy Music Camp and she mentioned that she might come but it was wonderful seeing her!
I made sure to upload both Choral Song and Folk Tune since I know you loved them! Thank you for coming all the way to Toronto to hear me play!
One of the highlights of the recital is showing people the Pipe Organ afterwards... I'm hoping that some of the kids will be interested in learning organ in the future!
A huge "Thank you" to my teacher, Ian Sadler and to Robert Busiakiewicz, the Director of Music at The Cathedral Church of St. James for allowing me to perform and do lessons there. And of course, thank you to Philip Elliot for the audio-recording and to my Mom for the videos!
I did my second ever solo recital earlier this month. It was on May 8th at the Cathedral Church of St. James.
It wasn't as nerve-racking as the first time.
Normally when I do concerts or rehearsals, my parents record some of it, but this time, they sat and enjoyed it.
We arranged with Philip Elliot to do an audio recording of the concert for us.
I'm so happy that we could get such a wonderful recording!
My program included:
Rigaudon by Andre Campra (166 - 1744)
Trio in C Minor, BWV 585 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 533 by J. S. Bach
Fantasia in C Minor, BWV 562 by J. S. Bach
Sonata de 1o Tono by Jose Lidon (1748 - 1827)
Folk Tune by Percy Whitlock (1903 - 1946)
Choral Song by Samuel Wesley (1810 - 1876)
Berceuse by Louis Vierne (1870 - 1937)
Gaelic Fantasy by Hans-Andre Stamm (b. 1958)
I finally had time to sit down and listen to the performance.
It is very different listening to the concert and comparing it to how I experienced it while playing. The Rigaudon and the Bach pieces all went really well. I stumbled in the Sonata; the stumble was only about a split second, but it seemed so much longer while playing. I approached the Gaelic Fantasy a little too fast..It would have sounded better if I had just gone a little slower. Everything else was good. :-)
Lots of homeschoolers came out to listen. Thank you so much for coming, it was great having so much support from other homeschoolers! I really hope you all enjoyed it!
me with Robert Busiakiewicz (left) and Ian Sadler (right)
A special thank you to my teacher - Ian Sadler, Robert Busiakiewicz - the Director of Music at St. James, and to Philip for recording the concert. :-)
This weekend we had a horrible ice storm but I recorded my Grade 9 Piano Royal Conservatory Examination pieces. What you can't see is that I spent lots of time shovelling the snow/ice mix outside and we have a blower drying the basement downstairs from the flooding.
My exam was last week, on a much nicer day than what we had this weekend.
In the exam, I made a mistake with one of my scales. I started playing the harmonic scale instead of the melodic, but I switched when I noticed. And I fumbled in one of my Etudes... I continued playing but I stopped playing the left hand for a short while while I recovered from the fumble. I hope they don't mark me down too hard for that.
My sight reading went really well, and everything else seemed fine.
Today, I did my first organ recital.
It was at St. James' Cathedral.
The programme included:
Prelude and Fugue in C Major by J. S. Bach (1685 - 1750)
Largo e spiccato by A. Vivali (1678 - 1741) arr. J. S. Bach
Prelude and Fugue in G Minor by J. S. Bach
Voluntary in A Minor by William Boyce (1711 - 1779)
Berceuse by Louis Vierne (1870 - 1937)
Trumpet Air by Bert van der Hoek (b. 1932)
Siciliano by Max Reger (1873 - 1916)
Gaelic Fantasy for Organ by Hans-Andre Stamm (b. 1958)
The prelude in C Major went smoothly, but I stumbled a little in the fugue. I had a 'fat finger' in a couple pieces but the good news is I think that any future recitals will be easier than this one. I learnt how to recover from my mistakes while performing in public.
Here is a video of Largo e spiccato from my recital:
A huge "Thank you" to Ian Sadler, my teacher and Robert Busiakiewicz, the Director of Music at St. James' Cathedral for allowing me to do lessons at the Cathedral, plus practice time and for letting me perform.
It is hard to believe, Robert introduced me to Ian, last year on October 18th and I had my first organ lesson on October 30th.
Here is a picture from the day I met Ian.
A special thank you to everyone who came out to hear me play, including Julia, Elaine, Kelly, Ken, Christine, Lisa, Mervin, Lucy, Barbara, Sage, and all the homeschoolers.
And thank you to Mom and Dad, I couldn't have done this without you!
People ask me what it is that I love about St. James Cathedral.... It is hard to put it into words.
I love organ music and I go to the Tuesday Music at Midday organ concerts whenever I can.
Above all, I like the people at St. James and I love that we share the same love of the organ.
I have met some really wonderful people at the concerts and it was at one of these concerts that I met my organ teacher. It makes me so happy that I am able to have lessons in such a beautiful, historic place and be a part of such a great community.
St. James has been going strong since 1807!
Of course, there have been many changes since then.
In February, there was a display up in the church for Black History Month..
This picture shows Thornton Blackburn's taxi stand outside of St. James Cathedral around 1874.
Thornton Blackburn was a former slave from the United States and John Strachan, who was rector of St. James objected to returning the Blackburns to the U.S.
I love that there is a long history of treating people with respect.
The Church building itself is beautiful. It has stained glass windows all around.
Each of them shows a different scene.
If you look closely, you might be able to spot a small picture of the Cathedral in this window.
There is just something about the church that makes you want to take care of it.
Of course, I love the organ itself....
It has 5101 pipes and it has such a wide range of sounds.
Here is an excerpt from Voluntary in A Minor by William Boyce.
(Mom taped me when I was having class one week.)
This one is Little Prelude and Fugue in G Minor by J.S. Bach
I am still very new at playing organ... My repertoire isn't yet varied enough to show off the full capabilities of the organ.
Here is a link to the website for the Cathedral Church of St. James:
I did workshops in Fiddle, Piano Composition, Intro to Mandolin, and Singing. It was really hard choosing which workshops to do. They had workshops for Step Dancing, Guitar, Technique and others. There were opportunities for private lessons, recording and using computer equipment.
Of course, there was lots of live music and concerts. 😁
On the first day, the instructors put on a concert. All of our instructors performed for us.
Here is a video from that performance with Timi Turmel on Accordion and Erin Leahy on Piano.
On the Second Day, we had a special performance from the Schryer Triplets - Pierre, Louis and Daniel.
We learnt how to jam with other musicians in the "Slow Fast Jam."
Even though I signed up for Fiddle, I got to try accompanying on Keyboard. Siobhan Donohue showed me how to play the chords.
Here is a picture of me in the Singing Workshop with Don Sills.
It turns out I sing Bass!
My favourite workshop at the camp was Piano Composition with Erin.
She spoke with my Mom and encouraged her to get notation software for composing. They both have faith in me and my music.
Some mornings, I got to play on the organ in the chapel!
On the third day, there was a Symposium about the theme of this year's camp which was "The Colour of Sound"
On the fourth day of camp - our last day - we recorded our Camp Chorus.
Each part learned their own section separately and we put it all together on the last day.
I played with the fiddles and Mom sang with the singers. The piano people and the dancers had their own parts as well.
On the last night we had a big performance where we performed the Camp Chorus and
we could all play along with the instructors in the "Grand Jam".
A big part of my camp experience was the "Group Challenge"
Campers could get into small groups of 3 to 5 people and do anything.... Play instruments, sing, or dance, or any combination.
My group was called "Journey On". I met Natasha Coffing and Gail Poulsen on the way to camp from the airport and we practiced each day. Natasha wrote the song and we did this arrangement at camp. It was such an amazing experience being able to work with such talented musicians on this beautiful piece.
Here is the video of "Aliyah" at the final performance at camp.
Thank you so much to the Leahys, and to all of the Instructors and Volunteers at the Camp. Thank you to Frank Callaghan for opening doors, literally and figuratively. And an extra special "Thank you" to Natasha and Gail. It was a pleasure working with you.
Camp was so amazing, I know this blog post doesn't even begin to describe how wonderful it was.
I have never been around so many talented people who play two or more instruments and also dance! It makes me so happy!
I hope to see you all again next year!
Update: Mama J from the Singing Pilgrims put together this video from the Instructors' Concerts.
Thank you Mama J!
Hope you all enjoy the video:
The exam could have been better.
I had to restart the Bach Invention and I made a couple of mistakes in the Kabalevsky Etude. The other pieces were good.
I did the sight reading was a waltz and I played it too fast, so I made a few mistakes.
The chord progressions were different from how I expected. In class, my teacher would play it once and I identify them all in one go. In this exam it is played once and then a second time, stopping at each chord so I could identify them individually.
After my exam, I went to practice some organ. This week was all about piano even though I felt a little sick on Wednesday.
Here is a short video from my practice today.
You can see me selecting the registrations and then starting the piece.
I had a wonderful afternoon today!
I went to the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church for "Pipes, Pedals and Pizza" put on by RCCO Toronto.
It was a special program during March Break where they introduce the organ to lots of kids.
It was -17C with windchill but I still managed to drag my Mom along with me.
Stephen Boda played Paul Halley's Outer Hebrides and an excerpt from Widor's Toccata.
He is just excellent.
He is the organist at the TEMC.
He also did a little talk where he explained all about stops, manuals and pedals.
It was a pretty large group so we split up into 3 smaller groups and we got to learn more about the different types of pipes from Thomas Fitches.
He talked about reeds, flues and string pipes and he also explained what the different parts of the pipes are called.
The spot where he is touching in this picture is called a "beard".
We all got to try out the spectacular 5 manual Casavant organ which has over 6000 pipes!
Here is a short video of me playing on the organ.
We also got to see where the pipes are installed in the church.
It was my first time getting to see the pipes like that!
I spliced together 2 short videos so you can have an idea of what it was like. The first part was taped by my Mom and the 2nd part I shot. This was in one of the rooms.
