We will be moving the blog to my website very soon. Meanwhile, you can visit my News page for current thoughts. Thank you for visiting and I look forward to seeing you in the new location ..read more

If you have time, more wild west stories from the Mackie family, this time from a letter that Mary Mackie wrote to her beloved parents-in-law. Context: my folks left behind a secure position with the BC Forestry Service and headed to a totally off-the-grid mountain ranch that was about 28 miles from Houston, BC in front of Nadina Mountain, building their own house (first a cottage, then the ranch house), fences etc. Though they had a garden, milk cow and beef, they raised cash with my mother's freelance writing for the Family Herald (Montreal Gazette), CBC and sportsman magazines. Any technica ..read more

Today, I loaded up my German axe, Canadian pry bar (pictured later), Swede saw and Japanese pull saw and headed down the road to cut some fence posts. Who says we can't travel these days, at least, in our imaginations? My neighbours said I could take some trees from their large wooded property, so I cut three 30' spruce and bucked them into 7' sections before I had to go home for a snack and a nap. Though we had snow last week, spring has now come for real and the exotic trilliums are all starting to open in the forest. And everyone knows, the black flies come at the same time as the fl ..read more

When I decided to sell my one-of-a-kind church/concert hall in 2018 and move up north to the last log house that my father built, many of my friends and colleagues said it was a mistake since I would be far away from the hustle and musical bustle of the Canadian metropolis of Toronto. They were sure it would lead to fewer concerts and opportunities for me. Now that Covid19 has taken charge, that equation has changed.  I'm still practicing, still getting ready to publish my new bassoon tech book, still working on the rest of the renovations and helping relaunch the Council of Canadian Ba ..read more

This time of restricted contact and cancelled concerts feels very familiar to me, accustomed as I am to solitude, yet clearly it is different.  I have stayed home for most 60 days, which is an all-time record. I am not bored, and  I have so much to do... painting basement rooms and building a garden and proofing my book, rebuilding the Council of Canadian Bassoonists with our new Board (lotsa Zoom meetings) and practicing...  For fun,  I responded when my neighbours started a daily drawing group on March 20 via FaceBook. They are low key, welcoming and unfailingly cheerful ..read more

There has been a slight hitch in my plans and I am forced to cancel my upcoming March 8 appearance in Halifax for Cecilia Concerts with Ophelia Rises. The concert will go on under a different title with the super tango group, Payadora. I encourage my supporters to attend because they are a fantastic and life-affirming group. I had day surgery on February 27 at Humber River Hospital to remove three malignant melanomas from the backs of my arms. While we originally thought that the surgery wouldn't prevent me from traveling and playing, when it came to the actual surgery, my wonderful operating ..read more

Yesterday afternoon, I presented the first version of my new show, Ophelia Gets Mad.  It is part of the Ophelia Project, which is a concert of great bassoon music interspersed with a reworking of the story of the youngest character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While not a scholar, I have always enjoyed reading plays. But not Hamlet. Four hours of generally tedious mellifluous self-centred tirades from many characters but mostly Hamlet. Though the language is spectacular, and I learn a new word every time that I plow into it, I find it to be an utterly tedious and depressing play and I would ..read more

New video of Marc Mellits' Dark Matter for electric bassoon & effects pedals commissioned by 12 bass clef players led by bassoonist Jacob Goforth... will write more about this in the coming days... recorded & filmed by Rob DiVito, Society of Sound ..read more

I realized tonight, on Canadian Thanksgiving, that it's 10 months since I have last visited this blog! Well, goodness gracious and my stars, that is an unprecedented period of seemingly silent reflection. I have been busy and will talk about all of that soon. And have been sorting thoughts in addition to all else. Which has made me uncharacteristically quiet. For the moment, I want to mention the sky. The same sky that is above all of us, but which has become very much more noticeable to me. And maybe it is not the sky so much as it is the surprises of light, the immense variety that must a ..read more