High-Rise Jam Session!

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 High-Rise Recital

Biking across town to catch the penultimate performance of Schafer’s The Children’s Crusade, I didn’t have much time to spare. I had hardly gone two blocks, however, when I heard what I thought to be some kind of noisy, musical protest at the Chinese Embassy on St. George Street, which struck me as odd given that the ever-present Felun-Gong gang is usually notably subdued.

Glancing south, I saw no one at the embassy, just the usual RCMP cruiser and a driver attempting to parallel park. So, slowing slightly as I rolled through the 4-way stop, I realized that the music was coming somewhere from way above me, like maybe from the 12th floor of that nearby high-rise!?

Instead of a trick of the light, this turned out to be an illusion of acoustics! What with the way the sound was reflecting and richocetting off adjacent buildings, I was certain there must have been close to twenty people singing or something  - it turned out to be just these two guys jamming away from their balcony, to the delight of passersby like myself in the street below!

And as if by cue as I doubled back - retrieving my handy Edirol from my satchel and firing it up while dismounting from Brodie all in one deft movement - one of the musicians started into this freakin’ fantastic flute solo!

And, yes, I made it to R. Murray Schafer‘s warehouse opera over in Liberty Village just in the nick of time!