Power To the Prompter

It's been an interesting week, work-wise.

On Monday, there was late-night drilling in the building and although our crew could barely hear it when the newscast started, it gradually got louder, until the audio guy was urging me to somehow have it stopped! You could hear the rumbling on-air. I ran out during a commercial break, found one of our technical guys, who managed to have it stopped in time for the last story in the show. During the same newscast, the teleprompter failed and let me tell you, a day without prompter is like a day without - brains!

There were a few other prompter glitches over the course of the week. I love my prompter.

The station studio is not massive, but we manage to fit all sorts of wonderful performers into the space for the weekly interview show. In November, the Bach Festival brought in a harpsichord for a performance by harpsichordist Ilya Poletaev, now a professor at McGill University's Schulich School of Music.

Pierre-Yves Asselin tunes harpsichord in studio

We've had the Alexandre Coté Quintet come in to perform, complete with drums, piano and bass. A couple of weeks ago, we had a terrific and dazzling clarinet performance by CEGEP student and OSM Standard Life music competition woodwind winner, Eric Abramovitz. This week, it was the Nouvelle Generation Chamber Orchestra. Conductor Alain Aubut had made a special trip to the station earlier in the week to get an idea of how many musicians he could fit. By taping day, we had several violinsts, cellists and a double bass in the studio, performing Mozart for this weekend's show.


Nouvelle Generation Chamber Orchestra during soundcheck

I told the musicians after the performance it was a privilege to be in the same room with so much talent and such wonderful music. I was impressed by their attention to dynamics, their precision and professionalism.

One of the orchestra musicians is Stephane Tetreault, who plays a 1707 Stradivarius worth well beyond 6 million dollars. He told an interesting story about performing for former Prime Minister Chretien and other passengers in November, while flying back from China.

Thanks to our technical crew for putting the orchestra performance together and to Alain and his talented musicians for fitting us into their busy days! As a musician, it's a great feeling to be able to encourage young, talented musicians to continue performing and it’s piles of fun to be able to help spread music around.

Keep the prompter rolling.