It's been a while since I did a regular update, but I've had some great experiences in the past few months. The biggest piece of news is that we are now living in Montreal! My partner, the incredible aerialist Keely Whitelaw, has begun her PhD in Humanities at Concordia University. We both moved our lives to TO for me to pursue my DMA, and I've always wanted to work on my French and spend more time in MTL, so the move made a lot of sense. Packing our lives in to a giant U-Haul and driving for 6 hours in torrential rain was harrowing, but now we get to enjoy all that Montreal has to offer: squirrels, beautiful views, graffiti, and lots of great things to be at.
Besides the move, I've been at some fun stuff: I was a soloist with the McMaster Laptop Orchestra, mixed some live tracks from my jazz trio, and did a cool interview with CBC about my research. Regarding my research, I am now a doctoral candidate - meaning I only have my thesis (and a single recital) left to complete my degree. I'm also happy to be spending lots of time in the studio (which you can see and here on my research-creation blog posts), and working on my thesis, thanks to a scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Besides that, I hope to release some video from the recital I did at U of T this summer in the coming weeks and months.
Recently, my long-time friend James Hurley, who runs a music school and venue with his wife in Germany, released the first video from an extended jam session we had at the Anglican Cathedral while we were both home in St. John's this past spring. As with most musicians, I am my own worst critic, but I was pleasantly surprised at the number of wonderful moments in here!
I've decided to take a short hiatus from performing so that I can develop my research and related solo saxophone music. I'm preparing for my final recital at U of T for this winter, which will be mostly solo, after which I will be exclusively composing and performing with my feedback saxophone setup - something I'm really excited for! It's definitely a challenge right now, but I know it will be for the better in the long run.
Thanks for reading,
Greg