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Right around the time I was starting to scramble for a Secret Santa gift for my guitar-playing friend Dave I received an email announcing Ottawa’s upcoming annual Chamber Music Festival. If I’m not mistaken, ours is the largest festival of it’s kind in the world and while most chamber music sits fairly low on my entertainment dollar priority list I can often find something in the festival that piques my interest.
Scrolling through the email I hit upon the following: “True living legends will take the stage when internationally-loved guitarists Assad Brothers present their classical blend of Europe and South America on February 11th, 2017 at Dominion-Chalmers United Church.”
Good enough for me.
I called my buddy who was working on the inside at the Chamberfest and scored three tickets for half price, taking care of my Secret Santa responsibility and a Christmas gift for my good friend JP all in one heavily discounted swipe.
The holidays came and went, there was much good cheer and tidings for all, the newest year ushered itself in and before you knew it the three of us were meeting up on the frozen sidewalk outside of the church.
The reverence of the domed Domchalm added a huge dose of upper-crustiness to the already very high-browed program – as it tends to do – and not only was it a good concert, it was a great chance to get together with a couple of good friends for a cultured event that featured plenty of flashy, heavily accurate rapid-fire guitar playing. After ninety minutes of nodding silently at the trickiest guitar pyrotechnics and keeping our eyes on the program (so we knew when not to applaud) our ears got completely filled up with notes and we were back out on the snowy sidewalk.
And just like that, Christmas was over for another sunlap.
Todd Man Out 