One of my favourite Canadians is Glenn Gould. Immortalized now in a life-like statue sitting outside the Glenn Gould studio in Toronto, he became the inspiration for a radio piece called lunch with Glenn. I spoke with several people who loved his approach to life, music and the North.
(Insert: tape: Lunch with Glenn)
Last April I celebrated my 50th birthday by honouring by the life and death Martin Luther King Jr.who died on my tenth birthday, April 4th, 1968. While there I spent time with preachers, poets and politians who marched in the rain towrad the Lorraine Motel where King was shot at 6:01pm, after chiding Jesse Jackson for not wearing a tie to dinner. That week launched a fascination with the writings of King. His sermons, lectures and speeches are still being quoted and paraphrased by public speakers of all stripes and parties yearning to captivate a listening audience. I later made a piece examing Barack Obama's refernces to MLK.
(Insert tape: the preacher and the polititian)
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For about a year I had a stint as a radio documentray-maker whose mission it was to introduce orchestral music to 'timid but willing' audiences. I am forever thankful to have met two men through this assignment: the Canadian composer and maestro Bramwell Tovey and a gentelman living in Owen Sound, ON whose ancestors fled the American South and slavery via the underground railway.
(Insert tape: Fugitive voices)
ne pieceteI heard
who died on my tenth birthday
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