Hand work.
Along with the ‘voice work’ that I do as a singer & teacher of singing, I am very much involved in working with my hands.
The Alexander Technique is a hands-on movement education, and I am learning to teach that work with my hands.
I am also a house painter & an amateur of historical paints, stains & other coatings.
And, though I am primarily a mouth-minstrel, having honed my singerly craft, I also love to make music with my hands.
Strings & Keys.
I fell in love with the violin when I was wee, beginning lessons with Alec Catherwood at the Beckett School of Music when I was four. I went on to study with Jerzy Kaplanek at Wilfrid Laurier Unviersity. Those brave, inspiring and wonderful souls fostered in me a love of music and of teaching & learing; and they fostered in me a love of making music with my hands.
I have kept up my fiddling, with an emphasis on early repertoire & historically-inspired playing and adding the viola into the mix. Also, thanks to the encouragement of an enthusiastic group of students and the guidance of Joëlle Morton, I have explored the viola da gamba. And I have begun to play the vièle.
My studies at the Schola Cantorum in Basel offered, amongst (many!) other things, two years of weekly harpsichord and basso continuo study, which study I continue in a haphazard way. Our household instrument is a lovely green Zuckermann kit harpsichord; and my teaching instrument is another Zuckermann kit. Both of these I maintain in my own little way, guided by my friend and colleague Borys Medicky.
Having left the door open to these bowed and plucked strings, a glorious consort of other instruments have now blithely broken (and whistled and buzzed…) their way into my life. And where would I be without them!?!
Wind.
I’ve been studying the recorder with some seriousness (and even more silliness) for almost two years. I’ve fallen hard for the instrument, which enchantment was to some extent brought about by proximity; for I’ve become the caretaker of Wilfrid Laurier University’s historical instrument collection, which includes all manner of wonderful pieces.
My curiosity about wind instruments has grown to include other piped and reedy things. Ricardo Simian was kind enough to make me a beautiful green cornetto, one which adapts itself to my particular interests. I am entirely a beginner player; and I was keen to try my lips at both straight and mute cornetto playing. Ricardo has been guiding me towards resources that may allow me to work myself up to taking lessons some day. For now, I practice long tones, punctuated by much longer rests.
Lip reed instruments are new to me (!). So, too, are cane reed instruments; but I have broken the ice of these thanks to Wilfrid Laurier University’s beautiful collection of Körber crumhorns. Not only that, but my wife, Mary, presented me this past Christmas with a set of medieval bagpipes with which I torment our cat.
Organ.
Most recently, I have begun a handwork venture with Leslie Smith, organ builder of Fergus, Ontario. Leslie and I are researching 13th, 14th & 15th Century organettos, very much inspired by the work of Cristina Alis Raurich, a former classmate of mine at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. We are working to build our own iteration of these instruments, with Leslie as the craftsperson and me his apprentice (read: dogsbody!).
I am not at all an organist; but I am very much organ- & organist-adjacent, having grown up at my father, Barrie Cabena’s elbow. I am inspired to participate in the music of this beautiful family of instruments in my own small way, melodizing with one hand & working the bellows with the other.
All of this has refreshed in me a felt sense of the Joys of the Novice, of discovery, curiosity, challenge and, indeed, toil, work.
And, speaking of bellows, so much of the handwork that I just mentioned is, of course, also breathwork; and I’ve been seeking to learn more about breathing by practicing wind instruments. But all of this - breathwork, voicework, handwork… - it’s all humanwork, wholepersonwork.
