Atheene Dodonpa, Nov. 14 @ 12 pm PST (SLT)

LIVE AT MUSIC ISLAND

The haunting voice of Atheene Dodonpa thrills audiences with the sounds of early music, accompanied as needed on lap harp, hurdy gurdy or other ancient instruments. The Finnish artist has developed a considerable following among Second Life's Early Music community.

Her RL CD release can be sampled here.

Or purchased here.

Attend the concert on Music Island.
To attend concerts at Music Island you must first create a free account in Second Life

Arts Vote Toronto says, "I am an Artist and I Vote!"

If you are a Toronto artist, work for an arts organization or you directly or indirectly have business ties with artists & cultural attractions in Toronto (marketers, web designers, printers, hotels & restaurants etc.) then you'll want to assure that you know which candidates in the upcoming Toronto elections understand the importance of the arts to the quality of life in Toronto and to the tourist economy.

Sign up at Arts Vote today to keep in the picture.

Arts Vote launch rally. 5 pm Tues. Nov. 17 @ the Urbanspace Art Gallery, 401 Richmond

Tafelmusik launches "Sing-a-long Messiah Contest" on YouTube

The folks at Tafelmusik succeed year after year not only with great music (they are among the best that Toronto has to offer) but also with the novel ways that they come up with to connect the music of the past with what is happening here and now in our world. They have achieved this through collaborations with new composers; placing their work in the context of festivals of art like the Metamorphosis festival that draws from new and old works; and now with a fun contest that is powered by the popularity of YouTube and karaoke. Great marketing ideas like this should be celebrated. What makes this one great is that it isn't just about getting bums in the seats for Tafelmusik's Messiah this season (not that selling tickets isn't important) but we are all tired and burned out by clever marketing that is just about "buy, buy, consume, consume". This campaign is qualitatively different: it is about getting people singing and involved in the arts. That's important at so many different levels.

If you love to sing and aren't shy check out Tafelmusik's website for all the information on the contest.

Peter Stoll, clarinet, Nov. 5 @ noon, free lunchtime concert

If you are going to be anywhere near the University of Toronto, 's Faculty of Music building (just south of the Royal Ontario Museum, behind the old planetarium) you might like to catch what promises to be a lively concert with one of Toronto's most versatile and active clarinetest.

Peter writes in his email of today, "A quick email just for those in the T.O. area who might be interested, this Thursday November 5, I'm playing a free recital at UofT's Faculty of Music, the Edward Johnson Building, in Walter Hall, noon-1pm. Fun stuff, some classical, some jazz, some klezmer, 3 different sizes of clarinets, hope you can make it!"

By the way, Peter has a new website. If you are a music-lover in Toronto, you'll want to bookmark it.

Protesting Cuts to the Diversity in Music Program--Oct. 26 @ 6 pm

Cutting The Album
Monday October 26 2009
6PM - 8PM
CBC Front Street to Nathan Phillips Square

Hello Friends,

Heritage Minister, James Moore recently announced that 1.3 million
dollars from the Canada Music Fund’s annual budget would be
redirected away from the Canada Council. This has resulted in the
cancellation of the CCA’s Music Diversity Program, which, for the
past 20 years, has provided integral support for recording and
marketing to artists who are on the forefront of forging new,
innovative, and distinctly Canadian culture.

We've decided that a parade was in order. We will be meeting at CBC,
250 Front Street, on Monday October 26th at 6pm. Below you'll find
our routing. The parade will be interspersed with speeches at various
strategic locations. The parade will culminate at Nathan Phillips
Square, where Christine Duncan's Element Choir will perform and no
doubt create a stir.

The goal of this parade is to create awareness in our wake among the
public. We'll be soliciting the press and hope to get a lot of
coverage. Some of us will have clipboards in hand to offer the
general public a chance to sign our petition, and others will be
handing out pertinent literature.

All the while, our drummers and horn players will be propelling us
along the streets in a free-form New Orleans style funeral
procession. Bring your pots and pans, bells and other noise makers to
join in the fun. Bring your cameras too, we'd like to send the
Heritage Minister some photos of our event. Bring your thermoses to
stay warm, too!

At the end of the parade, before the Elements go on, Andrew Cash will
give a little talk on behalf of Charlie Angus' office, who are
currently leading an inquiry with the Heritage Committee. We then
invite you to present Andrew with your letters that he can deliver to
the committee in Ottawa, as well mix cds that you can make comprised
of music that was made with the assistance of the sound recording grant.

- We still need more clipboard volunteers and people to hand out flyers
- Please contact me if you plan on bringing drums and horns
- Write your letters and make your mix tapes that will be delivered
to the committee!!
- If we have already been in contact with you about speaking, please
write back to confirm your interest.

Here's the route:

6:00 meet at CBC
6:15 process on John to Roy Thompson Hall (speech)
6:40 King to Peter to Queen - Lush on Queen (speech)
7:05 Queen to Yonge to Dundas (speeches)
7:25 Dundas to Bay to Queen to Nathan Phillips Square
7:40 Speech and Element Choir
post-parade hot chocolate at a meeting place TBD

Looking for a great holiday theatre experience for students?

If you are in travelling distance of Toronto you won't want to miss this great event!

Puppetmongers @ the Tarragon Extra Space
7 School Shows only
December 15 through 18, 2009
10 am and 1:30 pm

History and fun are integrated in this imaginative retelling of the classic fairy tale. Puppetmongers reset the story in 1834, just as “Muddy” York is to be renamed Toronto, and Ella is expected to cater to every whim of her just-off-the-boat-from-England stepmother and sisters. With a little magic and some imaginative special effects she does get herself to the Ball, and to the satisfying conclusion of the tale. The play is ingeniously staged with a traditional marionette theatre that transforms, as the story unfolds, into scenes evoking the wilderness, pioneer life and early Canadian society.

This is a Cinderella that Canadian children can call their own!

Single Tickets: $8.00

Book the whole theatre of 100 seats for $700

more info at: http://www.puppetmongers.com

Abousfian Abdelrazik Speaks in Toronto

Forwarded from TASC

Delist and Desist!
Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture.
Abousfian Abdelrazik Speaks in Toronto
With an Introduction by Dr. Sherene Razack

Thursday, October 8, 2009, 7:15 pm
Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil Street (just west of St. George, south of
College)
Free.

Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen who was detained, interrogated, and tortured in Sudan with the complicity of our own government (see http://peoplescommission.org/en/abdelrazik/ for further background). Indeed, the Federal Court of Canada found earlier this
year that spy agency CSIS was complicit in his detention.

His six-year saga of trying to come home to his loved ones (including a year-plus stay in a small corner of the Canadian embassy in Khartoum) was blocked at every stage by a variety of levels of the Canadian government, including CSIS and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Never charged, he was beaten, threatened and tortured during two periods of detention. Abdelrazik was interrogated by CSIS officials, and separately by Sudanese and French intelligence agents and the FBI. The Canadian embassy was instructed by the Canadian government that: "Mission staff should not accompany Abdelrazik to his interview with
the FBI."

Released and cleared of all suspicion by Sudan in 2006, and then by the RCMP and CSIS in late 2007, his many attempts to return home to Montreal were repeatedly blocked.

The grass roots efforts of hundreds of people across Canada led to a historic court order that forced the Canadian government to allow Abdelrazik to come home. He was finally reunited with his family in June of this year. Yet his struggle continues.

His name remains on the United Nations 1267 list. This list imposes a travel ban and complete asset freeze on listed individuals. Canadian regulations implementing the 1267 list prohibit anyone from providing Abdelrazik with any material aid - including salary, loans of any
amount, food or clothing. This makes it impossible for him to live a normal life.

Abdelrazik was not told that he was being placed on the list, was not told why he was on the list, and was given no opportunity to defend himself. As Federal Court Judge Russel Zinn said in his ruling forcing the government to let Abdelrazik return, "There is nothing in the (1267) listing or de-listing procedure that recognizes the principles of natural justice or that provides for basic procedural fairness."

No one has been held responsible for the grave injustices and terrible violence he has suffered.

As Abdelrazik undertakes the challenge of recovering a life of dignity for himself and his family, Mr. Abdelrazik is coming to Toronto as part of a national speaking tour so that he can meet his supporters and share his story in person. It is his hope to be "delisted" from the UN list, and to see true accountability at the federal government level.

Mr. Abdelrazik's horrific experience is part of a broader Canadian pattern of involvement in torture, and his talk on October 8 kicks off a speakers series that will focus on other cases of Canadian complicity in the most brutal human rights abuses imaginable. Watch for future
speaking events featuring Abdullah Almalki (http://www.abdullahalmalki.com/), individuals subject to secret trial security certificates, a focus on Canadian involvement in the U.S.-based School of the Assassins, Benamar Benatta (http://benamarbenatta.com/), and more.

(Dr. Sherene Razack is a professor, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. She is also the author of the remarkable Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law and Politics as well as
Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism)

Organized by Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture and Christian Peacemaker Teams Canada, endorsed by the Centre for Integrated Anti-Racism Studies (CIARS) at OISE.

Sponsored nationally by Project Fly Home, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Council of Canadians, Council on American-Islamic Relations - Canada (CAIRCAN), International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG), and the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA).

If you cannot make it to the Toronto event, Mr. Abdelrazik is speaking in many other parts of Canada. See his schedule at http://peoplescommission.org/en/abdelrazik/events.php

For further information: tasc@web.ca, (416) 651-5800 ext. 1

Rogers Communications television advertisement promotes ageism

"My name is Mary, and I've just discovered the Internet, but I know it is the future" said the gray haired woman on a recent Rogers Communications television advertisement.

As an age contempory of "Mary"'s I wanted to scream and throw a cellphone at the screen... but luckily my cellphone service is Bell.

But let's think about the premise of this advertisement. Unless "Mary" has been living under a rock for the past couple of decades, she has likely been using computers for most if not all of her working life. If, like me, she is a veteran of the punch card, DOS and early word-processing programs, she likely can run rings around some younger people in understanding her computer and getting it to do what she needs.

I know that there was once a time when I thought of computers as being "the future". That was in the 1960's when I was an elementary school student and we had an opportunity to learn some simple programming using computer punch cards, prior to the silicon chip, or later in university when, as a theatre student I got to play around with some of the earlier Moog synthesizers and made some early experiments in computer-generated video art with a Sony portapak.

I'm an artsey, not a computer whiz kid but computers have come into mainstream aspects of my life since the 1980's. I learned my first wordprocessing program on a Commodore 64 and in 1985 I was hired in an office job that required me to create a simple database for a YWCA branch in a new program called Q & A. I taught myself DOS, in order to write the batch files needed to sort the data, and became the office "computer expert" by being one step ahead of the rest of the staff in computer knowledge.

In the 1990's it was easy for those of us that had used older wordprocessing programs like Easy Script or Wordstar to learn html as the codes for centering, emboldening, tables, etc. were exactly like those we had learn to format text for print output. I took to website design like a duck to water, creating sites for volunteer organizations, family, and work projects for my various arts and non-profit employers. Mail lists and e-newsletter creation have been a part of the arts marketing strategy in all of my organizations for about 12 years.

These days I'm an avid user of social media, a blogger, and coordinate a cutting edge arts series in virtual reality. In my various management positions I have trained many entry staff members to use computer software on the job. I can attest to the fact that being able to text friends or Twitter a photo does not mean that the employee will be able to generate mail merges, use accounting software, has the basics of desktop publishing, can navigate a spreadsheet, or can print a simple mailing label.

Obviously, the Rogers ad struck a very sour note with me but in all seriousness, the advertisement is seriously out-of-step with reality and does a real disservice to the many working men and women with up to date job skills but who struggle with the type of age prejudice evident in the Rogers advertisement. On what basis did Rogers think that a late 50's woman would be credible as someone "just discovering the internet"? Would they make the same supposition about a visible minority member and not expect a backlash?

I hope that all of the women my age let Rogers know what they think about their recent media campaign. For a company that has had some very clever advertising, this one is just dumb.