How hard is it to make write articles that in an area that is nearly dead?

Ever since the Pandemic lockdown started, all of the Music Venues are closed.

http://Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Nothing to actually write about that. As someone who writes for this genre now. I do got to admit it is a little frustrating. If you wanted to write something on the latest band in a Music venue, You can do that, You want to get an interview with a song writer, you can do that.(You still can in a pandemic but it is a bit harder because of technology).

If you want to cover the latest big concert that is coming to BC Place, You can do that.  The point is there you to be an Oceans of topic in BC music you can cover, but now. The waters of content have dried up.

This lead me to travel into the desert of no content to find an Oasis of a Music story in BC.  I also got to write this in a way this has been interesting for you the reader. You know you not want to reading something that is poorly written right?…. Right?

Also another thing Is you want something bottom of the barrel. Like something super mundane. Because who is realistically going to read about that. And I got to admit it is tough stuff.

But it is also fun. The whole challenge aspect does force to go to things I never though I would go to. Genre’s that I never though I would write about. And that is kind of impressive in it’s own weird way. And this whole process made me more appreciative of things we get to cover as journalists. If you made it this far thank you for reading the crazy ramblings of this writer hopefully this gave some insight on what someone that does this do.

In this COVID landscape, The Mental health conversation has increased. Like in BC. With society facing things like social isolation and a lack of human interaction. People are looking for ways to boost there mental health or just ways to get into a headspace. Music Therapy can be one of those avenues for you.

What is Music therapy? What it Is is a type of therapy that mainly involves Music(usually classical) In the activities of Singing, listening or moving to music as a means to Therapeutically heal form things like trauma or just help express themselves if they are not good at speaking or writing.

This is ultimately to better themselves and apply the skills to use the skills that they learned in therapy to other facets of there lives. I find this really interesting. In mainstream media there is a big spotlight on therapist in the form of counseling. But this it is not really being talked about.

So that is why I am here. Music Therapy is used for depression, anxiety, insomnia and dementia. In BC there is a resource you can use.  And it is called Music Therapy Association  Of British Columbia. You can find many things there such as , How to become a Music therapist, The history of it and how you can find one. I have personally  found the resource very useful because it has a clear interface to navigate.

This sort of thing is very undervalued by society in my opinion and should be explored here more. and you learn a lot form it. I believe in sharing this resource with you. We can all bring a better more complete view of mental health that is only been really talked out history in BC. I invite you to check it out as well happy reading.

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Well The title says it . Jane Coop a World renowned pianist is playing in The Vancouver Chan Center.

Who is she? Jane Coop is Pianist who was born in Saint John, New Brunswick was raised in Calgary,

Alberta. She grew to love chamber Music and the Piano at a very young age. She is very good in fact. At the Age of 19 She won CBC first ever The young performers competition. And has even performed in the world Famous Carangie hall, which is called Weil hall for some reason. But no matter. It is impressive.

As a pianist she has also toured around the world playing in places such as Beijing, China and Paris, France. Her work is mainly in Canada in performing in places like Yukon and Niagara Falls. The performance that is she is going to be online so to get that, I will provide a Link bellow if you are interested.

She will not be performing alone however. There will be 2 violin players Joan Blackman and Jason Ho, Yariv Aloni on Viola and Brian Yoon on Celo. Jane’s group will be performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto NO.9 in E Flat Major, K.271 and Franck Quintet for Piano & Strings in F Minor. And if you do not know what that means, to which I do not blame you I had to search this up while writing this. Here is a video showing what that actually sounds like.

. So with all that the time to view this on the Chan Center website is June 10^th at 2pm until June 13^th Midnight. There will be also a live chat later that day. So you can share your thoughts on the performance or the others stuff to Jane herself. I am sure that will be interesting.

Personally I do not get the whole limited viewing day thing is kind of weird to me. But I guess it is for business reasons to attract as many eyes to this as possible due to scarcity, which is this case is time. I only see Netflix doing this with them rotating content by seasons of the year but never expected it in the Chan center. I do think it is worth watching aside from that. So if you can spare some time in June come watch it.

Jane Coop and Friends

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Since the pandemic I have been surfing through the Internet and I have found this Website, call EMV. EMV is Early Music Vancouver. This is a company which preserves The rich history of classical music.

So stuff like symphony’s , Mozart, Salieri anything before the 20th century really. They do this in not just symphonies, They have scholarships to help learn the art of classical music preserving it for future generations to enjoy. Interestingly enough they do have classes on how a symphony works .

Another thing that they do is they collect and rent out historical instruments made by people in BC throughout the years. I find this pretty cool. That also reminds me they do online events since COVID. I got to say it is surprising on what you find in there. There is a lot of young people.

I know stereotypically this kind of stuff is like for seniors of rich people. But in this case it is directed towards everyone. They tell a more universal message. The ones in charge of these performances are in there late 20’s to early 30’s.

One would never see this in classical setting for the average person. This definitely would draw interest to a younger audience. Which is very smart. It brings a fresher perspective to classical music. If you have the chance of checking that out in there website please do.

If you happen to like what you are seeing you can make a Tax deductible donation to the company. I mention this because I know some people can get political with where their tax money goes. It also excepts Aeroplan miles for some reason. Something you do not see every day for donations. So just put it in somewhere you like if this is one of them. Please check this place out I am sure it is worth diving into. Thanks for reading.

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Vancouver’s Jpop(Japanese pop) scene. Something that has not been explored here, We do not have a big following when it gets to this type of genre but it is popular to mostly the anime community and some the occasional Kpop stan. Jpop is Japanese pop music this branches from anisong singers to Idols. Today we are covering the latter. Shooting star Idols is and Indie Idol group based in Vancouver.

They formed in 2016 doing dance covers to Japanese songs. And one time sung in Mandarin for a concert.

They make there own original content as well. They uploaded there first original song Chasing Dragons on March 30^th 2019 on You Tube and SoundCloud. The Music Video is very well produced. Camera angles and Audio were on point. And the choreography was really good for there first original video. You can really tell they worked hard on it. Come watch it. They have also performed around Vancouver. Personally I have seen them in 2018 in the Richmond Night Market. They also do stuff in conventions, like Anime Evolution in which they danced cover to the Jpop song Goraku Jodo by Gardinelia.

Since then they have released Two more songs Bright A light in September 2020 and One sky a month after. Just recently one of there members Lumi just made a solo song  called strangers on January 24^th 2021. Even though there is still the Pandemic they have still managed to pull out some content. Which is pretty impressive due to being an indie group with a Genre is not popular in Vancouver nessarily. If you like there work by the end of reading this  you can support them  by the  linktree down below. It has all there social media and Patreon which you can financially back if you are able. Thank you for reading.

https://linktr.ee/shootingstaridols

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It is what the title says it is a apparently a thing. The one we are talking about today is Table tutors. Located in Russel street by Kingsway in Burnaby BC. They teach people to DJ. They claim to teach the art of DJing to people of all ages. This is true if you look at their Instagram page here they teach young children as old as 11. Who knew that this was a thing. I do not know about you but, personally I thought DJ’s were just self-taught, Early 2000’s media did enforce this and a cousin of mine who is in New York’s Music Scene does Dj but he is self taught. So stumbling upon this was pretty cool.

Some of there students do really well. The 11 year old I just mentioned came to 3^rd place in the Canadian DMC Championship after two years of being at the school. A Youtuber name by the name of Kymela who goes by the name DJ LOLA K also attends the school. She does mainly vlog type content in her channel but has covered some stuff about Dj Culture in BC. Her last video was a Behind the scenes of the Twitch Livestream she had participated in with the school.

If you want to get into DJing or just curious. Just take their intro class. It is geared towards this type of thing. It only costs 60 dollars and just book on there website. This just shows the basics and whatnot,  60 dollars may seems steep but it is fairly reasonable for a 1 time class. And if you do not like it, You can at least say I tried right? But if you do want to continue you can there Foundations class and once you are done that, you can take a mentorship course with one of the teachers.

Another note they also have a merch shop where you can buy  DJ Merch parodying brands like Canada Dry and Tim Hortons. Got to admit it was kind of funny to see. Nice designs though. If you want to check more of this out there is a link placed on the bottom of this article, so please check that out.  Thanks for reading.

https://www.tabletutors.com/

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An absolute legend comes to Vancouver on June 22,2022.  And it is Joe Hirashi . Ok so if you do not know who he is that is fair. But you may have heard in his work before. Many in the west have most likely watched Spirited away a famous movie made by Hayao Miyazaki. He made the soundtrack of that and all of his other movies, such as Princess Monoke, Castle in the Sky and Howl’s Moving castle. Aside from that he has made soundtracks to over 100 films over the course of his career. He is also a master at piano and good a conducting Orchestra’s which he started doing publicly 10 years ago.

This was originally slated for May 28^th -May 29^th of this this month but has been postponed until next year in the Orpheum theater. This was not the only concert in the Orpheum that was pushed back, All concerts after April 5^th were pushed back into new dates due to all the COVID and Vaccinations not being finished yet. I definitely do believe you should come see this concert. Joe Hirashi is a good composer, if you are reading at this point and are still not convinced I will show you a link. To give you a taste on the sheer awesomeness of this person.

Now that you have seen that. I will give you another reason. Tickets will most likely sell out fast when they come out,  I may have told you Joe’s work here but the concert tickets come out, fans of those movies that I mentioned above will come like hyenas once they catch wind on this. And if that has not convinced you, Japanese composers or generally Asian composers of scale, which is big especially in his home country of Japan rarely comes to places in the west. So this is most likely your only chance to see him perform live. And with that I hope to you there, Thanks for reading!!!!!

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Baron Que                                Why I think Music schools will open later in BC

Music schools In BC have been closed for sometimes but like all schools in the province they have either gone online or ,limited in person classes or a hybrid of the two. But when it comes to this next school year.  They are going to definitely going to open late. And here is why I think that.

http://Image by rottonara from Pixabay

• The fact that they play instruments. Well the next thing you might ask instruments? What does that have to do with anything? Ok so some instruments need a mouth to play them let’s name a few examples, Trumpets, Clarinet’s and Trombones. They all require you to blow in them and the Coronavirus is an respiratory disease so that is a big no no . This also covers singing as well.

http://Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

• Not really a priority. Music schools when compared to K-12 schools or Post- Secondary Schools are not as important objectively to open back up. You can argue how music changes people and why they should open back up Music schools at the same time as the other two, but they cannot produce basic education Like Math’s ,Sciences and English like K-12 school can. And they cannot produce as much useful people in the workforce like the Post- Secondary schools can. Sure you can play the piano, but can you fix my car? Build me a house? Or do my Taxes? Most likely not.

  http://Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

• The only real arguments will likely be an appeal to emotion, not logical ones. The only possible argument on the other side is that it will not be fair to the kids and staff who work there. While that maybe true. Is just only an emotional one. Life is not fair, and yet life still goes on. And to hammer this point further. Logically in September if Students fully go back to school what if there will be rises of COVID cases? We would have to go back to our current format again? In my perspective they will most likely open more but still leave a limited capacity just to see if any COVID cases spike. By doing that they will continue to halt opening music schools opening up completely until we get a clear green light. And that will most likely be for another 6 Months from September.

While I do present these arguments to you I really do hope I am wrong. I know I have been pretty despondent, but it is just the facts that I see right now form the situation that we are all in right now. Thank you for reading. Hopefully I gave you some food for thought.