Tausk starts his tenure at VSO with a flourish
FLYING DUTCHMAN: Nothing from Richard Wagner’s opera of that name was played when music director Otto Tausk conducted his debut concert with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. But the Dutch context held. Utrecht native Tausk, 49, opened with the VSO-commissioned composition Helix by fellow Netherlands-born Edward Top. More Dutch artists, Lucas Jussen, 25, and brother Arthur, 22, played the Concerto for Two Pianos in D Minor that Francis Poulenc composed at age 33. Tausk ended the concert with then-28-year-old Igor Stravinsky’s 1910 composition, Firebird. “I was scared to death,” Tausk said at a post-concert reception. “We had a lot of notes to play in a very short time. I thank the musicians for their hard work.” Flying corks characterized the reception where VSO president Kelly Tweeddale oversaw cutting of the orchestra’s 100th-birthday cake. From amateur beginnings, the VSO has developed, not least under previous music director Bramwell Tovey, so that Tausk could say of its players: “I am learning so much from you.”
MOUNTAIN GREEN: A recent design-related book was produced by Gordon Harris, the Simon Fraser University Trust president and CEO. Written with former Sun scribe Richard Littlemore, Building Community addresses the definition, design and development of UniverCity. Sited on SFU’s Burnaby Mountain campus, the development is planned to increase present residency from 3,000 to 10,000. “It is a model of sustainable living … and a huge contributor to university life,” said SFU president Andrew Petter, who lives there. The book was launched at Dialog, an architectural firm that, as Hotson Bakker, began planning UniverCity in 1991.
MORE DESIGN: That was in Railtown’s Settlement Building where furniture designer-manufacturer Kate Duncan staged Address. It was her fourth annual “assembly of designers and makers” from B.C., Alberta, Washington and Oregon. Forty of them participated in the three-day show curated by interior designer Amber Kingsnorth. Duncan likely deemed her exhibitors as “super capable” as those in a detention-centre woodworking class she once taught.
HERE WE GO: Some gave the Whistler Film Festival a mere snowball’s chance when executive director Shauna Hardy Mishaw co-founded it in 2011. By adding 90 films to 1,300 screened previously, this year’s Nov. 28-Dec. 2 festival became a big snowball indeed. There’ll be nine Canadian world premieres, too, Hardy Mishaw said during a pep party at Vancouver’s Big Rock Brewery. Her 2001 leap of faith parallels one made earlier by investment firm founder-head Terry Salman who has hosted festival patrons at his and wife Chris’ home. While telemarking at Whistler, Salman flew off a cliff only to land unhurt on a snowy ledge 20 metres below. He later bought a Cirrus SR20G3 aircraft with its own still-unneeded parachute. Hardy Mishaw hasn’t tugged her rip-cord either.
TOP TOMATO: The culinary Les Dames d’Escoffier chapter honoured founding member Diane Clement at a 10-chef, longtable gala banquet. Clement, an Olympic sprinter and B.C. Sport Hall of Famer, became a chef who taught classes, wrote eight cookbooks and, with daughter Jennifer, founded Tomato Fresh Food Cafe here in 1991. Ranking her later career with athletics, Clement said: “Eating is one of life’s major entertainments.”
BORN TO WEAVE: Sola Fiedler owned another landmark eatery here that particularly showcased music. That was the Soft Rock Cafe where, still known as Patti, Fiedler presented such artists as Ravi Shankar and Dexter Gordon. Changing names and career, the native Londoner became a tapestry artist exhibiting presently at 1359 Cartwright St. Her huge, finely detailed works include aerial panoramas of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Fielder plans a possibly bigger one for Los Angeles in 2028, “when I’ll be 92.”
TOP THAT: Tevie Smith pioneered takeout pizza at South Granville’s early-1960s Snackery. Attired as Superman atop a 1934 Packard sedan, Smith arrived at his recent 85th-birthday party to serve a four-by-eight-foot cake to 500 guests. Many pizzas, too, of course. Smith recently quit criss-crossing North America in a wood-sided 1947 Chrysler he called the “termite taxi.” He always took along rescue dogs who, without his care, would have missed many less theatrical birthdays of their own.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: What’s next, a place where blow-up politicians answer our every desire?