Greetings! From the basement web and audio/video studios of IAM in Georgetown Ontario, warm wishes for safety, sanity and hope through these trying times. Thank-you for following along with whatever part of this effort brings you here, and my warmest wishes for you and those around you.

I’ve always been a bit tickled at the unintended reference René Descartes made to us in “I Think, Therefore I AM,” and I was interested recently to read that this argument emerged out of a swirling sense of self-doubt about what, if anything, he could be sure of being true. Most of us today rarely harbour doubts about our own existence, but there is plenty out there posing as truth that we can (and should) doubt. Though Descartes went no further than verifying his existence by the fact that he had thoughts, I like to extend this idea to the self-evident truth that by thinking we can more credibly interrogate the truth than by not.

In view with the swirling landscape of COVID-19 news about us, I’ve been adjusting my activities at IAM better to fit circumstances and serve the constituencies that gather here. A couple of recent developments have suggested changes to the way things have been.

Firstly the final season performances of both the Georgetown Choral Society and the Marion Singers have joined the list of cancelled events and projects we all grimly accumulate in these sorts of times; this has released us a bit from any immediate need to prepare music without the benefit of rehearsals (!), but it does not erase the beauty and the interesting culture around the music in the organisations’ lives. Thus, Choral View Radio episodes continue to emerge for choristers’ and followers’ enjoyment, with a couple of changes.

In the case of The Georgetown Choral Society we will continue to dwell on the May 2nd program concepts and themes – the First Half of which was the subject of an hour-long episode released earlier this week. The cancelled concert, entitled “United we Sing: Songs of Love and Hope for Humanity” is only more compelling in the midst of a crisis – and even while the song is silent for a time, this will continue to be way I hope we as choir – like we as a species – can remain pointed.

In the case of The Marion Singers the loss of our June 6th concert at Jubilee United Church in Toronto is potentially a still greater blow. COVID-19 uncertainty and possible economic legacy may severely impact our ability to secure concert bookings for the fall, which in a normal year we would be booking already. Or, who knows, when public events resume we might have churches beating our door down to help them raise money! In any case with TMS I am taking the opportunity for a step back, and over the next eight weeks am sharing the four CD recordings Marion Singers made between 2000 and 2011 under then-Director Tony Browning. Besides a wonderful snapshot of our group under different direction these recordings are packed with beautiful a capella music, familiar and unfamiliar, that we can consider reinstating. Most of all I am looking at it as a celebration of a wonderful institution, with a bright future when the world is again ready for choirs to rehearse, and for them to meet with audiences in performance.

The biggest change here at IAM will affect the Rosedale Presbyterian Church CVR episodes… after two weeks of offering a diverse set of resources (including a special CVR episode) for home-bound congregants to use at will, we on the RPC staff have decided in time for Holy Week to switch to producing something more formal like a composite audio/video “Virtual Service” containing most the elements found in a typical RPC service – which, of course, includes lots of music. In order to do this we have turned our attention to the IAM YouTube channel as a platform to collect and share the six parts of the service, which will play in order as a Playlist. And to top it all off we will be promoting and holding a virtual coffee hour at 11:30 each Sunday using Zoom technology. None of this will replace the experience of gathering in our church, but it will serve during what, it now seems, might be months without the privilege.

Tuesday IAM Blog posts will of course continue, although the concept of the musical travelogue I had hoped they would be has a significant damper on it at the moment, since I’m neither travelling nor making much music… but if we can reach back for a moment to “I Think, Therefore I Am” – perhaps it suggests that all IAM needs to exist is a brain!

-CD