Glenn Kubish

  Happy end of the week, friends! I am no fan of death or dying, but I do enjoy a good graveyard every now and then. This week's podcast . Here are three things I noticed that made me happy or grateful this week. 1. Stamp collecting Walking through the rows of headstones at the St. Joachim Cemetery off 105 Avenue reminded me of leafing through my childhood stamp album. Before I ever heard of George Gershwin, I had a George Gershwin stamp, US Postal Service 8 cents, 1973. And an Emily Dickinson stamp from 1971, and, from 1975, a 10 cent Paul Laurence Dunbar, American poet, stamp. These postage stamps, and the ones of kings and queens and prime ministers and presidents chancellors and moose and the St.Lawrence Seaway and International Women’s Year, were miniature windows into big worlds far away from mine in northeast Edmonton. On my Germany page was a stamp from 1948 of a sour looking dude called G.W. Fr. Hegel, whom I wouldn’t meet until university, drinking beer at Dewey's. ...

  Happy end of the week! Here are three things from my little life that made me happy or grateful (or gratefully bewildered) this week. The podcast . The transcript: 1. Trumpeter Sean My brother-in-law Sean is a jazz musician of some note. He fronted the Edmonton Jazz Ensemble back in the day. He teaches at a college in New Jersey. We got to chatting in email about a new song by Bleachers, which turned into a kind of treatise on how musicians perform together. They can do so at a high level only if they’re as good at listening as they are at making their own noise. Here’s Sean from that email last week. To play in an ensemble, I have to listen to myself through focusing on your playing. Fortunately it is not difficult to hear myself since I am the closest to my instrument, but since I’m closest to the instrument and the sound that it’s creating, I hear it and it’s yet harder for me to hear the other players, which is why I must focus on them. I have spent my life honing listening s...

Here is a short video showing the boys at their best!