Virginia Woolf en Français

The Quebecoise director Lorraine Pintal is on a mission: raise the profile of Virginia Woolf in the francophone community. Last December I saw a piece she directed that was loosely based on Orlando, though I didn't really click with it. A few weeks ago I saw another play that she directed, Indomptable Virginia Woolf, presented in the festival Les Correspondances d'Eastman. I had some troubles with this one too, but for different reasons.

The play, written by Robert Lalonde (who also played the character of Leonard Woolf), is based on Virginia Woolf's diaries, with extracts from several of her works (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando). It works pretty well. This performance felt a little under-rehearsed and underdeveloped, something that Pintal freely admitted was the case as it was put together in a rush in order to be included in the festival, but that wasn't the problem. No, the problem was all mine: my French.

Firstly, Robert Lalonde doesn't enunciate very clearly. I had to concentrate hard to get 50% of what he said, and when I mentioned to my francophone wife that he was hard to follow she confirmed that he was a mumbler. But what flipped me over the edge was the scene where Virginia indulges in some fancy wordplay. I'm sure the original English text was witty but translated and adapted into French it went completely over my head. I had an extremely frustrating five or six minutes that seemed like an hour, everyone around me laughing heartily while I was baffled. That coloured my enjoyment of the rest of the piece.

My principal takeaway is that I need to watch more movies in French or perhaps listen to some audiobooks. My day-to-day comprehension is good, but I still do struggle a bit at the theatre. 

To finish on a positive note, the performance by Bénedicte Décary was excellent. She played three characters: Vanessa Bell, Vita Sackville-West, and the Woolf's domestic servant, and she was delightfully convincing in each role. And she enunciated perfectly too, fair play to her.

Isabelle Faust and Beethoven's Violin Concerto

I've written about this violinist and this concerto before—when making my Beethoven Pancakes—but last night I saw Isabelle Faust perform it live with the OSM conducted by Bernard Labadie. 

How good was last night's performance? Well, this morning I thought about playing her recording of it in order to relive the show, but instead I bought a ticket for today's performance and went to see her again. I choked up at the end of the first and second movements and exploded with joy at the end of the third—both times.

The concerto is phenomenally good, I knew that. Faust is a technically brilliant violinist with an exquisite tone, I knew that too.  What I didn't know was how charismatic she is on stage. In both performances she moved expressively with the music, her face bright with the joy of playing. She engaged in different passages with the conductor, with the cellists, the violinists. There was a real sense of her inviting the audience into the music that went far beyond simply performing for us. 

In short, these were probably the best classical music concerts I've ever been to.

Isabelle Faust & Bernard Labadie
Oct. 9th, 2025, La Maison Symphonique

 

What is Laurence Lumsden reading?

In July I had a story published in The New Quarterly (yay me!) and the marketing team asked me to write a few posts for their "Online Exclusives" blog. So, here's one I wrote about some of my recent readings: What is Laurence Lumsden reading?

P.S. And just for the hell of it, here's another of the "Online Exclusives". This is me reading the opening paragraphs of the story they published.

The Pogues!

Yesterday was a wild and raucous Friday evening at MTELUS. The Pogues were at full throttle on stage, the fans in the standing area at full throttle too (beer launching, pogoing, crowd surfing) and Louis and I had a great time in our comfortable seats on the balcony. 

The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the release of Rum, Sodomy & the Lash, an album which I only came to enjoy in retrospect. At the time it was released I was a bit of a sniffy purist about Irish trad and didn't really appreciate where the Pogues were coming from. But now, as a long-term emigrant myself with sons who have grown up in Montreal but are culturally Irish, well the Pogue's songs of the Irish diaspora hit home.

But the Pogues in concert are not really about listening to the songs. They create such a din that it's hard to hear words or individual instruments, but they also create a powerful energy that grabs hold of everyone. So, while we couldn't really hear the lyrics to The Irish Rover, or Sally MacLennane, we belted them out at the tops of our voices and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Spider Stacy was on front man duties and was quite brilliant, and a lot more coherent than the late-lamented Shane McGowan would have been. Stacy added smatterings of French to his anecdotes, even launching an incendiary "Vive le Québec libre!" at one point in classic republican fashion, then indulging in a few bars of La Marseillaise. Several Irish tricolours appeared in the crowd at the end, but thankfully there were no calls of Up the RA or anything hateful.

Lisa O'Neill was the most impressive singer. She has a sharp voice that can cut through any noise which was handy for the night that was in it. She also recounted visiting Leonard Cohen's grave earlier in the day, which I shamefully have to admit that I've never done (though I pass his childhood home all the time on my evening walks around the block).

Daragh Lynch from Lankum was also a Pogue for the night, sang a few songs and joined in with the crowd's Olé'ing at the end. I'll be seeing him again soon when Lankum comes to town in a few weeks. September 2025 is turning into a month of Irish music in Montreal. 

The Waterboys in Montreal

Mike Scott brought his latest version of The Waterboys to Montreal last night and I thought it was about time that I saw him again. It's been almost forty years (since 1986 in Dublin's Croke Park) but I've kept up to date with his music, having a particular fondness for his album of Yeats' poems set to music. 

It was an excellent gig and, in a good way, quite the loudest I've been to for a while. This incarnation of the Waterboys is a powerful and tight band, Mike Scott charismatic and witty as always. 

Mike Scott. Picture from my phone

The audience was a real mix, men and women of all ages, most of them familiar with the old songs and ready to listen to the new ones. Fisherman's Blues came up early for a singalong to get everyone going; This is the Sea had some updated and hard-hitting lyrics for the times we live in and was a highlight. Prince's Purple Rain was a surprising and brilliantly performed encore that went down well with the crowd. The last song of the evening, of course, was The Whole of the Moon, and Scott encouraged the crowd as we roared out the lyrics. This song would be in my personal top 10 favourite songs of all time: musically it's joyous, lyrically it's poetry, and I tear up almost every time I hear it. In particular the lyrics in the bridge part just get me every time:

I spoke about wings,
You just flew.
I wondered, I guessed, and I tried.
You just knew.
I sighed,
But you swooned.
I saw the crescent,
You saw the whole of the moon.

 Twas indeed a lovely September evening in Montreal.

Five go to Hamilton

We're so busy with work and studies that it's become increasingly rare for us to go to events together as a family of five. Consequently, Martine and I are always on the lookout for things that we would all enjoy, then planning them well enough in advance so that we can align our schedules. So a few weeks ago, we had a beautiful evening together at the famous Montreal restaurant Le Mousso, and we're all still marveling about the nine courses of haut cuisine and head chef's witty presentation of each. Then last night we all went to see the musical Hamilton in a stunning production at Place-des-Arts.

Hamilton at PdA (screen grab)

There's not much I can say about Hamilton that hasn't already been said so I don't think I'll try. We were all just blown away by it, the energy from the stage at the high-octane moments, the depth of the feelings at the quieter ones. It was an American cast, and they were all outstanding. Little no-longer-at-all-little Philou and I especially loved the performance of Christian Magby in the roles of the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. Philou and I used to watch the TV series The Flash together and we remembered him from that - we wouldn't ever have thought of him as a hip hop artist. But wow, he was so charismatic on stage as Lafayette in the first act, delivering a few lines in French to the delight of the Montreal crowd, and then as Jefferson his rap battles with Hamilton in the second act were, literally, mic drop moments.

We had a great evening together. 

Finish the book!

I've read several articles and social media posts recently along the lines that if a book doesn't grab you after twenty or thirty pages then give it up. Your time is too precious to waste.

Which all seems fair enough. There's no point spending time struggling through a bad book.

But what if it's not a bad book? What if it's a book that others have recognised as fine book, maybe even a masterpiece? Why did you consider reading it in the first place?

In one of those articles, by Marianna Mazza in La Presse, she complained about a two-page description of the winter sun she came across in a book, how it really annoyed her, so she closed the book and abandoned it. So with that mindset the long-windedness of Marcel Proust would not be for her, evidently. But on the other hand, perhaps that's why persevering with a Proustian novel might be perfect for her. By opening her mind to a different sensibility she might gain a new appreciation for the viewpoints of others. She might even become a more patient person. 

I suspect that Marianna Mazza is an advocate of inclusion and diversity in the world, for whom empathy for how others feels is an important value, and here's a way she could embrace that in a very personal way.

Alain de Botton wrote a clever book on this topic: How Proust Can Change Your Life.

One of his points is that Proust was quite deliberate in his style, as he wanted readers to slow down and really pay attention to the scene, and ultimately to the world around them. Botton, a philosopher, describes how habitual behaviour causes us to overlook the beauty around us, that we go through much of our lives on automatic pilot, and that there is much to be gained by focusing on the rich detail all around us.

The writer L.M. Sacassas is often very wise on these matters. Here he is on the difference between being a tourist through life, or a pilgrim:

The way of the tourist is to consume; the way of the pilgrim is to be consumed. To the tourist the journey is a means. The pilgrim understands that it is both a means and an end in itself. The tourist and the pilgrim experience time differently. For the former, time is the foe that gives consumption its urgency. For the latter, time is a gift in which the possibility of the journey is actualized. Or better, for the pilgrim time is already surrendered to the journey that, sooner or later, will come to its end. The tourist bends the place to the shape of the self. The pilgrim is bent to shape of the journey.

Rhiannon Giddens in Ottawa

Last week I finally got to see Gillian Welch, and this weekend I finally got to see Rhiannon Giddens. You wait years for the opportunity to see one of your favourite artists and then you get a week like this! 

Giddens brought one of her (many!) bands, The Old Time Revue, to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, mostly playing banjo and fiddle music from her latest album What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow. It was an unforgettable evening. Giddens is just an incredible musician, singer, composer, historian, and chronicler of injustice, who is equally at home in folk, blues, or opera. The Southam Hall at National Arts Centre was packed, and the audience completely rapt from her first notes. She covered most of the new album which really has to be heard live to fully appreciate it, infused with the energy of her playing and that of long-time musical collaborator Justin Robinson.

She did a few songs from her back catalogue too and I had tears in my eyes at her performance of her song "At the Purchaser's Option", her voice completely inhabiting the story of the enslaved girl who is raped and abused by her "purchaser":

You can take my body 

You can take my bones

You can take my blood

But not my soul

My francophone partner-in-life came with me to the concert and she in turn was brought to tears my Giddens' encore performance of Un Canadien Errant , sung in perfectly-pronounced French:

Un Canadien errant,

Banni de ses foyers,

Parcourait en pleurant

Des pays étrangers.

This is not a well-known song but it's hard to think of a more apt one, considering the themes it shares with many of the other songs she played (themes of forced migration, dispossession) and also considering the politics of this moment in time (an African-American  - albeit one who lives in Ireland these days - coming to Canada and singing a patriotic French-Canadian song). There were a couple of moments where the concert could have veered into capital-P Politics but Rhiannon Giddens is too good an artist for that - she shows you, she makes you feel, she makes you think, but then she lets you draw your own conclusions. 

There are so many sides to her music that I really hope to see her again soon with one of her other projects e.g. her collaboration with The Silk Road Ensemble, or with Franceso Turrisi, or with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, etc. etc. etc.

 

 

Strauss' Salomé at the Metropolitan Opera

We were in New York to see Gillian Welch at Carnegie Hall, so we took the opportunity to go to the Metropolitan Opera the night before. Montreal's own Yannick Nézet-Séguin was conducting too so it was an opportunity not to be missed.

I'd never seen this opera before, but I had seen the Oscar Wilde play on which it was based, at Dublin's Gate Theatre in 1999 or 2000. I remembered the play as being quite subtle, but the opera was very much the opposite. There was sex, there was abuse, there was gore, and not enough was left to the imagination. It's often the case that operas are extravagantly staged, but some of the best ones I've seen have been quite sparsely presented so that space is left for the singing and music. But I guess the Met has got far too much money for that.

So it was good, but almost ridiculously overblown. The music was fantastic though.

Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at Carnegie Hall

I've been boycotting many American products these past months in response to the hostile actions of the Trump administration towards Canada. But I bought the tickets for this concert when Kamala still had hope, and I sure as hell wasn't going to let the orange ogre stop me from finally seeing Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Their music has been important to me for at least two decades, and besides, as Gillian sings, "hard times ain't gonna rule my mind".

So Martine and I drove to New York in our not-a-Tesla electric car, taking in this concert on the Wednesday, and a visit to the Metropolitan Opera on the Tuesday (where we saw Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting Salomé - that'll have to be another post!).

Welch and Rawlings were spectacular. Acoustically, Carnegie Hall was perfect for the subtleties of their music. The hall was packed, the audience wildly enthusiastic between songs and hushed during them, and there were two brilliant encores. The whole evening was just one sustained highlight for me that will live long in the memory so it's hard to pick out any one song, but the cover of The Grateful Dead's "China Doll" was unexpected and Rawlings' playing on it was exquisite. The aforementioned "Hard Times", "Revelator", "The Way It Goes", and more, were all hold-your-breath stunning. And the final song of the evening was a raucous cover of "White Rabbit" that had everyone on their feet.

Screen capture from a YouTuber's recording
of their performance of Revelator.
Carnegie Hall, May 7th 2025

I had an exchange with Gillian Welch on Instagram last year where she confirmed that the Woodland tour will eventually come to Canada - so I hope to see them again soon. 

Krapp's Last Tape: It's a date!

It's probably my favourite piece by Beckett, and I still remember how moved I was by John Hurt's performance at The Gate Theatre in Dublin in 2001.

 Photograph: Anthony Woods/Gate Theatre digital archive/University of Galway

The story of the play is of a 69-year-old man making his annual recording of his thoughts on his birthday, laughing cynically at the recording of his 39-year-old self, and then losing his cynicism as his thoughts move back and forth between his old self and his current self. One of the many challenges for the solitary actor on stage is to convince in the younger recording while responding to it as the older Krapp. Hurt did that brilliantly. 

But what if a recording were made when an actor was actually thirty-nine, so that he could play the piece when he was sixty-nine? The actor would be responding to his own reality, as well as that of the character he was playing.

That's the idea behind a project by Art Over Borders, where the actor Samuel West made the recording in 2006, and the actor Richard Dormer in 2008. And a limited number of (very) early-bird tickets went on sale last Sunday, Beckett's 120th birthday, for West's performance in 2036.

I bought two. So, if we're not all tempting fate to an outrageous degree, Martine and I will be in Dublin on Saturday, March 22nd, 2036, to see West's performance. I'm looking forward to it!

Am I an award-winning writer?

Well a few months ago I wondered here if I should call myself a writer at all. Then I found out that I was an award-winning writer: I won the 2025 Cúirt New Writing Fiction Prize.

www.cuirt.ie

When I first began writing short stories just four years ago I devoured many collections in order to understand the form and appreciate its subtleties. One of the collections I most enjoyed was Dance Move by the outstanding Belfast writer Wendy Erskine, so I was completely gobsmacked when in her capacity as the prize's judge she wrote this about my winning story Deconstruction:

Complex relationship with a lightness of touch, I loved this story with its brilliantly judged dialogue. Who knew that an IKEA furniture forum could be mined for such gold?

I was floating on air after reading that and receiving her congratulations on BlueSky.

So there I was in Galway last week, reading my story at the Cúirt festival in the company of six brilliant writers. 

I'm still floating on air.

The impact of the unexpected: Elisabeth Brauss

I've seen a lot of really good classical concerts recently. Marc-André Hamelin playing Gershwin's Rhapsody Blue with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra was as good as you'd expect it to be. Shostakovich's 8th symphony with the same orchestra was excellent too.

Last Wednesday I saw a pianist I'd never heard of before playing at a half-full Salle Bourgie. I don't know why my wife bought the tickets, and she couldn't really remember either, but it seemed like a pleasant way of spending a Wednesday evening. Elisabeth Brauss was young, twenty-nine according to the notes, but she looked much younger. The program included works by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev. She came out on stage, all smiles, paused for a moment and began to play.

Holy crap.

There was a palpable moment in the hall when everyone came to the same realisation - something special is happening here. Her playing was mesmerising, a scarcely believable combination of energy, lyricism, and precision, with each of those attributes turned up to maximum. And unlike some other artists I've seen recently, the pianist herself seemed to be enjoying every moment of the performance. The audience was so caught up in it that they stopped coughing (!) and the silence between each movement was total, charged with anticipation, almost radioactive. Montreal audiences are always pretty generous with their standing ovations, but the enthusiasm in this one was off the scale. It was the concert of the season for me.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Elisabeth Brauss in concert again, but next time I'll have expectations. This was a one off, the sort of thing that can only happen in a live performance where you have no preconceptions of what you're about to see. 

Anyway, you had to be there, I guess. But here's a video of her playing at the Wigmore Hall in 2022.

Skye Consort with Emma Björling at Le Rucher Boltonnois

I love folk music, especially the traditional music that's rooted in the places where I've lived: Ireland, Sweden, and Quebec. So, when Martine described the band that was playing in the town next to our chalet, well, we just had to be there.

Emma Björling is a folk singer from Östersund and, amongst many other projects, she performs with the Montreal-based folk group Skye Consort. The venue was Le Rucher Boltonnois, a cosy little hall serving craft beers that we've visited four or five times now. They played a variety of songs from each of their traditions, singing in Swedish, French, and English (with some spicy Norwegian and Danish for good measure). They call their genre 'transatlantic chamber folk', a genre with only one member. Their performance was outstanding.

Each of the musicians is a virtuoso of their instrument. Simon Alexandre, also a classical violinist in the Orchestre Philharmonique de Quebec, played a nyckelharpa, a medieval Swedish instrument somewhat like a violin with keys. I'd heard it before on recordings but never live. The harmonic resonances it produced were just gorgeous.

Although she could sing in French, Björling apologised between songs saying that she couldn't really speak in French. But, she said, speaking in English was a fair compromise as we couldn't understand her Swedish songs. I was about to put my hand up to say there was at least one audience member who appreciated her Swedish - but quickly thought better of it!

The band has two albums and lots of performances available on YouTube. Here's the Swedish song that began their concert last Saturday evening.

2024 Reading List

2024 was a good reading year. I suspect 2025 will be even better, as I'll be diving into fiction to avoid reading any news about you-know-who.

The highlights of my 2024 reading year would have to include these four books:

• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, his first novel, which I read on the basis of a review in The Guardian. The idea is brilliant, a story of a war in ancient Greece made real and relevant by the present tense narration of two characters with funny Dublin accents. It's truly glorious from beginning to end. 
  
  
• The 19th century Russian short stories collected and analysed by George Saunders under the title A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. The stories are really good, but my appreciation of them was doubled by Saunders' explanations. This is such an enjoyable read, but also so insightful for an aspiring writer. 

 

• A memoir that was assigned in a writing craft class, Splinters by Leslie Jamison. It's fair to say that I wasn't looking forward to reading yet another divorce memoir, but Jamison's writing is sharp, insightful, and often extremely witty in an understated and subtle way, a pleasure to read.
  
  
• Orbital. It's wonderful, but sure everybody knows that already. 
  
  

I was a bit disappointed by Mike McCormack's This Plague of Souls. I was so looking forward to it as Solar Bones is one of my all-time favourite novels, but it didn't quite land for me. It felt unfinished. McCormack has said that these books are part of a triptych, with Solar Bones as the centre-piece, so maybe this will all come together in the end when the third novel is published.

I was quite underwhelmed by Sally Rooney's Normal People, just as I was underwhelmed in the past by Beautiful World, Where Are You. I'm ready to accept it's my fault, not Rooney's, but I've given it a good go now so Intermezzo is not in my plans.

Here's the complete list of what I read in 2024:

Fiction

Amis, Martin: The Zone of Interest

Arikha, Alba: Two Hours

Barry, Kevin: That Old Country Music

Boyne, John: Water

Cusk, Rachel: Transit (2nd reading)

Dutton, John B: 2084

Ephron, Nora: Heartburn

Ferrell Carolyn: Dear Miss Metropolitan

Fosse, Jon: A Shining

Harvey, Samantha: Orbital

Keegan, Claire: Foster (2nd reading)

Lennon, Ferdia: Glorious Exploits

McCann, Colum: Thirteen Ways of Looking

McCormack, Mike: Solar Bones (3rd reading)

McCormack, Mike: This Plague of Souls

McLiam Wilson, Robert: Eureka Street

Mitchell, David: Slade House

Murray, Paul: The Bee Sting

Richler, Mordecai: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Rooney, Sally: Normal People

Saunders, George (editor): A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - stories by Chekov, Tolstoy et al

Thúy, Kim: Ru (en Français)

Non-fiction

Balinska, Maria: The Bagel

Cohen, Richard: How to Write like Tolstoy

Dyer, Geoff: The Last Days of Roger Federer

Ho Davies, Peter: The Art of Revision - The Last Word

Jamison, Leslie: Splinters

Olen Butler, Robert: From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction

Poetry

Mandelstam, Osip: Stolen Air

Pinsky, Robert: Proverbs of Limbo

Roeser, Dana: All Transparent Things Need Thundershirts