Category Archives: Halifax

A maestro in our midst

An old acquaintance of mine told me a funny story once about how she “discovered” Harry Connick, Jr.

She was in a bar in Connick’s hometown of New Orleans and listening to him perform. She was mightily impressed and told him so after his song was over – something she could do in the intimate setting of the bar they were in.

“Hey, you’re pretty good,” she told him, not realizing who he was. She had heard of Connick, but didn’t recognize the man who had already won a Grammy Award for best jazz male vocal performance thanks to his work on the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack.

Connick was gracious and said “thank you” but someone – perhaps a friendly bartender – pointed out to her who he was. She was sheepish, but not so much that she didn’t delight in telling the story when she returned to Nova Scotia.

Sometimes, you see somebody perform and you feel like your discovery is the world’s discovery.

So it was with me and the first time I watched Dinuk Wijeratne conduct the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra.

While I didn’t approach Wijeratne or the orchestra to say “Hey, you’re pretty good,” I did decide to write about them for Halifax Magazine; that article will appear in the magazine’s April issue.

The more I researched Wijeratne’s background, the more I realized what a virtuoso he is. It was his work as a conductor that prompted me to write about him, but his talents are more diverse than that.

We are fortunate to have him plying his craft here in Nova Scotia. If you haven’t watched him play the piano, conduct, or seen one of his compositions brought to life off the page, then you must change that.

To get a sense of Wijeratne and what he and the NSYO can do, watch this video.

Now, go “discover” him like I did. The NSYO and Symphony Nova Scotia will be performing a joint concert at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium on Feb. 17.

Watch out for the last kid picked

If you’ve ever played a game of pick-up hockey, you know that some poor kid always ends up getting picked last. Sometimes, though, that person can surprise people with their unknown ability.

That happened on January 16 in the CHL Top Prospects Games in Halifax. Laurent Dauphin was the last replacement added to the roster after Hunter Shinkaruk couldn’t play because of the flu.

No matter. Dauphin has skills and had averaged more than a point per game with the Chicoutimi Sagueneens of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. After the game, he said he wanted to show that he belonged.

He had a rough start to the game as he was decked with a clean open-ice hit just 20 seconds in the game. Ticked off, he came back on his next shift and set up his team’s first goal. He later added a goal to make it 2-0 and had two other good scoring chances as he earned player-of-the-game honours for Team Orr, which won 3-0.

After filing my story for The Canadian Press, I was musing over the game and Dauphin’s effort made me think of that old Canadian Tire commercial featuring Albert.

I mentioned it to a couple of colleagues and one of them, Neate Sager, ran with it. The Yahoo blogger who compiles the CHL blog Buzzing The Net, converted it into a nice post. Yes, I bet Don Cherry wished he had a guy like Dauphin on is team.

Well played, Neate. Well played.

Sage advice from Henry Ford

One of things I’ve never enjoyed doing as an employee was promoting myself; and because I didn’t enjoy doing it, I was never very good at it.

Now that I am in business for myself, I have no choice. Some say nothing concentrates the mind like a deadline, but making the mortgage payment and feeding six kids sure does. Trust me, I’ve faced both challenges.

As much as I enjoy the freedom of being my own boss, I have had to learn to continuously promote myself to generate cash flow. This blog is part of that and I’m always looking for opportunities to get my name out there, sometimes for free, and sometimes for a fee; it’s just something that I have to do now.

As Henry Ford once told his dealers, the secret to success is thus:

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.

That quote has since been attributed to Ted Turner and Peter J. Laurence, and some internet sites will tell you they coined the phrase. However, as a wise man named Abraham Lincoln once said:

The trouble with quotes on the internet is you never know if they are genuine.

How can we be sure, then, that Ford coined the phrase in the first place? Well, a reference to a printed source always helps. See here.

Regardless of who said it, though, it’s good advice.