Bremner Duthie

Before starting work, make the sign of the cross; pray in silence and pardon your enemies.

1. Work with care on every detail of your icon, as if you were working in front of the Lord, himself.

2. During work, pray in order to strengthen yourself physically and spiritually; avoid, above all, useless words and keep silence.

3. Pray in particular to the saint whose face you are painting. Keep your mind from distractions and the saint will be close to you.

4. When you have to choose a color, stretch out your hand interiorly to the Lord and ask His counsel.

5. Do not be jealous of your neighbour’s work. His success is your success too.

6. When your icon is finished, thank God that His mercy has granted you the grace to paint the holy images.

7. Have your icon blessed by putting it on the altar. Be the first to pray before it, before giving it to others.

8. Never forget the joy of spreading icons in the world, the joy of the work or icon-painting, the joy of being in union with the saint whose face you are painting.

Iconographer's Prayer

Teach me, Lord, to use wisely the time which You have given me and to work well without wasting a second.

Teach me to profit from my past mistakes without falling into a gnawing doubt.

Teach me to anticipate the project without worry, to imagine the work without despair if it should turn out differently.

Teach me to unite haste and slowness, serenity and ardor, zeal and peace. Help me at the beginning of the work when I am the weakest. Help me in the middle of the work when my attention must be sustained. And especially fill all the emptiness of my work with Your Presence.

Lord, in all the work of my hands, bestow Your Grace so that it can speak to others and my mistake can speak to me alone. Keep me in the hope of perfection, without which I would lose heart, yet keep me from achieving perfection, for surely I would be lost in arrogance.

Purify my sight when I am doing poorly, for one is never sure that the work will turn out badly; Yet when I am doing well, one is never sure that the work will turn out well.

Lord, let me never forget that all knowledge is in vain unless there is work. And all work is empty unless there is love. And all love is hollow unless it binds me both to others and to You.

Lord, teach me to pray with my hands, my arms, and all my strength. Remind me that the work of my hands belongs to You and that it is fitting to return this gift to You.

Yet, if I work for the pleasure of others, like a flowering plant in the evening I will wither. But if I work for the love of goodness, I will remain in goodness. And the time to work for goodness and for Your Glory is now.

from his commencement speech at Julliard

"... by choosing a life in the arts you’ve set yourselves apart from a nation that has become such a hostage to distraction that it can’t absorb a single complex thought without having it reduced to a sound byte. Most people now, and particularly most people your age, live in a fractured virtual environment where staying focused on a single thought for, say, a mere seven seconds presents a grave challenge. (I mention seven seconds because a staff researcher at Google in San Francisco recently told me that 7.3 seconds was the amount of time that an average viewer stays on a YouTube site before jumping to another page.) You have grown up in a world that offers constant, almost irresistible distraction not unlike what the serpent in the Garden of Eden offered to Eve when he whispered to her, “check out them apples.”

"He will have you close to tears in one moment and laughing the next. An absolute joy to watch..."

http://noladefender.com/content/views-fringe

Well, this is just amazing.  There's nothing here.  I am so happy.   

We moved into Treme in New Orleans last week and I preface this by saying I feel a little guilty,  since the reasons why there is nothing here come from a whole host of some not great reasons - poverty, hurricanes, floods, violence.  But I'm still happy.

That is to say, there are no big box stores, there are no radio shacks, no fast food joints, no strip malls, no outlet stores, and in the evening there is no traffic to speak of... 

When I arrived I sort of panicked - 'Crap!  There are no supermarkets, there are no radio shacks... '  Then

Get educated about your Fringe options: come to special Fringe previews on November 3 and 4, at the Shadowbox Theatre!

Touring Fringe artist Cameryn Moore presents her first solo show PHONE WHORE (a one-act play with frequent interruptions) for three nights only in New Orleans, and has opened the stage before her show to NOFringe artists to preview their shows. Fringe patrons can come to the preview for free and STAY for the award-winning play for only $12 (20% off the door price). Just use the password "safeword" to get your Fringe discount for an amazing night of theater...

PHONE WHORE 
(a one-act play with frequent interruptions)

Truth and taboo collide in this intimate visit with a phone sex operator. Listen closely: she may change your views on sex forever.

THREE NIGHTS ONLY!
Thursday through Saturday, November 3-5
doors at 7:30, shows at 8pm
Tickets: $12/adv, $15/door
    (use the password "safeword" at the door to get your NOFringe discount)
Details and advance tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/206129

Pick of the Fringe (Drama), 2011 Victoria Fringe Festival
Best Female Solo performance, 2010 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Judges' Honourable Mention, 2010 Ottawa Fringe Festival

Selling out shows across Canada, this critically acclaimed one-woman play sparks powerful audience response at every stop. FOR MATURE AUDIENCES

FRINGE PREVIEW
November 3
- Cutting Across the Map (Ariel Gratch/Cutting Across the Map)
- The Wedding (Kat Sotelo & Jee-Horne Kan)
- AGAIN?! (FoKaT)
- '33 (a kabarett) (Bremner Fletcher Duthie)

November 4
- Sex Offender (Wilhelmina Baker) 
- Marilyn: a play about our bodies (Night Light Collective
- The Baroness Undressed (Diana Shortez)

Orlando, Montreal, London, Regina, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Victoria, Vancouver.  Have I left anything out there?  No.  Nine festivals, three shows (including my part in Rupert Watts wonderful musical).  Almost six months on the road.  

The new cabaret piece - '33, (a kabarett) was a challenge to perform.  My pitch line finally for it distilled down to 'Imagine Stephen Harper orders the Homeland Security forces to shoot the cast of Glee through the back of the head.  Well, my job is to come on stage, clear up the bodies and sing songs about them.'  Only, of course, this event is set (more or less) in 1933 and it really did happen that way.  

I was delighted with the response.  It was a challenge to mount such a dark show at the Fringe, where comedy kills, and I was inspired by the audiences who came along for the ride.  

It wasn't an easy ride - I played to crowds of 3 and 4 at the Montreal Fringe, and at each festival I would enter with small crowds and then watch it slowly build. But at the last festival, the show sold out most of it's performances in a huge venue at the Edmonton Fringe.  It was honestly humbling to perform the work for all these people.

'33 was inspired by a single song.  'Unsrer Shtetle Brent', by Mordecai Geburtig. The song was written to commemorate the destruction of a village in Poland.  Mordecai Geburtig was killed several years later when he refused to leave his village.  He wrote that he wanted that song to become a song of universal resistance to oppression and injustice, not just a song about that particular incident.  When I wrote the show I thought about what my 'village' was, and the stage and the people on it came to the fore. So the show is about a man mourning his friends fate and determining to carry on regardless.

I also remounted my old show 'Whiskey Bars', a show built around the songs of Kurt Weill, and took that to three festivals.  

I've been playing that show for almost 10 years now in various forms and it was great to see how well it works.  We sold out 8 shows in a row at the Winnipeg Festival, and got a 'Best of Fest' award there, and again at the Victoria Festival.

I think though that this might be it's last time out in this format.  It's time to shake it up.  So I think it's next emergence into the world will involve a reworking and rethinking of the show.  

The rethink is partly inspired by a vast screw up on my part.  On opening night in Vancouver, with a sold out show, and with 15 minutes to go before the show, I realized I had forgotten my costume (formal tuxedo with tailcoat).  And the show is basically built around me getting dressing into said Tuxedo.  I freaked out and while I was running around panicking a good friend rushed into the performers green room and asked if anyone had any kind of formal wear.  A wonderful Australian performer (who goes by the name of The Birdmann) handed over his ancient tux coat and the skinny black jeans he wears on stage.  They made it to me with enough time to be laid out on stage before the audience arrived.  So I went on stage with a costume that I had never tried on.   And that might have been one of the best shows of the summer.  The ancient threadbare costume inspired comments afterwards from patrons who read a whole story into their quality and my 'inspired choice' in wearing that outfit.  

I'm going back and re-listening to the songs I recorded years ago on my CD of Kurt Weill songs 'Bremner sings Kurt Weill' (ok, ok,it's not the most imaginative title in the world... but it gets to the point. ) 

I consider myself a Kurt Weill specialist.  I've read so much about his life and sung so many of his songs that they feel like home to me.  The CD has 14 tracks by Kurt Weill and a variety of astonishingly talented lyricists-

Youkali

Speak Low

Lost in the Stars

Je ne t'aime pas

My Ship

The Song of the Big Shot

Moon Faced, Starry Eyed

Bilbao Song

Nowhere to Go but Up

Apple Jack

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Alabama Song

Mack the Knife

One Life to Live

Listening to the songs again after all these years I think we did a pretty good job at both capturing the spirit of the music, and of trying some new approaches.  During the rehearsal we tried them in so many ways and finally the recording went very quickly and in an atmosphere of fun experimentation. Of course there are a million things I wish we could try again, but overall I'm pretty content (which as a perfectionist, is a pretty rare thing for me to say).  

One of my favourites is still 'Apple Jack' - it's perhaps one of his last compositions.  He and Ogden Nash were working on a musical theatre version of 'Huckleberry Finn'.  After Weill's heart attack he kept composing from his hospital bed.  It's pretty amazing that he could write such joyful music at that moment in his life.  

click here if you'd like to hear some of them.

And here's a video pulled from my kabarett show 'Whiskey Bars' - Kurt Weill's beautiful song, 'Speak Low'

It's a broadsword and dagger extravaganza!  I'm walking onstage soon with a new production of Macbeth. We're all done up in designer suits and carrying blackberrys and iphones, but also carrying daggers and broadswords.   It is a small cast, so we're all playing several roles, and I think (at last count) I die four times (that's not counting the off-stage dispatching of myself as Duncan)  The only character I play that makes it through the show alive is the Porter, with his great licentious speeches...   A wonderful adaptation by Tommy Taylor of Forward Theatre and fabulous stage fighting choreography by Christian Feliciano.  

Benny Golson's Whisper Not

"Splendidly paced and thoroughly engaging Whiskey Bars..."

http://www.torontostage.com/reviews/int-BremnerDuthie.html

Come along, it'll be half party, half concert, audience participation is threatened but not guaranteed, the ambiance is spiffy, the beer is great and the location is simply historic.

the CD is jazz with a dark, pop twist, pulling in songs from the Velvet Underground and the Talking Heads. I think it sounds like Tom Waits and Frank Sinatra in a fist fight over who gets to sing next in a red velvet lounge in Vegas.

or maybe it's less violent and more romantic to say it sounds like a big old brass bed – you know... a well pounded mattress of bouncy jazz springs, a colourful quilt of pop twang, and a fluffy feather pillow of Sixties soul.

what else should I tell you? Stories??

Should I tell you how the CD was originally meant to be a jagged mix of electropop and jazz, but the producer got a better paying gig and quit days before the recording session?

Should I tell you about my panic as I realized I was faced with four days in the studio, and no idea how to deal with it?

Should I tell you about the day the charmingly stoned guitarist forgot both his guitar and amp, and did the day's recording on what was basically a toy guitar that was kicking around the studio?

Should I tell you about my despair as I listened to the feeble twangings that were recorded from that cheap instruments straight onto the board?

or should I tell you about how those four amazing musicians pulled together without any producer and simply did what I should have had confidence they would do in the first place - use their talents and skill to put down some amazing music, and challenge me to come up with vocals to match.

and should I tell you about the studio engineer who, when he was mixing the CD, heard the guitar sounds and went straight to back of his cluttered space, pulled out a 1963 fender amp, rerouted the tiny guitar through that amp, added some reverb and rerecorded the whole thing... giving me a sound that sounds like it fell out of a gorgeous '60's blues album.

or how my friend Toni Mustra donated his amazing graphic talents to create a gorgeous, mysterious album cover crafted from a shot of the Blue Sky over Trinity Bellwoods park in Toronto.

I'm not sure if I should tell those stories... but if you're curious, and want to hear some more gossip... and what it sounds like live... well come by the Cameron House (the Back Room... the party room!) on March 4th, and we'll show off a bit...

Join the facebook event at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=628355662#!/event.php?eid=308650006703&ref=mf

'The Sky Was Blue' was recorded in Paris at Bopcity Studios with Remi Amblard, Benoit Gil, Thierry Tardieu and Tomasso Montagnani.

I'll be accompanied on the 4th by the extraordinary talents of Scott Metcalf on keyboards, Scott Kemp on Bass, Robin Pirson on drums and Joel Schwarz on Guitar.

"a one-hour tour de force of hope and regret rooted in the songs of Kurt Weill"

http://www.livewithculture.ca/music/whiskey-bars-puts-fresh-spin-on-kurt-weill/

Join me over on Reverbnation to hear selections from the new album

Just confirmed that I'll be launching the Gala opening of KOKO, a new resto in Yorkville, with a pared down version of the quartet (the playing area is real tiny) - should be a fun evening  - Valentines Day and Chinese New Year - the concept is a tapas Korean restaurant.  Come by and check out the music and food.  Song from the new album and other standards.

KOKO 89 Yorkville, February 14th... all night

just confirmed I'll be doing a slice of my show The Barker, at the No Sweethearts Fest in Cabbagetown Feb - 9 - 13th.... a bit of Brel, a bit of Weill, some surprises... songs for the lovelorn, song for the delighted single

http://events.insidetoronto.com/view-event/10098/135917/NO-SWEETHEART-REQUIRED

Preview tonight at Bread and Circus Cabaret in Kensington Market. Looking forward to getting back into that towel...

Three days back from Paris and finally managing to sleep at the same hours that the rest of Canada does!  Now that's good news!