The Omniscient Mussel

or why conductors matter. Miss Mussel was relieved to see that bloggers and journalists didn’t take the bait in regards to Phillipa Ibbotson’s thoroughly ridiculous article about the value of conductors. Poorly argued and grossly uninformed is just the tip of the iceberg. M...

Saturday night Miss Mussel’s inbox brought the rather unsurprising news that Ben Heppner was canceling his COC engagement due to illness. The bug he caught in London while doing Tristan und Isolde is apparently still making life difficult. ...

Miss Mussel has long held the view that the Messiah is boatloads more fun to sing than it is to listen to. In Toronto, the period performance outfit Tafelmusik cottoned on to this years ago and offers a sing-a-long concert in Massey Hall conducted by one Herr GF Handel...

These pages have been clogging multiple browser windows for a while, so they may be ever so slightly old. Not so far gone that you can’t just pick off the bits of mould and make a perfectly good sandwich…uh…for your brain….or…..something. “Why deface a book? If you don...

ToothpasteForDinner - a new-to-Miss-Mussel interwebular comic has produced this helpful guide to all things panflute. First spotted on a server’s T-shirt at the inestimable café With The Grain. It’s worth the drive to Guelph, people. [Fo...

In Friday’s Record Classical musicians, administrators and marketers all over North America are spending an increasingly large amount of time thinking of ways to get younger people interested in classical music. ...

From the always fabulous Ryan North, here’s the indomitable T-Rex developing a new theory of language with his long suffering dino pals Dromiceiomimus and Utahraptor. (c) 2009 Ryan North Add some T-Rex to your feed reader here.

The Canadian Opera Company’s absolutely brilliant production of The Nightingale And Other Short Fables has extended its run by one night only. Tickets are now available for Monday November 2nd at The Four Season Centre For The Performing Arts. ...

Waterloo, Ontario – one half of the Kitchener-Waterloo partnership affectionate known by the cool kids as the Kdub – is a community of roughly 110,000 people in Southwestern Ontario. 9...

After a lengthy battle with a persistent and rather sneaky malware infection, Miss Mussel is happy to say that things are back to normal around here. MarciaAdair.com has also fended of its invasion by Chilean internet hackers. Thanks to everyone who wrote to tell Miss Mussel about the overtake...

or the day Miss Mussel went to the opera and whole building was flooded with glorious sunshine. Even her little iPhone, which routinely finds itself in situations with insufficient light, was able to capture some of the brilliance...

When is an opera not an opera? When it’s a masque? A variety show? Does it even matter? The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, which opened the Canadian Opera Company’s 60th anniversary season on Saturday afternoon certainly makes a person wonder. Ra...

Watch the whole concert. Right from the beginning, the Perimeter Institute has recognized symbiotic relationship between arts and science. This is a more unusual approach than it may first appear. In our specialized world, the two are usually viewed as an either/or binary like on/off or dead/alive...

Good news for music lovers with sensitive backsides: the Music Room has new chairs! Some of the old favourites, are still there but several of the most epic offenders have been replaced by brand new specimens guaranteed to give comfort to even the most delicate of derrieres...