On Saturday, May 6 and Sunday, May 7 2023, we have a rare opportunity to experience live in concert two giants of music: Cuban pianist and composer, Omar Sosa, and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita. They will be joined by Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. These concerts, presented by Nuits d’Afrique Productions will take place at Le National in Montréal. Opening act will be Romain Malagnoux (France, Québec).

Omar Sosa has made a name for himself as a leading figure in modern jazz. He has won multiple Grammy awards and has been praised for his ability to combine traditional Latin rhythms with contemporary jazz. Seckou Keita is considered one of the greatest kora players in the world today. The kora is a traditional West African stringed instrument that is central to the griot musical tradition. Gustavo Ovalles is a master percussionist who plays the polyrhythmic sound of the African Diaspora.

Sosa and Keita first met in 2012, when they were both performing at a music festival in England. They hit it off immediately and decided to collaborate on an album together. The resulting album, Transparent Water, was released in 2017 and was met with critical acclaim. It featured Sosa on piano and various percussion instruments, while Keita played the kora and other West African instruments.

In a conversation with Sosa and Keita they expressed their excitement for having the opportunity to present their music in Montréal. It’s the first time they perform together in this multi-cultural city, well recognized for being an important focus of artistic creation in Canada.

Omar Sosa considers the recording of SUBA as a beautiful project, which was born during the time of Covid-19. “During the first lockdown I got a phone call from Seckou, and he suggested we should work on a new album. We had released our first recording, Transparent Water in 2017. I embraced the idea and we agreed to start working on creating the conditions to make this happen. We would work in our own homes and then make sure we could travel and meet up in Europe. From the very beginning we talked about following a philosophy that would involve space, silence and peace. All of a sudden, Covid had brought the world to a standstill, it created this strange atmosphere of peacefulness in the middle of the chaos, and we thought we should reflect this new reality in our project. SUBA -which means sunrise in Mandinka language- is for us a big statement, where another world is possible. SUBA for us is like a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of tolerance and change in a postpandemic world, it’s a reiteration of humanity’s eternal need for peace, hope and unity.”

Having watched in YouTube Omar Sosa, Seckou Keita and Gustavo Ovalles in a recorded concert in New York, and experiencing the magic created on stage by these musicians, I had to ask Omar about what we should expect during the concerts in Montréal, and this was his answer: “For us, a concert is a ceremony, it’s a moment of collective communion. We take every concert we give as if it was our first and last. We give it all, we project all the energy we have inside in our music, we don’t hold anything. And that creates a community with the audience, a spiritual connection.”

I also asked Sosa to expand on something he has said before: “The one thing that Africa can teach the world is the spirituality in every single thing.” This is what he had to say: “When people start getting close to Africa they realize there’s another way of connecting with your inner self. Why? because you give a more important role to your spiritual dimension as a human being. Unfortunately, many people in western society stopped having that connection with what we call The Supreme Force, or what others may call The Cosmic Energy, our ancestors, who perhaps are not even part of our genealogical tree, but they are with us. So, we need to start listening to our ancestors in order to reconnect with our inner voice, to get guidance and balance to continue our journey on this planet.”

Finally, I asked Omar to tell me about his work Gustavo Ovalles. He said: “I’ve been working with Gustavo for more than 20 years, and from the very beginning we had a strong connection. He’s an amazing musician. I met him in Paris, he came one day to rehearse with my band before a concert. I asked him to sit with my drummer and play together for a few minutes and that was it. I asked him to join us that evening and the chemistry during the concert was incredible. It was a beautiful show that day, and it continues to be like that after all these years.”

After talking to Omar Sosa, I had a chance to talk briefly with Seckou Keita, and asked him to talk about the energy, the connection, the magic that happens when him, Omar and Gustavo get in front of an audience during a live concert, and especially after the terrible experience lived during the pandemic, and he said that “it is something incredible and that energy is hard to describe sometimes, to express it with words. There are elements that we do share… Omar and I have recorded, have been travelling the world, performing on many stages for a number of years now, and also with Gustavo. When you play music that is for the soul, that music speaks for itself. And when musicians meet on the stage with open minds, and wanting to share their energies, everything flows easily, that’s usually what happens. And everywhere we go, and every different place where we play it’s a different energy, but always at about the same level or above, never under. It’s about the music we create together, the chemistry we have listening to each other that allows the music to peaks by itself, to shine. We are so much looking forward coming back to Montréal and play these two shows. It’s gonna be a high energy event. I have an amazing experience performing in Montréal, the first time in 2006 I came with my quartet. We played at the Jazz Festival and I was so touched about how the public engaged with my music, it was overwhelming. And I have to say that I will be back in Montréal next July, for the 37th edition of the Nuits d’Afrique International Festival. I will be performing at the Gesù on July 16 as a solo artist.”

One of the things that makes Sosa, Keita and Ovalles’s collaboration so special is the way in which they are able to blend different musical traditions together seamlessly. They are incredibly versatile and able to move between different genres and styles without missing a beat. Another thing that makes their collaboration so special is the way in which they showcase each other’s talents. Sosa’s piano playing is nothing short of breathtaking, and he is able to create a wide range of sounds and textures with his instrument. Keita, meanwhile, is a master of the kora and is able to coax a seemingly endless range of sounds and melodies out of his instrument. Ovalle is a master percussionist who comes from the Afro-Venezuelan, Latin and Caribbean tradition. Together, they form a musical symbiosis that is truly awe-inspiring.

SUBA is a fusion of different musical styles, but this time the album is more focused on Latin and African rhythms, another masterful collaboration between two masters. The recording is characterized by its energetic rhythms and high-energy performances.

Omar Sosa and Seckou Keita are two musicians who have created a sound that is both innovative and captivating. Their collaboration is a testament to the power of cross-cultural exchange, and it demonstrates the incredible creativity that can emerge when different artists and traditions come together.

_{YouTube Video – Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita: Allah Léno}

I rarely conduct interviews using email and don’t really like doing them over the telephone either. In my view, the talking and listening – more listening than talking, as I prefer it to be – is best done in person, and preferably in a quiet space where I can savour (I use the gastronomic term, “savour”, because it suggests a rather visceral experience), in this case the sound of the words; the way they are intoned gives them a particular colour and texture. They are alive, these words spoken by the person with whom I speak. Alphabets strung together and which ring and resonate making a particular luxurious sound, echoing in this quiet space have more meaning; accented vowels and diphthongs that are formed by the curl of the lips, blushing purple and rushing to meet the wind between her and I sitting close together from music not only to my ears but seem to float their ghostly visages across my eyes. I get so ravenously hungry in situations like this that I devour each word, each phrase and sentence as if I were receiving Holy Communion itself. And so hot are these to the touch of my skin that they burn themselves in the memory.

Rarely, if at all, such incredible magic takes place over the telephone. And when it does happen, I am left breathless as I was when I spoke to the great musician and guitarist Berta Rojas in Paraguay twice over a month and a half. Although she was thousands of miles away, I ‘saw’ her lips part into a perfect, radiant smile. And when she spoke to me it was as if she ‘sang’ her lines; now bubbling as if cascading through laughter, now sombre as if muffled by the ache of a memory, twisting in the gut, now wistful and blurred as if spoken through the translucency of tears; and no matter what, always spoken as if grateful to be alive and present with me – in this case, no matter how separate we may have been, in a place, in space where it felt that if we reached out, we could touch each other and hold hands through shared pain and joy. Berta Rojas is a special person; she has as have I, come face to face with death and been blessed instead by the grace of God smiling as He sent her back from the dead to play music again, and again for a world scorched by fire and drenched by rain. He sent me back too. And I write now not only giving thanks for having my life given back to me (twice), but so that I could not only speak to Berta Rojas but live to write about it too.

Berta Rojas speaks in words adorned with syllables that are redolent of the aroma of frankincense burning quietly somewhere, floating towards the guitar strings that she is plucking with the tips of nails of long, slender fingers, urging them to conjure images of Paraguay, Argentina and Brasil. The music that ensues echoes in between my ears like notes cut in high-fidelity, into a vinyl which spins around and around occasionally accompanied by the strings of an enormous, well-drilled orchestra. The words playback again and again when I listen to Felicidade, a grand work of art made up of the music of Brasil. The song is “Berimbau” by the great Brasilian guitarist Baden-Powell, to whom Miss Rojas is paying homage here, with Toquinho and the wonderful Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay, conducted by Popi Spatocco. The song melts into “Se ela perguntar” by Dilermando Reis. Toquinho is alone with her this time; he is replaced by Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay on “Choro Tipico” and the bracing, lyrical, bittersweet sound-world of Heitor Villa-Lobos, which, in turns melts into Paulo Bellinati’s “Jongo”. I am speechless, and “Jongo” also fades into space – and into silence…

I break the velvet silence between us with what I believe must be mundane questions, such as “How are you?” and so on. But Miss Rojas always finds a meditative and introspective way to answer, capturing in her special way, BIG emotions on a small scale, with a poetic concentration that only an artist with her particularly powerful calibre can. Her answers are short, spoken intimately as if for me alone. Yet there is nothing hermetic about her approach at all. Gently, insistently, quietly, she draws me into her world – which is all melody and wonderfully chordal – and the effect is always thoroughly absorbing. I ask her if her gorgeous auburn hair has grown back again (after the virulent chemotherapy that she had recently been through) and first she laughs disarmingly, with a bright child-like giggle, then she sings a short line in praise of God and it is as if a whole Barcarolle has unfolded, its rhythms exploding like a box of rioting crayons, the echo of which beams its dynamic melody across the stratospheric miles that separate us: “By the grace of God…” (She breathes into the telephone). “He is a mighty God, and he is good,” she says.

The disc in my player runs out and I switch it back to the beginning. Felicidade begins to play, and Berta Rojas’ fingers make the song shimmy out of the speakers like a diaphanous gown unfurling. Song after song plays and I live each moment in the present, looking ahead and trying to fix my mind’s eye onto some distant point from where it appears safe to look back. Throughout, I feel as if I am in the presence of the finest of tour guides as Miss Rojas ushers me into secret spaces in of her choosing in a Brasil I am ever-grateful to discover. As Pliny once said, albeit in a different context, I feel that I am “choking with gold”. The history of Brasilian, in the spirit of the music, is gently unfolding as I follow Miss Rojas, walking past the long, long sleep of kings: Vinicius de Moraes, Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, Ernesto Nazareth, Baden Powell de Aquino, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Dilermando Dos Santos Reis… Their great names echo with legends of valour and epic stories, their waking and sleeping marked by iconic songs emerging from effervescent pens overflowing notes to sing in songs that will last forever. Miss Rojas makes each song a magnificent votive offering as if in a cathedral, joined here by three great Brasilians: Gilberto Gil, Toquinho, Ivan Lins. “A distinct honour,” was how she described the experience.

Berta Rojas is on song. Her music is coming from the springtime of her being. Her guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different colour, a different voice. She is playing softly now; then a little louder as the strings of Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay begin to argue with her. She finds her voice and begins to illuminate the melody of “Homenaje a Baden Powell” a rare composition by her and her guitar opens like a great tome from Jorge-Luis Borges’ mythical library Tlön, Uqbar, or Orbis Tertius. Miss Rojas then proceeds to reveal the guitar’s huge vocabulary of sounds and effects – song after song – that combine to make it sound as big as an ensemble, but which have always needed her insight to deploy effectively. Her sounds range from harmonics and pizzicato to technique exotica, such as ‘nut-side’, ‘nail sizzle’ and ‘bi-tone tapping’ (plus) she suddenly unleashes a battery of percussion possibilities (on Paulo Bellinati’s “Jongo”, for instance) as if her guitar has come with a drum set attached.

I am astounded by her technique and find, when I ask her about it, that she practices incessantly. She used to practice a lot more before her troubles, I find out. But now she is much more relaxed and makes time for many other things in life, such as events dedicated to women, women musicians and women who have come through breast-cancer, and to children – especially those who are severely underprivileged: For instance, she was joined by La Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura (literally the Recycled Instruments Orchestra of Cateura) played by children on instruments recycled from rubbish that they (the children) mine on the Cateura landfill on the outskirts of Asunción, haunted by these very children to eke out a meager existence. The song was Edin Solis’ “Tambito Josefino” and the album was Salsa Roja (ON Music, 2013) from which she began a Latin-American journey, albeit kick-started by an earlier encounter in Paraguay with Paquito D’Rivera, a recording entitled Día y Medio (ON Music, 2012). Those efforts resulted in a musical adventure in Argentina, Historia del Tango (ON Music, 2015) where Berta Rojas and Camerata Bariloche undertook to re-discover and re-imagine the work of Mariano Mores, Aníbal Troilo, Ástor Piazzolla, Virgilio Expósito, Julián Plaza and Anselmo Aieta. Here Miss Rojas was joined by Carlos Franzetti, whose magnificent arrangements animate the record like glimmering gems. It is also here where the guitarist came to work with Popi Spatocco, who conducted the Camerata Bariloche, and returned again later to (produce and) conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay, on Felicidade.

By then the die was cast. “I have a dream,” Berta Rojas tells me when we speak, “Of travelling throughout the length and breadth of South America to bring the great traditions to life from everywhere I go.” “What a wonderful idea!” I find myself saying to her. “And what a tiring journey that will be by the end of it all,” I add, thinking of how much of a strain it will be on her spry body as it recovers from the exhaustion of her two-year sorjourn to bring Felicidade to fruition from the day it took birth as she (Miss Rojas) began to feel the urge to glorify the unique (in all of South America and, indeed, the world) and extraordinary guitar music tradition of Brasil. The very thought of Berta Rojas making circling North and South America, and even branching out to Europe to promote Felicidade exhausts me. I ask her how she thinks she will feel doing all the legwork. “It is a labour of love,” she shoots back. “For me the enigma of arrival at my destination is so exciting, it fills me with energy,” she says. “No time to feel the melancholy of departure,” I tell her, as images of the pre-surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico flash by. “Besides the feeling of being alive in the music is a beautiful way to begin each day,” she adds, as if icing a delicious marble cake before my eyes. “There is nothing more beautiful than to be sustained by music, from the word ‘hello’ to the word ‘goodbye’… what else is there in the world, after all, but ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’” she says to me. I struggle to hold back the tears that suddenly fill my eyes; then run down my cheeks to my trembling lips. Are they tears of joy? Or sorrow? I cannot tell. But they taste bittersweet.

(I would be remiss if I did not thank Diane Blackman, Miss Rojas’ publicist, for putting up with me and my requests; and offer a cornucopia of gratitude to Berta Rojas for making time to speak with me)

The Sultans of String have been keeping a steady and busy performance schedule this year. They are now getting ready for a two-consecutive nights of concerts with the Ontario Philarmonic Orchestra. First, on Friday, November 28th, they perform in Oshawa at Regent Theatre and then in Markham at Flato Markham Theatre on Saturday, November 29th. On Saturday, December 4th, they perform in Toronto at Koerner Hall, premiering their Sultans and Divas concert.

I had the opportunity to catch up with Chris McKhool. We talked about the upcoming concerts and about some other topics of interest for those who follow him and the great ensemble he leads, the Sultans of String. Please keep on reading.

Danilo Navas: We’re going to talk about the three upcoming concerts and the different concepts. I know that two of them are with the Ontario Symphony and the other one is the Sultans and Divas, right?

Chris McKhool: Right! There are two entirely different types of concerts. One at Koerner Hall is entirely the Sultans of String. It’s a multi artist night; no orchestra… And then the one with the Ontario Philharmonic Orchestra on November 28 and 29 and that’s just Sultans of String with a 45/50 piece orchestra.

DN: Okay so let’s get started…The first one is going to be in Oshawa, right?

CM: Yes, the first one is on November 28 at the Regent Theatre in Oshawa and then the next night at Flato-Markham, and that’s with the Ontario Philharmonic Orchestra, which is a world-class orchestra made up of players from other orchestras including the Toronto Symphony (Orchestra)… These are the best players around and it’s really going to be a treat… really spectacular. There is nothing better than hearing our music played by 50 of the world’s top players behind us. And these players, these performers can read anything that you throw at them… they’re real pros. So we have one rehearsal with them the day before and then we have the dress rehearsal on the day of the first performance; the Friday and then away we go… we start performing. (laughs). A real whirlwind…

DN: And then we have the next one at Flato-Markham Theatre the next day…?

CM: That’s right. I am so excited about that… That’s going to be our second or third time… Our third time at Flato-Markham Theatre….You know it’s such a wonderful theatre. It seats about 500-550 people; so it’s small enough to give you that intimate feeling, yet big enough to make you feel that you’re in a large concert hall… It’s such a special space and so close from Toronto that I know a lot of people are going to travel up from Toronto to see the artists in Markham instead of seeing them in Toronto because you get to be that much closer to the action…

DN: That’s right, I’ve been there a couple of times… It’s a great venue.

CM: … And the parking is easy… all those things that people with cars have to think about… Here we’re going to be performing material from our Symphony album, which we released last year and since then, we’ve taken it right across the country… we’ve performed just a couple of weekends ago with the Vancouver Symphony (at the Orpheum October 24 & 25, 2014) and we’re with the Edmonton Symphony in January…. So it’s really great that this project has taken off in ways that we could not have dreamed about… really unimaginable just a few years ago.

DN: So, let’s talk about Koerner Hall, which is a different concept.

CM: Yeah. So that’s part of the Sultans and Divas show. That’s going to be very exciting for us as well. This multi-artist concert features our band with mezzo-soprano and CBC radio host Julie Nesrallah; soprano Miriam Khalil; master oud player Bassam Bishara and the Montreal ensemble OktoEcho… It’s a chance for us to lay not only Arabic-inspired music, but also to collaborate with other artists… You know, Bassam and Miriam are going to be doing a duet… Bassam me and a violin are going to be sitting in on a tune with OktoEcho , and then Bassam is going to play with Sultans of String… and then everybody in the whole bill performs together for the very last song… And we’re doing all that together just on the day of the show, so it’s going to have that very fresh, flying-by-the-seat-of- your-pants sort of thing, which is the best way to do it, because if you over-rehearse it then it gets boring. This way everyone’s going to be hyper-aware of things so we’re all going to be watching and listening and learning as we all go along; it will be really fun…

DN: Right… that’s the element of improvisation… very cool!

CM: It’s great for us because not only are we going to perform in that glorious Koerner Hall, but it will deepen our connections with these other artists… because that’s how collaborations with (other) artists come about; you know most of the beautiful collaborations come about at festivals; let’s say that you’re at a jazz festival, you don’t really get to do that in a concert hall setting, so that’s going to be exciting not just for us, but the others as well…

DN: Any chance that you might be recording this project in the future?

CM: Oh, I haven’t got to that stage yet, you know that now we’re in the middle of recording our fifth album, which is with sitar player Anwar Khurshid. He’s an amazing, amazing Pakistani-Canadian, who plays just a few notes and you’re blown away right there. So we’re writing material for that…

DN: Is this the guy you played with for the Kingston Rd. United Church program (in Toronto), back on May 4th this year?

CM: Yes, exactly. Funny you should mention that because I was just thinking today that our fifth CD should be a collaboration with Arabic artists… Maybe this is the start of something that could have legs! By the way, what did you think of the concert at the Kingston Rd. United Church?

DN: It was fantastic. The Sultans of String meeting your special guest, sitar master Anwar Khurshid was a very special combination indeed. I invited my brother-in-law and his wife. He was so moved by the music that he bought all the CDs you had on sale after the concert.

DN: Let’s talk about this concept of your band trying to lock in with orchestral musicians, resulting in an interesting push and pull with improvising musicians on stage!

CM: Right, we really come from two different worlds actually; the Sultans of String is an improvising group, so a lot of what we do comes from looking at each other; listening… watching each other’s hands; trying to figure out where the other is going and someone can just suggest “go to the bridge” and we can all go to the bridge… it’s easy that way, but with the orchestra, everything—every single note in every single bar—is written out; so there’s often time when we get carried away with the music and we suddenly realise that the orchestra has moved on because that is what is written in their scores, you know… There is also this element in the band, where we are every groove-based, kind of funky groove-orientated, whereas with the orchestra—not that they are very stilted; they are absolute masters of their instruments and can play anything with them, but sometimes it may turn out that they are playing a little bit behind the beat, while we are a little bit ahead of the beat or vice-versa. There might be this kind of push and pull with the orchestra. Usually there might be just one or two spots where we might get out of sync with the orchestra, but no more than that… we always end up catching up you know. Sometimes, like in our last concert, we just stopped playing for a bar, just to listen to them and then we just jumped back on again. But 99.99 percent of the time we are always together and it is the most glorious thing because you are bringing two worlds together… that very groove-based world and the very lush orchestral, symphonic sound and then you have something more powerful than when you hear each of us on our own. For me it is almost distracting sometimes because the sound is so beautiful… melding together what is written and what is improvised… it is like taking western music to the very edge of art that it is such an astonishing sound; such a surprising sound that I am always astonished when I hear it.

DN: And then it comes the part of funding and making this happen from the financial point of view.

CM: Yes, it is very expensive to record and perform with orchestras in North America, but that’s what we’re committed to doing because we know that we have the very best players on the planet living here in our own backyard so why go to eastern Europe when we can do it right here. The reason why so many people go to Eastern Europe to record is because it is so much less expensive, but what we wanted to do was to figure out a way to record/perform right here in Canada. We were very lucky; we applied to Canada Council for a grant to get our scores made and we were successful with that so we had Rebecca Powers come in… she’s done a lot of major scoring for IMAX and Hollywood films and the Cincinnati Orchestra and other major orchestras; we were able to get her to do our scoring for us. And then we applied for funding to do the recording from Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council and Factor and we were successful. Toronto Arts Council helped us with funding to do the song-writing. Part of the success was that we had early success with the first granting agency; so we took that to the next agency and said, “Look we have been helped here already and now we would like to have funds to get to the next part of the assignment,” and when we were successful there, we took that and went to the next agency and did the same until we were able to complete what we had set out to do.

DN: So you got it all done?!

CM: Yeah. We were very lucky. You know we also made a lot of friends in the US, where we perform a lot as well. But they do not have the Arts Councils there like we have here in Canada. They have family foundations and private foundations that will fund some kinds of things similar to what we are doing here. I am so grateful that the Arts Councils here saw the value in what we are doing here and helped us to get to where we wanted to be with these projects, like hiring 50 symphony musicians, and doing everything like the recording of the overdubs and doing everything from the mixing and the mastering… getting it all done right here in Canada was a challenge, but also something that we were so grateful that we were able to do…

DN: And then there is the part that deals with selling. You know that you are an indie band and we know that CDs are kind of history now…

CM: Yeah, there is almost no place for retail…

DN: So what was your experience with the last CD in this regard?

CM: Well, people are not buying CDs so much anymore. That’s what happened to books and even clothing. Recently my wife bought our daughter a winter jacket and it was all done online and it came to our porch you know? Like everything seems to be going online now…. For musicians there is always a danger that someone could copy your music and just stream it… we also know from the Taylor Swift example that she was not making much money from the online streaming sites but the one thing that cannot be replaced in the digital age is the live performance. So that is where we have concentrated: trying to perform as much as we can because there is absolutely nothing in the world like being touched by a live performance. It can move you in such a deep way and it can change your life you know… Music really saved my life when I was younger… So to be able to share that with others is the greatest gift we could ask for. And on top of this people are still buying CDs when we are performing live—whether it be a concert stage or a festival—that is where the CD sales happen, just like your brother-in-law who was so moved by that performance on Kingston Road that he bought one of everything that was on that (CD) table. It is people like him who make us want to perform more and record more… At least that is still happening.

DN: And that is the way that it is happening all over… You know you’re not the only one to whom this is happening. There are others, you know. That is the new reality now…

CM: That is the new reality and it’s nice to have the CD, because they have made a real connection to the music on that night… it is like a really nice reminder of what they saw and it is a really nice way to relive that experience too.

DN: Let’s go back a again to the new CD that you are making.

CM: Oh, Yes… the one with Anwar Khurshid? He’s been on major soundtracks like The Life of Pi and The Love Guru and he even taught Mike Myers how to hold the sitar and how to play a few notes… he’s got some good stories about that. He’s such a great guy… such a pure spirit and a nice soul… not just a great musician you know. He teaches you not just about Indian music but also a few things about how to be a better person.
So we have been recording now; we’ve got ten songs that we have in the bag and these are co-writes between Anwar and me and Kevin and I am really looking forward to completing this project. One of the things that music of this kind does is that it breaks down barriers and enables people to learn from each other, and I feel that I have learned more with this recording than I have in a very long time.

DN: Let me go a bit forward and talk about the Pan-American Games.

CM: Yeah, I hope that we can participate in some way. I know that my wife has put in a bid for a bunch of tickets to see the Games… (laugh) We’ve done a few events for the Games already in Markham to do with the Pan Am Games. So I hope that we will be able to do more things and contribute to that great event.

DN: Thank you Chris for sharing your thoughts with our readers.

CM: Thanks to you for allowing us to reach your readers.

Photos by: Danilo Navas