The latest winter bulletin board
It’s Christmas Craft Night at the library once again and fifteen eager crafters aged 6 – 10 will join us for a fun evening. We’ll be making Santa ornaments, Christmas tree pop-up cards and crazy gift tags. As usual, we’ll play a few games, eat lots of holiday candy and get sparkles everywhere. So if you’re in the library tonight, don’t be surprised if you hear laughter in the back room.
Our Christmas tree pop up card
Our fun gift tags
A Santa ornament
When I was in high school, I attended a gala event in Toronto put on by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to pay tribute to Walter Homburger, the retiring manager of the TSO. It was a three-day affair called The Great Gathering with amazing musicians from around the globe performing on one stage. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of 300 music students from each Ontario school board to attend and we spent two days sitting in on all the rehearsals before the big night. One of the performers that I remember being thrilled to hear was the amazing cellist, Yo-Yo Ma. (You can read more about The Great Gathering and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the new book entitled Begins With The Oboe : A History of The Toronto Symphony Orchestra by Richard S. Warren, which our library owns and you can actually preview this book here.)
Of course Yo-Yo Ma is a world-renowned classical cellist, but in recent years, he has done a lot of work outside the classical genre. You can find some very interesting recordings such as his duet album called Hush with singer Bobby McFerrin (you’ll remember him as the singer who brought “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” to our ears), and now, just in time for Christmas, his amazing new album called “Songs of Joy and Peace”. If you are looking for something interesting to get for that eclectic music lover, I’d highly recommend this album which casts music greats from all over the world including Canada’s Natalie MacMaster and Diana Krall as well as people like Dave Brubeck, Allison Krauss and James Taylor. You can hear more from this album at the official Yo-Yo Ma website here.
I saw the special on Bravo this weekend about the making of this album, which is not all Christmas music but rather music which expresses the hope of the season and I had to go and download it from iTunes right away! It is a gorgeous collection of jazz, classical, and world music, all done with great creativity and most of all, joy. You can watch a session with Yo-Yo Ma and trumpeter Chris Botti performing “My Favourite Things” below:
If you’d like more information about The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, you can visit their interesting website where you can watch video, download music and podcasts and even get tickets to their latest season. And pop over to iTunes to download the album, Songs of Joy and Peace.
Think you know a lot about Christmas? You can take this fun quiz to see how well you’ll do.
I am all about being able to download something and print it at home and these cute little Christmas gift tags are perfect for all your gift-giving this year. Just download the PDF template and print them off onto card stock, if you have it, or regular paper. How cute! Thanks to the people at Creature Comforts for the heads up!
