“Music is fluid like water,” the conductor, Edwin Outwater, calls over the rumble of breaking waves. “Like water, music’s this ever-changing force that is bigger than you, but you can’t let it overwhelm you.”
He stops paddling and straddles his surfboard. Facing the open Pacific, he bobs like a cork on waves not yet worth riding.
He waits. In surfing, as in music, timing is everything.
Time has been on the 36-year-old’s mind lately.
Outwater is just weeks away from officially beginning his tenure as music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, charged with the unenviable responsibility of rebuilding the institution from the rubble of near-bankruptcy.
Okay … the guy is a surfer. And his name is Outwater. And he’s going to be conducting the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.
I mean, well, it made ME laugh. But some might suggest I’m all wet.
I do hope the guy can keep his new orchestra afloat.
Ironically, the KWS almost went under last year. The campaign was called “SOS” (Save Our Symphony). The article I wrote about it used Titanic analogies.
This pun could go on and on.
I laughed.