Help

Okay, so I'm teaching a little class in the fall on the uses of music in theatre. I've been thinking about the best classes I ever took, and most of them had a great deal to do with tools of inspiration and motivation. A character mask class springs to mind, as taught by Pierre Lefebvre at the National Theatre School of Canada. The key thing, aside from the teacher's patience and generosity (as well as a virtually embodied inspiration), was a plethora of brilliant masks and costume pieces, along with time to work with them to create a repertoire of small, repeatable pieces. The teacher himself took a back seat to his tools and his method.

If possible, I'd like to do the same thing with music. I'd like to have a cornucopia of instruments that could have come from the junkyard of some mythical musical deity - like Apollo or Fat Albert. I don't just want homemade instruments (though those are also welcome.) I also want a few complex instruments, like tubas and concertinas. I'll be bringing in my banjo and my banjola, and the department has offered to find me a few little things.

But I need more.

So, ahem, if any of you out there have an old uke or trombone or french horn that you don't want anymore and it's a waste of space and you figure you're never going to get around to selling it, well, perhaps I could impose on you to send it along to the following address:

Sean Dixon (AKA 'Banjo Banjar')
School of Creative and Performing Arts
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
3199 Lakeshore Boulevard West
Toronto ON M8V 1K8

I just thought it might be worth a try.