Cancer, comfort and a concerto that sings the journey

Luc Leestemaker: May 18, 1957 - May 18, 2012

In 2011, Vincent Ho’s patron, collaborator and friend Luc Leestemaker phoned. He had cancer.

The LA-based visual artist and entrepreneur, who had financed Ho’s first recording when the composer leapt from academia to the professional world, told his friend how doctors had given him three months to live, tops. Leestemaker was rejecting western medicine’s death sentence, however, in favour of alternative healing practices – psychotherapy, herbal medicine, shamanism and meditation.

And he wanted his friend Vincent to compose something: a musical score for cancerland.

(Continue reading at The Spectator Tribune)

The Winnipeg Circus

Gabriel Whitford is balancing on a double rolla bolla — a wooden plank laid across a foot-long-tube that balances on another, perpendicular tube. That’s three axis ofinstability (if you’re counting) the 24-year-old could mess up on, but he’s on top of the situation.

Until he starts juggling to shake things up. His balance slips, physics gets mean and Whitford falls two feet onto his knees. Hard. He sucks in breath through clenched teeth and waves off help from nearby jugglers, clowns and amateur acrobats.

Welcome to the circus.

(continue reading at the Spectator Tribune)