Complaints Choir at the AGO

The Toronto Complaints Choir gave a performance in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Walkers Court as part of a week of appearances at various Toronto locations.  Inspired by an idea that originated in Europe (doesn't it seem all good ideas originate in Europe?), the organizers solicited complaint suggestions from the public, found a composer to create a rousing song called "Toronto Complains!", and invited all interested parties to join the choir.  Meant to be a fun and cathartic way to vent common frustrations, the lyrics of the song strings together many rhyming non-sequiturs.  Seven choruses of complaints ranged from traffic, TTC, litter bugs, winter, Rob Ford, dog poo, escalator blockers, kids, work and so on.

"Where are the attractive single men?
Bugs are invading my house again
We are people, not sardines
Not everything is about you teens!
Complaining ...

Accompanied by a guitar and bongo drums and led by the spiky haired conductor and composer, the group exhuberantly sang a very catchy tune, while the audience who were handed out the lyrics tried to sing along.  It only lasted about 5 minutes in total, but what fun!

Getting into the spirit of things, I'd like to add my own complaint - the article in the weekend Globe and Mail advertising the AGO performance indicated it would be at 6pm so I showed up at 5:45 only to find out the real start time was 6:45.  I'm "Complaining ...!"

To kill time waiting for the singing to start, I checked out a few of the gallery's exhibits.  One room consisted of the cartoon drawings and accompanying text of the children's book "The Animals' Conference" by Erich Kästner. This was a fable about animals trying to convince human politicians to bring peace to the world for all the children.  It was quite enchanting to walk all the way around the room reading each panel of the story and viewing the delightful illustrations.

I also stumbled upon the Marvin Gelber Print and Drawing Centre, tucked away in the back of the ground floor and only open for limited hours.  The lonely curator seemed delighted whenever anyone wandered by.  She proudly explained how there were over 60,000 works on paper filed away in metal drawers in their vault room and that each piece of art could only be shown for a very short period of time before having to be rotated so as not be overexposed to light.

Currently on display there was the exhibit called  "Love Bites: Amorous Works on Paper".  It was a series of works on paper of various forms (prints, drawings, watercolours, photographs) all dealing with the concept of love in some way, abet not always the traditional hearts and valentines types of images, which made it very interesting to see.