I loved every single thing about being a part of the amazing “Rococo” event, which was my first time to perform for an Opera Kelowna event, an incredible honour. The last time I played publicly, was also for Opera Kelowna, which was the third time I had the honour of performing for their big-ticket annual fundraiser, before I began my overuse injury healing journey.

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The “amazingness” began the night before the Rococo event, when I got word that I’d received what felt to me like the greatest compliment I could ever hope for – because it came from the incredibly talented Alexandra Kosachukova Babbel, founding Artistic Director of Opera Kelowna.  Just do a quick google search to see what I mean!  If you ever have the wonderful opportunity to hear her live – you’ll remember it in awe forever. 

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The moment I walked into this spectacular venue for the rehearsal, the magic began.  I was treated like a rock star!!  I usually just enter into a venue and make my way around somewhat “unnoticed” to begin my preparations.  But not this night!   It was so noticeable to me, that it actually had me wondering “what is going on?”

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Then later – I found out the answer…. It was something that Alexandra Babbel had said during Opera Kelowna’s recent board meeting, after hearing me perform at the annual Okanagan Arts Awards. (OAA)

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While visiting separately with two different board members during the evening, somehow both conversations led to them telling me that during their last board meeting, Alexandra announced to them that after my performance at the OAA, she’d asked me to open the Rococo show!  Everyone at the meeting was like “What!?? An accordion?!”  How she answered their surprise felt like a lifetime achievement award to me!! Because it came from her.  Whom I’d admired from afar since I first heard her - due mostly to her indescribable talent of a very difficult craft.

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Her words apparently put everyone’s inquiries to rest, and gave me that rock star status!  Let me preface by saying that of course she would have said this perhaps a hundred times before and a hundred times since (with her vast array of hearing decades of performances) …. but that time, she said it about my performance – and I will never forget those magical words…. What Ms. Babbel said was “it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” 

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And thus, in my heart, it truly did feel to me that I’d just received a lifetime achievement award!!  Such music to my ears!

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If I had had to end my career as an accordionist because of my injury, though it may seem strange to some for me to say this, or to have felt this way, I would have been complete.  This is how much my musicianship being recognized by someone such as Alexandra Babbel meant to me, what she wrote in my fb post after the awards night, using words like “peerless” and “sensual”– saying that she was “..excited that you will be a featured guest at our upcoming event for Opera Kelowna!” - I was beside myself! 

It is because of being classically trained by one of Canada’s leading accordionists of the time, if not the leading accordionist, who was trained under the tutelage of Boris Borgstrom, son of Ernst Borgstrom, the famous accordionist who played before royalty “back in the day”.

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You see, after the sudden death of my beloved accordion teacher and mentor, just before my 16th birthday, with each passing year my music fell more and more to the wayside, and without direction, I didn’t pursue my earlier goals of going to Humber College in Toronto for music, or similar outstanding music programs elsewhere, as I got carried away with life.  Then, when I was struck on my bicycle in my mid twenties, flying about 20 feet through the air after shattering the windshield, landing on my tailbone on the cement, then smacking my head in a whiplash motion on the cement - before we wore helmets - my body was never again the same, with broken bones, head trauma, and an affected spinal column etc…. in fact, it was more than two years before I could even pick my instrument up.  Then only 3 years later, this was followed by severe whiplash in a head-on collision when the other driver was on the wrong side of a divided highway! My  car totalled, as both vehicles were doing about a 100km, when I was 29.  The repercussions of both of these accidents, especially the head-on, seemed permanent and affected my life significantly.  

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And so, when I performed for the Okanagan Arts Awards many years later, performing for so many outstanding musicians and artists at the top of their game, as “luck” would have it, I was fortunate that Alexandra Babbel was one of those oh-so-talented people in the audience.  I knew that she would be – I was so nervous!! She was someone who would recognize the subtleties of the reason I was able to accomplish what I did in those earlier years.  She yelled “brava” from the audience!!  I was in heaven!! 

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Then later, to my utter delight, she did not hold back expressing her excitement to me! Of all people, in my eyes, which were the only eyes that could possibly know my heart’s desire around the desire to be recognized for the subtleties of my craft - for this woman to be the one to tell me what she told me after the show, and write in my fb comments what she wrote …and then hearing from board members that she was echoing to them her excitement that she had shared with me when we met during the arts awards evening – honestly, it truly did feel  to me that I could not be more delighted – nor satisfied!  There had been so many “losses” for me with the death of, and following the death of my mentor – so those words to me – were a BIG “win”!!

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And at the same time as all of that, I felt that if my own accordion teacher and mentor had been there, the beautiful Wendy Ward Bauder, whose life was taken at the tender age of 28, in the midst of an amazing music career, if she’d been there – oh how I suddenly missed her so much that night after all those years - if she’d been there, I know exactly how she’d be feeling for me.  Being 13 years older than me, she felt kind of like an older incredibly successful sister that you admire and love to the end of the Universe and back!!  Outside of my mother and father and siblings, my siblings and I being first generation Canadian and having no relations in Canada, she was really the only person that kind of felt like family to me growing up, seeing her once or twice a week for my entire childhood.  I loved her dearly.  And I was the apple of her eye!

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All those years of not playing, and letting my musical dreams slip further and further away…. I realized that I longed to be seen once again, through the eyes of someone so accomplished, like my dear Wendy –so when Alexandra said what she said to me, she filled what I didn’t even realize I had – a kind of void that seemed to exist from the moment I was first told about Wendy and her dear newlywed husband’s death – on the way to my “most important” performance in my life thus far, just minutes before I went on.  It all became surreal from that point on…

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Prior to that moment in time, over the years I enjoyed much of the actual learning and playing, but not so much the competition part.  But at some point, I knew it was important for my goals to have that experience and have some medals to show for it – I realized that even if the pressure of competition was my least favourite thing of playing - I found myself wanting to be just like Wendy, and follow in her footsteps…. But with more of a rock influence, like from Queen albums for example…. I wasn’t sure at the time how the accordion would fit in – it seemed THAT unpopular at the time in my world! Only my very closest friends knew I even played until I was 13, when the cat got out of the bag (see my “Back in the Day gallery and blog ….. The only accordionists I was ever exposed to were at competitions, and the accordionists in the very amazing orchestra I played in that Wendy headed.  On tv there was only the famous-at-the-time Lawrence Welk Show - and Walter Ostanek also from Kitchener-Waterloo – think Octoberfest …. Lawrence Welk from a different era… and Walter Ostanek a genre that I didn’t resonate with….

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But then I was introduced to one of my favourite songs ever written – Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s “C’est la Vie”…. And then seeing them in concert  – the possibilities suddenly opened up. 

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So I figured I’d just figure it all out as I went along, with Wendy by my side I couldn’t go too wrong with her track record of success with everything she ever put her mind and music to – it was almost always all of her students that walked away with the red and the blue ribbons - so as her protégé, I always trusted whatever she thought was best – including all those nerve-wracking competitions!! And the way she spoke so highly of her Humber College experience – early on in life I decided that I was definitely going there too!! Plus, it was perfect that it was only about an hour from where I was living in Kitchener-Waterloo……

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Somewhere along the way I also realized that in many ways I felt like all my hard work, and almost everything I was doing was not only for me, but also for Wendy – it felt like we were a kind of team in a way.  And I loved her so much.  On top of everything, she was fun, and funny!! And so, so super sweet – the nicest, kindest person I knew. 

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After her sudden death, I was never again heard by those incredibly talented adjudicators and musicians, as I moved the following year to the interior of BC with my family, not knowing a single soul, leaving all my accordion peers behind and also leaving Nicholas Antonelli’s accordion studio.  I learned a few instruments over the years, but, not surprisingly, never felt completely connected to another instrument the way I did with the accordion….. I performed a bit during the 8 years I lived in Vancouver, but it was so challenging for my body after the accidents, and honestly, in many ways, my heart was not so into it, as it was outplaying in ways so different than those initial dreams…..until I began playing again within a few short years of moving to Kelowna, in the Okanagan Valley of BC. 

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In my music life, there had been so many “unsung and unplayed” dreams that ended so suddenly for me….. so capturing those “moments of glory” through Alexandra Babble’s words made everything somehow less of a loss. 

Sometimes you think some beautiful thing and for different reasons, it doesn’t always get said…. About 20 years ago I read somewhere that thinking some nice thing and not actually giving the compliment – is like wrapping a gift but not actually giving it to the person.  This spurred me to always wanting to “give that compliment” and to share how I felt about artists and musicians –  I’m compelled to let them know - I can’t stop myself!!  Well, how grateful I am, that on that evening, Ms. Alexandra Babbel gave me that kind of gift.

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And about me saying that I would be complete if I had to end my career as an accordionist….. fortunately, it isn’t the end of my career as a musician, and now that my healing is complete, I look forward to the next phase of my music career – the recording experience. 

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