Welcome to Shift, where Tom Allen takes you on a daily musical journey from the stalwarts of Classical music to the cutting edge of Contemporary tunes. Join us here on CBC music for a round-up of the stories of the day, some videos of music (or maybe just videos interesting to music fans) and a place to speak your voice.
Thursday November 1st
Movember
Gentlemen if you are staring in the mirror at your freshly shaven face today then why not treat it as a blank canvas for your Movember moustache. On November 1st men across the world will begin to grow upper lip fuzz for charity. Need a little cookie duster inspiration? Here's some moustache suggestions.
Here are some chaps who are proud of their hirsute appendages with graspable extremities. The Handlebar Moustache club!
Doing more with less
In our classical section today, we're featuring music that gets our attention not with the usual trick of getting bigger, and adding more, but by doing exactly the opposite: taking away.
Here is the haunting final act of Dialogues of the Carmelites an opera by Francis Poulenc. The story is based on an actual event in French history, when, in the post-revolution terror of 1794, the new government sent 16 nuns to the guillotine.
Poulenc uses this terrible end to bring drama to his music, with a chorus that begins with sixteen voices, and ends with none, as each one is snuffed out by the drop of the dreaded blade.
You can contact us at SHIFT with your ideas, questions, or anything else by sending us a message on our Facebook page. Through email, you can reach show producers Alison Howard ( alison.howard@cbc.ca ), Alex Redekop ( alex.redekop@cbc.ca ) or Pete Morey ( peter.morey@cbc.ca )