Parmela Attariwala

There is much to say these days, but I have even less time now than I had a few months ago. My life is as unruly as the Earth's reactions to our climate change assaults on her.
Here is a…

We’re heading into the third summer of the pandemic. Unlike one year ago when a heat dome filled the air over the Pacific Northwest with a granular dryness so thick one could smell the threat of cinders ready to spark…

The leaves are changing again - or already!

i wish I had time to be poetic about the past spring and summer, but they’ve come and gone so  quickly that I barely had time to take in the scent of…

Feb, 2021

The last time I boarded a flight was just over a year ago. It was my fourth return trip between Toronto and Vancouver, since (ostensibly) having moved from Ontario ten months before. Everything indicated that this might be…

"Re-sounding the Orchestra", the research report commissioned by Orchestras Canada and co-authored by Soraya Peerbaye and myself has been officially released today. 

The report is based on 16 months of research, including interviews and roundtables with more than 40 people…

Having traversed this extraordinary country two months ago in order to make a new home on its west coast, late spring finds me back in Toronto. I'm here for a remounting of James Kudelka, Alex Poch-Goldin and James Rolfe's extraordinary--and…

Hard to believe that we're two decades into the second millennium.  And twenty-five years since I landed in Toronto, intending only to kill the length of time necessary to renew my visa to the UK ... and perhaps make a…

A mid-summer interview by my friend and colleague, Friendly Rich, in a podcast series called "Industry Tactics". 

We cover a myriad of topics including: my early life in Calgary; the Suzuki Method; defining Canadian culture; colonialism; improvised music; the…

I can't quite believe that 2017 has come and gone! I spent a wonderful semester in Brandon last winter, experiencing (and enjoying!) what it was like to have a singular workplace, from which to pursue a multi-faceted job of lecturing…

I am back in Toronto after a wonderful winter semester sojourn at Brandon University. And really, the winter wasn't so bad. It was actually a relief to go through a winter of sunny, cold days and clean air instead of…