Long time no blog...

... but it's because we've been busy. Our friends Rob and Viki from Scotland arrived for a visit, and we had a whirlwind of a time with them and with Rob's cousin and her husband and their two kids; they have been living here in Brussels for almost six years now since leaving the Toronto area.

Maggie has been remarking on her desire to get a blog entry out, so I'm going to merely summarize a few of the recent activities, to come back to later in more detail after she's had a chance.

• we did a walking tour of some Brussels places, such as the Grand Place, Place Royale, the Palais de Justice, Notre Dame de Sablon church, the Royal Museum, etc.
• we took the kids to a children's opera by Benjamin Britten called The Golden Vanity, and then a few days later I went to see his opera Death in Venice
• we took a train trip to Gent to visit the Gravenstein Castle, and
  
• we had a Robbie Burns supper with lots of haggis, mashed root vegetables and beer and whisky, recitations, songs and graces and good company.
  

All this along with the usual stuff like schoolwork and singing and so on. Malcolm's hard work is paying off, as he achieved a 9/10 on his french dictée last week, a real triumph, and his whole class was excited about it. He's doing swimming and judo every week and doing well at both. Duncan had his report card, and academically he's doing perfectly well, and can move up into primary school next year, although his teacher has suggested that he get into some sort of team sport to tire him out, as he's got (ahem) "too much energy"... oh really, I hadn't noticed... we're thinking maybe speed tractor pulling?

I haven't been swimming much in the last week or two, but have been keeping active by all the walking, and doing some strength exercises. The singing is going well, although when guests are around I do take a break from my usual routine to spend time with them. Actually when I think of it, we've had far fewer people as guests this year than last.

I've found out a little more about the church in Antwerp that I've been offered an "artist's mass" in; it's in the Saint Carolus Borromeus, a baroque church that was attended, designed and decorated by Rubens. I'm really excited about that but haven't fixed a final date yet, or chosen repertoire. Probably Bach, I'm thinking... I want to try some selections from the Passions that I haven't sung before, Betrachte meine seele (St. John) and maybe Mache dich, meine Herze, rein from the St. Matthew, and then something that I've done before. The Mystical Songs of Vaughan Williams, maybe, or something from Messiah? We'll see.

Tomorrow night Maggie and I have arranged for a babysitter, and are taking advantage of having a car (thanks, Cambio!) to go to Liège to see Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Then Sunday evening we're having a pizza dinner here with friends Denis and Florence and their three kids... looks like a busy weekend.

As I said, I am waiting for Maggie to do her blog entry, but next time I'll write about the most significant and emotionally challenging event of the last couple of weeks: our visit to the first world war battlefields near Ypres...

La galette des rois

We enjoyed la galette des rois very much... turns out that Malcolm was king this year, which Duncan took in good spirits, after an appropriate interval of disappointment. (Maggie needs to practice her technique to ensure that she can influence who gets the fevre or little surprise in the cake, and who therefore gets the crown).

What else has been going on since Epiphany? Not much apart from getting back into the usual routine. Malcolm's been getting great marks on math, geometry, fractions, and showing a steadily improvement on his dictée, which is a huge part of French education. It's not a big deal at all for us anglos as there aren't really many accords in English: I run, you run, he runs, she runs, they run, we run, they (plural) run. You've really only got two choices for the verb form, run or runs, and the articles and the adverbs don't change with the person who is doing the actual running.

It's totally different in French, and all these components have to agree with the actor (the person doing the running), so Malcolm works very hard, and he's doing well, and has already learned some conjugations that I have no clue about, in any language.


Duncan is getting much better on forming his letters, and he draws and writes extremely well, and is getting better with his comportment in class. He loves to play foot (ball), and has lots of friends, but he's still carrying a torch for his pals back home, including Roxy. The boys are coming back on the Easter vacation with us, but their friends in Canada will be in school, so we are talking about having a little visit in the schools; maybe Duncan can spend a little time with his old daycare buddies, and Malcolm might be able to arrange a day at Withrow with his buddy Nicholas.

I have confirmed the Brahms Requiem in Perth, April 5th, and am still talking about some other things while I'm back... more to come later. I picked up my Zauberflöte score yesterday so I had some fun yesterday and today working through that as well as some Bach stuff, as well as the Don Carlos per me guinta. I picked up some new Bach music for a song (wucka wucka!) at the used music store, including a cantata with all the parts for 8 euro, and three volumes of arrangements of Bach arias for alto, tenor and bass plus cello and oboe for around 12 euros. There are also some really beautiful John Ireland songs to poems by Masefield and Rossetti and others that I picked up that I want to look at... so much music, so little time. Bruce has often told me that he had to give up very early on the idea of ever getting through all the music that existed for his voice type in opera, let alone all the art song stuff. I know what he means...

So that's about it, I'm back in my routine too, swimming and exercising and practicing and calling and strategizing and auditioning. Bon weekend!

An Ephiphany of snow

It's the first day back into the new routine, and we had a nice surprise this morning: snow, about six centimetres of it. It was a bit ironic for the kids, to have a snowfall that stuck around, after two weeks holidays with none of it, but they welcomed it anyway. It took us almost 20 minutes just to get dressed to go outside, and a little longer to walk to school as Duncan needs a grippier pair of boots (he kept falling down). Good thing there are lots of sales going on this next week or two, as the boys need clothes, and so do I. My only suit is one that I bought a couple of years ago, and although it is a very nice dark Ralph Lauren, I need something a little closer-fitting, as the styles have changed a bit since I've bought it, and I've lost around 40 pounds since we moved to Belgium in August 2007. Must be all the beer and french fries...

Or maybe it's the swimming? After an extensive snowball fight in the playground, I left the boys at school, and legged it over to the pool. Miraculously, it was nearly empty of swimmers! I hadn't been swimming in over two months, so I decided to call it quits at just 40 lengths (one km) but plan to continue swimming daily, as early in the morning as possible.

Maybe it's not having a car? We've managed pretty well without one so far, apart from the odd rentals. I'm still waiting for my Belgian driving licence to appear, which will let me join the car sharing co-op, best for quick trips of only a couple of hours, and will also let me rent delivery vehicles from places like IKEA for something ridiculously low, like 2 euros an hour. Meanwhile we're shopping on foot, and using transit.

We walked over to Kiana and Brian's for New Year's Eve, and had a great time there as you can see by this photo of K. and M. yukking it up.


I'm not sure what we were laughing about. It might have been the game of Cranium, or perhaps a joke someone made... to be honest, things got a little dim after I took inspiration from the Globe and Mail's wine critic Beppi Crosariol and "sabred" the top off a bottle of Mercier dry pink champagne... Crosariol himself called this method "the totally pompous wine geeks's way of of opening a bottle", so I figured, hey, if the shoe fits? Hmmm... maybe it's the champagne? It was delicious, by the way.

Maybe it's the cabbage and sausages? We went to Glons to have a big New Year's Day party and day-long meal of choucroute with Nathalie and Tschi-tschi and their kids, whom we missed seeing during our last trip to Glons during Toussaint.


We had a great time visiting with them and the rest of the family, eating and drinking and playing games, telling stories and jokes and just having fun. We are very lucky to be a part of their extended family; it reminds us of how things are this time of year back in Canada, with our own.


Maybe it's the dairy products? The next day we went to look at the house that Tschi-tschi and Cristophe are building for a local farmer, and we had a visit to the barn nearby that is full of cows. The kids loved feeding the cows, and Duncan had a visit with a calf who was only a couple of days old. Then we headed back home with Nathalie and the kids, enjoying a long walk through the village, including inspections of old houses, fields with goats, chickens (even an emu!) and a walk past a medieval walled farm that, although technically designated a heritage building, is slowly and sadly falling to pieces. As much as these buildings seem exceptional to us, as Canadians, here every little town and hamlet has them. The farm on the corner across from the loft, for example, was built in the early 17th century, about ten years after founding of Quebec, the first city established in North America... It really is a different sense of time over here.

Then our friend JR gave us a lift into Liège where we caught our train back to Brussels, ready to head home and get ready for the return to routine. This weekend past we took down the tree, did some housecleaning, got the boys ready for school, and Maggie finished up her report cards and did a little clothes shopping of her own.

As far as our social activities, that's pretty much it. Now it's back to work: I have to keep the momentum going on the auditioning and performing front. So far I've got:

• an offer to sing a Brahms Requiem in Canada in April
  
• a solo part on Mendelssohn's St. Paul in Antwerp in May
• a performance of an "artist's mass" (my choice of music, date tbc) at a historic Antwerp church
• a recital here in Brussels (date and location tbc) with a Belgian pianist I've been working with; most likely a reprise of Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin
  
• a Messiah tour in Canada in December...

...plus there's a trip to Montpellier in early February to study with Pierre Fleta, follow-up calls to make to Monte Carlo, Montpellier, Avignon, Lyon, Liège, La Monnaie (Brussels), Lille, and Paris; new calls to places like Dijon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice, Marseille...

... and that's just on the French side. I've resolved to learn some spoken German this year, and to expand my German concert repertoire; today I'll be cracking open the Bach St. John Passion, for example. I'm also waiting for my new copy of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte to arrive; there's tons of spoken text in there, and the agent I sang for in December, the ZBF agents in Cologne, and a conductor friend in Canada are just three of the many people who have suggested that I learn Papageno. All this is to get ready for an important audition that I'm hoping will materialize, in a German opera house this spring, and in Germany, they do need you to speak SOME German. Ich sprache Deutche nicht sehr gut might be be a polite way of explaining that I don't speak German very well, but it doesn't go nearly far enough.

Lastly there are a few places in Ireland that I spoke with last year, and several asked me to contact them again in January.

So you see, there's lots to keep me busy before Malcolm gets home around 16h. Once again, Happy New Year and best wishes in 2009!

p.s. See, I managed to do a blog post without any pictures of food in it! No wait, there was the choucroute... dang! Oh well, in that case I can mention that tonight it's the Eve of Epiphany, so we get galette des rois from La Brioche down the street. Related pics and news to come in the next post.