Brahms completed

The Brahms is done, and I am pleased and feel very priviledged to have had the chance to sing such an incredible piece of music again. To be able to do so with my hometown orchestra and choral society and the choir of my university makes the pleasure that much more deeply felt. Sara Gartshore, the soprano soloist, came from Chicago for this performance, and she was really wonderful to hear, and Glen Fast kicked everybody up a notch, eliciting an exciting perfomance by singers, choir and orchestra. My parents and cousin, teacher, and many friends and musical colleagues were there, and I must say it was great to actually have people that I know attend one of my performances for a change! That frequently doesn't happen, especially when one is performing overseas.

Yesterday was a family day, incluing coffee in the morning with my aunt Judy, and a tour of her workplace, a long visit and delicious dinner with my cousin David and his wife Melissa and their three sons (including the new baby) and then an evening visit with my Grandmother Rita. Today I'm heading back to Belleville for an evening with my parents, and a visit to my other Grandmother, and then I'm heading back in Toronto for the next little while. I've already got two or three auditions scheduled in the Toronto area over the next couple weeks, so that's gratifying, and I hope to spend some time coaching with the excellent Don Tarnawski, and also singing with Bruce. I manage on my own, but Bruce is such a wonderful technician, and so knowledgeable about singers and the craft of singing, that I want to make the most of the time we have together.

Maggie and the boys are good: Malcolm is lucky to get some alone time with his mom this week as Duncan is away at Nettine for the week. We've been in contact pretty much every day; in this age of skype, VOIP phones, the internet, and cheap international calling it seems like they are just around the corner, not far away at all.

rehearsals completed

The two rehearsals today went smoothly. The soprano is a pleasure to hear; she lives in Chicago and has a very beautiful voice. The choir is quite large: 200 voices, combined from the Choral Society and the University Choir, and the Kingston Symphony is playing very well, as usual. It is exciting to be doing Brahms again, and for the first time with Glen, the conductor. It's also very nice to see old friends again.

Tomorrow the concert is at 14h30, and then I'll be staying in the Kingston area for a bit, to work with Bruce, visit some family and try to arrange some auditions in Eastern Ontario, but am heading back to Toronto later in the week, to prepare for the Bach and to try to audition there as well. When I called home this afternoon, Maggie and the boys were doing well, having visited a christmas market with some friends in the afternoon, it sounds like they had a good relaxing day.

I hope you are each having a good weekend!

On the ground in Toronto

What a crazy day yesterday. After arriving in Antwerp to get my ticket for the train to Amsterdam, I went down to the proper track to wait for the high speed train, and another train was still sitting on the track, delayed. No one from the railway seemed to know what was happening, but five minutes before the scheduled departure they started offloading passengers, and when we asked about the 10h25 train to Amsterdam they told us it was changed to a different track three levels up! We all rushed like madmen to track six, to be told that the high speed train was cancelled, and that we'd have to take a long roundabout route via train, bus, etc.

Three of us decided instead to hop into a cab, and 240 euros and an hour and a half later we were in Amsterdam airport. But the fun didn't stop there... despite my having bought my ticket in march, they had overbooked the plane and so I had no seat! It all got sorted out in the end, and the flight was fine, but the rushing around maked it pretty stressful, and it made the day very tiring.

But that's all behind me now, and I'm feeling good today, and looking forward very much to Saturday's rehearsals with the Kingston Symphony.

Getting ready to leave

Last night it was fireworks at the British School of Brussels, out in the forest of Tervuren. It was great, and as Endeaneans know well from our street fireworks shows in Toronto, I like it when stuff gets "blowed up real good". It was a lot of fun, food and music, and we were a little late getting home, and slept in a little bit in the morning.

We continued with a later breakfast, and then had a mid-afternoon dinner of wild duck breast and bok choi with noodles, and a side dish of spicy garlic shrimp... maybe these gave me a little extra oomph for my last coaching with Peter before I leave for Canada as it was a good one. We worked quite a bit on the Brahms and the Bach again today, so I'm feeling very good about these pieces and am looking forward to see what the conductors think about them.

Tomorrow is a day of packing, plus a visit with Duncan's teacher at lunchtime to discuss his report card, which was uniformly excellent. The only thing that lagged a bit since the week off was his comportment, but it's not so bad and I'm sure it will come back up to "status Green" this coming week. Malcolm also got a good report card, and Maggie will attend his teacher meeting next week to ensure that we are on top of any potential problem areas.

Tuesday morning I have to get up pretty early to get to Antwerp on time to get my train to Amsterdam. Travelers be forewarned: KLM/Air France misrepresents their service; on their web site it says that you can buy a ticket from Brussels to Toronto, and do the Brussels-Amsterdam leg of that trip by train instead of airplane, but by "Brussels" they actually mean that you have to board the train at Antwerp! That's 60 Kilometers away! It's not even in the same province. That means leaving the house at 6h45 to get to Antwerp by 8h25, and then leave two hours to pass customs. Crazy. Next time I'm going direct Brussels to Toronto with Jet Airways.

That's it. The boys are in bed and we're going to have an early night. Let's hope each of you is having a good weekend!

Autumn colours

We are quite lucky to have the Bois de la Cambre, a beautiful forested park, within a few minutes walk from our front door. Maggie and I enjoyed some time there this week, and saw - apart from some colourful leaves that almost make us think we are in Canada - the wild parakeets of Brussels cracking hazelnuts, lots of dogs having their exercise, and a lovely restaurant on the island in the middle of the park that you have to take a ferry to visit.


Here's me looking at the dogs...



... and Maggie looking at the parekeets.

Yesterday being a state holiday, we took some chrysanthemums up the street to the Ixelles cemetery and looked around. There were graves from soldiers from the first world war through the second, up to the 1950s. We didn't find any Canadians but quite a few Polish and British mixed in with the French and Belgians.


Then we quickly hopped a bus to the European Parliament to see sections of the Berlin Wall that had been set up around the square. We are getting lots of our local news from Malcolm now that he is an avid listener in history class, and a subscriber to the student newspaper. He was the one to explain to us the context around the recent protests by milk farmers, and was a voluble repository of factoids about the Berlin Wall: apparently it is exactly three metres high. Who knew?


I can't even begin to describe how strange it was to stand there and see these now inconsequential fragments of weathered concrete standing outside of the European parliament like parking barriers. When assembled, they used to form an implacable symbol of partition and dictatorship, a monolith that had predated my birth by some years. Like many of my generation, I assumed that The Wall was a fact of life, that it was forever... I remember my astonishment when it fell, and the tentative hope that emerged from its rubble and seemed to suffuse everyone in those first moments: a hope for a world free from tyranny, of fear, of political repression.


It was a day of hope and optimism for us in Brussels... no matter how large the obstacle, courage and compassion are stronger than fear, and they will win in the end.

* * *

Last night I had a long three-hour coaching with Peter Tomek, and feel very well prepared for both the Brahms and the Christmas Oratorio. I'm very excited to do them both, and have already started assembling my things for the trip. Obviously there are items on the list that are always the same: white tie and tails, shoes, scores, toiletries and so on, but there are always last-minute requests and thank-you gifts to bring along, so I'm starting to get ready now. There will be lots of firsts: first big solo concert work with the KSO; first Christmas Oratorio and first oratorio performance in Toronto, and other firsts. I'm looking forward to them all...

November has arrived...

... and it's getting colder here all of a sudden. We didn't really need to warm our hands by the sparklers in this cake that Maggie had made for my birthday last week, but it still felt like a good idea. I had celebrated my birthday a little earlier when my parents were visiting, but it's nice to have a cake on the actual day, especially when the baker is your lovely wife!

On the music front I have had a productive time. My friend and colleague Peter Tomek and I coached some Schubert songs with Dietrich Henschel, a lieder specialist and lovely baritone singer, which was interesting. I also sat in on his Brahms Requiem rehearsals with the Orchestre de La Monnaie, and got a chance to think some more about my own interpretation of this same piece; that performance is coming up on November 22nd in Kingston. They also did the Schönberg A Survivor of Warsaw, which was interesting and reminded me very much of the experience of doing Zimmerman's Die Weisse Rose, both textually and musically.

Last week and again yesterday I rehearsed with the ensemble BL!NDMAN two pieces, "En je noemt het Liefje (And you call that love)" by the Dutch composer Mayke Nas, and another piece called "Nuits Adieu" by the Finnish composer Kajia Saarahio. Both are very different, but interesting, and the singers use microphones and filters, operated by another musician, to create some quite unusual and brilliant effects. These concerts won't be taking place until January, but these pieces take a lot of time to prepare, and the singers won't be able to meet again until after Christmas. Saarahio is in the news a bit in Canada too since (according to the Globe and Mail at least) her opera L'amour de loin is rumoured to be making its north american premiere at the COC soon, perhaps next season.

What else? The boys are back in school after a week off, and tomorrow is Remembrance Day, a national holiday here. We likely won't make the trek up to Vimy Ridge, but instead will stick close to home. There are almost 1600 commonwealth graves in the Cimetière d'Ixelles just up the street, so we'll head that way tomorrow and have a look round. As well, just five minutes further up the 95 bus line, sections of the Berlin Wall have been set out around the European Parliament as a memorial tribute to the end of East German Communism.

That's it for now. As always I would encourage you to visit Maggie's blog periodically for her take on life here in Brussels.