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.