Home again

I spent my last morning in Canada packing, and then working on the Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs with Don and Bruce. They are a lot of work to uncover, and it's been quite a while since I've done them, so I'm really excited and humbled to be preparing them for Antwerp at the end of January.

Bruce gave me a lift to the airport around 15h, and approximately twelve hours later I was walking in the door of our Brussels home, thanks to a pick-up by Maggie and the boys. Transit is great here, but nothing beats getting met at the airport for a great welcome! Now I've sort of got a second (or third) wind, after having a short nap of an hour and a half this late morning, and we've all had our dinner and are relaxing; the boys with the books I brought them and Maggie in playing with the new iPod Touch that I brought back from Canada.

I do feel a bit strange, with all this travelling. Also I am sorry that I didn't get a chance to meet up with or even telephone friends in Toronto more, but I had originally planned on being busy with music until the 10th of December, and then having almost two weeks to coach the next pieces, relax, smoke the odd cigar, and catch up with friends. Instead I've rather unexpectedly had to fly back to Brussels, and we will have to save our socializing to a very tight nine days starting on December 22nd, when all four of us fly together to Canada for time with the extended families.

Some good news musically: I have an audition with the Flanders Opera on the 17th of December, in Antwerp (...and to think that it's only taken two years to arrange!). As well, I was offered a Haydn Creation in December and a middle January opera excerpts concert here in Belgium that I've had to decline because of other committments, and I have been invited to present a concert in the Antwerp suburb of Merksem, commemorating the anniversary of its 1944 liberation from Nazi occupation by - of all things - Calgary Highlanders. How cool is that?