Ho! Ho! Ho!

I realize now that it's been about eighteen days since I posted... time to catch up.

I really enjoyed my time in Canada, as you can see from the photo above. Snow, a wood fire, time to think about the music... Bruce's place was very restful, and he went out of his way to make sure that I had as much calm and quiet as I needed to be in good form for the Bach.

Even so, I was still very busy when in Canada... there were three performances to prepare for, and with all the rehearsing before they finally finished on December 5th, I had very little time to write anything then. Afterwards I had a number of very important social engagements to attend to. We had a very pleasurable evening of roast lamb, cigars, whiskey, and extensive conversation with an opera conductor friend who was stranded in Ontario by the snowy weather; then there was a big Christmas party at Bruce's place, with a chance to catch up with lots of friends and colleagues, and then another one hosted by a major Canadian artist agency, where I saw quite a few familiar faces, and had a lovely conversation with Bruce's agent, herself a former opera singer. As well, I was able to meet with another conductor friend to discuss the 2011-2012 season, and even get in some singing practice. Add to all these professional activities the repair work on our house to prepare it for the new tenants (changing broken door handles, washing and painting bathroom ceilings, etc.), the required shopping for presents, visits with my sisters, parents and grandmother, and other social pressures, and I had no problem filling my time with things to do...

The Bach concerts were quite satisfying; I was well-acquainted with the high standard of Pax Christi's choir and orchestra, having sung with them before, but was very pleased to finally work with Howard Dyck. He's someone who I can honestly say introduced me to opera, since I - along with many, many fellow Canadians - heard for years his smooth voice introducing "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera", not to mention Sunday's "Choral Concert", both on the former CBC Radio Two. It was really a lot of fun, and I was astonished to see him conduct the Christmas Oratorio from memory, with its many choral and instrumental cues. That's preparation for you! There's a chance I'll be down in his part of the world (that would be Kitchener-Waterloo) sometime next season, so I'll be sure to look him and his wife Maggie up for more artistic conversation, and who knows, maybe a glass of wine or two.


It looks as though I have a good crop of concerts coming up in the next eighteen months or so. Glen Fast has confirmed that he wants me to do the Haydn Creation in Kingston, so that will bring me to Canada in late march of 2012; I have a possibility of doing another Schubert Die Schöne Müllerin at the same time, and there are a few other possibilities for that period, falling as it does around Easter. Otherwise I have already three Schuberts in Toronto, Ottawa and Kingston this spring, that follow close on the heels of three Belgian performances of Messiah, with a Bach Mass in B-minor thrown in there for good measure. I feel very fortunate to have almost ten gigs in the pipeline, and in the case of the Schubert and Handel, to have repeats of the music more familiar to me than any other.

Familiar music... after doing eight new Bach cantatas in six weeks, it's really great to come back to such gorgeous music that I know, after having put it away for a while, to see how it strikes me now. Messiah was probably my first oratorio performed, but this tour of it will be my first with a period instrument orchestra, and of course my first time in Belgium, and I know I will sing it differently this time around...


But, to continue with the narrative... after getting home, I suffered from a pretty intense jet-lag, but I'm feeling okay now, despite a stubborn tendency to awaken at 5 a.m., which I'm trying to make use of to get a few things done, first thing, before anyone else gets up. The weather here has been fabulous for the boys, with lots of snowball fights, snowmen, snow-angels and so on. I don't think I've seen a snowplow yet, but there have been lots of sanders out making brown-grey slush on the roads.


In keeping with my preference to find and transport a Christmas tree home on foot, the boys and I walked down to the GB grocery this past weekend, and picked out a big tree for the living room, in part to celebrate Maggie's end of year. She's been off this week while the boys have been at school, and will have to return to work on the 3rd of January, while the kids enjoy their second week of holidays. (As problematic as this might seem at first look, it's actually been a bit of a boon, because we've had some time at home alone as a couple, which almost never happens. I'm sure I'll be tearing my hair out by noon on the 4th of January but for now I'm feeling good about the situation).

We decorated the tree in the interval between the St. Andrew's Sunday morning Christmas pageant, in which the boys acted and sang, and the carol service in the evening, which was brimming with music for the junior choir (which the boys have joined), the choir and congregation. We walked the 3.5 km to the church in the midst of a snowfall that evening, as driving would have been unsafe, and the trams were delayed. It was a beautiful ambiance as we tramped along that evening, but I will say that the promise of a warm, candlelit church, carols, mulled wine and mince pies were necessary to keep us going, and we took care of our share of both afterwards.


Speaking of mulled wine and mince pies, we've been enjoying the other festive foods that are available around this time of year. We ordered our turkey from Delhaize a few days ago, and will pick "him" up tomorrow afternoon, but in the meantime we've had lots of game, which is the tradition in these parts in November/December. It can be very expensive, more than we can easily afford, so I keep my eyes peeled for the last day of sale items, and we do pretty well. Last week it was roast of wild boar stuffed with mushroom, onion, cranberry and pear slices, accompanied by cream and celeriac-stuffed mushroom caps, and then this evening we enjoyed a fabulous reindeer filet, marinated in red wine, juniper berries and garlic, and served very rare with the rest of the celeriac and a fabulous mirepois sauce, thinned out with the leftover marinade. Yum.


Everyone tucked in with enthusiasm, in spite of a few wayward comments from the other end of table, and it was the unbelievably tender, deliciously rare venison that got hoovered first, by all diners. Someone distinctly opined that perhaps Blitzen hadn't made the cut this year... or maybe he WAS the prime cut? In any case it was fabulously delicious, and goes into the "show-off recipes" file for sure.


Maggie is having fun working on her autumn leaves quilt; it's very close to completion now. Tomorrow we have an open house at Piers and Gilly's, and then we'll spend a quiet Christmas Day with our own little family, which I think will suit us just fine. No doubt there will be some skyping going on, so if you are around, send us an invite and we'll catch up, Buck-Rogers style; we'll stay logged in.

Merry Christmas to all!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We had our general rehearsal last night, and it would seem that everything is in place for tonight's opening performance of the Christmas Oratorio. Howard has done at least fifteen productions of this work, and everything was extremely organized, so that we were able to touch up a few things left-over from Monday, and then ran the whole show.

It makes a huge difference for everyone when the rehearsal process goes smoothly and efficiently: no one feels that their time is being wasted, the energy level stays high, and running things in sequence means no surprises, and smooth transitions. I am really looking forward to the next two performances this weekend. It's a great honour and a pleasure to be working with colleagues old and new on such beautiful music; what a fantastic Christmas present!

Bad-a$$-Bach

That earlier post where I included a picture of Bach as "The Terminator" appears to not have been entirely unwarranted, as it would seem that he was not a total stranger to brawls. I happened upon David and Mendel's "A Bach Reader" in Bruce's study this morning, and came upon a reference to a tussle Bach had with a bassoonist when they were both students in Arnstadt in 1705.

Now, some of my best friends are bassoonists, seriously, but it would seem that Bach had little patience with what he called "nanny goat" bassoon playing (Zippelfagottist was the actual word he used) and wasn't shy about saying so. Apparently he was accosted by one such bleaty fellow in the Markt, who called him a dirty dog and started in on him with a stick (one presumes it was a different type than the one he played). J.S. promptly drew his sword, and it was on! It was fortunately resolved without bloodshed, but makes an interesting story nonetheless, and gets me fired up for the coming weekend.

I'm breathing a little easier at the moment, now that the Purcell St. Cecilia last weekend has been completed, and rather successfully, I think. I had coached it with Piers, who certainly is familiar with this idiom, having worked extensively on baroque repertoire in the UK, South Africa, the US, Belgium and in Aix-en-Provence, and indeed conducted the first baroque opera in China recently. That helped me get into the swing of this particular style of music, quite early and very English, so I was confident, despite a fairly short rehearsal period. An orchestral conductor friend of mine was there, and he has offered me a big project for 2012: Haydn's Creation. This is a repeat engagment with his orchestra and quite an exciting thing; getting asked to come back and do something else by a conductor is a clear sign that you've done a good job. I was offered the Creation last winter in Belgium but had to decline because of a scheduling problem, so I am really very, very pleased to be asked again to perform it, and this time I will assuredly say "YES!".

But back to Bach, I've been relaxing this morning listening to a number of recordings of his Weihnachts-oratorium, and getting ready for the first rehearsal this afternoon. It's going to be great to devote all my attention to this concert, because for the first time in the better part of a year, I'm not preparing to perform one project while simultaneously learning the music for the next couple of projects... after this weekend, I have a couple of months in which to get ready for Messiah and Die Schone Mullerin which are both pieces I know well.

Arts and Literature, or Sports and Leisure?

Pie me! Anybody who played Trivial Pursuit most likely remembers the different pieces, and if we were playing a real-life version, as a family we've collected quite a few of both the Arts and Lit, and Sports (even a bit of Leisure) pieces recently.

Last week we had a nice dinner together with Stephanie Martin, a conductor, musician and composer friend from Canada. Stephanie is on sabbatical from York U., and one day last week we walked around Brussels together, exploring a variety of places new and old in the city. When visiting the Church of St. Nicholas near the Grand Place, I learned something new about the saint's effigy; there was a small sculpture of three children in a barrel at his feet that I'd never recognized before, but whom Stephanie immediately recognized as the "pickled boys".


Yeek! Apparently part of the St. Nicholas legend includes the story of a wicked innkeeper who murdered three boys, and salted their bodies to serve to his guests, to save on the butcher's bill. Nicholas visited the inn and confronted the innkeeper, who confessed his crime, whereupon Nicholas prayed over the brine-tub and the three boys leaped out unharmed. Talk about a Trivial-Pursuit winning question, on the lives of Saints, no less! What is particularly interesting to me about the three children, and St. Nicholas's effigy, is that over top of it floats the Eye of Providence, which most of us would recognize from the back of the U.S.A. banknotes, but which is also a Masonic symbol. Of course we just got back from Vienna, and Zauberflöte at the Staatsoper, and my mind is buzzing with Masonic imagery, but it is intriguing that there are three boys in the barrel, like the three boys in Zauberflöte, and above all floats the Eye!


Later on Stephanie came over to our place for moules frites. Both boys got excited about having a Canadian guest, and as usual, the board games came out. A post-prandial chess death match ensued, but no pickling occurred, unless you count the modest consumption of Trappist beer that went with the moules frites.


That's about it for leisure: Thursday was the Remembrance Day concert in St. Andrews, which was a big success. It was the first time that Eleanor Daley's Flanders Fields setting had been performed in Brussels, certainly as a version for solo voice, and it may very well have been the first time that the Ned Rorem War Scenes were heard here. These deeply disturbing pieces on text from Walt Whitman's Civil War diaries are difficult both emotionally and technically to sing, but very affecting. Other pieces included the gorgeous Vier ernste Gesänge of Brahms, the Schlummert ein from Bach's Ich habe genug, Barber's Dover Beach, and the Libera me from the Fauré Requiem.

Then on Saturday there was a reprise of the all César Franck concert with Vocaal Collectief, in a 13th-century church in Tervuren, just south-east of Brussels. It was also very successful, perhaps because we all had performed the same material on October 3rd, and the programme had a chance to mijoter (simmer) since then. The sense of ensemble in this church was much greater than for the first concert, partly because we could all hear each other much more clearly, and it was extremely well received.

Last night I had the first strings rehearsal with Philippe Gérard, who will be conducting this Sunday's Bach concert at L'eglise des Minimes. These two cantatas have some extremely dramatic and vocally challenging singing for the baritone/bass, on the themes of the day of apocalypse and judgment, contrasted with the peacefulness and contentment of God's love. In between the ongoing preparation of these pieces, I'm also getting ready for the Purcell Ode on St. Cecilia's day, which is all about the beauty of music, and takes place on November 26th in Kingston, Ontario.

Now for the sports and weather... D. experienced both this past weekend, during his trip to the Maidstone Rugby Club in Kent, just south of London. He had a great time but came home quite wet; apparently the heavens opened mid-game. Here in Brussels yesterday was the first dry day out of the previous 17, and it appears that England has its share of rain this time of year as well.

The Telegraph mentioned our concert...

As a little coda to my last blog post, where I spoke about the importance of art, the political correspondent for the UK Telegraph happened to be at our concert in Brussels last night, and wrote about it today. We were also mentioned in the Brussels Weekly, and Brussels TV also filmed a piece on the concert which should be airing tomorrow.

It's gratifying that a Remembrance/Armistice day concert has received so much recognition here, and that our choice of pieces was appreciated. I promise I'll write more about our programme later, but for now, a big "thank-you" to St. Andrew's Church of Scotland itself, for hosting the concert.

Remembrance of a different sort

I feel like I've been on the run since mid October! No posts for a couple weeks reflects my high level of musical activity recently. It's been a very challenging couple of weeks, one filled both with much preparation for upcoming concerts, and performances, but also full of the theme of Remembrance.


All Saints' Day is an important holiday here in Belgium, and everyone takes the time to remember those who have died. On a personal note of remembrance, our family said goodbye recently to my Grandmother Helen Gillespie, who died in September of this year. I was unable to go back to Canada for the funeral, but fortunately our family had several opportunities to visit with her when we were back in Canada, and she was in good spirits and energetic for those visits. I'm glad that we took those opportunities to spend some time with her. I was lucky enough to have a close relationship with her, as did both boys, and we kept up a written and telephone correspondence for many years.


Remembrance for me has also included some commemorations of the life and work of fellow artists. In the week leading up to the Hunting Cantata concert of October 24th, I heard the sad news that Pierre Fleta, Bruce's mentor, had died in Paris at the age of 85.

There is little information available online about Pierre, so I would like to say a few words about him now. He was a beautiful tenor singer, a committed teacher, and a gifted artist. The son of Miguel Fleta, himself perhaps the most famous tenor of his generation, Pierre lived with Beniamino Gigli while completing his voice studies. He debuted as Cavardossi in Tosca, sang at La Monnaie in Brussels for six years, notably as Alfredo and Hoffmann, and sang for many years in many European opera houses including Paris, Strasbourg, Lyon, Nice, Bordeaux, and Montpellier. In 1972 he became the artistic director of the Opera Royale de Wallonie in Liege, and shortly thereafter was named professor of voice at the Liege Conservatory. For the following 20 years he staged many productions there and in France, Spain and Monaco before retiring to Paris, and subsequently moving with his beloved wife Claude to the village of Millau, near Montpellier, in the south.

Bruce and I visited Pierre and Claude in 2005, and I was lucky enough to sing for him then, and again during subsequent visits to Montpellier in 2007. He was a wonderfully warm person, and a gifted teacher, deeply committed to encouraging young singers. While he made many recordings for the French label Pathé, there are few available online. Here is one clip I found of him singing a patriotic french chanson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yr5R4qAB2g

Bruce was in Victoria at the time of the funeral, but I was able to take the fast train to Paris and get to Montrouge in time for the service, and pay our respects the the Fleta family, before returning to Antwerp for my rehearsal of the Hunting Cantata that same evening. I am glad that I did, to help honour this remarkable artist.

The following week I spent time preparing for last night's Music of Remembrance concert here in Brussels. (I'll write about that in my next post). The week of November 1-5 was the Toussaint school holiday, and we put the boys in a residential programme for the week at the castle in the Ardennes, and Maggie and I went to Vienna to celebrate my birthday.


As you can see, the Hotel Bristol puts on a nice breakfast! Vienna was gorgeous, as majestic in architecture as Paris, but on a scale that reminded me more of Brussels, in that it was possible to move easily around the old city on foot or by metro.


We saw many fantastic museum exhibitions, including the Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Biedermeier exhibits at the Belvedere Museum, Michaelangelo and Picasso works at the Albertina, and a host of fantastic displays at the natural history museum, including quite a few amazing fossils such as archaeopteryx and some ichthyosaurs. We also say probably the most famous piece of prehistoric art in the world, the 22,000 year-old Venus of Willendorf.

The age of this female human figure is mind-boggling; when you consider that it's been 2000 years since the time of Jesus, and this figure is at least ten times older than that, it gives you pause. It makes me think about all the human stories that have passed, now forgotten in that span of time, and wonder what people will know of today's events in the year 24,000 AD...

We toured the Staatsoper, and visited the Mozarthaus. There was a manuscript score of Marriage of Figaro on display, and at it was quite a profound experience for me to sing a few lines of Conte Almaviva there, in the room in which it was composed. The museum was very informative, with lots of great exhibits including Mozart's death mask:


I made my pilgrimage to the central cemetery, to visit the resting places of several great composers. The location of Mozart's grave is unknown, but there is a monument to his memory in a little grove of trees:


and with him are Beethoven,

Brahms,


Schubert,


Wolf,


and the opera composer Gluck.


I was very happy to have the chance to pay my respects to these wonderful composers, to thank them for the beauty that their music has added to the world.

Speaking of beautiful music, that evening we lined up for standing room places to see Die Zauberflöte. Imagine, for four euros each, we had really the best view and sound of the stage! It was great! You can see the standing places on the parterre in this photo, just behind the orchestra seating, under the imperial box.


The Staatsoper has a huge stage area, with elevating platforms that make up the front and rear stages, each 25 by 25 metres, and a side stage of the same size, plus an understage that covers the combined area. They have about 150 operas in repertory, and stage 50 different productions a year, with a different show every night of the week. Changing all those sets around employs perhaps 300 technicians, and they use all that stage space for quick scene changes, because if means you can be arranging the set on one platform and then quickly and silently move it into place using the elevators.


Seeing all the people involved in the production, and indeed all of the economic benefits that Viennese art and culture bring to the people of Vienna makes me understand how ignorant are those who consider arts to be a "frill". While this particular "frill" may require state subsidy to continue, along with employing singers, musicians and directors, it keeps 300 macho guys with power tools busy every day of the year, employs set builders, costume designers, sewers, set decorators, lighting technicians, ushers and cashiers, and provides beauty and enjoyment to thousands of people. It also injects millions of Euros into the local economy in hotel and restaurant purchases.

Ok, enough preaching about the arts, at least for now. What a wonderful trip!

* * *

This past week was a resumption of our normal family schedule, with lots of rehearsing, not only for last night's concert, but also for upcoming performances of Franck (tomorrow in Tervuren), two Bach Cantatas (Nov. 21st in Brussels), Purcell's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (Nov. 26th in Kingston) and Bach in Toronto December 4th and 5th. I'm looking forward to a day without singing, a glass of whisky and a good cigar, but I doubt that will happen until after the 5th of December. Until then I have a lot of work to do, so I'm signing off for the moment.

Hunting Season

Sunday's concert was a wonderful experience, and signaled the opening of the traditional hunting season in Belgium. The choice of works was interesting, and included the Hunting Cantata, another secular Cantata, and a lot of dramatic hunting horn ensemble playing by a group of red-coated players, the Royal Antwerp Hunting Horn Society. As you can see we are all enjoying a glass in the square after the concert (in my case, a Duvel).

This was a very interesting concert for me, as it was Bach's Lutheran music, to German texts, with hunting as a theme; these are all things that remind me very much of my late Grandfather, a German Lutheran hunter himself! Another interesting conection comes from our commune here in Brussels: Watermael-Boitsfort's coat of arms displays the hunting horn and the stag, symbolizing Saint-Hubertus himself, as a reflection of this area's history as an area historically rich in wildlife. I recently found a vintage poster advertising the commune, and on it you can see St. Hubertus and the coat of arms very clearly.


Lastly, with people talking about hunting season, I couldn't help but think about this.

But back to "serious", as opposed to Chuck Jones' comedic art... Performing this music in Rubens' own baroque Catholic church added a lot to the experience, and the orchestra was made up of many very accomplished baroque musicians. This was my first time performing with Paul Van Loey, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, conductor and co-founder of the Flanders Recorder Quartet, but we are looking forward to working together again on three performances of Messiah next spring.

Now it's time to practice for the Remembrance Day concert I'm preparing with Piers Maxim, and to refresh my memory on the Franck music for the 13th. That will come sooner than it seems, since Maggie and I will be exploring Vienna for the week of November 1st - 5th, so that's a week less preparation time. The Ned Rorem War Scenes are in particular a challenge to learn, as they are modern, chromatic and sometimes very angular, with much unaccompanied singing punctuated by interjections by the piano; not bumpity-bump music at all! Fortunately the other music on the programme (Dover Beach, Brahms Serious Songs, Faure and Handel etc.) is much better known to me, so for those pieces it's a matter of re-examination. One important exception will be the Brussels premiere of a Canadian piece: Eleanor Daley's setting of John McRae's In Flanders Fields.

"I'll be Baaaaach"

Hey there. It looks like my Bach voice is getting a real workout these days, as I now have seven cantatas, all new to me, to perform over six weeks:

• BWV 207 Vereinigtre Zweitracht der wechselnden Saiten and 208 Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd! (October 24th), Sint-Carolus Borromeus, Antwerp
• BWV 82 Ich habe genug (excerpts, November 11th), St. Andrew's Church of Scotland, Brussels
  
• BWV 70 Wachet! betet! betet! Wachet! and 90 Es reißet euch ein schrecklich Ende (November 21st), La Chapelle des Minimes, Brussels
• BWV 248 Weihnachts-Oratorium and Cantata BWV 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die stimme (December 4, 5), Grace Church-on-the-Hill, Toronto

The Ich habe genug excerpts will be part of a larger concert that we are doing for Remembrance Day. Here is the poster:


So what else has been going on? Well, we had a great weekend, for a start. Saturday we went to the Bois de la Cambre and picnicked together with Stephane and his three kids, then got dressed up for Das Rheingold. I suppose we could have dressed down a little, since it was in the cinema, and there was no intermission to be seen at, but we all went to the trouble of looking nice. The boys were captivated; Malcolm knows more about Norse mythology than I do, so he was happy. Maggie liked Robert Lepage's hi-tech sets, and the costumes, and Duncan was able to keep up with most of the English subtitles. He asked a few questions but for the most part just took it all in. I loved the music, and my favorite was hands-down the Alberich, sung fantastically by Eric Owens.


Then Sunday we had a nice barbeque, and then headed off to see the Steve Miller Band in Antwerp. They were great, and along with the hits from Steve's heyday (1975-1985) they played a lot from their new album, Bingo! which was very heavy on the electric blues. Particularly good was Steve's new sideman and vocalist, Sonny Charles, who at 70 was amazing.

This week Duncan is away with his class on a week-long field trip, so it's a lot quieter around here than normal. It's been much colder, but at least it's been sunny and dry, so I hope he is having fun in Nettinne. Have a good week!

Preparations

This week I was walking along the street after dropping off the boys at school, striding purposefully down the street on my way to the Forêt de Soignes. This beautiful park is quite close to us, wonderfully quiet, and within its boundaries, it's possible to walk for quite some time along footpaths without seeing any other people. After the 1.5 km walk to the school I've started to take a much longer walk home, both for the exercise and the "peace dividend" from contact with a quiet forest. Some of the trees are 200 years old, and it's easy to get pleasantly lost under their branches...

Anyway, I had taken along my iPod, loaded up with the recordings from our first rehearsal of the Cesar Franck concert (which is coming up this weekend), and as I walked down the street leading from the school, heading for the forest, I greeted the grandfather of one of M's classmates... a lady was passing by, I think after speaking with this gentleman herself, and as I said, "bonjour" she smiled at me and said, "Monsieur, vous avez l'air d'un homme très content dans son travail..."

Am I happy with my work? Absolutely! While the next few months are going to be busy, the social contact they also provide are most welcome. Unlike some other professions, when a singer has a relatively quiet period, performance-wise, it's easy to become rather solitary, taking up the time with lots of rehearsal, reflection, listening, and other kinds of preparation for those gigs to come. Good thing, because large amounts of time are necessary to really get a handle on one's interpretation, but it does get a little lonely sometimes.

Now I'm leaving that preparation period and moving into the execution part of the cycle, with seven performances of almost entirely new material over the next two months. I'll have lots of opportunities to work together with other musicians, coaches, singers and conductors, and to interact most importantly with an audience. I'm looking forward to it!

Tomorrow I am running through material with my organist colleague, choosing pieces for our upcoming November concert memorializing the 1944 liberation of Merksem. Then on Saturday we rehearse for Sunday's Franck concert, before I finish preparing the Bach cantatas that happen later in October. I likely won't post for a while, so have a good weekend...

A quick update

I wanted to write a quick update, since a couple of new contracts have arrived.

It would seem that I'm singing with my old friends David Cameron and Melos on November 26th, in a programme that includes Purcell's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; Cecilia being the patron saint of music, of course. In addition, the May 2011 tour of Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin is being extended into June, with the addition of a Kingston performance on June 4th to complement the other performances in Toronto on May 1st and Ottawa May 6th. I'm still negotiating with other venues to add more performances, and expand the tour outside of Ontario.

As for Brussels, I recently met a neighbor who is a concert promoter, and is quite a good friend of the head of the Brussels Conservatoire; she seems interested in helping me present La Belle Meunière here in Brussels as well. Peter and I are both very keen to perform it, so I'm going to keep pursuing it and see if we can't make something happen.

Tonight Peter and I had a nice long rehearsal, but not of Schubert; this was Cesar Franck music, in preparation for the first official rehearsal this weekend, and we rewarded ourselves afterwards with a run-through of Grosser Herr, O starker König! from Part 1 of the Christmas Oratorio, which I'll sing in December in Toronto. It really is very jazzy when you think about it: lots of syncopations, surprise dotted notes, lots of cross rhythms... I bet old Johann Sebastien would have loved to hear Charlie Parker solo on alto sax...

The last Trappist beer...

Okay, now for a little Belgian beer blogging. Today marks the third Belgian monastery I've had the good fortune to visit, and this one is rather special. You may remember that I wrote back in June of 2010 that our friends had obtained some Westvleteren beer, and we tasted it together. You might remember that the dubbel - the 8˚ one - was our favorite, so when the abbey's website indicated that, for a brief four hour window that week, they were accepting reservations for three cases of the 8˚, I got myself a second cup of coffee, a comfortable chair with in reach of the "redial" button, and settled in.

To make a long story medium, I was able to make a reservation, after giving the licence plate number of my car, and was told that I could pick up my reserved beer at precisely 14h15 today. It would seem that one is allowed only one beer reservation per day, and if - I do mean if - you happen to get through to the operator, you have to give the licence plate number of the car you will be driving, and promise that you won't be reselling the beer commercially. That's really the reason that I spent over three hours in the car today: you can't buy the stuff anywhere else but in West Flanders, at the St.-Sixtus Monastery located at Donkerstraat #12.


Why can't you purchase it in stores? That is explained by the following excerpt from a speech by the Father Abbot, on the occasion of the consecration of the renovated brewery, in 1989: "As every man we must be able to live. So we have to try to earn our living and let others share in what we have to abstain from. Indeed, we have to live 'from' and 'with' our brewery. But we do not live 'for' our brewery. This must be strange for business people and difficult to understand that we do not exploit our commercial assets as much as we can. We are no brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks."

I also found an article by Owen Ogletree, that explains: "The annual production of 60,000 crates (each wooden crate holds 24 bottles) a year is done in 75 days by five of the 27 members of the monastery. The bottling line dates from 1978, runs only 35 days a year and can fill 12,000 bottles an hour. The monks have no desire to increase production, and they admit that rarity and exclusivity of their beers contribute to a mystical aura."

As an artist, I can respect and admire this point of view, but as someone who loves exploring and also sharing with visitors the benefits of Belgian life, including their amazing beers, this presents a problem. I can get the other five Belgian Trappist beers (Aachel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort and Westmalle) at the local DelHaize supermarket, and can even find the single Dutch Trappist beer (La Trappe) in some grocery stores, but not Westvleteren. Fortunately, sharing this exclusive taste of Trappist beer with friends will not a problem for me for the foreseeable future! These beers will keep for a long time if left in a cool place, and in fact will continue to age like a quality wine. I am very pleased.

Not that I'm drinking more than one of them tonight... I have to stay in good shape and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow I do some preliminary rehearsing with an organist for the Merksem concert in November, and then later this week, some Bach rehearsals with my coach. Some more singing contracts have come in over the last few days, and I have to figure out how to fit them into my schedule.

Bon soir!

But it's a long, long while... from July to September...

... and I thought I'd write / 'fore it was November...

My apologies to Kurt Weill for my paraphrasing, but it has been a while since I posted. I just haven't quite felt in the mood, and have been very busy getting everything back the way it should be after a long seven weeks in Canada. Speaking of Canada, I could write pages about what we did on our vacation, but in brief, we had a great time visiting with friends and family... I only regret that we didn't have more time to see other friends that we missed. We made it back to Brussels safely, with an eight hour stopover in Warsaw; the picture above is from the opera house there. I hope to go back for a more extended visit soon.

First a family update. Maggie started school on August 24th, and had her first students the following Monday the 30th. She has had lots of work to do getting her room organized; not only was her classroom moved to another location in the building, but she wasn't the one who packed the boxes, so there are things missing or mis-placed. She likes her students very much and is glad to be back in her professional millieu.

The boys are well placed in school. Duncan is on track to getting a perfect comportment assessment this week; he was very close last week, and we are hoping he will be fine this week, otherwise it's no tv. He's looking forward to going to Nettinne again this year in October, and has joined up with the best rugby team in Belgium, the Boitsfort Rugby Club. It seems to agree very well with his personality, and constitution. They practice once a week and have one match per week. He's doing very well in his academic subjects too, and is able to read equally well in French and English, something that Malcolm has also somehow mastered, despite an almost total lack of English instruction. He's got Malcolm's old two-wheeled bike, and a couple of weekends ago we got him out in the nearby forest park, which is closed to cars on Sundays, and now he's able to start, stop, and turn on his own. Duncan's also enrolled in rhythmique class at the local academie de musique, so he is getting instruction in singing, dancing and some percussion.


Speaking of Malcolm, he's enjoying his last year of primary school, and becoming more and more independent. He is a big reader but also is having fun riding my bike, which was always a little small for me, but with some adjustment fits him well. We were hoping to get him into judo class at the same time as Duncan's rugby practice but it looks like the timing won't work, so it might be golf for him instead, or swimming. He's started solfege at the academy as well, and despite my reservations he is absolutely loving the two hour theory classes. They are learning sight singing, rhythmic patterns, lyrics, notation and so on. He's also taking the transverse flute once a week, and is excited about that too.

Just a word here about the academie: it is funded by the francophone community, and we pay only ten euros per family. For that, students can take theory, dance, singing, acting and instrumental music; it's all taken care of. We were even able to rent an instrument for the year for only 50 euros. I'm really very impressed at this commitment to funding the arts for everyone, and making music, dance and theatre appreciation a priority. Last Wednesday while Duncan was in his class, I asked at the office if they had a spare practice room, and without any reservation, they handed me the key to a classroom with a piano, so I was able to spend 50 minutes working on my upcoming Bach pieces! I expect that that might become a regular thing...

Speaking of upcoming pieces, I need to find as much time as I can to practice, as I have lots to learn and perform over the next three months:

• Bach Cantatas BWV 207, 208 (Hunting Cantata) for Sint Carolus Borromeuskerke Antwerp
  
• BWV 140 (Wachet auf) and parts I and VI of the Christmas Oratorio for Pax Christi and Howard Dyck in Toronto
  
• a programme for Belgian tour of César Franck music including several offertories, an ave Maria, the Messe a trois voix and other pieces for Vocaal Collectief
  
• an entirely new programme commemorating the 1944 liberation of Merksem (part of Antwerp) that will include music of Ives, Rorem, Vaughan Williams, Elgar and others for the Calcant concert series
  
• Purcell's Ode on St. Celilia's Day for Melos and David Cameron in Kingston
  

... so I've got my hands full with things to learn. I also have learned that I have a third performance added to the Messiah tour that's happening in Belgium in April, and there are more leads on the Schubert tour in Canada in May. Fortunately these last two things are works I've already done many times before, but there is still lots of work to be done on them to make them better.

Okay then, off to practice. Tomorrow is a busy day, as we are taking part in a brocante, or street sale, and then visiting with our friends Bryan and Kiana who have moved out of town. I helped them move a couple of weeks ago and we are looking forward to a nice barbeque together. Bon weekend!

O Canada

We've had a fun but very busy time over the last couple weeks. Since arriving on the 29th, we've had a number of great cottaging and socializing opportunities. Spending time with our old friends and family has been wonderful, and I haven't always remembered to take photographs, because I've been having too much fun.

Here are a few snaps...




As well I've taken the time to coach some arias, sing an audition, and rehearse for some upcoming projects. I am also keeping up the advance planning for some summer festivals in 2011 and 2012; it's important to keep thinking and planning well in advance. I am really quite surprised at the amount of work that I have coming this season, and may have to start turning down some jobs, but can't afford to slow down. As a successful salesman once wrote in his memoir, "If sales are slow, you aren't having a slow week; you had a slow week six months ago". By that he meant, that if your sales cycle (from initial contact, to sending information, to meeting to discuss products, to closing the deal) is 6, 12 or 18 months, you need to be thinking that far ahead. For me as an opera singer, the "sales cycle" varies from 12 to 36 months, so I need to always keep one part of my mind on maintaining and increasing my career momentum.

Bruce was taking care of our house in Brussels until a few days ago, and so we were in his house in Toronto, as well as spending time at Maggie's parents, my parents, and our friends' cottage. At the same time I've been taking care of some maintenance tasks at our Toronto house, and Maggie and I have started a big inventory of kids' toys, clothes and other items that we realize we no longer need to keep. Our original trip to Brussels was to be of undetermined length, but we had in the back of our minds the idea that if things didn't go well, we might well be back in our house after only ten months. Now that three very productive years have passed, we are benefiting greatly from our European residency, and have no pressing reason to return, so it's time to re-sort, re-pack and purge the stuff that we no longer need. (e.g. does Duncan really need those size three sandals? They were too large for him in 2007, but way too small now, so out they go!). We're organizing a big yard sale on the 7th of August at Bruce's place, so that should cut the storage job down to size.

I hope that you are each and all having a great summer!

Off to Canada

We're up early and off to Canada in a couple of hours. I haven't blogged in a while, as I've been way too busy doing stuff to blog or even write in my notebook. It seems to me that this last month has flown by at triple speed.

Bruce has been here for a week already and we've taken in lots of musical activities, and for the last month Maggie and I have had lots of administration to do in preparation for the trip. We got our cards renewed at the maison communale, and I was reminded how cool this country is: you can get burgers right in the town hall!


I'll probably have a chance to write more while waiting in the airport...

Performances, parties and practices

Wow, it's been almost a month since my last blog post! I've been totally involved in other things, and while I've used my blog at times for reviewing priorities and planning I've been doing that other ways. There have been lots of household things to do, choosing and installing light fixtures, building and installing some cabinets, and so on. With the good weather I've been doing quite a bit of container gardening.

So what else has been going on? To sum up, it's been: performances, parties and practices. To begin with performances, the Matthias Goerne / Pierre-Laurent Aimard concert I mentioned in the last post was really very good; Goerne has the chutzpah to bend and stretch his vocal line at will, and his legato passages - expecially when he sings mezza voce - were tremendously affecting. It was obvious why this fellow is so renowned as a lieder interpreter, and while I begin the cycle from a different musical/emotional place, there is lots to consider in his approach.


Next was the first of many little parties. We took an afternoon trip to Lille, just over the border into France, and celebrated Malcolm's birthday with a lunch on the grand place there. It was a four-day weekend, since it was Ascension, so we decided to delay his public birthday celebrations until the following weekend. In the intervening week, I had my first session with a boys' choir in Waterloo, and will be an occasional répétiteur for them, giving some performance help from a vocal soloist's perspective. I also continued with my private voice student, and we made some good progress together.

Then we celebrated Malcolm's birthday with a trip to the climbing gym Terres Neuves, which was really great. Malcolm, his invited guests, his brother, and even I gave it a try, and liked it very much. Our friends Nathalie and Tschi-tschi climb every summer with their kids, and maybe we'll get a chance to go with them sometime soon.


The following week was performances; it started with the BL!NDMAN: Globus show in Amsterdam, which went very well despite a very short rehearsal period, and ended with the spectacle des enfants at the maison communale. Both boys did very well in their performance pieces; Duncan as a storyteller in Emilie Jolie, and Malcolm in a gymnastic demonstration to the music of the Black-Eyed Peas.


Finally this last weekend was very busy. Duncan's circus arts class had their end-of-year performance on Friday afternoon, and then we headed to a Canadian friend's place for a barbeque on their back patio in the gorgeous weather. Imagine my great surprise when in the course of our conversation our hosts casually happened to mention that they had a half-case of Westvleteren! I just about fell off my chair, since this is the last of the seven Trappist beers that I had yet to sample. Just for review, they are:

• Westmalle
• Westvleteren
• Orval
• Aachel
• Chimay
• Rochefort
• La Trappe

Our hosts had all three types and so the four of us shared three bottles around. The favorite seemed to be the double 8, very chocolatey with a complex aroma, but the blond and the trippel 12 were also excellent. This surprise was all the more exciting because of the relative unavailability of these beers: you have to call ahead to ask to reserve the beer, and then drive to the abbey in Vleteren (about two hours away) to pick it up. You have to specify your vehicle licence number, and sign a declaration that you won't resell the beer to anyone else. I was happy to have finally added this beer to my collection!


Our weekend continued with more performances: we left the kids with a babysitter, and drove up to Rotterdam to have dinner and then see several Canadians colleagues perform with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Montreal's brilliant young conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin is music director of this orchestra, and Nathalie Paulin and Brett Polegato sang the roles of the parents in Debussy's L'enfant Prodigue, while Dutch mezzo-soprano Cora Burggraaf performed Poulenc's La voix humaine. We also met one Canadian musician who began his professional career with the Kingston Symphony, and his wife, a Montrealer; they moved to Rotterdam some years ago and are both longtime members of the Rotterdam Phil.


Yesterday I went to Amsterdam to catch the last in a series of Cole Porter recitals to mark the completion of a five-cd boxset that my friend and colleague Wilfried Van den Brande has just finished recording with Dirk Baert and the Nürnberg Symphony. Wilfried was the bass soloist in the St. John Passion we just did this past April, and it was interesting to hear him sing something completely different from the Bach role of Jesus. This music as Dirk and Wilfried presented it revealed Cole Porter's real connection with both the romantic lied of Schubert and Schumann and the modern art of the early twentieth century, and I made note of my favorite ones to look at again later.

Now it's the home stretch before coming back to Canada. Practice is the key word for the rest of this month... First it's conversational German this afternoon with the parent of one of the kids' classmates, and Maggie is giving daily English lessons to Michel, our landlord, to help him prepare for a trip to Papua New Guinea next month. I have to continue polishing my arias for next monday's Cologne audition, and begin rehearsing for the next couple of concerts coming up in August and October. Bruce arrives in three weeks and we hope to get to Paris to see his teacher prior to our leaving for Canada on the 29th of June, so there are alarmingly few days left to get things done.

A bientot!