Blog from the airport

I'm back home now, and settling in, although the jet lag is killer this time. It's been great to spend time with Maggie and the boys over the last day or two. Here's a post from Toronto airport, written two days ago.

tuesday feb 23 17h
Here's a couple photos from the times when I wasn't auditioning, coaching, rehearsing or performing over the last two weeks in Canada. There really weren't very many still moments… of course I stayed in touch with Maggie by video link and also telephone on a daily basis, and since the kids were on holiday this past week I got a chance to speak quite a bit with them, but the rest of the time was very busy.

Friday afternoon I sang an audition with Opera Hamilton, and then that evening I had my first glimmer of recreation. What do opera singers do when they need to relax? Go see a Sondheim musical of course! Bruce and I went to see a new production of Stephen Sondheim's show "Assassins" at the Theatre Centre on Queen Street West. Graham Abbey played the guy in the dirty Santa Claus suit, and his eleven seasons with Stratford stood him in good stead: his monologues were mesmerizing, a high point in an altogether remarkable show. Wow!


We talked with Graham afterwards, and he was happy to see Bruce again, and me; Maggie and I met him in his last season at Stratford, when he starred in "The Lark" opposite Amanda Plummer. The son of a former supreme court justice, Graham was actually a law student at Queen's when he studied singing and acting on the side, and he pointed out several times that it was in part because of Bruce's support and encouragement that he decided to pursue acting as his profession. Good thing he did! Right now he's working in the CBC series "The Border", and he also plays opposite Woody Harrelson in the new feature film "Defendor", in theatres now. He's specialized a bit in dramatic parts but he has a great singing voice, so who knows what he'll be doing next?

Saturday was also busy, preparing for the Broadway show, and I spent a good chunk of time rehearsing. I was really thrilled to have a very large contingent of supporters there, so much so that my extended family members in the audience numbered in the teens! This is such a huge change from many other times when I've known no-one in the house, especially in European performances. The soprano soloist was a lot of fun to act with, and the choir was well rehearsed, so by all accounts it was an entertaining evening.

Then Sunday I had an audition and meeting for Tapestry Opera, and then I really felt like I had some time off and could afford to relax a little bit… The sun was very bright and warm, and so Bruce and I had a little drink and a cigar on the back porch, just like old times!


Monday I did some organizing and packing, and had a visit with my banker; then in the afternoon John MacMaster, Bruce and I socialized a bit with Andrew Ager, the musician and composer that I had sung with earlier in the week. After a nice cigar, some red wine, a tart a l'oignon and conversation, it was a fairly early night.

It snowed quite heavily yesterday evening, and so today was a bit messy to get around on foot. I had another bank meeting to finish up some business, shopped for some last-minute things to take back to Brussels and had lunch. Then I finished packing, spent an hour working with Don on a new french aria, and headed up to the airport to leave.

To my great surprise terminal one was completely deserted this afternoon… even though I was only two and a half hours early there was no line at all at the check-in, and no line at security! I asked the security staff, and they told me that tuesday afternoons are always an extremely quiet day, with my Jet Airways flight being the only transatlantic flight. Mental note to self to fly on Tuesdays!

17h30
I took a little break to get a little snack; I had lunch at 12h, but since the flight doesn't leave until 18h45, I know there won't be likely be much to eat until 20h, so I took a little trip over to the cafe, and had some quite good sushi (it's very cheap and good in Canada compared to Europe) and an Alexander Keith's (I can drink Chimay at home anytime). While finishing up I noticed the elegant uniforms of the Swiss women's downhill Olympic team, sitting nearby, and struck up a conversation with the coach who was ordering at the bar next to me. I commented on how they were leaving early, and he told me that their discipline was already over, so they were heading home, but that they had enjoyed Whistler very much.

One of his athletes had missed a medal in her event by 1/10th of a second, but the coach was philosophical about it, saying that that was how her race had gone that particular day. I mentioned that I was an opera singer, and that I could relate a little bit; both olympic athletes and operatic singers train for years for a specific moment, be it a qualifying run, a world cup final or an olympic competition for them, or and audition or a big performance for us, and neither can say for sure if we'll have that extra little magical edge that particular day. He smiled and agreed that it's a great experience just to be competing in an olympics, something that so many people will never enjoy.

So I'm back into training mode myself, getting ready for my first St. John Passion. It's no olympics, but it's certainly a welcome artistic, emotional and technical challenge...

A night in Vienna

On the left is a promotional image from the Queen's School of Music "Night in Vienna" that was produced by Queen's School of Music this past weekend.

The performances were by students, faculty and alumni who returned to support their alma mater, and their superb work was very well received. Originally concieved by Bruce Kelly and Gordon Craig in 2003 as an event to raise funds for a new grand piano, the event has returned to Grant Hall on the Queen's campus on two occasions since then. The Austrian embassy provided a large Austrian flag, there were dancers from a local studio performing Viennese waltzes, and the whole evening was filled with music, laughter, fizzy wine and of course, sachertorte.

Bruce was doing triple duty as producer, vocal soloist, and sometime conductor, and the extra work didn't seem to slow him down at all: his performances were great. How lucky Queen's is to have him!

I was one of the surprise guest performers of the evening, picked out of the crowd to perform a viennese operetta aria at a moments' notice. It was great to sing with Dina again, and it makes me look forward even more strongly to our next recital of Die Schöne Müllerin in 2011. Dina and I surprised quite a few people in attendance with our operetta piece, and I've already been approached for more work because of it. One never knows who might be in the audience, so as Dina once told me, it always pays to prepare for a concert as if you were doing so for the prime minister.

Tonight we are doing a mardi gras opera gala at St. James, and I just sang an audition as a sort of warm-up. Tomorrow there is some rehearsing with Caroline Davidson and David Murrell, the soprano and pianist for the Mississauga concert that is coming up. It's going to be a busy few days from now until my departure.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Good concert last night

The concert last night was fun, and Andrew played very well... interestingly I met an older gentleman from Belleville who had come down on the train to hear the concert, and he actually owns a 78 rpm recording of "O Richard, O mon Roi", by Gretry, and says he used to listen to it all the time as a kid. Strange coincidence, isn't it? It was great to see some old friends and colleagues who also attended, and I really enjoyed myself.

Now it's off to Kingston; Bruce is producing "A night in Vienna" in Grant Hall as a benefit for the school of Music, and Gordon Craig is directing. Their first performance was last night, and by all accounts it was brilliant. It promises to be very glamourous evening again tonight.

I've had success scheduling two more opera auditions, so it looks like this two weeks is going to be a very, very busy but productive one. Bon weekend!

Cathedral Church of St. James

Today is an off day, and so I'm relaxing and charging up the batteries for the next week or so. I've had two rehearsals with Andrew Ager for tomorrow's concert, and we are in good shape for "The French Connection", our concert of French and Belgian music. The Cathedral is a great venue for singing, and while much of our shared music will be performed with Andrew on the piano, he will also accompany me on the organ, as well as presenting a very exciting Widor symphony.

Andrew is quite talented at creating the effect of an orchestra with the four-manual instrument at St. James, and I'm looking forward to presenting with him an opera aria by André Modeste Grétry, a famous 18th-century Liégois, celebrated in his time as "the Belgian Mozart". It should be quite dramatic!


At the same time I'm getting ready for the Broadway review show next weekend at the Living Arts Centre... that's going to be a completely different type of show, something that I don't do much of these days, but since it's "golden age" broadway, it's real singing. Then there's the St. John Passion to coach, and other projects to prepare for; I have another audition at the ZBF agency in Cologne in later March, and I need to keep my audition arias in shape, not to mention practicing my spoken German if I want to demonstrate that I speak it, if only a little (they are sticky about that thing in Germany houses).

Speaking of auditions, I have had another frustrating failure of technology: I had an audition date set for me here in Toronto, but for some reason the emails never made it through to me, perhaps because of some sort of security issue with Sympatico, and so I never showed up for my scheduled audition! GAAAH!

The director suspected there was a problem, so she called me to make other arrangements, and asked me to send them some recordings, but it's really too bad, since each time I miss one of these messages, it delays the whole auditioning (and more importantly the HIRING!) process by another six months to a year I'm seriously considering trying something a little more dependable, such as jungle drums or smoke signals, or even carrier pigeon!

On that note, here's a little film that my parents sent me on the robust nature of older technologies.

In Toronto...

... but two days late. Why?

Tuesday night Duncan was sick and so we kept him home with us, and by Thursday afternoon, Malcolm and I were sick too... by the evening it was clear that I wasn't in any shape to travel on friday morning, and the boys would have to stay home from school. I spent a solid hour in conversation with Jet Airways and the TD Travel Centre, and finally a wonderful travel agent named Margaret was able to rebook my flight from Friday morning to Sunday morning, for a very reasonable price.

By yesterday evening the boys were both fine, and Maggie hasn't caught this bug, but I'm a little slower in recovering and so I slept most of the flight, and have eaten very little since Thursday. I actually feel pretty good now, so I should be in good shape for rehearsals this week, and I'm looking forward to a more substantial dinner this evening in good ol' T.O.

I have some auditions already scheduled while I'm back, and more to try to finalize. As for Brussels, it looks like my recent string of Bach concerts in going to continue... the Chapelle des Minimes is interested in having me sing with them either in May or June, so that's quite exciting. I am really quite pleased: this makes the Christmas Oratorio, the St. John Passion, the Hunting Cantata and this new Bach gig, all debut pieces, and all in less than a year. This will also be a Brussels Oratorio debut for me, so I'm quite pleased that my work with Peter Tomek and Don Tarnawski on german diction and Bach interpretation appears to be paying off!

It's nice to be back... it might just be the effects of jet lag but I do think the sun shines brighter here in Canada than in Brussels... that famous watercolour sky is marvellous in Flemish paintings, but there's nothing like the bright clear blue of a Canadian winter sky.

Happy Sunday!

Two new gigs

I mentioned earlier that some more job offers had emerged from my last two concerts; these have been confirmed. The first is the BL!INDMAN Kwadratur#1: Globus concert in Amsterdam in May. This is the first concert in the cycle; I started with the ensemble on the second one, so I'm interested to try out the repertoire of the first.

The second gig is the Bach Cantata BWV 208, commonly called the "Hunting" Cantata, and it will be presented in Antwerp in October by the Flanders Baroque Academie. This cantata will share the programme with the Brandenburg concerto, and performances by an ensemble of hunting horns, which will play outside the church to call us all in for the concert, then play again at the halfway mark. Cantata 208 is most famous for the soprano aria "Sheep may safely graze" but there's lots for me to do also: a recit, two arias and an ensemble: sounds like a lot of fun! Plus I get to sing the part of Pan, so it's bound to be a kick. (If you're interested in more details, the 2010 performance schedule page is here.)

I'm just packing up again for the Canada trip; this will be a short visit but I already have a full slate of performances and some auditions already scheduled, so I'll be busy for sure.