Planning ahead

Well it's been a busy day. I received confirmation yesterday that I will be doing the Bach Christmas Oratorio in Toronto this December, on the 4th and 5th, with Pax Christi. Howard Dyck is conducting, since Stephanie Martin is on sabbatical, and it will be my first time working with this very well-respected musician and conductor. I'm very pleased.

Then this morning I got an email about a concert, a Faure Requiem and a new work, here in Belgium. It's good to have people contacting you instead of the other way around! Such confirmations always inspire me to keep up with my audition calls. I'm trying to arrange something with Opera Lille, a mere hour and a half away, and planning another trip to Paris soon, while researching other concert organizations in Cologne; while in the area for my audition next month I should try to take advantage of the time there, and sing for someone else if I can.

In the meantime I'm also practicing for the next BL!INDMAN concert in Amsterdam, and indeed, practicing my guitar, as I will need to perform in a Phillip Glass piece as a musician-guitarist, not just as a singer! While I studied as an brass instrumentalist, I never really bothered to learn to read guitar music with any fluency, so I do need to prepare. It reminds me of an old joke:

Q: How do you make a pianist play more quietly? A: Take away his music.
Q: How do you make a guitarist play more quietly? A: Put his music in front of him.

Tomorrow Peter and I are going to see the Matthias Goerne / Pierre-Laurent Aimard concert of Die schöne Müllerin at the BOZAR here in Brussels. I'm really looking forward to seeing someone else do this cycle; for all the times I've listened to it, and performed it myself four times, I've never heard anyone else do it live, so it should be quite the revelation.

Our (only) car...

... is a Volkswagen. Like this one, except ours is black.

Yep, we've joined my parents, my sister, and my mentor in the VW club. We couldn't find a beetle cabriolet in our price range, but since the car I learned to drive on was my parents' Rabbit, I've always had a soft spot for little VWs. When we happened to mention to our friend Régine that we were looking for a car, she mentioned that her elderly neighbour was selling his VW Polo. We set up a time to test drive it with the neighbour's son-in-law, and were satisfied with the price, the good maintenance record and the low kilometrage, so we bought it.

Living where we are owning a car seems a luxury, but after two years of car-pooling to work with a very generous colleague, Maggie wants to offer to drive herself, and to have a little more flexibility in when she travels. The boys were treated to a drive to school yesterday, since Maggie and I were going shopping together, and while I cautioned them against thinking that this would be a regular thing, D. assumed that he'd be getting a drive this morning. I swiftly disabused him of that notion, and walked both boys to school and back; we can all use the exercise, and gas isn't cheap here... According to an online archive, two weeks ago the average was $7.18 USD per gallon; that's 5,65 EUR for 3.78 litres, or around 1,50 EUR per litre, or just over $2,00 CAD per litre. With fuel prices that high, it makes sense to get a small car that's good on gas, but also to use it only when needed.

In doing some comparison shopping online I came across this old VW advert, that made me smile.

I'm still waiting to receive my new washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator, etc...