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.