entertaining weekend

This past weekend was a busy one. Friday was a journée pedagogique, so the boys were home, and after we tidied things up, completed homework, and I did some rehearsing, we took off for the cinema and saw Tron: Legacy. The boys knew the original film, and were quite excited to see the sequel. I thought it was ok; more about special effects than story. It was a little bit odd as a film: Jeff Bridges was good as the older version of Kevin Flynn, but the dialogue was a bit wooden; he is obviously a talented actor, but his performance here was sort of a "Big Lebowski visits the Matrix". But then, that's just my opinion, man...


Duncan's regular rugby practice was cancelled on Saturday, but he was to have been part of the honour guard for a big UNICEF international tournament. The weather didn't cooperate; it was below zero, with some snow, so the field was frozen, and they had to relocate to an artificial turf stadium, and his age group was excused. It was just as well, because the day was a bit more relaxed. We all went to Holy Trinity Anglican in the late afternoon for a complete performance of Messiah. I was happy to sing it again, and for the first time in Europe; with three performances coming up in April I wanted to try out a few different things vocally. It was a pleasure also to hear some of the lesser-known parts, since they performed it complete, and the church is really a beautiful spot to sing in, with a live but not excessively reverberant acoustic.

Yesterday we went to St. Andrew's as usual, where the boys performed the introit as part of the junior choir. The music was particularly beautiful yesterday; Penni Clarke - a fellow Canadian from Newfoundland - is the music director, and she and her husband Damien were excited to have their new daughter baptised, so the choir did something a little different. Damien's family are francophone, and so the choir's anthem was the very lovely Fauré piece Cantique de Jean Racine. The Rev. Andrew Gardner even went so far as to deliver the words of the baptismal service en français, so I'm sure that the extended family felt included, and it felt a little bit Canadian to us to have both of our official languages in one service.


Maggie and I had gone shopping earlier that morning in preparation for a visit from Bryan and Kiana and their kids, so when we got home we immediately started preparing dinner. Everyone cooks in this family, so while Duncan rolled up his sleeves and was put to work at the table to french-cut a mess of excellent green beans, Malcolm was the sous chef for our signature lemon zest/rosemary olive oil roast potatoes.


(I can't help crowing a little about my most recent find: notice the orange cocotte in the photo above; it is a Cousances, of enamel on cast iron, made in france; 5 euros at the Kringwinkel, which is kind of the Flemish Value Village. That sure beats 130 EUR for a new Le Creuset one.) I did the leg of lamb with slivered garlic, and a croute of paprika bread crumbs, chopped black olives, chopped rosemary and thyme, dijon mustard and a little olive oil. Dessert was moka ice cream for the kids and fresh pineapple, and the grown-ups had a cheese plate, and a little digestif. I think we started eating around three, and finished around eight o'clock, very civilized.

Now this week coming up is one of continued preparation. I've signed up for an intensive German course with the Goethe institut here in Brussels, and that will occupy three-and-a-half hours each morning, monday to friday, for three weeks. Sounds a bit tough, but after all the work I've done on my sung German, it's about time that I bring my spoken German up to par, in preparation for auditioning further in Germany, and to have a closer connection with German-speaking friends and colleagues.

Happy last day of January, and to all family and friends in Ontario, I hear that you're getting some serious snow over the next couple of days. Please drive safely!

Robert Burns

This past weekend was a lot of fun. Yesterday was the 25th, and the commemoration of Robert Burns's birthday on that day in 1759... we've celebrated this unofficial Scottish national day ourselves many times, but this past Saturday we went to St. Andrews for the Burns Supper, and what a supper it was! Maggie and I got dressed up, she in her Rose family kilt that she sewed herself some time ago, and I in my Queen's University tartan tie, and left the kids with a babysitter.

There were kir royales in the upstairs room (not totally Scottish but I'm sure Robbie would have approved) where the delicious smells wafting up from the kitchen piqued our interest and our appetites, and then the piper piped us down for the meal. Haggis, in the traditional and vegetarian varieties, bashed neeps (imported from Scotland, since yellow turnips can't be found in the groceries here) and mashed taties made sure we were satisfied, but there there was also a scotch broth to begin and then a trifle to finish, and good wine, and even some whisky for the toast to the haggis itself. We had Burns songs from three different singers, excellent speeches from three different speakers, and lots of good conversation with our table-mates. Quite a fun time, and one I'd like to make time for again. Who knows, I might even have to learn something to recite for next year?

Sunday in the morning service the boys sang in the junior choir, which did a great job on a klesmer-ish piece, with clapping and dancing and singing. They seem to enjoy the choir, and I think that's great, because they are learning to sing in public, to be organized in rehearsal, to follow a conductor, and so on. Malcolm has rehearsals for a music academy concert of Beatles music that is coming up in a couple of weeks, so with church choir, solfège, rehearsal, and his flute lessons he's certainly jumped into music with both feet this year. I have been as restrained as I can be, to try not to push him, but he has taken the responsibility upon himself, and I haven't had to remind him at all to do his regular practice.

Duncan is quite insistent that he do a proper solfège course himself next year, because he feels a bit ripped off that he has to wait to do an instrument; the private music lessons are essentially free, but only if the children do two hours of theory a week, and that just wouldn't work with our schedule this year, given his rugby commitments. I think I will take the advice of his current music/dance teacher, and put him into theatre arts next year.

Another thing we did this past weekend was go to the "portes ouvertes" day at the Athénée Royal Jean Absil, in the next commune to the north and east of us. Belgian students have 12 years of schooling prior to university/technical school, but rather than the variety of divisions in Canada (K-6, K-8, 7-8, K-12) here it is uniformly split into six years of primary and six years of secondary. This June, Malcolm will finish the 6eme primaire and have to choose a secondary school.

The Jean Absil school is the second one that he has toured, and he seems to like it better than the first one he saw. At Absil all students begin with the same programme in 1st year, and then as they progress, they can choose differing concentrations as their interests dictate. There are three possible streams in second year: "Latines", "Modernes" and "Artistiques", and by third and fourth year there are five: "Scientifiques", "Sciences Latin", "Latin Grec", "Economiques" and "Artistiques". Finally in the last two years there are ten different specializations. Of course it is way too early to think about those specializations yet, but it's nice to know about what is ahead for him.

Malcolm has done exceptionally well in his primary school, despite - or perhaps because of - his lack of a solid base in the Belgian French system. He has had to fight his way through, and has developed some great tools for organization and discipline because of it. Still, his present school is very traditional in its focus, and so he is looking forward to having more art and music in his regular programme. While he does well in grammar and science and is interested in classics (mythology, logic, philosophy) he seemed keen to substitute the four hours of latin a week for three hours of music and one hour of extra french. The music programme is also quite interesting; the students write, compose, stage and perform an "opera" every year. We have other schools to go visit, but Malcolm seemed to like this one very much, so we shall see if he gets in; it's not guaranteed, so we need to have a few choices on our list.

This coming week will be fairly busy. I've been singing regularly again, and contacting more conductors and agents. Tomorrow night I'm going to the general rehearsal of Parsifal at La Monnaie, and then will see it again with Maggie on Sunday. Saturday I will sing for a fund-raiser at a Candlemas performance of Messiah at Brussels' Holy Trinity. It'll be nice practice for the three Messiahs coming up in April in Flanders. I've also had a few more invitations to sing arrive recently, but I'll let you know more about those later.

I'm feeling quite pleased with how the career is going; I did a rough count, and realize that I gave twenty performances of fifteen different programmes in 2010, most of those in Europe. For the coming eighteen months I have sixteen performances of seven different projects on the books already, including three new role debuts, and two or three more in negotiation. In a difficult time, when everyone is searching for work, I feel quite lucky.

* * *

As an epilogue, here are three interesting products for sale in Belgium. It's always interesting to see how things are marketed, and who is endorsing what. First we have the official beer of the Standard de Liege football team, one of Belgium's most successful clubs. Talk about honestly, football fans need their beer.

Secondly, I'm not really sure what burlesque star Dita Von Teese has to to with Perrier, unless maybe she's "bubbly"...


This last one has to be my favorite:


I always thought the Presbyterian mixture was 50:1, but maybe that was just for outboards run by my father-in-law...

Happy New Year

I see by my last blog post that I haven't written anything since the 23rd of December. In that case, Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! We had a relaxing time over Christmas itself. We had a little drop in at Piers and Gilly's for mulled wine, then came home for our seafood dinner; this time it was fresh pasta with a mexican shrimp sauce, instead of the usual lobster. Then it was time to hang up the stockings and head off to bed.We all must have been good, because Santa was good to us, and we were to each other. There are too many presents to list, but here's a shot of the boys with their knitted hat, mittens and scarf from the aunts Heather and Emily.

The next day we stayed in, and I got to work on the turkey, a fresh one from DelHaize, which turned out very well.

Maggie got in some quilt work, with Kiki's help...

...and we even got in some toboganning, with an outdoor bonfire and Chimay Bleu with cigars with Bryan and Kiana and family. All in all, a very relaxed and enjoyable Christmas.

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Now for the New Year's Eve celebrations. On the 28th we drove to the airport, and left for a very pleasant five days in Vilnius, Lithuania, with our friends Gediminas, Rasa, Austeja and Simonas. As I no doubt have explained in an earlier post, we met them through Malcolm, as Simonas and he were best friends at school, and we quickly got to be good friends with the rest of the family. We saw Rasa nearly every morning before school, and Austeja (now in her last year of secondary school) babysat for us, so she and Duncan are close too. They returned to Vilnius about a year and a half ago, leaving a standing invitation for us to come visit, and we finally took them up on it.

What an interesting country! Lithuania has a long and very storied history, filled with many struggles to defend their independence against invaders. They were the last country in Europe to become Christianized, remaining pagan until the fourteenth century, and were a formidable military power; indeed, in the 15th century, Lithuania became the largest state in Europe. Partitioned in 1795, they endured Russian rule, until gaining independence in 1918. In more modern times they struggled first under German and finally Soviet occupation, until finally regaining their independence in 1990, the first of the former USSR states to do so.

It was quite amazing to walk around this city, exploring the different historical buildings, churches, monuments and so on. The climate and landscape remind me very much of Canada, and it snowed nearly every day we were there. I don't think I've ever seen so many fur coats and hats; I guess when one lives in a country that has such a long cold winter, PETA doesn't get much traction.

We had a great time visiting with the family; getting a great tour with Austeja and Simonas, but also had some serious moments... one particularly affecting trip was to the museum of Genocide Victims, housed in the old headquarters of the NKVD/KGB. It was grim to walk in among the prison cells, see the places where partisans and dissidents were kept, sometimes tortured, and where many had been executed. Exhibits included lots of information about the uprisings, how the partisans hid in the forests and continued their resistance, and the forced deportations to Gulags in the remote north of the USSR. There were examples of surveillance and listening equipment, and many examples of Soviet-era propaganda. It gave us quite a sobering feeling for what life must have been like under Soviet rule.

We also saw some more fun attractions... Gediminas took us for a drive to Trakai, to visit the island castle there, begun in the 14th century. It was quite amazing, and had lots of great museum displays, and reconstructions of the various stages of the castle's construction and restoration. It was a major stronghold during the period of conflict with the Teutonic order, and held a position of great strategic importance.

There is currently a long footbridge across Lake Galvé giving access to the castle, and we were surprised to encounter a wedding party from the country, engaging in their tradition of the groom and groomsmen carrying the bride and bridesmaids across the footbridges.

After our tour we enjoyed cups of broth and baked meat piroshki at a local restaurant, which warmed us up after the cold walk, and we returned back home to Vilnius to Rasa's wonderful meal, which helped us celebrate the arrival of 2011. We finished off the evening with lots of fireworks, including a few of our own; this seems to be a big part of the celebration, as the coloured rockets were exploding above the city as early as eleven p.m., and they continued until at least one in the morning.

The next day we had a very snowy drive to the airport with Gediminas, and we made our farewells, until the next visit.

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Speaking of visitors, we welcomed one ourselves this week, in the person of Carla Dirlikov, a very talented mezzo who was in Belgium to sing Carmen at the Opera Royale de Wallonie this past month. I met Carla in 2003 in Toronto when she sang Carmen for the first time, and I performed the roles of Morales and Zuniga, so it was a nice coincidence to hear that she was strutting her stuff in Liège. We had a nice visit, and hope to see her again next time she's in Belgium.

Today is the last day of vacation for the boys, so when they get back to school on monday, I'll have a chance to do some singing, and get down to audition calling in earnest. I'm fortunate to have received word of two more performances on my schedule; another BL!NDMAN concert in Amsterdam next month, and a fourth Schubert Die Schöne Müllerin in Canada, this one in the spring of 2012. As well I had to turn down an operetta contract because of scheduling conflicts with the Messiah performances this April; it's nice to have more work offers than you can actually fulfill!

I'll sign off with a galette des rois update: this year it was Duncan who found the feve, and got to be king! Happy Epiphany!