What a month it has been. The dust, both emotional and literal, is finally starting to settle, and so I am able to take a moment and write something down. My apologies in advance if it is too long a post...
When last we wrote I was in Vancouver... I made it back without incident. Westjet prices seem to me to be unreasonably high - it cost me much more to fly from Vancouver to Toronto than it did to fly from Brussels to Frankfurt and then Toronto! - and they don't serve more than a tiny refreshment, but I opted to buy a sandwich which wasn't too bad, and rather than watching pay-per-view movies decided to work on reviewing my scores instead, while listening to recordings of coachings and rehearsals.
I think if I had one bit of advice for young singers it would be to record every single lesson, every single coaching; every rehearsal. I now have a wealth of audio files of lessons with Bruce going back at least five years, and coachings with Don Tarnawski and Peter Tomek going back nearly that far. There is only so much that one can do, stopping to write things down in the moment, and the coach or teacher has to choose which things to emphasize in any given session, otherwise one would never get through the piece, so listening to oneself later on allows for one to really hear what is working and what isn't. Frequently now I don't write much on the score at all during the preliminary coaching, but then when I sit down with a pencil and the recording, a day or two later, I can review and annotate every little decision that we made during the rehearsal. It means that I can learn things much faster, and it also means that I consolidate what we did later on my own, and reduce unnecessary repetition for the coach. I hate wasting people's time, so I like to review on my own, to get the maximum results from the minimum of time, money, effort and so on. It means that when we sit down for a subsequent coaching I don't have to be reminded of what we talked about the last time, and I believe it helps the ongoing relationship with the coach, as they feel that I am listening and integrating what we did before, so there is much less rework.
I am very glad to have those archival recordings of coachings with Peter Tomek as well, as he has just announced that he is leaving La Monnaie to become the head of the opera studio there at the Staatsoper Berlin. This is wonderful news for him as he is a talented conductor, a fantastic musician, and will be able to work wonders with the young singers that he will have regular, ongoing access to. But selfishly it is a sad day for me, as I have been spoiled to have him right in Brussels, both for coachings but also as a collaborative pianist in recital and also as a conductor in opera productions here. Together with Don Tarnawski here in Toronto he has coached me on the major Bach pieces, on Le Nozze di Figaro, the roles of Papageno and Valentin plus many other concert pieces like Carmina Burana, the Creation and so on. But we have been talking about continuing things, and branching out into new projects in Germany can only be a good thing for him. We still have future collaborations in store, and who is to say that our lieder programme can't be done in Vienna and Berlin as well as in Brussels? I am hopeful, and my friend David Miller is still in Brussels, as are other good coaches, and Don is still here in Toronto, as is Bruce, so I will make do.
The concert with Jurgen Petrenko in Toronto a couple of weeks ago was very satisfying; the Talisker players are excellent, and 'cellist Rachel Pomedli played a beautiful solo prior to our duet in the Haydn Missa in Tempore Belli. I look forward to hearing the recording when Jurgen is finished mastering it. As well it was nice to sing with tenor Jamie McLennan again; the last time was I think was a Messiah or a B-minor mass in Kingston, many years ago. The Handel Dettingen Te Deum also had lots for me, including a "Vouchsafe, O Lord" that was lyrical and entreating; as I have explained before, in Handel's Messiah, he gives the bass the voice of thunderous prophecy almost entirely, leaving the beautiful long lyrical moments for other voices. It was great to sing this sweet baritone part for a change; I have the feeling it might become part of my more permanent repertoire.
Once Jurgen's concert was out of the way I could apply myself with vigour to the house at 26 Endean. I must say that it was one of the most difficult, stressful and exhausting ten days of my life so far. Sorting through items that had been kept in the main living area of the house, and therefore displayed and used by the tenants wasn't the hard part; these have been visible during periodic visits and so have few nostalgic connotations. Nor was it difficult, except logistically, to sell or give away items of furniture that we knew we would no longer need, like bunk beds or cribs.
The tough part was unpacking items that were from the earlier past, from our Sharbot Lake house, or Logan Avenue, and that had been kept out of sight for many years, and trying to imagine if they were important to save or to donate. It seems completely irrational to me but I was touched by mundane items like bed sheets; some of these I recalled being on the bed in Sharbot Lake that Malcolm and Maggie fell asleep together in, the first few days after they came home from the hospital. Others made me remember Maggie and Duncan and Malcolm together on the morning of Duncan's birth. While our tenants used some of them, many I think stayed packed away in the large Rubbermaid bins that Maggie put them in during the summer of 2007. Now that Bruce has been kind enough to offer his front room as a home for our queen-sized bed and a few items of furniture that we have reserved, I hope that the best that I reserved will get an airing out and be used again, either during our visits or when he has other guests.
As challenging as it was to move items to Bruce's they represent only a small part of the things that were in the house. As I wrote on Facebook Monday, the day before the sale closed: "Roughly twenty Value Village bins of donations, six Craigslist transactions, four pickup truck loads of junk, one storage container of "to keep" and a very generous Bruce's front bedroom of "to set up as home" later, the cleaner was in this afternoon, I went to the bank and I saw the lawyer, and with caution, I am ready to declare, ladies and gentlemen, that we are done... tomorrow seems a long ways away."
There was a lot of reaction from friends and family and colleagues on Facebook. Several people commented on my post, sharing memories they had of good times in that house. I responded: "It has been an emotional process. Duncan's birth in the front bedroom while Eric Wilding and Kareena Wilding stayed downstairs and took care of Malcolm was a very special thing. We felt very connected to this house and to our neighbourhood, and we had a great talk on Sunday evening [with some of our neighbours], about the many parades, parties, barbeques and the like. One memory that I had forgotten was the night of the blackout in August 2003: The whole neighbourhood was outside, and by some miracle Greta Borick and David Cunningham, Steve McAvoy and Tracy L Teeple were in town, so we struck up a big jam session, with Cinders from down the block on double bass, reading our 'cello sheet music from a stand while wearing a Petzel headlamp. The fun we had decorating the boys' room as a tent, the many dinners we cooked and enjoyed with family and friends, the one Christmas that my Grandmother Helen stayed in Toronto, so that my parents and sisters and grandmother came to our house for the big event. The time Bruce and I lit the front porch on fire with a smoldering cigar... there's a big blog post coming on this whole process, as soon as I have enough time to write it."
So that's what I'm doing now. As it happened, once I had moved everything out, cleaned the place, and handed off the key to the realtor, my work wasn't actually over. One thing that I didn't make public except to a few people was the disconcerting news that I had received from the lawyer about a week before closing, that might easily have put the kibosh on the whole deal...
To try to explain, there are expenses, commissions, taxes, penalties, etc. that must be paid off when a house is sold. Normally when one sells a house they live in there is no issue, but the story is different if one is not resident in Canada. Being non-residents we understood that for various tax reasons 25% of the sale value of the house would be held in trust by the lawyer upon closing, until all tax assessments had been paid. It makes sense: this is a way for the government to ensure that their capital gains taxes are collected; without such a hold-back a non-resident could theoretically sell a property and then leave without paying the capital gains tax, and the government would never get their pound of flesh.
... or was it? The bank teller who processed the cheque that I gave to the lawyer misread what I had written on it, and so I went online the day after the sale to make sure that the mortgage was discharged and discovered to my horror that our chequing account was sixty-thousand dollars overdrawn. Can you imagine? I certainly irrigated my sinuses with coffee in that moment. What had happened was that someone read my "1" as a "7", and so despite my having written it out longhand, they had entered it incorrectly... I had to write another cheque, let the first one bounce, and grit my teeth.
But never mind, everything is now resolved, and I can start to think about putting Bruce's front bedroom in order. But before that, organizing and itemizing everything for the accountant so that everything can be processed, and the lawyer can release the funds to us that he is holding in trust. Still lots of paperwork and filing to come.
But enough about real estate. Down in Kingston last week immediately following the sale, I began with some rehearsals with Dina for our MidAtlantic concert. We had already had a go at the familiar European pieces of Mahler and Berlioz and Schumann the week before, but this time we started with the Canadian pieces. They are fantastic! Gena Branscombe grabbed me right away; she was born in Picton, Ontario in 1881, and she studied first in Chicago and in Walla Walla, Washington (!) before heading to Berlin to study with Engelbert Humperdinck for a year. (I must briefly interject to say how excited I am to use "Walla Walla Washington" and "Humperdinck" legitimately in the same sentence. That gets me my next Vaudeville merit badge, thank you, Gena.)
Branscombe settled in New York in 1910, and wrote some very beautiful music, in a distinctive early 20th-century voice; I really like her work, and hope to learn more about it... one of the roles of the Canadian Music Centre (where we will perform on April 25th) is to maintain an archive of Canadian music, so I might look through what they have and see what comes up. They would likely be copies as the originals went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts after Branscombe's death in 1977.
We also have lots of French-Canadian music, by Jean Chatillon and Pierre Mercure, as well as more by women composers like Jean Coulthard, and a piece written for me by Stephanie Martin, which I really like. More on these later, no doubt... Dina and I are meeting at the CMC on Thursday morning so she can put their Bavarian Steingraeber & Söhne piano there through its paces, and we have a lot more rehearsal time scheduled before we do the actual performances.
The other thing I was doing with Dina last week was learning a Stephen Sondheim piece for the Broadway: Take Two concert that Queen's School of Music presented last Friday. This is a revue fundraiser that features the Queen's Orchestra and the voice students, conducted by Professor Gordon Craig and produced by Professor Bruce Kelly... This was called "Take Two" because the same programme was ready to present last spring, but was cancelled because of snowstorms.
Bruce half kills himself to programme, cast and then present this project, usually alternating each year with their Vienna concert, and he also conducted the chorus, wrangled the microphone stands, helped decorate the hall, etc., and even sang a couple of solos. Remember how stressed out Kermit the Frog was on the Muppet Show? Well, that's basically what Bruce does for these Broadway and Vienna evenings, and he does it while teaching all day without more than a short break as well.
But he's up to it: his "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Old Man River" were real showstoppers, but the students sang very well also. It's clear to me as his former student which ones are putting into practice his technique (or should I say Pierre Fleta's?) and which are not. He was very kind in his introduction to the audience of my little song to say a few supportive words about our decision to leave Canada for Europe, to describe some of my recent debuts and successes and also to promote the upcoming Kingston recital with Dina and me. I was very happy to contribute something to the evening, and am very glad it was a success. As it was this performance narrowly dodged the hailstone, as it were, as there were great snowfalls a week before it, and another in the early hours of the next morning following the concert. I try to explain to my Belgian friends that this is what spring looks like in Canada but they don't quite get it...
Speaking of the MidAtlantic concert, you might have noticed the poster on the piano photograph above. I received the artwork from Darren DeGenova, who has been kind enough to accept my commission for a hand-tinted Japanese style linotype print on the "voyage" theme. If you are interested in downloading a hi-res print of the poster, here it is.
I stayed down in Kingston most of last week, and apart from rehearsing with Dina, Bruce and I had a tour of the new Tett Centre complex, and particularly the new Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, the recital hall of which is very nearly ready to open. It is a huge multimillion dollar renovation and building project, and will bring together film, drama, dance, music and other arts in one place. From the Queen's website: "This stunning facility combines a 560 seat concert hall, 100 seat studio theatre, 90 seat film screening room, an art gallery, and spacious teaching and rehearsal rooms for our large ensembles. Created by award-winning architectural firm Snøhetta with concert hall design by Arup Acoustics, the new facility is located on the shores of Lake Ontario."
The amount of natural light in the building is amazing, and the recital hall is physically separated from outside vibration and noise, and acoustically tuneable for specific functions. It is really amazingly beautiful and I cannot wait to hear something presented there. Bruce was very much overcome with emotion as he and his fellow professors have been waiting for years and years for this to get off the ground, and now all the hopes and dreams of a world-class performance space in Kingston are becoming a reality. If you are interested in more information on the centre have a look here.
I also had some visiting time with our friend Gill Fisher, and got to meet her very pleasant son Henry, who is a chef at a private golf club in Toronto, but was visiting her at her home in Kingston. Gill is great friends with Bruce, is always very encouraging to Maggie and me, and reads this blog regularly (Hi Gill!) and it was nice to be seated next to each other to see Bruce sing the Mozart Requiem with the KSO on Sunday.
This was quite a powerful concert, as the first half included Mozart's First Symphony (written when he was only eight years of age), and the overture to The Magic Flute, which was fantastic. The Choral Society and the KSO did a marvellous job with the Requiem, and I knew all the soloists: Bruce had taught the tenor Chris Mayell, and I have performed with him before; Bruce also had taught the mezzo, Jennifer Routhier, who, following the completion of her chemical engineering degree, has decided to continue her musical studies at University of Toronto. Allison Angelo is the wife of Joseph Angelo, a good friend of mine; Joe and I did Nozze together many years ago, but I was happy to hear Allison sing the soprano solos for the first time. Afterwards it was great to catch up a bit with Lisa Draper and Glen Fast, to reminisce about past successes and talk about Glen's future plans now that he is becoming KSO conductor emeritus and handing the baton to his replacement, Evan Mitchell.
Another spot of good luck: the manager of the KSO is a fellow Queen's grad, and she very graciously helped promote MidAtlantic as well, by putting out flyers and posters, and many were picked up: I am hoping that we will have a good turnout in Kingston on April 23rd.
Our own Vienna operetta concert is coming up next Wednesday in Markham with Kerry Stratton and the Toronto Concert Orchestra. I haven't sung with Allison Cecilia Arends since one short opera excerpts concert four or five years past, and have never done duets with her but I am meeting her this weekend and so we should be in great shape. Likewise I haven't seen Kerry since the Brahms Requiem back in the fall of 2007, very early on in the unfolding of our European adventure, so it will be good to sing with him again.
Okay, that's about it for this long and involved month, condensed (well, semi-condensed) for my blog. Hasten, spring!
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