Musical weekend

I have been still struggling with terrible allegies all week, but managed with the aid of multiple sinus rinses and throat gargles, and ibuprofen and ricola candies and long slow warm-ups to make the voice work well enough for yesterday's concert.  I went out for a 14km run in the afternoon on Saturday and sang through the Brahms a few times, and then on Sunday morning had a good 1km swim to get everything moving in advance of the concert at 16h.

Jurgen Petrenko was very happy with the result, and he congratulated me very strongly, and said that he was looking forward to our Elijah very much.  I am too!  My friend the mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender (who played Helen in our La Belle Helene production) and her husband Ali were my guests at the concert, and they were both very complimentary.  Afterwards Beste and I had a drink together and she read through her English dialogue; she's playing the role of the Old Lady in Bernstein's Candide in Banff this summer, and she wanted a native English speaker to have a listen and make a few little suggestions to improve audibility for the spoken text.  It's a very funny role, and I'm sure she's going to have a good time with it.

Then I went over to College and Bathurst to the Monarch pub, to see the band "Guh" play.  My old friends Andrew Henry and Henry Muth are founding members of this group, formed in 1991, out of the ashes of my high school rock band, the Prostetniks.  The last time I was in the same room as these two gentlemen, the Berlin Wall was still standing!  It was wonderful to see them again and enjoy their music, and to meet Henry's wife Kristine, and I hope that maybe we can welcome them to Belgium for a visit, be it musical or just social.

Saturday night I went to Massey Hall to see Bruce Cockburn and his band's final performance of a Canadian tour.  I was really happy to hear a concert in this most famous of Canadian concert halls, and read with interest the many vintage posters on the walls of the downstairs bar.  Beniamino Gigli, who was the teacher of Pierre Fleta (and therefore my artistic great-grandfather in the art of singing) sang there, as did Maria Callas, and many other great opera singers.  It turns out that the hall will close soon, in preparation for a huge multi-million-dollar renovation project.  I was sitting in the upper balcony, on hard wooden fold-down seats that likely date from the original build in 1894; they weren't terribly uncomfortable but the security staff I spoke with after the concert told me that the seating replacement is part of the planned renovation.

I found the concert to be really quite good: Bruce's voice is still exactly as it was, even and powerful and unstrained, even in the upper register.  His guitar playing was perhaps a little less virtuosic than I have heard on records, but he still has an unerring fingerstyle rhythm technique.  The sound was extremely loud though... very heavy in the lower frequencies, with the drums and bass predominant, and Bruce played through a matched set of Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers.  It was so loud that for most of the concert I had my fingers in my ears, and I could still hear absolutely everything clearly.  I guess that I am just not used to amplified music these days; my ear is much more attuned to orchestras and opera singers, working without amplification.

Today in Toronto it is sunny and warm, but I will take today to rest and relax prior to returning to running tomorrow.  I've signed up for the Barrie 15km trail race on Saturday, and will take the opportunity to visit my uncle Jeff and his family in Barrie, and also to get together with my cousin Patrick and his girlfriend Nicole.  Bruce is going to be support crew for that race so I'll have someone cheering me on for the first trail race of the year...