Busy with concerts this week - kitten update - first meeting with Yoshi - new contracts

I wrote in the previous post about Maggie's birthday party in Oostende.  On Sunday afternoon we also had a little visit with Francisco, and a very special person, named Yoshi...

Yoshi is a four year old neutered male border collie.  He has been through obedience training as well as agility training, which he really enjoyed.  He is extremely responsive and attentive, and loves to walk and run and chase a tennis ball.

His "human" Francisco is a single dad, and while he and Yoshi got along very well, recently his work schedule has changed so now he has to travel a lot more often that before.  His two teenaged children are quite busy with their own interests and don't seem to be able to handle the responsibility of being a border collie human, so he has been trying to find a good family to adopt Yoshi.

A mutual friend of ours had heard that we were looking for a border collie, and put us in touch back in February.  At that time Francisco had given his kids an ultimatum: spend more time with Yoshi or accept that he will be given up for adoption.  They responded initially, and we thought that Francisco had "cold feet", so we forgot about the whole idea.  But apparently the kids soon returned to their old habits, and while we were in Oostende he sent me another text, and we arranged to meet Yoshi for the first time on Maggie's birthday.

He's really a lovely dog, much the same colouration as Rosebud, our old dog, but a little smaller.  He is very friendly, and is used to cats, and shows absolutely no stress reaction to other dogs, which is very encouraging; he's obviously been very well socialised.  When out on a walk he responds to commands to sit and stay, even from some distance away, and doesn't pull on a leash.  I can see by just a couple of interactions that he is going to be very easy to work with.  Over the two hours he was with us on Sunday, he never made a sound; no barking, even in the presence of other dogs, even extremely aggressive dogs that were barking at us from the other side of fences.  We did have to discourage him from chasing the chickens, especially Beaker (the large black one), so if he does come to live with us, that's something we will have to work out.  Probably it's just his instinct to herd the livestock.  The kittens weren't freaked out by him; they are young enough to be curious about everyone and everything that comes into the house, so I'm not worried about that.

At the moment it looks like we will take him for a trial period on this coming Wednesday, and keep him for a couple of weeks.  I have to work out the details, and I don't want to get too excited about it until it happens, just in case Francisco changes his mind again.  It's a delicate thing.  I can only imagine what it must be like for a couple waiting to adopt a child!

rehearsing with Isabelle, Jean-Luc, Catherine and Rita

This last week I have been really swamped with rehearsals, both by myself here at home, and with others.  The madrigals concert is necessitating a ton of rehearsing as the music is both complex and totally exposed.  The harmonies are wonderful but very transparent and exacting, so getting the right vocal blend is really important.  We've had some additional rehearsals that have been added at the last minute, on Friday, and then another tomorrow evening, and then a general rehearsal on Monday.  The theorbist/lutenist Jean-Luc Impe and his wife Catherine on viol de gamba are really wonderful colleagues and excellent players.  I'm happy to have met them and hope that it will lead to other collaborations.

More urgent is tomorrow's Bach concert at Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg.  Julius Stenzel offered me this concert on fairly short notice, and when I glanced at the scores initially, I wasn't worried about preparing for the concert, as it seemed there was only a two and a half page arioso for bass in the one, and a two page recit in the other.

HOWEVER that is not the case at all: in the Cantata BWV 71 Gott ist mein König there is a notation at the very beginning of the first movement: "Divisi a due cori".  This is followed by alternating sections with the notation "coro senza ripieni" and "coro pleno" that recur in movements 1, 3, and 7.

You might thing that this means that there the chorus is divided into two parts, as is the case in the Matthäuspassion.  You would unfortunately be wrong... those long extended choral sections that are marked "senza ripieni" are to be sung by the solo voices!  This is something that I didn't realise until earlier this week, so that has meant that instead of a few pages to learn, I now have reams of very challenging Bach music to cram into my brain at short notice.  This afternoon is the main rehearsal so I have my fingers crossed that it will work.

The cats have been around during my operatic yowling and they don't seem to be fussed by the loud singing; they are usually lounging around sleeping while I am practicing.  They are celebrating their five-month birthday today, and are getting bigger; we took them to the vet this Wednesday and had Bonnie tested for a bacterial infection, as her litter box product didn't look entirely normal.  She is on an oral antibiotic for a week to see if that clears things up.  The vet showed me a trick for holding her by the scruff of the neck to relax her so that she'll take the eyedropper of liquid antibiotic, and amazingly it works!  She goes completely relaxed and doesn't try to argue with the eyedropper, or my hands, and that is a good thing as her kitten claws are razor-sharp.  While at the vet we have made appointments for their sterilisation for next Wednesday.  This was one of the conditions of adoption, and five months is a little early but not at all dangerous for them.  Two kittens is already more than enough, thank you very much.

In new contract news, I have just heard that they are adding two more performances of the Johannespassion in Amsterdam, bringing the total up to four (three in Amsterdam plus one in the Canary Islands).  That is marvellous news both artistically and financially, so I am really pleased.

Secondly I was recommended by Julius to a Chamber Music festival that is happening the second weekend of November in Brussels.  I Cambristi is an association of professional and high-level amateur chamber musicians based in Brussels with partner organisations in Milan, Geneva, and Lille.  They run a yearlong concert series, and also hold an annual masterclass.  This year the organiser has a number of singers signed up for the masterclasses and so he needed a voice teacher.  Julius from the Minimes suggested me to the director, and he called me yesterday to offer me the job.

It's going to be an interesting challenge for me, as I have never taught this many students at once, and also the longest lesson I have given has been a little under an hour.  In this case I will have to teach much of the afternoon on Saturday and nearly all of Sunday.  Fortunately the students are all adults, and they will have their pianists with them, so I don't need to fuddle my way through trying to pretend that I know how to play piano accompaniment.  However my Baroque interpretation masterclass at Queen's was a fantastic experience, and the two times that I adjudicated and gave coaching at the AMIS festival at the International School of Brussels was also energising, so I am excited to try this new challenge.  As well I am hoping to get some private students for my own teaching practice, and as I will be introduced to a number of Brussels-based singing students there is a good chance that one or more of them might click with my approach.  It will be great to pass on to others the things that I have learned from Bruce, and from Pierre Fleta, and also all of the ways of approaching singing that I've gleaned from the many conductors and coaches that I've worked with over the years.

One little drawback is that because the masterclasses start on Saturday afternoon the 10th, I will have to cut my trip to Tuscany short by a day.  I have had my flight ticket to Rome for a few weeks; the plan was to fly down on the 3rd November, meet my neighbour Christophe on the morning of the 4th,  and drive the 250 km back to San Vincenti, where the family house is located.  Then we would carry out the olive harvest from Monday the 5th until Friday the 9th.  Late on the 9th or on the 10th we would take the harvested olives to the plant for pressing and bottling of the oil, and then he and I would drive back together.  But instead I have bought an afternoon ticket on Friday the 9th, to be back here in the late afternoon.  I need a good night's sleep before I go teach on Saturday and Sunday.  So I had to buy a return ticket; fortunately it only cost 56 EUR, so that's not going to break the bank, and the masterclasses pay a good fee.

This weekend Maggie is out at the Edwardses looking after the kids while Lawrence goes to France for an ultra-marathon, and Tiffany is in California visiting her mother all month.  Malcolm stayed in Wilrijk for a jam session with some friends, so Duncan and I continued our film night series, which began a couple of weeks ago with 1979's Alien.

Last night we watched the Coen Brothers' 1998 The Big Lebowski, more or less on its 20th anniversary.  Next up: 1993's Tombstone.  Val Kilmer's portrayal of Doc Holliday was a career highlight; I think he was robbed of an Oscar nomination that year...