Toussaint holiday; concerts finished for the moment; cleaning up around the house

The concerts all went very well.  In particular I was pleased with the Bach concert that we performed on Sunday; these cantatas were virtuosic, and the conductor Thierry Fiévet took ambitiously brisk tempos.  As I explained in my last post, the extent of the solo singing came as a bit of a surprise for all four of the vocal soloists, and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to work a bit with Julius Stenzel during the week before.

A number of the musicians in the Minimes orchestra are also involved in the I cambristi chamber music association, and so they were pleased to hear that I would be doing the voice teaching on the weekend of November 10th and 11th.  I've already received some of the scores and so will be spending my free time next week looking them over in preparation for the lessons.

Immediately after the Sunday performance I went to the house of Rodolphe de Borchgrave, the gentleman who planned the Monteverdi concert, and who would give the spoken commentaries on the madrigals and arias that we would present, so as to provide historical and harmonic context for the audience.  We had a long rehearsal that lasted from 18:30 until well after 21:30, and as both Isabelle (our mezzo-sorprano) and I had given performances that day, we were quite tired.  Fortunately we also were able to schedule another rehearsal on the Monday, and that made us feel much better prepared.

Tuesday morning began with an appointment at the provincial office, where I had a meeting to contest a parking ticket that I had received back in September.  I suspect that this was a strange case of an over-zealous police officer... Our driveway is quite short and narrow, and like most of our neighbours, to load or unload the car we regularly stop in front of the walkway and put the four-way-flashers on.  Care is taken to allow pedestrians to get by on the sidewalk, but also to avoid blocking the road lane.  This is something that happens on our section of roadway several times per day...  On the first Sunday of September I was moving Malcolm to his new kot up in Wilrijk, and I suspect that while he and I were wrestling the bike trailer out of the back of the garage, one of the police came by and ticketed the car.  The situation was probably exacerbated by the fact that the parking lot of the grocery was cordoned off for a big community flea market or brocante, and perhaps the officer thought that I was leaving my car to go browsing the stalls for bargains.

In any case, I managed to show emails to the effect that the car was there because we were moving.  I also showed photographs of other vehicles parked in the same manner, and a copy of the rental contract, as well as a photograph of how I had parked my car.  The good news is that they agreed to let me off with a warning, and so I managed to duck out from under a 67 EUR fine!

In the later afternoon I went into Watermael-Boitsfort for the sound check in the auditorium, and then the evening performance.  This was well-attended, with around 200 seats filled in the 250-capacity hall.  For an opening concert on a Tuesday night in Watermael-Boitsfort, that is a pretty good house.  Maggie and Kiana came to the concert with a new friend, Lucy, who also lives in Wavre; they told me afterwards that they enjoyed the concert very much.  The early part of the programme, consisting of a capella madrigals, went reasonably well, but it was not as polished as the later section, which included later pieces which were more operatic in nature and so were more in keeping with our solo voices.  Another factor which made the second half more secure and interesting was the support by Jean-Luc and Catherine, the instrumentalists.  Rita felt it to be an artistic success; it seems clear that any future presentation of this repertoire will focus more on the late madrigals and even more upon the operas, which I think will be more interesting for both the singers and the audience.

On Wednesday I was quite busy; I took the cats to the veterinarian's office early in the morning, for their sterilisation appointments.  Then I went to the human medical centre for a consultation with the orthopedic specialist who had seen me before, for my sprained ankle.  Happily she gave me the all-clear to start running again, provided that I did so progressively and stopped if there was any discomfort.

At 11h Yoshi the dog arrived for his extended visit... as he was interested in going for a long walk/run, and so was I, it was natural that we would take advantage of the decent weather to go try out a few flat sections of my usual trail.  Around 3km walking and around 2,5km running didn't seem to bother us at all.

At 17h I went to the vet's to pick up the kittens, who seemed a little drowsy from the anaesthetic but none the worse for wear for their operations.  They seemed a little wary of the dog at first, but frankly the dog seems more skittish around the cats than they do around him!  After a day or two Clyde lost all nervousness around Yoshi, and we realised that we have to hide the dog food from the cats, as both of them find it quite irresistible.  Yoshi doesn't seem interested in their cat food; in fact he eats very little, and only in the evening.

Thursday included a drive to Nivelles to make the second attempt at passing the controle technique for the car.  It had previously failed the test because the headlights were misaligned, but the garage up the street had adjusted them for no charge, and I was happy to get that resolved successfully for another year.

This past weekend was the beginning of the Toussaint holiday week, so everyone has been around the house... we've been busy with cooking and tidying and doing yard work outside, and I have been doing some carpentry upstairs in the attic to try to move that along a little bit, so that's why I haven't had the time to write until today.  Duncan had his friend Arthur over for a visit two nights ago, and last night they went back to Watermael-Boitsfort and were planning to do the neighbourhood Hallowe'en cortege, and score some candy.

Maggie left a couple of hours ago to meet our friend Claire in Namur; her birthday present was a fabric shopping date at the fabric market, and so she will be back in the early afternoon.  So that leaves just Malcolm, who at the moment of this writing is still upstairs, perhaps still asleep.  He has cleaned up the workspace in the cellar and has been happily working on his mandolin project all week, with little breaks to help us out.

I am looking ahead to this weekend... my flight to Rome leaves very early on Saturday morning, and I should be near Vatican City by around 10h30.  I am presently planning on going to visit the Vatican Museum, see the Sistine Chapel, and then go visit St. Peter's... after that I might meet Kiana, who arrives in the afternoon.  We'll have to see.  In either case, Christophe and Isabelle are coming into Rome on Sunday morning, and then we'll do some sight-seeing then as well, before Isabelle flies home, and Christophe, Kiana and I drive the 250km to San Vincenti, to start the olive harvest on Monday...