Jøtul wood stove pickup

Today I met Lawrence early and we did a dump run with a bunch of old broken up furniture that he and Tiffany had decided their kids no longer needed.  They have been doing some upgrading as their kids are getting older and they are realising that cribs and child beds are no longer required, and so have been gradually replacing that furniture.

After cleaning those things out and heading to the container park, we came home and had a brief lunch, and then headed to a nearby village to pick up a small reconditioned wood stove.

Several months ago I had the fellow who installed our white enameled wood stove have a look in the attic; there are several unused chimney flues that are accessible from the attic room, and we like the ambiance and radiant heat of a wood fire.  He said that we needed a very small woodstove to avoid over-heating the space, and so when this little Jøtul 602 N woodstove came up on the Facebook marketplace for a very cheap price, I thought I'd grab it.  The 602 N was designed in the late 1930s, which makes it roughly contemporaneous with the house, and it has since become the most popular woodstove in the world.  It's small enough to carry in to a remote cabin in a boat or canoe, so I am sure that the majority of Norwegian cabins have one of these little babies in them.

Now the decision has to be made as to where it's going to be installed: Maggie's sewing studio side, or my office/singing studio side?  Decisions, decisions...

Busy weekend: AMIS music festival, Burns night

This weekend was a bit of a challenge for the Rose-Zadow family... it involved an awful lot of hard work...

Maggie was the head caterer for the Burns Supper fundraiser this year.  The guest list numbered seventy people, so there were many preparations to be done ahead of time.  On Thursday I went to the butcher's shop and picked up five kilogrammes of lamb shoulder and some extra lamb bones for scotch broth, the first course.  I don't know how many kilogrammes of potatoes and yellow turnips were purchased, but I do know that on Friday evening it took a large team of perhaps a dozen people at least an hour to peel and chop them all, and pop them into huge pots of cold water.  While that was going on, other volunteers (including Duncan and Malcolm) led the set up of the church sanctuary; this involved moving all of the heavy oak pews to the very front of the church, pushed together to clear a large open area for the initial reception, and the setting up of a bar to deliver the apertif.  Downstairs in the hall people were busy setting up tables and laying out tablecloths, napkins, cutlery, and hanging tartan and Saltires to decorate the hall.  The soup, potatoes, beans, and turnips are best cooked in boiling water, and the large presentation "chieftan" haggis is heated in the regular oven.  But we also have many of the smaller ordinary haggises, and the fastest way to heat them up is still the microwave method, so we brought in two extra microwaves to supplement the existing one.

Saturday morning was a very early start; I had to be at the International School of Brussels for 7h20, to have an introductory meeting with the rest of the adjudicators, and Maggie very kindly drove me to the school.  This was my third time at the AMIS solo and ensemble musical festival, and this year we had musical performers visiting from international schools in Munich, Madrid, Luxembourg, and other European cities.  There were every type of instrumentalist, but the largest group by far were the vocalists.  I had almost twenty students to listen to, and each one received around fifteen minutes of coaching from me, as well as some written assessments and an evaluation.  There were even a couple of extra musicians who didn't fit into the main groupings of violin, piano, brasses, etc.  There was an accordionist whom the piano teacher bemusedly agreed to hear, and there was also a guitarist, who they gave to the percussionist teacher, to his bewilderment.  I had a break at that time, and offered to help him with that student, which he really appreciated as he knows nothing about the guitar.  I am not of course a classical guitarist but do know the basics of posture, hand position, fingerpicking, and so forth.

There was a wide range of proficiency on view this year, as always.  I do understand that the most important thing for young singers is that they sing something that they connect with emotionally, and then they are likely to practice and learn the piece.  But I have to confess that I find that the pop music pieces and many of the more recent film and musical theatre pieces are useless.  Firstly, the accompaniments are badly written, boring, with little movement or direction, so the accompanist can do very little to support the singer.  Secondly, they are often of a weird range, way too wide, or uninterestingly narrow, so it becomes tiring, or indeed very difficult to sing the pieces well, even for a professional. 

So you can imagine my delight when one girl brought Benjamin Britten's Sally Gardens!  I was over the moon.  I also was lucky to have a Panis Angelicus, and then - wonder of wonders -  Caccini's Amarilli, mia bella, sung by Adam, a boy soprano.

Adam is maybe twelve or thirteen, and I remember him from last year.  He still has a beautiful soprano voice, although it has started to darken and become more mezzo-soprano in range and colour.  He surprised me, because he said that he remembered what I had told him from last year... I had suggested that he slightly exaggerate the rolled "r" in italian as an expressive element.  He explained that it had felt weird last year when I first pointed it out, but now he agreed it was valuable advice,  and he had used it in the preparation of this new piece.  Now that is a smart kid!  It's great to have a student who listens so closely; this year he was able to take one of my new suggestions and immediately put it into practice in the performance.

At the end of the day we three solo voice judges and the choral judge each selected two or three singers each from the day and asked them to sing some excerpts in the large atrium of the school.  Even though I had only just met these young musicians, I still found myself beaming with pride as they sang their bits in front of a large audience.  Teaching is an incredibly rewarding thing, and I felt a very strong sense of satisfaction that I could do a little something to add to their development as performers.

When the festival was over I headed over to the church to help Maggie and Malcolm with some of the last-minute preparations, and to get changed into my Macpherson kilt.  I have put on a couple of kilogrammes back on since I was at my very lightest weight a couple of years ago, and so if I cinch the straps as tight as they will go it actually will fit tight enought to wear.  That is a nice thing, as I love that kilt, and so I am happy to be able to wear it again.

Len and Maggie singing upstairs during the apertif

Burns Supper introductions

piping in the chieftan haggis

listening to the address to the haggis

the excellent kitchen staff

I lent one of my other kilts and one of my kilt jackets to Lawrence, and he was very happy to attend the supper as well.  He explained that one of his first experiences in the catering industry was helping his mother host large Burns Suppers back when he was a teenager, but he hadn't been to one in many years.  As it turns out his mother was catering one that same evening in London, so I'm sure she was happy to hear that he was participating in one here in Brussels.  He had a great time and I saw him deep in many conversations.  There were a great many people whom I had never seen before; these kinds of events are a great opportunity to make new friends.

As master of ceremonies I didn't give a large speech, but in the introduction I did talk a little bit about the history of Scottish-Belgian connections...

Scots have had a disproportionate influence on the creation of the modern world, not least in shaping the history of Belgium and the rest of the “low countries”.  Most obviously we stand (or sit) tonight in a Church of Scotland, here, in Brussels, the capital of Europe.  It has been clear at the very least from the time of the Auld Alliance of 1295, formed between the kingdoms of Scotland and France, that Scotland valued strong connections with mainland Europe, and saw itself as part of a larger European entity.
These connections were not only political, but religious, and, as befits the Scots reputation, economical... the European experiment is a very old and successful one... no one should be surprised that Scots and their descendants have a long history here.

I went on to illustrate these connections by making reference to the little town of Veere in Zeeland, which I blogged about back in 2015.

My emphasis on the long history of Scotland-as-part-of-Europe was echoed in the "Immortal Memory" speech; Jacquelyn MacLennan, a competition lawyer, used that platform to declare that she is one of many who are convinced that leaving Europe is a horrible mistake.  A reporter from Politico magazine was there, and he wrote a piece about our Burns Night, and the impact of Brexit on the Scots population here in Brussels.  He quoted Jacqui, and also quoted me...

https://www.politico.eu/article/for-brussels-scotland-scots-a-last-burns-supper-brexit-european-union/

By the time the dust had settled it was well after midnight.  Malcolm was a tireless worker the whole evening, and Maggie received many compliments for her great job in the kitchen.  (Duncan had stayed home with the dog and cats).  We made our way home and finally got to bed well after two in the morning...

Sunday was therefore a pretty lazy day, although we did head out to the Hammers for a later lunch, and a belated birthday celebration for Kiana.  We had a great time, but spent nearly all of the afternoon indoors as the weather was very wet.  But that didn't stop Osa and Yoshi from running after the tennis balls for as long as they had someone to throw them.  Bryan made sure all of the chickens were away in the coop so that Yoshi would obsessively herd them, but somehow he managed to get inside the coop, even with all of the entrances shut!  I'm not sure how that happened but perhaps he should have been called "Houdini" instead of Yoshi.  Either that, or "Gonzo" after the Muppets character who is completely fascinated with chickens...

Their neighbour Jean-Claude came by for a visit, and we sketched out the plans for a new wall that will divide the large room at the end of the upstairs hallway into two rooms, to be shared by Armani and Kenzo.  I am sure that I can help Bryan with that construction work; it looks to me to be relatively simple.  As well Bryan consulted with me on acoustical insulation; I have already done some research on the subject and so shared some ideas with him.

We made it home fairly early, as Bryan had an early departure to make his usual trek to London.  Malcolm was also looking at a six a.m. departure this morning to get his train back to school, and Maggie and Duncan had to leave a bit before seven a.m. as well.

It was bright and sunny earlier, but now it's bucketing down rain, and so I might forego my usual Monday long run until tomorrow.  My right shoulder is still bothering me, but I am hoping for some news on Wednesday when I see the doctor and we have a look at my NMRI scan from a couple of weeks ago.  But I am feeling well enough to look upstairs and do some planning, to resume my attic renovation. The consultation with Bryan and Jean-Claude has made me itch a bit to get moving on that work.

Lastly, I just received the airline tickets from the International Bach Festival in the Canary Islands... Maggie and I are going to travel together on the 15th April, and come back late on the 19th of April.  It's going to be a lovely chance for her to have a little holiday, and for me to sing, and we are both really looking forward to it!

Amazon screws up; running poetry

I had a funny experience with Amazon.de over the holidays.  Ordinarily my trail shoes wear out a bit after the 600 km mark, so as my grey ones were pushing 650 and getting a bit slippy, I started searching for the best price for a replacement pair online in early December.

There is no Belgian Amazon, but Amazon.de offers free delivery in this country with orders over a certain amount (I think the shipping is free around the 38 EUR mark).  When I compare Amazon.fr, with Amazon.nl, Amazon.co.uk, and so on, usually Amazon.de is the most affordable.

So it was with my trail shoes, and so I ordered a new pair in December along with a number of Christmas presents for the family.  All of the other items made it just fine, but for some unknown reason, instead of this:

I got something like this:

... and in size 8.5 instead of size 11,5 (Nikes fit small, but these small greys were pretty clearly not going to work).

It turns out that there is a process for returns via Amazon.de.  I clicked here, and clicked there, and filled in the requisite fields, and then printed off my return postal mailer, and promised that I would mail the shoes back, and they promised to send the right ones to me.

A few days later, these arrived in the mail:

At this point the now-dormant systems analyst in me began to awaken, and suspect that there was more going on here than met the eye. One incorrect delivery might be a simple error; two identical errors means that the system works, but not the way you want it to: there is obviously a database mismatch.  I dutifully reported the erroneous delivery via a web form again, noting that this was the second time that the identical incorrect product had been delivered, and I suggested gently that they should audit their database.  Then I mailed back the two pairs of incorrect shoes to Amazon.de.  And waited.

Crickets.  After a week or so, I felt that a telephone call (sigh) was finally called for, and to my great surprise and pleasure, Amazon.de's web site asked me to populate a single field with a telephone number, and then asked me to click on a "call me" button.  Guess what?  I clicked on it, and within literally two seconds, my telephone rang.  Hold time = zero.  Happy me!  Danke schoen...

The nice lady on the phone took down all of my information, and when I had explained the situation, she refunded me the cost of the shoes immediately.  She said that there was obviously a bug, and that they would take the item off the "for sale" pages until they could figure out why runners wanting size EUR 45,5 trail shoes would receive suede skateboard shoes four sizes two small.  So I was happy for having discovered a bug, but sad because I still was forced to run in worn-out shoes.  I can't help but think that there should be a gift certificate, or a free lunch, or maybe an "I Heart Amazon" t-shirt, or a preferential Amazon stock price, or something in there for me for troubleshooting their system, but sorry, no dice.

In the meantime I went on the Trakks website; it is a small Belgian chain with four or five stores... as it happens they had my shoes, and offered them at a 20% discount, or about the same price as Amazon.  As well, they offered free delivery, and even offered alternative delivery to the store across the street in the event that I wasn't home!  That is truly amazing, so I opted for Trakks, and two days later, I had my shoes, or at least a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile thereof, and in the right size, too...

Today I went for a run to break them in, and as luck would have it, the weather was cold but very nice.  Here's a little poetic reflection on this afternoon's outdoor activity...


"January light"

afternoon run to Dion-le-Val and back
just a short one given the cold

no phone or ipod, no headphones
I have ears and like to listen, and think
apart from the hum of the autoroute
and the sky-high exhalations of jumbos playing tic-tac-toe in the big blue
the only sound is breathing, and the cadence of feet against frozen ground
and the occasional chirping of forest birds

the dog likes to chase the geese in the snowdrift fields
and never tires of trying to sell me on the idea of playing fetch-the-stick
but I’ve found a rhythm instead

muddy paths made-over in January white
mean cleaner shoes than on warmer, wetter days
but crumbs of dark earth show through
like a inexpertly frosted cake

on the Avenue Procession Reliques
bright post-meridian light chamfers through
conclaves of shaggy red pines
backs to the wind,
bending their aged, needled heads in chorus to the east
instructing the saplings at their snowy feet
“Grow, little one!”

that long slight downhill straight through their sacred grove
is the highest elevation, and about the midpoint distance
so passing through is both joyful and wistful,
half begun, and half done

alone in the forest
for just a little longer

the dog much closer to me now as we return to houses and streets
finding the familiar route
home to fire and hot water
and then back to work

afternoon run to Dion-le-Val and back
just a short one given the cold
--
Wavre, Belgium, 24 January, 2019, 15:00

Frosty weekend in Belgium; firewood delivery; eclipse; Duncan on the mend

last of the old firewood sawn up

  

bright and clear and frosty for the ball throw game

cats liking the woodstove

(the boy is not visible but he's lying behind the stove for maximum heat)

Duncan was home sick on Wednesday afternoon, with fever and chills, and so he pretty much stayed in bed until Sunday.  His fever broke late on Friday/early Saturday, and today he's well enough to bundle up and attend class.  I'll make sure there is something warm and nourishing for him to eat tonight.  So far we are lucky in that no one else has caught it, but the handwashing protocol remains in effect, and we are hoping that the rest of us will dodge the bullet.

On Friday night we met Bryan and Kiana at Lawrence and Tiffany's place to meet their new dog.  Westley is a Keeshond, which is a dutch breed used historically as a guard dog on barges in the Netherlands.

little Westley

He is only a couple of months old and so is still quite wee, but is quite calm and attentive.  He probably will grow to maybe 15-20 kg.  I think Yoshi is probably around 18kg, or 40 pounds or so, so they might end up to be around the same size.

After meeting Westley we piled into the Hammer's van and went to a nice dinner out at La Damison, a restaurant in Piètrain not far from the Edwards' house.  It was quite unusual for all six of us to go out to a fine restaurant; frequently when we dine together we are at one or another's home, and there is lots of cooking involved, so while I am not so much a fan of restaurants it was really quite nice to just sit and have a conversation and not have to worry about the menu or the cooking or the cleanup.

After dinner we drove back to the Edwards' house and played a few hands of Chameleon.  This is a really simple game, but one that is a lot of fun, with elements of wordplay, deception, bluffing, and voting.

If you've ever played the games like Fictionary, Balderdash, or SlangTeasers, you'll know that in these games a word is chosen, and then the the players write their understanding of the dictionary definition of that word.  One person writes down the actual definition from the dictionary, and then there are votes to choose the right definition.  There is sometimes an element of bluffing as well.

In Chameleon, a topic card is chosen - for example "Fictional Characters" as shown above.  This card has a grid with sixteen different characters.  Then each player but one is dealt an identical code card, so that all the legitimate players know which of the sixteen squares on that grid players will hold the specific word for the round.  The one standout player is not dealt a code card, however; they get the chameleon card.

The dice are rolled to choose the topic word; for example if using our "Fictional Characters" topic card, the word might be "Mary Poppins".  Everyone in the game except the chameleon has a code card, so they know the specific word, but the chameleon only knows that it's one of the sixteen characters on the card.  The point of the game is for each person to come up with a word that signifies "Mary Poppins"; it should be clear, but not so clear that it gives away the word to the chameleon.  The chameleon tries to come up with a word that sounds plausible but they have very little to go on, and have to try to pick a word that follows the general trend of the others.  Then everyone votes on who they think the chameleon is, and there is a lot of back and forth discussion.  In this way it's a lot like the card game Where-wolf, where the chief pleasure is in the arguing about who is or isn't the wherewolf.  We had a great time playing Chameleon together, and I would highly recommend the game.

Early on Saturday morning we were awakened by the wood delivery guy, who was over an hour early.  I wish that I had had the presence of mind to take a photo of the huge truck with a probably 20m3 dumping container on it, but as he dumped the load of wood on the sidewalk and partially on the roadway in front of our house and Christophe's, we had to frantically work to get the split logs off the road and to clear a path for pedestrians before the police gave us a ticket for blocking the sidewalk or the road.  It was good that it was a weekend and fairly early too.  We managed to divide the wood into two piles and move the logs into each driveway while the traffic was still pretty light.

In the afternoon Maggie and I moved our five stère or cubic metres of wood into our basement, and then on Sunday afternoon after church we helped Christophe and Isabelle do the same with theirs, with some help from Malcolm.  Now I really think we are well supplied for quite some time.

With the temperatures down well below zero for the first time this winter we are appreciating the wood heat.  Belgium doesn't get the same low temperatures as Canada but it sometimes feels colder than you would expect because the air is damp from the moisture from the sea.  Also I was happy when looking at the roof tiles from the garden; the frost is thicker on our roof than on those of our neighbours, so I think that the insulation job I did is making a difference.  It is still only partially complete, so when I can get the last edges and corners foamed up and sealed that will improve the insulation level even more.

I have been running a little less because it has been so cold, but instead I have been throwing the ball for Yoshi regularly, and I did get out for a run on Saturday, and got in over 6km at a respectably fast 5:47 minutes/km, so I am hopeful that I'll be able to take on some longer distances soon.  I try to alternate between maybe 8km and 15km, and hope as the spring progresses to extend that to the odd 20km run.

The International Bach Festival people wrote me today asking for my passport information for the flight to Gran Canaria in April.  It looks like I'll be there from the 15th to the 19th April.  Since that corresponds with the first week of Easter vacation, I have requested that the hotel accommodation be double occupancy, and am looking into another flight ticket so that Maggie can join me.  I can see flights for around 200 EUR return, so that will be nice, especially since on April 25th I will have to fly again, to Canada.  It won't be hot in the Canary Islands then; the temperature is usually in the 12-18 degree range in mid-April, but it will be a mini-vacation for the two of us.

Early this morning we were up before 6:00 to see the eclipse.  It was visible out the back windows of the house, and was quite dramatic, with the totality peak at around 6:15.  I don't own a telephoto lens, but one of Maggie's colleagues took some photographs from his backyard in Waterloo...

Dona nobis pacem; booking travel; sawbuck and chainsaws; Duncan home with the flu

Well I have been thinking a bit about the Dona nobis pacem, which is the next thing on my plate.  The choral society asked the soloists to write a few words about it, and then they would use that in their social media advertising.

Here's what I wrote about it:

The music of Vaughan Williams has been a part of my musical life for a long time, and his works have served as signposts throughout my professional journey.  As a young baritone, his setting of Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel was the first song cycle that I learned and performed while a student at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.  As my singing voice grew, I was lucky to sing his Five Mystical Songs with an excellent chamber orchestra there.  After moving to Toronto for more singing opportunities, one of my first large engagements with a large professional orchestra in Toronto was his Sea Symphony, with settings of texts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  The experience was transformative for me.

To have the opportunity now to sing more Whitman texts in Dona nobis pacem, in Belgium, where so many Canadian soldiers served in two world wars, is an honour.  Whitman's text is deeply moving, and to be given such atmospheric legato lines, written so masterfully for the baritone voice, is a huge gift.  While the piece itself calls for a large orchestra and a big choir, Vaughan Williams chooses to make the musical texture as transparent as he can when the solo voices are singing, so as to have the maximum contrast between the solo and choral sections. It's wonderful to be handled so gently by the composer, and I will be doing my best to bring out the most expressive and clear singing that I can, so that Vaughan Williams, were he here to listen, would be pleased.  It will be also very significant for me to sing this work in English, with this ensemble, in my adopted country.

I am also thoughtful about the theme of peace...  Since this work was first performed in 1936, Europe suffered another terrible war, but peace eventually came about: since the founding of the European Union, no member state has gone to war with another.  This is a remarkable thing.  I am sure that every other singer and musician in our ensemble will be in agreement, that we will be asking for peace in the world when we perform this work.

Apart from looking at music I've been doing some travel booking; I managed to find a flight back to Canada on Expedia.be for a good price, and so have booked it so that I will arrive a couple of days before the Belleville Choral Society concert on the 28th April, and will stay until after my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party in Belleville on June 8th.  I hope to try to find some more work to do while I am back, however, as at present the only other gig I have in Canada is Elijah in Toronto on May 5th.  There are other jobs that I hope to pick up on, to make it financially worthwhile, and maybe this will be a good time to sing some auditions.

My other travel plans involve a likely trip to Berlin to see Peter Tomek, so that we can coach the Johannespassion again, and see how much of it is already memorised.  As well one of the conductors at the Comische Oper Berlin is a fellow named Adam Benzwi, whom I met in Toronto last spring during the performance of La Belle Helene.  He was there to see my colleague, the mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender, but we soon realised that we have a friend in common in Peter.  Adam has therefore already seen me perform but hasn't heard me sing in German, or in something that is in an ideal tessitura for my voice (Calchas in Helene was a bass role) so that's something else that I might try to arrange while I am there; in any case it would be good to see something at the Comische Oper.

Return flights to Berlin are less than 100 EUR, so that's not going to break the bank, and it's possible that I might be able to stay with Peter.

I had some medical stuff done this week.  Back in October I hurt my right shoulder, and it hasn't healed properly.  I had an ultrasound and an x-ray in mid-December, that seemed to indicate a lesion one of the tendons, and some irritation of the "bourse", the pad that cushions the tendon where it passes over bone, but the sports doctor suggested an "arthroscan" MRI to get a better idea of what exactly is going on inside my shoulder.

I arrived at the hospital thinking that it would be a simple scan, but was surprised when the physician started painting my whole shoulder with a disinfectant!  No one had told me the details, so I didn't realise that they'd have to freeze the shoulder and then inject radioactive iodine tracer material into the joint space itself, in order to get a good picture.  But it wasn't too painful: as is often the case, the administration of the anaesthetic is the worst part.  The whole thing went fairly quickly, and I will find out how my photos turn out when I see the doctor again, on the 30th of January.  She has office hours one morning a week at the Wavre medical centre, so that's very convenient.

Yesterday was clear and dry, so I took Yoshi to the field a short distance away and spent a good half hour throwing the tennis ball for him.  He would chase the ball all day, and with my sore shoulder I was happy for the plastic ball thrower.

When we got back I moved a bunch of things around in the garage to make room for the five face cords of oak firewood that are arriving on Saturday morning.  The wood that we cut and stacked at Bryan and Kiana's this past summer still needs to dry another season before we burn it, so Maggie and I decided that we'd pay a little extra and have some delivered, already cut, split, and dried.  As well I have a few hardwood pallets on hand, and if necessary we might have to stack some of the wood outside and cover it with plastic, if there isn't enough room in the coal room and the garage.

Then I got out some tools and built a sawbuck out of reclaimed pallet wood, and got the chainsaw running again... A small amount of the last load of firewood that we had was too long to fit inside the woodstove, so I started cutting those in half.  I only did a few logs yesterday before it started to get dark, so I'm going to head out and do that again now, if the rain holds off.  But it was enough for us to have a nice warm fire last night.

That's all for now.  Duncan is upstairs trying to rest: he came home from school early yesterday with body aches, fever, and a cough, so I have been giving him ibuprofen and chicken soup, and he's staying warm in bed.

Something to work towards

Anyone who has ever taken classical voice lessons knows this image above... It is the famous "yellow book" that contains a number of famous Italian songs that singing teachers have been using for generations to help their students develop breathing, proper diction, interpretation... there is a reason that it's been so popular for so long.  It's because it works.

The reason that it works is that the songs it contains are simple in some ways, but in subtler ways, they lay bare the trouble spots in a student's performance; they show clearly what the teacher needs to focus on.

This sheer utility as a diagnostic tool is the same reason that young opera singers will invariably be asked to sing some Mozart in their auditions, and it's why auditioning without some Mozart in your carnet is unwise: it's because many of these Mozart arias look simple, with unexceptional range, and often with what looks to be fairly manageable coloratura, or rapid decorative notes.  They look easy.

I write the word "look" in italics above, because Mozart arias appear simple, but to perform them well requires an impeccable technique.  If the singer's approach to language, breathing, muscular support, handling of the passaggio, emotion, drama, is lacking... everybody will know.  It's not like other kinds of music where it's easier to hide in the texture, or impress with fireworks or bombast.  If you have a weakness in any element in your preparation, Mozart will show it.

Ok, so why write a blog about this now?

I had a veritable lifting of my spirit this last week, and now that the concert in Luxembourg is over, I think that I realise why: I had to work hard at something new.

I should explain that a lot of what I have been singing recently is material that I have already learned, or material of a genre that I have enough experience in that learning it hasn't been terribly challenging.  A couple of years ago, I was singing a ton of Bach, and I started to imagine that if I continued the way things were going, there was a good chance that I would soon check off every major Bach piece for baritone/bass from my to-do list.  As it happens, this past season I did just that, with the performance of the Christ role in the Matthäuspassion in the Netherlands in April.

Of course there are over two hundred cantatas, so to be fair there are many more Bach treasures to discover, but when it comes to the baritone or bass voice parts in the big works, like the Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, the B-minor mass, the Magnificat, and the solo cantatas, for me all of these are done and dusted.

So then what?

Singing artists are interested of course in developing their best possible performance of the music they are hired to perform, or those that they choose to prepare as audition pieces, even in the happy eventuality that one does so better each time.  But there is a limit to the satisfaction that comes from singing the same pieces over and over again.  One can and should coach one's usual arias as one's career unfolds, and there are always little technical things to tinker with, to try to squeeze as much juice out of the piece as one can, but eventually things get to be a bit routine, and that's why I was so rejuvenated by this Luxembourg concert.

It was the first time that I have performed the Bizet Toreador and the Wolfram O du mein holder Abendstern with an orchestra, and the Strauss Der Zigeunerbaron pig-farmer aria was one that I had to learn from scratch.  It was very wordy and set quite high, and that poses a very interesting challenge for me.  There is a real sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that comes from interpreting a new piece, with new challenges, for an unfamiliar orchestra and audience, in the technique of today, that doesn't really happen the same way with familiar pieces.

By "technique of today" I mean the way I sing at this moment, as opposed to the way that I sang five, ten, or fifteen years ago when I first started learning the opera arias that I still sing now.  From a technique point of view I am essentially the same person, with the same way of singing that I learned from Bruce and Fleta.  In those situations where I am asked to do some teaching or coaching, I frequently hear their words coming out of my mouth, exhorting students to inhale more deeply, to stand still, to drop their jaw and open their mouths more as they ascend, to use their lips more to enunciate, to exaggerate their diction, to modify their vowels towards Italian, etc.

But there are practical limits to repeating what one has done before.  To quote or to paraphrase Heraclitus, whose words are visible above the Don River in Toronto, in Eldon Garnet's 1995 art installation called 'Time: and a Clock': "this river I step in is not the river I stand in".

This passage comes to us second-hand through the writings of Plato, and through Plato into English.  Perhaps a better translation is this: "We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."

This second translation reveals Heraclitus's view of the nature of reality, that everything changes and flows, including the observer.  As singing artists we learn new things from every composer, every librettist, every coach, every director, every conductor, every colleague, that get chewed up and digested inside our conscious and sometimes unconscious mind.  As well, every place we visit, every book we read, or film we see goes into the hopper.  Our interactions with other people, good and bad, also go into the mix, and definitely the pieces that we sing do so as well, with all of their technical challenges.

So it's always fun to re-examine old pieces, as we are different people than we were the last time we put that particular score on the music stand.  But it's doubly nice to have new things to learn, because all of those experiences that make us who we are right now, right at this very moment, are suddenly visible to us, because of the depth of examination demanded by the new work.

New pieces also have novel challenges to be overcome, and part of the joy of being an artist is deciding how one will meet those challenges and turn them into something authentic.

So I think my own personal artistic resolution for 2019, being roughly halfway through my singing career, is that I'm going to work my way through some new repertoire and see how that goes.  What works; what doesn't?  The Italian songs might figure in there, but more importantly as an opera singer, I am curious about some opera arias that I've never really taken the time to try out.  I have several anthologies of arias that I have only superficially explored, cherry-picking the things that seemed easiest or most accessible, yet there are arias in there that I've never even listened to.  It costs nothing to lift the lid on the piano and plunk one out, or look up a youtube video, to get an idea of what they are all about.  Bruce has told me many times that I am at the threshold (or possibly already in the foyer) of the peak time to be a baritone: the years 45-60 are generally considered to be the best ones, so it's time for me to do some experimentation to figure out where the second half of my singing career is going to lead me...

A really lovely time in Luxembourg

We had a great concert last night in Luxembourg.  It was a great pleasure to reunite with my friend the conductor Philippe Noesen, and to meet his wife and family.  As well, it was a happy reunion with Luc (percussion) and Vanessa (flute) with whom we toured China four years ago, and I made other musical friends as well during the course of our preparation and presentation of this new year celebration concert, played to a capacity audience.

It was a very exciting experience also to present Bizet's Toreador Song from Carmen, and then my debut of "O du mein holder Abendstern" from Wagner's Tannhauser.  Also it was extremely enjoyable for me to listen as the band played many Viennese favourites, including the overture from Die Fledermaus.  I love this operetta, and last performed in it in Toronto, so there were many memories of fun times on stage triggered by Strauss's wonderful music.  Then we had a lot of fun in the encore, with "Ja das Schreiben und das Lesen" from Der Zigeunerbaron, also from Strauss.  It was my first time performing it, but I couldn't stop my character from oinking with pleasure as he sang about the pleasures of being a pig farmer!  The reward was that I heard not only the audience, but also the orchestra afterwards, whistling the tune of the aria.  Always a good sign!

(Yes I am in the photo above, just look to the upper-left corner and you'll see that I'm the only one without an instrument...)

First performance of the new year tomorrow in the Cercle Cité

I went to Luxembourg on Wednesday evening to rehearse with the Luxembourg Wind Orchestra, under the direction of my friend Philippe Noesen.  It was nice to see him again, along with a couple of other musicians whom I met while on tour in China a few years ago.  On that tour, Philippe had to jump in and conduct a couple of performances during when our conductor fell ill, and I was impressed with his skills, and have kept in touch with him.  He and another Luxembourgish friend (Luc, who is a percussionist in this ensemble) helped me out with coaching by telephone a couple of years when I had to learn the Luxembourg national anthem.

So we were still in touch, and when he asked me early last year if I'd like to sing some Viennese music for his orchestra's New Year concert in the beautiful Cercle Cité, of course I said yes!  To be honest it's not just Viennese music; the orchestra will play mostly Viennese things, but for me there's more variety, with the Bizet "Toreador" song from Carmen, sung as part of the Carmen Suite, the Wagner opera aria "O du mein holder Abendstern" from Tannhauser, and lastly a new piece for me, the aria "Ja das Schreiben und das Lesen ist nie mein Fach gewesen" from Johann Strauss's Der Zigeunerbaron.  This is quite a texty aria, and it also sits very high, as it was originally written for a tenor buffo.  But like the role of Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus it is quite manageable for the baritone, if one interpolates a few alternative notes to lower the tessitura a little.  Here's a tiny clip of the aria of the character of Kalman Zsupan: he's a pig farmer who says that reading and writing were never his thing; even as a kid he was obsessed with pigs, and his ideal life's work is farming bristly beasts and making bacon.  It should be a fun concert!

It has been the season of the sales, and that means that a lot of people have been cleaning out closets and donating clothes to thrift shops.  I scored some nice things over the last couple of weeks, including some new jeans for Malcolm (he is tall and thin and needs extra pairs) and some shirts and sweaters of good quality.  As well I found this nice t-shirt from the University of Capilano in North Vancouver.  Of course I had to grab that!  I wonder how it made it all the way to Brussels?

The menagerie is doing fine.  I went out with Yoshi for a 13km run + 2,5km walk yesterday, my first since January 2nd, which we both appreciated.  My cold seems to be pretty much gone now, which is good news for the concert tomorrow.

The cats are doing fine.  They are still growing, and are approaching the eight month mark, so I expect they are not going to get too much bigger.  Clyde is still a complete goofball, but Bonnie is getting much more affectionate and less skittish.  Here they are keeping warm on top of the living room radiator.

I was a bit confused because the chickens suddenly seemed to stop producing eggs, even when Maggie went to the trouble of clearing out their henhouse and putting new bedding in.  But suddenly today I had a brainwave, and looked in the huge pile of rose brambles next to the composter.  Voila!

Back in the saddle again....

Today was the first day of school for Maggie, Malcolm, and Duncan... for me it was a day where I helped out Christophe, my neighbour, in his run to the container park, to get rid of a lot of stuff that he wanted cleared out from his garage.  Christophe's back has been bothering him so he rang my doorbell this morning, and asked that I give him a hand unloading the trailer.

After I did so (rather gingerly as my own right shoulder is still complaining after I injured it some time ago) we did another trailer load, and this time cleared out a few things that we had cluttering up our garage and backyard.  So it all ended up being quite productive for both families.

Indeed having Christophe as a neighbour has been very much to our benefit, as he enjoyed Malcolm's participation in the installation of a few custom cabinetry jobs over the course of the holiday season.  Malcolm enjoyed being employed, which has lined his pocket considerably.  But as those days were very long, and quite strenuous, Malcolm is certainly happy to return to the relatively relaxed pace of work at the lutherie academy.  I dropped him off at his apartment Sunday evening, and he was eager to get back at his main occupation, the building of his current classical guitar.

As for me, I have been mulling over the idea of running the trails over the last couple of days, but as I am fighting a cold, I've opted instead to stay bundled up and simply throw the frisbee for Yoshi endlessly in the backyard.  We've also been practicing the "find" command with him, which thus far has included "Find Maggie" and "Find the rope" which is a braided dog toy that he loves to play tug-of-war with.  I expect that eventually we might work up to other things, such as find this-or-that stuffed animal, or maybe even "Find me a beer", if Stroh's commercials from the 1980s are to be believed.

In other dog news, his updated registration information arrived today, and I pasted it into his doggy passport.  So it would seem that the last formalities have been observed, and he is truly confirmed as a member of the family.  Happy day!

Tomorrow I have a coaching with David Miller in Brussels, so I had a big sing-through today, and I am happy to report that the three pieces that I need to prepare for this coming weekend in Luxembourg's beautiful Cercle Cité will be in good shape.  I just want to make sure that I will be well prepared for the rehearsal on the 9th of January, prior to the concert on the 12th.  Two of the three are already well-known, but the third is a new one, and as it is set for buffo tenore I have had to do a few modifications of the line so that it sits a little better for the baritono.  But I'm not worried, I am sure that it will be fine.

As well as clearing out some things with the trailer, this evening we also took down all of the Christmas decorations.  The moment that the evergreen bough arbour hit the ground, Clyde attacked it, which confirms the wisdom of our choice to forego a tree this year.  We managed to get it outside, and the needles sweeped up, while sequestering the cats in another part of the house, without too much trouble.

It is traditional to take down Christmas decorations after Epiphany, which falls on the 6th of January.  As I have written before, Epiphany is also the moment to celebrate the arrival of the Magi, who come bearing gifts.  In Belgium, the 6th of January also means the serving of the galette des rois, which this year was baked by Maggie!

It's really a dead simple recipe, which actually makes sense after the extravagances of Christmas: two layers of butter puff pastry, separated by a layer of butter, egg, almond powder, and sugar.  Not terribly difficult to produce, or so she says.

We had ours with the Edwardses on Saturday, and also enjoyed an extended skating session as a group before the rink was shut down for the season.  Malcolm and Duncan both like skating, and seem eager to learn: I have the sense that the family has caught the skating bug to the extent that we'll make the trip to Leuven to skate on the big rink sometime soon...