at home in Toronto

I'm sitting at the dining room table at Bruce's house, drinking espresso and finalising car payments online... certainly the public internet makes so many things much easier than even a few years ago when everything needed to be done on paper in the bank branch.  I was able to digitally sign the car loan documents while in the Montreal Airport yesterday using my smartphone, and the funds appeared in our account this morning.  I made the bank transfers to the car dealership and it would seem that all is a go for Maggie to pick up the new VW on Tuesday the 30th, which is also Duncan's 16th birthday.  She'll have to be clear with him that the car is NOT a sweet 16 present...

It's been a tiring couple of days.  Immediately after the concert in Waltershausen I was lucky enough to catch a ride back to Belgium with Rob, Barbara, and Adriaan, three of the singers, rather than waiting until the next morning to leave, and thereby losing an entire day.  Maggie met us at the carpool spot and so we were home and in bed by around one in the morning.

The next day I took Yoshi for a nice long run: we warmed up and cooled down with the usual 1km walk before and after, and did a pretty good 12km run at a 5:56 minute/km pace.  I never hit the high heart rate zone, which indicates a perfect effort level, although perhaps that's because I often had to stop for moment to let Yoshi catch up to me: it was 23 degrees and so much hotter than either of us are used to, and so he was a real slow-poke.

After I got cleaned up and we had lunch, I made pack list and got my suitcases ready, and then Bryan and Kiana picked us up, and we drove together to Brussels.  Malcolm and Duncan met us at a great restaurant called Neutnigenough not far from the Grand'place, and we enjoyed a delicious (but overly large) meal there before walking over to Ancien Belgique for the Tedeschi-Trucks band concert.

The band was really wonderful, and Bryan was particularly emotional, as his recently deceased father was a huge fan of this band, and Tedeschi-Trucks is probably Bryan's favourite group.  Susan Tedeschi is a talented "soul" singer, and an excellent solo guitarist, and Derek Trucks is the nephew of Butch Trucks, drummer for the Allman Brothers band, and one of the greatest guitarists of all time.  Certainly as a slide virtuoso he is unique... they were backed up by a big band, with a pianist/organist, two kit drummers, sax/trumpet/trombone, and three backing vocalists.  The highlight for me was the slide guitar duet jam near the end of the show that featured Trucks and the trombonist Elizabeth Lea.  As a former trombonist and slide player, of course I was into it.  Elizabeth was awesome... here's a fan-shot video of a similar performance from late 2018:

The concert wasn't too long, and so we were home and in bed well before midnight, but Yoshi was a bit unsettled and I woke up many times throughout the night before finally giving in and getting up at around 5 a.m.  Christophe our neighbour had some deliveries to make near Boom that morning, so Malcolm and I went with him in his truck, and he dropped me first at the airport at around 6h45 and then carried on to drop Malcolm at his school.

For the first time in my life I was at the airport too early to check my bags, so I sat down to relax for a bit until the luggage desk opened., and read some of my emails.

We have already received a great review for the Thuringer Bachwochen concert... unfortunately for me, they had the wrong singer listed in the programme booklet as the lower bass voice, and so the journalist also perpetuated this error.  But they will correct that for the online article, and also the German radio stations MDR Kultur und MDR Klassik, which recorded the performance for broadcast on the evening of Sunday, April 30th.  Despite this annoying error I am quite pleased with my first German performance and first live radio broadcast in Germany.

As well it was nice to recieve a very positive review in the newspapers in Gran Canaria... here is a very loose translation of my short mention:

The cast of soloists shined in moments of authentic mastery. All this, without a director... ...the baritone Matthew Zadow as Pilatus gave proof of the requirements of culture and of vocal faculties. (La Provincia - Sunday, April 21st, 2019)

The flights were okay, although pretty crowded.  I had a two-hour wait in Montreal, and then was in Toronto by around 15:45.  Then I took a bus, the subway, and another bus, and walked in the door of Bruce's at 17:20; my travel time door-to-door worked out to be around seventeen hours.  I managed to go to sleep around 22:00 and woke up this morning at 6:00, so I hope that will get me started on acclimatising to the new time zone.

This morning I'm making some phone calls, and waiting until the lane swimming opens at 11:30... then it will be time to sort out all of my music for the Belleville Choral Society concert, and to try to sing through it in advance of the first rehearsal on Saturday.  I'm heading down to Belleville around noonish on Friday so maybe I'll get in some singing then too, but it seems likely that I will rest instead...