Lightning trip to Belleville to meet with my cousin Thom and his wife Krista

Yesterday I had an early start and drove to Belleville to meet my cousin Thom and his wife Krista. They live in Calgary and rarely make it to Ontario, but were in the province to pay a visit to Thom's mother in Brockville, and used the opportunity to make a little tour to visit with family members in the area.

We had a delicious breakfast that my parents provided.  I last saw Thom and Krista two years ago when I was in Calgary to audition, and although Thom and I do keep in touch through fb messenger, but it was nice to see them in person.

After they left for Brockville, I had a consultation with my dad, who gave me some construction advice; I am demolishing the old privacy fences in Bruce's backyard and will be extending the decking boards so that he gets perhaps another five square metres of space.  As well the steps down from the deck are dangerous, as they are not of consistent height, and so I'm going to be rebuilding those as well.  I'll post some before and after pictures when it's done...

Spring is coming to Canada

The weather is finally starting to improve but I haven't been outside as much as I would like.  The last week or so has been full of travel.  Last week Bruce and I drove to Kingston to make some deliveries at the University, and then went up to see Maggie's parents in Ottawa, and we spent a nice time at their apartment and in the restaurant attached.  They are both doing well, and it was great to see both of them, and to celebrate Hugh's 90th birthday, albeit a few days late.  Our friend Dina Namer was in Toronto awaiting the birth of their most recent grandchild but Michael was home in Ottawa, and it was nice to see him after a long interval.

On the way back we stopped in at Golden Lake to say hello to my Aunt Lorraine and Uncle David at their new cottage... Patrick, their eldest, and his partner Nicole were there for the long weekend, and it was really very pleasant to have a brief visit with them before heading off home to Toronto.  They have really made a beautiful home there that still retains the charm of the original cottage.  On the way we stopped off both at the old Zadow homestead and also at Bruce's aunt's place in Barry's Bay, which he hadn't visited since the 1980s.

The next day we had more travel, getting to St. Catharines to see the Niagara Symphony perform an opera excerpts concert.  The tenor Adam Luther is a friend, as is his wife the soprano Laura Albino, with whom I performed the Creation of Haydn some years ago.  Adam and Bruce just finished Countess Maritza in Victoria last month, and baritone Jonathon Dick was singing as a soloist in the concert; he is a friend and fellow student of Bruce, so it was a very enjoyable afternoon.  The late Peter Partridge and his wife Janet are longtime friends of the Rose family, and they gave a substantial gift to the building fund for Partridge Hall, and it is acoustically excellent and also visually quite beautiful.  The Niagara Symphony and Chorus Niagara comported themselves wonderfully, as did the solo singers.

I have managed to get in my usual share of runs and swims and am trying to keep up my training regimen, although I have no races on the horizon; it's a bit hard to think about that at the moment as I am otherwise occupied.  Apart from a lot of maintenance and rebuilding work that I have contracted to do, I have a yard sale to plan, to try to cut down a bit on the many items still in storage here in Toronto... I have to spend some time musically on voice lessons, which Bruce has been very generous with, and I have to work on my own, on my next project, a very challenging Bach Cantata that will happen in Brussels very soon after I return.    As well, today I just received news that I have an audition here in Toronto in about a week and a half, with the new artistic leadership of the Pax Christi Chorale.  I have performed as a soloist with them three times already, but all of those were before the leadership change that happened a few years ago, so it's important to put my best foot forward and make a good impression with the new direction of this excellent choir.

I hope that I can sing a few more auditions this trip to try to line things up for my next ones...

Mother's Day

Mother's Day in Canada and in Belgium usually is close to Malcolm's birthday, sometimes they fall on the same day.  Today he and Duncan and Maggie are out at the Hammers' for a get-together to celebrate both events; I managed to get in a wifi call on the train to wish them well.  Meanwhile I am on the VIA train to Kingston, thanks to Bruce's generous gift of a points ticket so that I can take the train to my sisters' and nephew's home for the Mother's Day brunch that they are hosting. 

This week has been pretty good, although the weather here in Toronto has been quite cold.  I have been swimming every three days or so, and also running at the same frequency, with mixed satisfaction; it's hard to find forest trails in Toronto.  On the other hand, it's good to make use of the pool and quite frequently there is only one other person in the fast lane with me.  I'm planning to try to break my distance record of 3366 metres; I swam 3500 yards this past week, which falls short by only a couple of hundred metres.  As before, my main issue is with calf and instep cramps that set in around the 3km mark, so I will try to take magnesium tablets and hope to avoid cramping.  Miraculously my shoulder seems fine while swimming.  It still aches a bit but I would suspect that the rotational movement of front crawl is likely causing the joint capsule to expand again, which should cause a knock-on effect of an even greater range of motion, as well as increased strength.  So it is exciting to hope for recovery from this injury, which now has lasted almost eight months.

One complication of all of this time in the water is something called "swimmer's ear".  I had a short 1km swim last Sunday morning before my Elijah performance, and ended up with water stuck in my left ear, which meant that I couldn't hear a thing on the left side during the concert.  It was distracting but not insupportable, and I managed to sing without too much trouble.  But the situation has persisted all week, and it means that I can't hold a phone to my left ear, and it makes having a conversation with Bruce while walking on the street only possible if I am standing to his left side.  I have started using swimming ear plugs to avoid further water infiltration but there is still the matter of clearing the middle ear of the water already there.  On the plus side there is no sensation of pain or pressure, but I am sure that having water sit there is likely not a good thing for my eardrum health.  I have been reading up on remedies and may end up trying a vinegar/rubbing alcohol mixture to try to clear things out.  It's really annoying!

Yesterday I ran the old Beltline trail that starts a few streets south and west of the 401 and Allen Road.  Bruce and I went to visit his family plot at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery and then he drove me to the trailhead, and I ran down the old railway line until I reached the Brickworks, crossed the Bloor-Danforth viaduct and then down to Leslieville.  While the initial couple of kilometres was asphalt, I could run on the grass next to the trail, and after that it was mostly cinder track for the next 11km or so, with only the last couple of kilometres on concrete.  So I was pretty happy to get in a longer distance, my first 15+ km since the 17th of December in Helecine with Lawrence.

The Beltline railway was created in 1892 as a commuter railway to service suburban neighbourhoods north of the city limits.  It failed to turn a profit and shut down after only two years of operation.  One portion of the railway loop was converted into what is now Allen Road, but the eastern loop sat more or less neglected until the 1970s.  The City of Toronto acquired the remaining land from Canadian National Railways in the late 1980s, and the construction of a bicycle path on the old right-of-way proceeded from there.  There are still sections that are being built or renovated, and there are many road crossings, but it's a cool bit of Toronto history, and one of the few places I've found that are free of car noise and exhaust fumes.  My favourite part is the ravine that decends from Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which is next to a tributary of the Don River, and has some more challenging topography.  I hope to run it again soon, and maybe explore some of the connecting trails on the east side of the river.

Last night Bruce and I rode the TTC up to Sheppard and Yonge to celebrate the engagement of John Cowitz and his fiancee Cathy.  I met John twenty years ago when he and I were both living in Bruce's house, and so we've had many dinners and conversations over the years.  John and Cathy have been going out for ten years now, and are going to make it official later this year.   It was great to see John, his mother Sibyl and sister Karen, and also to visit a little with his son Josh Warburton, who is the bassist in a very cool June-award-wnning indie-rock band called July Talk that has had a big international career...

Success with Elijah

Wow, Elijah was quite a ride.. it's not an exaggeration to describe his taxi as a bunch of fiery horses, and Mendelssohn doesn't spare them.  I have been singing so much for so many days in a row that I am really looking forward to some rest, and this barn-burner was a good way to go out with a bang.

No photos yet from the concert but I am content with what we produced.  For me, I look at any musical work with a critical eye, and with the help of my support team, I come up with a plan to try to deliver the most emotionally affecting performance I can, with a number of strategies that will help mitigate the technical challenges each piece presents.  If I can actually deliver on most of the strategies that I've worked out ahead of time with coaches and through my own research, then I feel that the performance was a success.  Certainly there are places that I can improve but on the whole it was really quite a good concert.  The choir was very well-prepared and the other soloists also.

My cousins-in-law Nancy and Margaret McNee had never seen me sing before.  They were voluble with their praise, and congratulated me with a lovely dinner out at a nearby Italian restaurant, which makes me grateful on both accounts.  It was again exceptionally nice to have a friendly face or two in the crowd...

Elijah tomorrow

This past week has been pretty fairly steady training work for me, both in terms of general health and also singing rehearsals.  I went swimming twice this week, once to a distance of 2650 yards, and then again for a distance of 3000 yards (the pool is an older one, and so a length is 25 yards).  These are good distances and my right shoulder seems to be handling it just fine, which is a great relief.  I also ran twice, with distances of 12km and then 9km yesterday.  I see that there is a trail race up in Barrie again this year, the same weekend as last year, so maybe I will sign up for the 15km and see how that goes.  My run paces are a little slower than last year but then again I haven't been training with the same intensity, haven't been running so much with Lawrence (who pushes me to train harder by his example) and haven't been doing the long runs as much as in previous years.  But I am feeling pretty good nonetheless.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I sang through Elijah in several stages with Don Tarnawski.  He was in town for the week, and as always his coaching was amazing.  I feel much better prepared than before... I am really lucky that he was here and available to coach.  He's now dividing his time between Toronto and Montreal, but there are still many singers here who value his coaching skills very highly, so they are going to miss him terribly if he ends up staying in Montreal more permanently.

Yesterday I took a drive to Elora to meet with the conductor Jurgen Petrenko, and run through Elijah at his house prior to today's general rehearsal.  I knew that the many accompanied recitative interjections of Elijah were complicated for the conductor, singer, and orchestra to assemble, and I also knew that we wouldn't have lots of time at the general to repeat things, so I wanted to get them solidified for the two of us well in advance.  It was a good rehearsal and Jurgen was nice enough to treat me to lunch!

I had been talking earlier in the week by email with Petr Hejny, an old friend who was the best man at our wedding.  He lives in Guelph, and on the way home I dropped in for a couple of hours to talk to him and his youngest son Silas, and catch up.  We hadn't seen each other since maybe 2012.  What a good friend and a wonderful person; it was just like old times.

2019

2012

1997

I didn't stay for dinner, but wanted to get home before dark, but left with promises that we'll try to keep in touch more by telephone and email in future.

This morning was a very early start, with the Elijah rehearsal starting at 10:00!  That meant quite an early wake-up to try to get the voice moving, but it seems to have gone pretty well.

Everyone involved is very positive about the project, and the orchestra and choir are rising to the challenge of this dramatic music.  So too are the soloists: they are uniformly excellent, and are all singing wonderfully.  I have performed with Lesley Bouza, the soprano, before, but the others are discoveries for me and are very inspiring.