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.