Last day in Newfoundland / Home to Belgium / rehearsing for Bach

Post-Messiah: with Allyson McHardy (mezzo), Marc David (conductor),

Hélène Brunet (soprano) and Ryan Downey (tenor)

Here we are having a little photo op after the second concert.  We were all feeling pretty good about the performance, and Bruce sat up in the side gallery this time, and said that the sound up there was superior to where he had sat the night before.  I was feeling a bit on the tired side on Friday from all of the rehearsals, but by Saturday was feeling more rested.  Bruce gave me some notes after the Friday show, so I was able to put those into practice and felt like I succeeded at integrating those improvements and delivering a quality performance.  I don't sing Messiah all that often as it isn't done so much here in Belgium, so I feel that it's important to try to set the bar high.

Afterwards Ryan, Marc, Bruce and I went out to have a drink with Ryan's parents... we ended up playing pool for a bit at the Duke of Duckworth, the traditional post-concert watering hole.

The next morning we got up fairly early and headed out to the Quidi Vidi brewery for the tour scheduled for 11:00.  Unfortunately the tours were not running as advertised, and walked around a bit exploring the village until the taproom opened at 12:00.  There are lots of nice little buildings, and with the river and harbour, and the granite rocks on either side, I felt very much like I was in an Ottawa Valley town.  There is a nice little church there that has been converted into a private home; it is a little bit famous as it was used in the first Canadian feature film, The Viking, in 1931.  One of the newer buildings in town is a large multi-purpose display space, and housed an arts and crafts fair: I saw a nice little embroidery bird ornament that I bought for Maggie, that will go up on our Christmas tree once it arrives.

When the Quidi Vidi taproom opened Bruce and I each enjoyed a tasting flight of four different beers, and so we ended up sampling quite a large variety of the Quidi Vidi production...

draft beer list at QV

Next we made our way to the Mallard Cottage, another heritage building, and had a delicious brunch of eggs benedict with slow-cooked pulled moose meat in place of the ham.  It was delicious and we finished up with a little shot of screech rum, before catching a cab back to the hotel.

Our flight was at 17:15, and we were delayed slightly upon landing in Montreal, so it was a very quick goodbye to Bruce who was continuing to Toronto, and I literally ran to my gate to catch my flight to Brussels.  I didn't sleep very much on the flight: maybe two hours, so I was tired when I arrived.  Miraculously my checked bag made it through the very short transfer time between flights and was waiting for me on the carousel!

As it was a Monday morning Maggie was already at work, but our neighbour Christophe had plans to make an early delivery for a client in the area of Zaventem airport, so he quite generously offered to come and pick me up.  I was pretty jet-lagged for the rest of the day, but slept almost twelve hours Monday night, as did Maggie, who is nursing a sore throat and other cold symptoms, so she needed a long sleep also.  I also got out with Yoshi for a 10KM run yesterday in the middle of the day, which I think has put paid to my jet-lag; Yoshi certainly had a good time, as I don't think he has been for a run since before I left for Canada.

Today I rehearsed my Bach cantatas for this weekend: the Christmas Oratorio Part IV cantata is quite familiar, but I am still learning the bass aria from the other cantata BWV 40.  It has some interesting turns but I am going to sing it again tomorrow and Friday so hope to be in ok shape.  This Friday we are going to make a little trip with the Hammer family to Monschau to check out the Christmas market there, but we will have to leave relatively early to make it to my rehearsals and performance on Sunday evening.

I wrote earlier about the La Petite Bande project in Japan, but I had some more good news... you may recall a blog post from 2016, when I was asked at very short notice to replace another baritone in a complete Christmas Oratorio.  That same conductor just contacted me to offer a Beethoven 9th Symphony in the Netherlands in mid-June of 2020.  This is really exciting as it will be my very first 9th Symphony performance; it's something that I sang as a choruster with the Kingston Choral Society in something like 1996, but I've never been asked to do the solo before.  And there are other things on the horizon, like a lieder recital, but that's not yet confirmed.  It's good to feel like I have some momentum going these days...