Last post of 2020

It's the eve of the new year, and I realise that my rate of blog posting has been quite low this year.

On one hand one would think that the pandemic would have given me a lot more time to think, and to write.  However one has to have things to write about, and after a bit of a bump in March as my concert schedule came to a sudden end, and I had lots to reflect on, my mental attitude rather quickly settled into survival mode.  I didn't really have much news to share, as weeks turned to months of confinement.

Then in late August, the opposite happened: I became very busy with the school production, and private students.  The situation was exacerbated after I took on the classroom teaching role in late October: suddenly, while I had stories to tell, I had no energy left to write about them!

But I have to say that while people everywhere are bemoaning everything that has happened in 2020, it was a productive year for me personally, filled with a ton of personal growth and change.

Household things got a lot of attention this year.  I had much more time together with Maggie, Duncan, and the family pets; Yoshi in particular has loved having his family around all the time.  Gardening was very therapeutic, and planting vegetables became a personal statement of optimism during a time of uncertainty.  The same was true of our collective efforts making beer, sparkling wine, jam, bread, ketchup, salsa, and pickles. 

I had a brief return to work in the cabinetmaking trade, something I did before and during university, and enjoyed helping Christopher on his installations.  A side benefit was that we were able to redo our kitchen.  And we also took the big step of replacing the back windows and doors on our kitchen and living room; this has made a big difference in reducing drafts and increasing heating efficiency, and it looks beautiful too.

On the health front I have kept running, and apart from a sprung calf muscle in the spring, have kept my distances up.  I try to get out there two or three times a week, between 10 and 15km per run, and Yoshi and I both benefit from the time in the fresh air and sunlight.  I am lucky that my health is good: a resting pulse rate under 60 bpm, a blood pressure of around 110/70, and no sign of any problems on my recent physical examination or blood tests.  Maggie is still cancer-free, and physically active in frequent Zumba classes, and she goes running as well.  We are grateful that Duncan's COVID infection was mild and seems to have no lingering aftereffects, and also grateful that Maggie and Malcolm and I didn't catch it ourselves, despite friends and colleagues who did get infected.  For those who did catch COVID, for the most part they are all completely recovered.

We are also grateful for the health of people in our extended family.  Maggie's parents are both ok, and enjoy a very high-quality living arrangement in Ottawa, with many amenities, an excellent chef, and while there have been a few cases among the staff, and perhaps one resident who was infected with COVID, they and the overwhelming majority of their fellow residents have been spared.

My parents and sisters are also enjoying good health, and the rest of the extended family are feeling well, including my Aunt Judy who just was cleared of leukemia after an extended course of treatment.  Bruce has also been given a clean bill of health this year; I have had to cancel two trips to Canada in the past year, where normally I would have been able to visit him, so it's a relief to hear that he's also healthy.  For all of these relationships, we are very lucky to have inexpensive or free telephone and video calls to maintain contact.  If one imagines how difficult it must have been to stay in contact with loved ones during the flu epidemic of 1918, then our situation doesn't actually seem so dire...

Making do with an improvised creche

On the professional side it was an artistic disaster of course: when I compare my spreadsheets for 2019 with 2020, I see 24 performances in 2019, in Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and Spain.  To contrast, 2020 included 6 productions, all in Belgium, and three of those were recording sessions, so that's a decrease of 75%.  I've already written about all of the great projects that were supposed to happen this year, so I won't repeat that laundry list... it's enough to say that a huge amount of mental energy went into coping with grief from losing those opportunities.

However, I still had things to do musically: I taught about fifty private voice lessons in the first few months of the year, and almost seventy more since September.  That has already refined my teaching technique quite a bit, and I feel that it has opened up a different dimension in my relationship with Bruce, and also with his teacher Pierre Fleta.  It also reinforces the memories of my past coaching sessions with Peter Tomek and Don Tarnawski, and I am grateful to pass on to other singers the tools that all of these teaching artists have given me.

Lastly, I have taken a big leap into the world of classroom teaching, and that has been quite frightening and exhausting, but it has also been satisfying.  Not only has it given me a big challenge to grow and learn new skills, it has also meant that the lost income from performing has been more or less replaced.  Being a part-time employee has also meant that I have been able to finally choose to register as a hybrid employee/self-employed person, something that I have been vacillating about for quite some time.  There are quite a few financial benefits from being classed as an independent in Belgium, including the possibility of deducting many professional expenses, so I do feel like I have turned the page over and am looking ahead to another chapter in my professional life.

How long will this classroom teaching aspect of my musical career continue?  It's a good question: the school has made it part of our agreement that I can continue to perform, and that they will cover those absences.  In my opinion, while I have a couple of contracts on the books (in April, and in November) there is no guarantee that we will return to live performances until next autumn, if then.  So until that happens I think it makes sense to take advantage of this opportunity and see where it leads.

Sending each of you lots of good wishes for a happy and healthy 2021...

Yoshi (right) with his new friend Nevis

p.s. just as I was getting ready to publish this blog, I received a call from the company that Malcolm and I worked for, singing English versions of Flemish songs for television.  I had called to verify something about the work I did for them in 2020, and as we were talking, they asked if I also do spoken-word work.  Turns out that they are interested in having me send them some examples of spoken English for commercial voice over.  That's a nice little surprise for the last day of 2020...

Christmas Day dinner with Camille

Classes are over, Christmas Tree is up

Wow has this ever been a busy month.  The last day of classes was last Wednesday, and it marked a little more than one month of classroom teaching.  I was pretty tired!  My fatigue from teaching was compounded by the fact that I had a number of things all happening around the same time...

The weekend of the 5th/6th December I went and ran a 20km trail with Kiana, while Bryan, Lawrence, and Victoria (Lawrence's new girlfriend) trained for the longer 36km Trail des Cisterciens, which was taking place on the following Saturday.  The Cisterciens race this year was a virtual one: everyone involved tracked their runs and then submitted them via email.  I knew that I was going to be busy the next week, and the organisers didn't care if I ran my 20km on the day of the race itself, or the weekend before.  It was good to actually have a race on the books for 2020, and it's the longest run for me since April.

The following week was a bit easier in terms of classes, as most of my private students were taking a break from singing lessons, to concentrate on end-of-year exams.  But I was busy rehearsing and recording the students singing Silent Night in a variety of languages, to prepare them for a massed choir performance on Monday the 14th.

This was necessary to do advance recording because my original plan to have the music students assembled as a mass choir in the theatre was not approved, because of COVID regulations.  The only way that I could get a massed choir performance approved was to do it in the gymnasium, with the doors open, and the students masked and spaced out.  The acoustics were likely to be poor in the gym, so Thom had the idea to record the different classes individually in the music room, and then put them together in one audio file.  Then we would play the audio file back in the gym, and the kids would sing along with themselves, and we would be able to record that and so have some room sound but also have the clear tracks as a backup.

I managed to get the final bits recorded during Friday's Grease rehearsal, and then edited the tracks together that evening.  The rest of that weekend of the 12th/13th December was packed.  It started with a Grease rehearsal Saturday morning and early afternoon.  Unfortunately Thom was busy adjudicating some drama examinations, and Marie-Pierre was also absent, so I had to lead it myself.  Afterwards I hopped into the car, and drove to Jodoigne where we had our final recording sessions for two Christmas concerts.

This was a very tiring project.  We were doing "live from the floor" recordings in a church with two singers, a harpist and a string quartet, so that meant that if anyone made any errors, or if there was any noise from the street outside, we had to perform the whole piece again, and sometimes did take after take until we got a useable one.  Then we did another take for the other broadcast; we were contracted to do two concerts and so it was part of the agreement that we wouldn't re-use the recording from one in the other.

It was quite a challenge, and totally exhausting.  But I think that it turned out ok, and the first "concert" has already been streamed out to a number of cultural centres in Flanders and Wallonie.  Here's the link in case you would like to watch it.  Or you could also choose to look at the other version of the concert that doesn't go to air until December 24th.

Then it was back to work at the school on Monday.  In the last period of the day we wrangled all 160 singers (120 music students plus 40 Grease singers) into the gym, gave them some quick instructions on how to move and where to look while performing the various verses, and I stood on a little platform and conducted them all in Silent Night in French (grade 6s), Flemish (grade 8s) , English (grade 7s), and German (Grease cast and grade 10s), and we filmed it from various angles.  Then we all did it again in English, so that the entire school could sing along in their respective classrooms.  Thom edited the video and synchronised the audio, and then we played those clips during the assembly on Wednesday.  It was quite a nice thing to have achieved, and a good ending to the first half of the school year.  (I would share the video with you but I'm not sure if the school privacy rules permit that, so I'll have to check that first).

Malcolm came to Wavre late this past week, and so we have enjoyed having four in the house again.  We went out together on the weekend to a roadside stand about a kilometre and a half away, and picked up a nice tall Christmas tree... Malcolm and Duncan carried it home, while I accompanied them with Yoshi, and Maggie drove the car back home.  It's now been decorated and is looking great.  I have often bought Christmas tree ornaments from places where I was travelling to sing, so as we were unpacking them I had ornaments from Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, St. John's, Halifax... I didn't have much chance to shop for ornaments as the Christmas markets are all closed, but Maggie ordered a new 2020 ornament from a former colleague who works as a ceramic artist, and it arrived today.

We really don't have many presents to buy this year: we don't need much except clothes and shoes, so that will be on the list for each of us, as well as special treats, and a few modest things for each person.  We bought a new fridge and stove and replaced the windows already this year, so we are considering those things to be our "presents" for the most part.

I have also had a surreal experience over the last week or so, trying to register as an partly self-employed person here in Belgium.  To explain, there is a very useful status called "independent complementary" which applies to those persons who are a) employees working at least 50% of a full-time load, and b) engaged as a self-employed person.  I found a good accountant, and met with him on Friday.  All looked to be in order for us to move forward: to approve that application, the government agency needed proof of residency, the contract for my employment, and proof of a degree or diploma.

I had Bruce take a photo of my Queen's degree back in Toronto and dutifully submitted it.  But there was a snag: they wouldn't accept it because it was written in Latin!

Gadzooks.  I tried to have the degree translated here in Belgium, but that proved impractical: apparently Latin is not this country's lingua franca, despite it still being something offered in secondary school.  Fortunately Queen's received my request for an English proof of graduation certificate, and they sent it to at no charge by email.  Despite the fact that English isn't an official language in Belgium, this was accepted, and so today I filled in all of the other paperwork to open a separate bank account, get a tax number, and so forth.  Unless I hear something from the government agency this afternoon (fingers crossed), we should be "in business" by tomorrow.

That means that I can legally issue invoices for concerts that I sing, and also for lessons that I teach privately.  I will also be eligible for certain other benefits, including business deductions for things like scores, clothing, a portion of the household utilities, travel, etc.  In return I do have to make fixed payments of my social contributions every three months, based on how much I billed the preceding year, but those are not too expensive if you are partly independent.

Looking ahead to next year, I just received a couple of confirmations of new musical projects: the Beethoven Mass in C and Choral Fantasy concert that was cancelled this season has been rescheduled to take place in the Netherlands on November 7th of 2021.  And also a new concert with the same group that I performed the Homilius Passion, Mozart Requiem, and Carmina Burana will do a new programme on April 25th, 2021.  All COVID permitting, of course!  But it's nice to have these musical projects of my own on the horizon.

This past weekend we had a nice Zoom call with the extended Zadow family, and enjoyed a bit of a singalong.  It's really very weird that we haven't had some sort of get together in person; for us living in Europe it's not so strange as we are more used to video conferencing, but I'm sure for the family members in Canada, this is the first time in decades that they haven't met in person around Christmastime.

After the call I went to sleep by the fire, but set my alarm and got up at 2:00 A.M. for a video call with my French class colleagues from Alliance Francaise.  We met more than fifteen years ago, but have stayed friends; Olga has visited us here in Brussels, and Miroslav and his family have met us in Croatia over the years, and since the rest of them all live in the GTA they see each other regularly.  It was really nice to talk with them again and catch up.

We are enjoying lots of good food: last night I made a filet of venison with roast vegetables, and Maggie has already made one lamb tourtiere that is mostly gone: she has the extra meat pie filling for another one, so that will probably be on the menu soon.  With two tall sons in the house no food has time to spoil!

Maggie is also busy sorting threads for her next embroidery project, because she just finished the one that she's been working on since June 16th of 2019.  It's currently being blocked, but when it's stretched and dry I'll post a picture.  Here she is sewing the last stitch, yesterday evening...

With that I think that I'll sign off.  I have a lot of schoolwork to do: assignments to be marked, new tasks and units to create for the second semester, and then report card comments to write for every student.  While they don't technically have to be in before the 15th of January, I have to get them done now, because as soon as school resumes we are going to be flooded with Grease rehearsals as we run up to the "performance" dates, and I just won't have any time.

About Grease, it seems clear that large assemblies are still going to be forbidden for several months ahead, and so we have already pulled the plug on the idea of a live audience, and will sell tickets for internet streaming performances instead.  That is disappointing for the cast, but on the other hand if we are filming without an audience we have some more freedom in rehearsal and re-shooting, and we can go scene by scene, which has some advantages. 

The big question now is how we are going to deliver a musical with as many as forty singing and dancing teenagers, and without masks?  Are they going to have to quarantine for two weeks beforehand?  It's still unclear what January 2021 will hold for our cast, but we are hoping for the best.

In all likelihood I'll have something more to report before the 25th of December, but in case I don't...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Too busy to write a blog post - teaching at St. John's

Today Maggie and I are home, as she had a bit of a fever and some muscle aches on Thursday evening... our doctor prescribed a COVID test, which we did yesterday, and we expect results within 48 hours, which would be on Sunday.  She has no other symptoms, and the fever disappeared after only a few hours.  She felt better yesterday already and today feels her normal self, so we find that encouraging and are hoping that it was some other fast-moving bug.  But we are staying masked in the house until we get the results back from the lab.  As she feels normal I'm not at all worried about her, and I don't have any symptoms of any kind.  For both our sakes I really hope that it is a negative result, and we won't have to stay home and try to teach remotely.

Teaching!  That is the reason that I have been incredibly busy since my last blog post, over a month ago... to review...

The Bach concert on the 25th October was quite the experience, both full of joy and also very sad, as we all knew that the confinement rules were coming back down as of Monday 26th October, and there would be no clear idea of when concert performances would resume.  It was strange for me to wear a suit again, after so many months spent wearing casual or work clothes, and to do all of the little rituals around preparing to perform.

The audience was seated in such a way that they were distanced from each other, and masked, which was a bit strange.  It was impossible to see their expressions during the performance, but based on their reaction afterwards they really seemed to enjoy it, and showed their gratefulness for having some sort of live performance.  Christopher, Camille, and Malcolm attended as well, as did some of our old friends from Watermael-Boitsfort.

The next week was the school break for St. John's, and then the school resumed classes via distance teaching for the first two weeks after that, which was a bit weird.  Some of the kids were known to me but the majority weren't, and so I had to get to know around 120 different faces.  I have two grade six classes of around 20 kids, two grade seven classes of around the same number, one grade 8 class, and one grade 10 class (there is another Grade 8 class that is shared between the other music teachers).  

Imagine trying to hold their attention and give them appropriate tasks to do while largely unsupervised and at home, when you haven't had a chance to establish a solid personal connection already!  But fortunately for me, we needed to do a sort of interview meet-and-greet so that I could learn about their family musical background, previous music education, performing experience, and so forth, and that could easily be done over teleconference.  So I had some time to get my bearings.

My birthday came and went during that first week of online teaching.  Obviously as we were in confinement and we were both working all day on my birthday, and we couldn't invite anyone over, the celebrations were fairly low-key.  But Maggie made some great breakfast to start the day, and also a nice dinner in the evening.  Malcolm had come home as it was the Belgian school holiday, and he made a chocolate birthday cake for me, which was delicious.  All in all a very nice day.  We had several more nice dinners that week, and it was great to have both Duncan and Malcolm there with us.  

Maggie and I continued the teleconference teaching for two weeks and then resumed in-class teaching starting on the 16th November; I've just completed the second week of that, so that makes four weeks now.  It's quite an interesting experience being a classroom teacher, with music being a special challenge.

I don't have much material to work with from the previous teacher, as we didn't get a chance to talk or review things before she left, so while that is a bit challenging to know where to start, on the other hand I have a certain freedom to do what I want.  After discussion with Thom and Marie-Pierre, who are also taking on some music classes, we decided that we will focus on teaching them the do-re-mi note names, and helping them hear how to sing the different scale steps using them.  Regular practice at identifying where a note is on the scale also helps them to sing harmonies.  We will also work on rhythmic literacy, using the Kodaly vocabulary (if you did any rhythmic musical education as a kid you might remember hearing the syllables "ta" for a quarter note, "tee-tee" for two eight notes, "tiri-tiri" for four sixteenth notes, etc.) which the Primary music teacher also uses in her classes.  And we're also eventually going to be teaching them how to identify and perform in different time signatures.

The idea is that we'll be able to get them all singing music "at sight" much more accurately, which will help with teaching them to sing in choir, perform as an instrumentalist, or to learn the parts for musical theatre productions in the future.  One strength of the current performing arts team is that the three of us teaching music and dance and drama in the Middle and High Schools are all professional performers, so we can model performing easily, and can direct the study in class toward performance skills.  Rather than make music theory something that you do while sitting down with a pencil and paper, I want to get them using it to sing and eventually play instruments properly first, and then extend that to the written exercises.

The introductory project that we chose to do for music was "Show me what you got!", which involved the kids coming up with a short musical performance, which they planned, rehearsed, filmed and then uploaded to the class server for the teachers to view.  As well, they had to write down their planning and brainstorming sessions, their choice of instrumentation, their specific challenges, and the feedback that they received from parents, siblings, or each other during the rehearsal and preparation.

The range of performances was huge, with some of the kids giving quite polished classical performances on the piano, to others who sang quite capably along with commercial recordings, did karaoke, composed their own lyrics, sequenced rhythmic beats on their computers or played drums, did Anna Kendrick's "cup song" clapping / table percussion song from the movie Pitch Perfect, or many other things.

The next task I've chosen for the music classes is to perform Silent Night... the head of school has asked us to have some music ready for the end of term virtual assembly in December, and so I am rehearsing all of the classes in this famous piece.  I am hoping that we will be able to have all of the younger kids at least singing the top two voices, and then the grade tens and the Grease male singers can handle the bass and tenor parts, and the older girls can do the two female voices.  If all goes well I will be able to put them all (around 150 people) in the seats of the theatre, which has a capacity of 450, and is very well ventilated, and I'll conduct them from the stage with a student pianist helping give them the notes, and we'll film it and show it to the rest of the students.

In my own performing news, pretty much everything that wasn't cancelled, has now been.  Technically some things are postponed, but some are quite a long ways off: the Flemish baroque programme has just been moved optimistically to October 2021; the rescheduled Japanese Matthauspassion tour has been cancelled again and theoretically moved to (maybe) 2023... the Christmas Oratorio in Flanders was first scaled down to a smaller baroque programme, then scaled down from three concerts to one, and finally put out of its misery with an outright cancellation.  It is not at all unexpected.

I hope that things improve by May 2021 so that I can go to Canada for the Vaughan Williams concert, but I spoke with the conductor and he's not optimistic; they are still not able to rehearse, so it seems very unlikely that we'll be back at it by then.  As well the Johannespassion here in Brussels is still on the books, but for how long?

So because of those developments, I'm not complaining about being busy with the teaching, as many of my singer and musician colleagues are stuck without any music in their lives at all!  Our family has much to be thankful for.

On that note, while we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving last month, the fresh turkeys only showed up this week in the Delhaize ahead of US Thanksgiving.  I bought one, and we were planning on meeting with the Hammers for a socially distanced dinner outside together, with turkey, my haggis cranberry dressing, etc. until Maggie's fever on Thursday put the brakes on that.  We are keeping fingers crossed that her COVID test comes back negative before the dinner bell goes tomorrow... 

Four Rose-Zadows under one roof; little doggies, first public performance in a long time

Malcolm arrived this morning along with Camille; Christopher and Isabelle picked them both up this morning in Brussels, and then the four of them went to look at the new puppy that Christopher hopes to adopt.

"Pongo" is ten weeks old, and is a very friendly little fellow.  He is the product of two parents who are both dalmatian/border collie crosses, so we were all quite enamoured of him as he ran around Christopher's backyard.  Yoshi is a very playful dog so they had some nice moments together in the garden.

I had a long planning meeting yesterday with Marie-Pierre and Thom, to try to figure out a harmonised curriculum for the rest of the school year in music following the departure of the previous teacher.  I think we have it more or less sorted out.  It's lucky that I have a full week of holidays right now to get my head around what I'll be doing for the next few months.

I did some baking yesterday to prepare for today, as I knew that we'd have a full (and hungry) house.  I made hamburger buns, and also did another two loaves of that rye starter/kamut/wheat loaf that blew my mind last time.  This time the levain was only single fermented, and I used much less than last time, something like 300 grammes.  But it still has a wonderful taste, and that is a bread I'm going to keep and make again regularly.  The hamburger buns will be used tonight, as angus burgers were available for a reduced price at DelHaize, and we don't bother with any other kind of beef around these parts.

I got warmed up this morning and drove into Brussels for the general rehearsal for two Bach Cantatas and a motet that is happening tomorrow with my colleagues at Les Minimes.  It honestly felt a bit weird for a few reasons.  The first is of course that I haven't sung very much in public since the 8th March (apart from some recording work, a funeral, and the Canada Day recording) so the experience had a kind of strange unreality to it.

Also we were rehearsing (and will be performing) in a new church.  The Eglise des Minimes was closed to us a couple of years ago, and we moved to our new home, the Eglise Saint-Jacques-sur-Coudenberg / Chapel Militaire, on the Mont des Arts.  That church is having the furnace replaced at the moment, so we had to find another venue, and this gothic/renaissance church on the Sablon, well-known to anyone who has ever done a walking tour of Brussels, will be the venue for tomorrow's concert.

As well I really haven't had much opportunity to sing in my "real" voice recently; I've had to do a lot of demonstrating and falsetto singing to help the kids learn their parts in Grease, and that hasn't exactly set me up to sing Bach's bass solos.  But I had started early, and spent quite a lot of time over the last week singing the pieces into my voice, so I was pleasantly surprised that everything went well today.

The two Cantatas that we are doing are interesting.  I have a recitative in the BWV 115, and a nice aria in the other, BWV 89.  The recitative is great, because of the different "painting" that the singer can do with the text:

God who watches over your soul has a horror of the night of sin; He sends you the light of his grace and for these gifts which he promises to you so abundantly He only wants you to have the eyes of your spirit open. Satan's cunning is unfathomable to catch sinners in his net; if you now break the covenant of grace, you will never obtain help. The whole world and every part of it are nothing but false brothers and yet your flesh and blood see in them pure flattery.

But the aria is also unusual, because it is one of those situations where the bass voice is in fact singing with the voice of God, the vox Dei...  It is normal for Bach to give the bass singer the vox Christi, as he does in the Passions and in many cantatas, but I can't remember interpreting God the Father very often... so far in my singing life, I've sung the voices of Jesus, Peter, Judas, Pilate, Elijah, St. Paul, Raphael, Adam, Joseph... but not very often God the father, so that's kind of neat.  Here's a great recording with Jakob Stämpfli as the vox Dei in this cantata, from the late 1960s:

Here is the text, where God speaks directly to Ephraim (one of the sons of Joseph - he of the famous "technicolour dreamcoat") and the nation of Israel, and asking if he should rain down judgement... 

What shall I make of you, Ephraim? Shall I protect you, Israel? Should I not simply make an Adama* out of you and judge you like Zeboim*? But my heart is of another mind, my mercy is too fervent. (*Admah and Zeboim were two of the "cities of the plain" that were destroyed by God, along with Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zoar.)

In the end God is magnanimous and admits that his mercy is "too fervent".  You can imagine that give lots of opportunities for the singing actor to show contrast between the God of vengeance and the God of mercy and forgiveness...

All three of us at home this week and next; some changes in my work

We received our negative tests late on Friday evening, and so I went into the school for rehearsal on Saturday.  It was really great to be back in person, and we got quite a lot done.  It was the first time that the full team of Marie-Pierre, Thom, Aine (our producer) and I were all together with the cast since MP's diagnosis a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately as the day went on Thom started to feel a bit shivery and by the time he got home he was starting a fever, and feeling under the weather.  One of the participants in a workshop that he led earlier in the week had just tested positive, and so he needed to isolate and get a test.  While so far there have been no confirmed transmissions between anyone on the cast or creative team since rehearsals began in late August, the administration was concerned, and so the COVID prevention committee pulled the plug on in-person rehearsals for the rest of the week.  It's been very frustrating for all of us.

In fact, there were only scheduled rehearsals on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, because the Toussaint holiday, or "half-term" as it is called in the UK, is scheduled to begin this coming Saturday.  As is usual the school scheduled professional development days for Thursday and Friday, so the kids had two extra days off.

I decided to do one-on-one singing rehearsals using Microsoft Teams on Monday instead of group rehearsals, which was only partly successful.  As I have written before, and as some of you may know, standard teleconference audio is optimised for speech, and not singing, so there are some workarounds required to allow singing to be properly heard over teleconference.  But it was certainly better than nothing.

While face-to-face production rehearsals were stopped, private teaching was still allowed, so on Tuesday I went in and taught two lunchtime lessons and three after-school ones, and also took the time in between to practice my own two Bach Cantatas for this coming Sunday.  These went fine and we made some good progress.  Last night Thom was recovered somewhat from his symptoms (a promising sign) and so he and Marie-Pierre and Aine also joined the rehearsal, and we each ran scenes with different groups of kids on Zoom or Teams.  Today I will have another private in-person lesson, before the Toussaint break begins in earnest.

These interruptions in the normal rehearsal plan have meant that while the individual soloists are in ok shape musically (many of them are private students of mine as well) we have missed opportunities to physically run the scenes and sing the ensembles with stage movement.  Grease is a pretty energetic show, with some complicated choreography, and so we may need to delay the performances to allow more time for staging and rehearsal, and move the shows from late November to late January... that hasn't been confirmed yet but it seems highly likely.  As well we are hopeful that by then the epidemic curve will be less steep, and we will be able to accommodate a larger audience in later January than the current guidelines allow.

It seems that Duncan has completely recovered from his COVID infection and hasn't had a fever for probably ten days, with no further symptoms (sniffles, cough, or headache) since the middle of last week.  But as luck would have it his school has decided to suspend in-person classes, so I've set him up with my personal computer at the dining room table, and he's been doing some school work this week, and I assume next; the Belgian school doesn't begin its Toussaint holiday October 31st, so the next ten days or so will be interesting, with all three of us at home.  Yoshi will be happy to have humans around all day!

Some other important news has just arrived for me...  The school has been relatively lucky with enrollment, which has held steady since the epidemic began.  However the administration did some restructuring this week, and reassigned some classes with the arts department to teachers who had space in their teaching schedules, but now they find themselves with some music classes and no one on staff with free periods to teach them.  Yesterday morning I had a meeting with the middle school principal, and while I haven't signed a contract yet, he did offer me the job of handling the music classes that remain, from now until the end of the school year.

It's only about a 30% load of classes, or about seven periods per week, which is fine with me, given that I have twelve private voice students already, plus the musical (or possibly musicals if the middle school show goes ahead) so I hope that I can manage it.  As well, I have made it clear that the few singing contracts that I have already on the books will mean that I will need coverage of those absences, and the administration has agreed.  That is of course assuming that those concerts (Leuven in December, Japan in January, Binkom in February, Toronto in May, etc.) will even happen... in the meantime it will be good to have a little more financial security, and looking toward the future and maybe teaching in a conservatory someday, any additional classroom teaching experience is good for my resume.

About the COVID situation, while the numbers may seem dire, and the news reports are frightening, the situation here in Belgium isn't as gloomy as one might think from the news.  People are much better prepared now that they were in the early spring, and the infrastructure for testing is established.  We have a better idea of how serious the infections are, and while the rate of infections is higher than it was in the spring, the death rate is not rising to the same extent.  In Wavre at least people are very compliant about mask-wearing, so that's a good thing.

Happy birthday Maggie!

With Malcolm unable to come visit us because we were in quarantine, and Duncan upstairs in his room isolating with his positive COVID diagnosis, it was a pretty quiet celebration, with just Maggie and I at the table.  But we did make a big birthday meal, starting with champagne and a shrimp appetiser, followed by Irish Angus "babytop" beef steak seared in a pan and then baked in the oven with an improvised "HP Sauce" made from our homemade ketchup and Worchestershire sauce, served with rosemary oven fried potatoes and shredded brussels sprouts and bacon, along with a nice St. Emilion red wine.

As well I baked a four-layer vanilla cake for Maggie's birthday, with homemade Provencale apricot jam thinned out with limoncello, and butter cream icing (also with lemon and more limoncello).  I have to admit that Maggie did apply the icing while I was cooking everything else, but otherwise she didn't have to cook.  

Unfortunately for her it was not the most restful of birthdays.  She was on the computer most of the day, having ten minute teleconferences with every student and their parents... this was the substitute for the usual in person parent-teacher conferences.  She even had to do some of those using her iPhone while we were driving to Beauvechain to get our latest COVID tests...

That was a bit of an adventure: I had to contact the doctor in the morning by telephone, go down the checklist with her, and then go pick up the prescriptions, and then we rushed to the testing centre.  Fortunately we made it with a couple of minutes to spare before they closed down the line: the one we like is only open from 10h-12h, and has almost no waiting time, unlike the one that is a little closer.  The closer one is open from 14h-18h, but has huge lineups and a waiting time that is growing longer as the pandemic drags on, with delays of up to two hours.

After the tests we came home and Maggie continued with her interviews, which I did a bunch of the shopping for the dinner, and then sat down to try to lead a choral rehearsal with the kids at St. John's... They set up a computer in the theatre and had me join.  I could sort of hear what was going on in the theatre but as they were attached via wifi, I felt that there was a substantial lag, and as well they didn't have an external microphone.  Not ideal. We are going to try again with a better mic tonight, and see how that goes... I hope that we get our test results back quickly (and that they are negative) so that I can go back to music rehearsals in person. 

Thank you to everyone who has expressed concern for Duncan; he's doing much better now, and in fact he didn't have terribly intense symptoms: he hasn't had a fever since perhaps Sunday or Monday, so that's a good sign.  He still has the occasional cough, and a slightly scratchy throat, but he isn't feeling too poorly.  He was up and dressed, dusting his bookshelves, and reorganising things this morning.  We're still keeping him in his room, and not going in without a mask when we bring him his meals.  The doctor has explained that we need to wait forty-eight houre after the disappearance of symptoms before he can leave isolation, which most likely will be early next week.

This morning we caught the two cats and put them into their carriers, not without some complaining: Bonnie is sweet and cuddly but her back claws sliced me open in several places on my left hand...

It was time for their vaccinations, and a yearly examination.  They are both in good health: Clyde is tipping the scales at almost fifteen pounds, and Bonnie is around ten pounds.  We also took the opportunity to order replacement passports for the two of them, and get their microchips registered.  Both are inside/outside cats, and neither is used to wearing a collar, so it's important that if they were found we could be notified.  The passports and the chip registration were supposed to have already been done by the cat rescue organisation that we adopted them from, but they never delivered them, so we had no choice.

Okay, that's about it; I have to go for a quick run and then get ready for the rehearsal this afternoon.  Fingers crossed that we'll be receiving our negative reports shortly...

... and back at home again

That didn't last very long...  home again...

Duncan is upstairs awaiting the results of his most recent COVID test, and Maggie and I are stuck in the house until it comes back negative.  As we don't have symptoms we don't have to publicly quarantine, but the school has asked us to stay home.

Duncan was feeling poorly beginning on Thursday, and his cold had already been going on for a week.  Then on Saturday morning he awoke with a mild fever, and so that meant that he had to miss karate, and then we had to try to get a COVID test, which he did yesterday.

We are trying to stay clear of him, giving him his meals in his room.  Fortunately his appetite is very strong, and he's been eating and drinking a lot, which is a good sign.  The only symptoms are just the fever (which has now disappeared) and a mild cough that sounds to me like it's caused by upper respiratory congestion.  We should get the results by this time tomorrow, and if they are negative, then I can go back to school and continue with the rehearsals and my private lessons.

Meanwhile we've also had to have Malcolm tested, as the roommate of his girlfriend Camille tested positive.  Malcolm stayed over there the Friday before last, and then he and Camille were here overnight on Saturday, and I drove him back to his apartment.  Fortunately both he and Camille have both tested negative, so that's good news.

As far as infections at school have been going, Maggie has had only one positive case in her class, but that was three weeks ago and seem to have been no transmissions by that route.  One of our principal actors in the show has tested positive, and has been out since last Wednesday, but she emailed me today and seems to be ok, with only minor symptoms.

I can't help but feel that we are all dog-paddling in a kind of COVID whirlpool, going around in circles, trying to keep our heads above water but not sure if we'll get sucked under... I have collected yet another student to that brings my total to twelve confirmed, and maybe more to come, so it's very frustrating to not be able to get into the school to teach them.  One of the things that I think I will do is to try to set up a dedicated room with a good microphone, a monitor and a hard-wired ethernet connection, so that the kids can go there and have an in-person lesson if (when!) this happens again.

From what I have heard so far, the October 25th Bach cantatas concert is going forward, and I am still being asked to do paperwork for Japan in January, so who knows?

In the meantime household things continue.  We harvested a lot of tomatoes from the garden, and so decided to make our own ketchup!  The whole house smelled like Leamington, Ontario, for a while, but the six or seven litres of fresh roma tomatoes ended up reducing down to two 750ml jars of ketchup.

I have continued with bread baking, and my rye and wheat starters - which had slowed down a bit - are back up to higher activity levels.  I've been playing around a bit with using slightly different amounts of levain and water, and I'm happy with the results.  Today's loaves are made from rye starter that I did a triple feeding / fermentation, so it's going to have quite a strong flavour.  Also I ran out of 000 organic wheat flour, so had to use half organic kamut.  This is a relatively new flour, made from Khorasan wheat, which has been cultivated in the fertile crescent (the Levant) for millenia, but has only been commercially grown since the 1990s.  It has a buttery yellow colour and is quite high in nutrients... I find it really quite delicious when used with the 000 wheat and a larger-than usual amount of rye starter (I sometimes use as little as 140g of starter for two loaves, but in this case I used 450g so it has a much more pronounced "sour" taste).  One nice thing about sourdough bread is that it lasts for a very long time without drying out or getting stale or mouldy.  It's not uncommon for us to be eating bread that is a week old but still perfectly good, and sometimes in the case of rye breads they are actually better if left to rest a full day after baking before you slice them.

I'm also going to be baking a birthday cake today, so that Maggie has one for her birthday tomorrow!  The celebration will be small, just the two of us, plus Duncan if he gets the all-clear (fingers crossed).

Here are some photos of our most recent little projects... Happy Thanksgiving, and stay healthy!

playing around with some antique floor tiles
to fill the gaps next to the new windows and doors

Thanksgiving roast leg of lamb
(I debone the roast, but roast the bone anyway

so that I can use it in stock later)

ratatouille with veggies from the garden

kamut / wheat bread ready for the oven

Back to work

I am happy to report that things are getting back to normal...

My second COVID test on a week ago Monday came back late on Wednesday, so I was cleared to go in and do some voice lessons on Thursday.  I had only a couple of students but they were really good ones so that was energising.

Last week we had workers in from Wednesday onwards... they finally finished the last little bits by Saturday.  Here are some photos.

We are loving the new windows and doors and have already noticed a big difference in heat retention in the living and dining rooms.  We have to be quite careful not to load the woodstove too heavily as it actually verges on being too warm in the living room, now that the drafts have been eliminated.

Since resuming teaching voice lessons, I have added another student to bring my total to eleven, and there might be a twelfth, which on top of my "Grease" work is quite demanding.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I now have five students: two at midday and three after school.  As we get closer to the performances there will be additional rehearsals added, so I am going to have to reschedule some of the afternoon lessons.  But I am glad to have the students, because compared to 2019, 2020-2021 is shaping up to be a year with very little singing work (and therefore also very little income).  To compare, in 2019 I had twenty-four performances, in six different countries.  Not this year!

That's about all that I have time for writing at the moment... stay healthy and stay safe!

First Covid test is negative

A quick update: I just heard back from my doctor, and the COVID test that I took on Tuesday has come back negative.  Good news!  That confirms that Marie-Pierre (the dance director) definitely did not get COVID from me... Speaking of Marie-Pierre, we've heard that her condition is improving but she's not quite ready to come back to work any time soon.

Despite the advice that I received yesterday from the COVID contact centre, indicating that I might need to quarantine only seven days, I received different instructions from my doctor today.  She insists that if I was in extended contact (more than 15 minutes) with an infected person in a confined area (as was the case), then that is a situation of high risk for transmission.  She confirmed that a second negative COVID test needs to take place before I return to work, and that there have to be at least five days between tests.  So the earliest that I can take a test is Monday, and with a best-case processing time of 48 hours, the earliest that I can likely return to work would be Wednesday, but more likely Thursday next.  At this point I'm not sure if I want to go ahead and do some distance private voice lessons, but the creative team is going to get together in a few minutes over teleconference and make our plans for the next steps...

A bump up ahead

Before the run

and after

The Terry Fox run was great!  We managed to do a few different distances, although there was some confusion about routes.  I think next time I'm going to have to be a bit more organised and actually put up clear signs for the different distances.  In the end Lawrence and I ran the 15km, and Maggie did the 6-7km with Bryan, as he is nursing a sore ankle, but then there were people in the middle like Kiana who did I think a 10km... then there was the rest of the group, who don't regularly run here, and so they had no clue where they were going and got completely lost!  But in the end everyone found their way back to the house and we had a big bbq with chicken and ribs.  I was particularly happy because this was the first time that Malcolm and Duncan have actually participated in any kind of running activity with us; I hope that it won't be the last.  Duncan is already experienced at running, having trained up for his para-junior trials, but I'm happy that Malcolm is also interested.  Both boys are tall and slim and long-legged, so it makes sense that they would both be fast runners.

We've been having a very busy time rehearsing "Grease", four days a week, and I've also seen an increase in demand for private voice lessons: I am up to ten confirmed students and there are more asking, so I have had to expand my private teaching days from just Tuesday and Thursday, to include the days when I have "Grease" rehearsals.  It is tiring but it's good to have so many motivated students.

This has meant that I have had longer days, and more frequent days at the school... Last autumn we were able to use the scooter to supplement the car, but unfortunately someone stole it right out of our driveway a couple of weeks ago!  That really stinks, and what's more, our insurance covers liability and damage but not theft.  So unfortunately we have only one vehicle at the moment.  As I wrote last time, that means early mornings for me, driving Maggie to work and then returning home, before going back to do lunchtime lessons and/or after-school rehearsals.

That is a bit tiring but it's been going ok, until this past Monday...

Our dance director was feeling a bit off last Friday the 18th September, and she awoke with a fever on Saturday morning, so we told her to stay home.  She got tested and late on Monday we received the news that she was COVID-positive.  So that meant that we had to call a halt to both rehearsals and lessons this week.  I went to my doctor early on Tuesday and got a test prescription, and took a bus to the nearest testing centre, which is maybe 9 km from here.  I am still waiting for the results but so far I have no symptoms after six days since contact with the dance director.  Nevertheless my doctor suggested that I sleep in a different room from Maggie and try to avoid close contact with her and with Duncan for the next couple of weeks.  So I have been sleeping in the attic, which is actually very calm and quiet, with lovely light in the mornings.

It's been a bit frustrating because while I still am getting paid for my work as musical director, I am not able at this point to give private lessons... during the March-May confinement, I did so via teleconference, but that was when the students were at home.  The logistical issue now is that they are in the school, so the challenge is finding a place there that has a stable internet connection, external microphone, a speaker system, etc., and there are also some concerns about students being in a school room without some element of supervision.  We are having some meetings this evening to discuss how we might solve this problem, for the rehearsals and also for lessons.

There was an added wrinkle today: the Belgian test-trace contact centre called me this afternoon, and said that since I was considered low-risk, and had had no symptoms, that I would likely only have to quarantine for seven days instead of the usual fourteen!  So that's a question for my doctor... which is the proper duration of isolation?  I left her a text message so we'll see what she says. 

Our neighbour across the street rang the bell yesterday and said that the new windows have arrived, so he wants to take some final measurements this evening, and will start installation next week!  So that's great news.  Just in time for winter...

I have been a bit bored all by myself at home this week, so after getting a batch of sourdough bread going and tidying up the kitchen, I went out today for a run, and as it was not too hot (around 17 degrees) and I was well-rested, I managed a quite fast 10km at a 5:29 average pace, with my fastest ever 1km pace, at 4:26!  I'm not really training for anything in particular but it feels good to stretch my limits a bit.

That's it for now.  Stay healthy, everyone!

contract at St. John's is confirmed

Hi there, I realise that I haven't posted in over a month.

This will be a short catch up post... shortly after our wedding anniversary in mid-august I led a Grease themed musical theatre camp for a week at St. John's International School, along with Marie-Pierre the dance teacher.  Thom, the drama teacher and architect of the camp was unfortunately forced to stay in quarantine, as he had just attended his son's wedding in the USA, so while he did a lot of the planning and organisation, he had to leave it to us to teach the classes, so it was a tiring week.

In accordance with the Belgian Security Council guidelines, sports camps were allowed to resume that week as long as certain precautions were followed.  For example, parents were not allowed into the campus; students had their temperatures checked upon arrival; they agreed to self-isolate if they had a fever or symptoms consistent with COVID-19 infection; and masks were obligatory except when on the playing field.  So we used the same rules for our theatre camp... 

We made sure that the students were in large enough rooms that there was at least two metres between them while singing, and at least three metres between them and me.  We had a little less than twenty students, and got them going with some of the more complicated dance choreography, and taught them some of the songs from the musical.  They were masked whenever they weren't singing or dancing, and I made sure to stay masked as much as possible.  Maggie sewed some masks with extra pleats in them that I can actually open my mouth wide enough to sing in, which is great.

I admit that I disliked the film Grease when I saw it as a kid, and have never bothered to rewatch it, so I was skeptical about the stage version.  Happily it is far superior to the film, and the story is much more interesting, without the edits and changes made to accommodate Travola and Newton-John.  In fact it is a very feminist play, and amidst all of that doo-wop music, couped-up cars, leather jackets, and poodle skirts, there are very important examinations about gender roles, peer pressure, conformity, sexual consent, and so forth.  It's a good play for the kids to be doing right now.

We began the auditions on the week of August 25th, and then cast the show about a week and a half later... we've been doing rehearsals for a couple of weeks now, and it's coming along really nicely.  The cast is around forty kids, all grades 9-12, and pretty evenly split between boys and girls.  The music in this show is quite easy, actually; it's all doo-wop harmonies, and for those numbers which are multiple verses, the harmonies and rhythms aren't different for the subsequent verses, so once the kids have learned one set of harmonies, they are good to go for the later sections.  Hello, Dolly! was quite a bit more complicated, and so now I am finding that they are so solid on the harmonies already that there are places where I'm going to add some additional voice lines to the mix to make it more interesting.  The boys and girls have their little competition going on, and they enjoy showing off their songs to each other.  They're becoming real little harmony junkies.

Because of some delays in confirming the school budgets, I was working "on spec" since the 25th of August, but fortunately this week the approvals came through and I was able to sign my three-month contract to do the show.  As well, the private singing teaching has resumed, and happily for me, I have nine students now, with a couple more on the way.  A few of them are quite familiar with the classical repertoire, so I am looking forward to exploring some challenging repertoire with them.  The others are interested in a variety of styles, including Sinatra-esque crooning, modern musical theatre, and even some romantic french melodie which I am happy to help them unpack.  It's going to be an interesting year, I think, but always hanging over my head is the idea that we will have an outbreak and have to shut things down and return to online teaching.  Fingers are crossed that the masking and social distancing that we are trying to follow will reduce the likelihood of an outbreak but one needs to be constantly vigilant.

As well I have had some discussion recently with a private musical theatre school that runs classes on Saturdays... A friend of mine co-founded the school, but now has decided to move on from the musical director role after several years, mostly because her kids have reached an age where she needs to be more present for them during the weekends.  She was positive about the organisation, and we had a nice chat about the programme, which led me to go ahead and contact the other partners.

It seems like a promising lead.  Because of the Saturday Grease rehearsals I will only take the last two classes, with the oldest students (middle teen years), but it's nice to have a bit of diversification in my teaching work.  We have lots more renovations to do around the house, and the extra income will come in handy, especially since we are still in a cautious period where public performances are being gingerly resumed.  It's not clear yet when and if we will ever return to a "normal" kind of performance situation, so I plan to make hay while the sun shines, as the expression goes.

That's all I want to write for now, but in brief, the boys are back in classes (since early September) and all seems ok, and Maggie is also back in regular classes since late August.  So far we've had a few cases of COVID-positive parents, but for the moment no students have tested positive, so we are hoping that this trend continues...

So that I hope explains why I haven't written before now.... Sunday is usually my only day off.  The Grease rehearsals are Monday/Wednesday/Friday after school, and then again on Saturday; my private lessons are mostly on Tuesday and Thursday lunchtimes and after school.  I've been driving Maggie to work in the morning at 7am, and then coming home, before going a second time to do my lessons/rehearsals, and then we come home together.  It's around 18km each way to get to her school, so the added trip increases the commuting time by an additional hour each day, but it's not a great hardship.

This Sunday will be a busy day, as we have six steres of firewood arriving at 8h, and then a few friends are coming here to do a Terry Fox run with us in Wavre.  It's the first time that we've organised our own little run in Belgium, and we've started very modestly.  But in case you are interested in supporting our run, here's our team page.  If you are interested in supporting us, the donations to the Terry Fox Foundation are secure and online, and your banking information is kept confidential.  It's forty years since Terry's Marathon of Hope, and we are really excited to do something symbolic to recognise his achievement.

Happy Anniversary

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of our wedding ceremony, and a little more than twenty-five years since we first met...  Happy Anniversary, Maggie!

Today is a Sunday and I have to start work at the St. John's International School Musical Theatre camp tomorrow (more on this later) so we were planning to go to a patio or restaurant yesterday instead of today.  However, the Feast of Assumption falls on August 15th, and so everything was closed.  Instead of postponing our anniversary dinner we opted instead to try out the rotisserie on our new stove, and had spit-roasted chicken with oven fried potatoes and broccoli, with some seafood appetizers (shrimps and scallops), and enjoyed that out in the garden.  Malcolm is at home for a few days and so it was a rare occasion when all four of us were together.

The weather cooperated for our dinner outside, which was lucky: recently it has been very much like August in Ontario: many weeks of dry conditions, and very hot, and then this past week we had torrential rainstorms late in the afternoons nearly every day.  A few days ago we had a prolonged hailstorm (about 30 minutes duration at least!) with marble-sized pieces of ice that tore holes in the sunflower and zucchini leaves, and even broke through the plastic roof of our veranda in several places.

I have never seen a hailstorm that lasted so long... it was also accompanied by heavy rainfall that filled the water cistern.  It also caused a river to run down the driveway, and unfortunately our outside drain was blocked by fallen leaves, and so several centimetres of water made its way into the cellar.  Our neighbours on either side also had water in the cellar, so perhaps it would have happened even without the leaves.  Obviously since the flood we've been busy shifting things around and running a fan, and keeping the front and back doors of the garage/cellar open to ventilate it fully so that no mold or mildew starts to form.  In fact, I am sitting in the garage right now, typing this blog post while I make sure that no one sneaks in and steals any of our tools, or bikes, or anything else, while the door to the street is open.

We've been extremely busy this summer with home renovation projects.  I realise that I haven't posted anything since the end of July, and since then we have pretty much finished the kitchen.  I have some steel kick plates to install under the cupboards, and also some nice brushed steel electrical receptacle covers on order, but other those things, plus a little bit of painting, it's basically done.

removal of kitchen radiator, and re-tiling next to where the new fridge will be

retiled and grouted

removal of some unnecessary electrical outlets

retiled and grouted behind the stove

We went to an appliance outlet centre here in Wavre that was recommended by a friend, and found a good quality fridge and stove.  The fridge price was much less than we could find anywhere else, and we managed to get the vendor to match a better online price for the stove.  In the end we got them both for 20% less than the price of the next cheapest vendor, and delivered, too.

first loaf of bread in the new stove

our new 300-litre fridge!

Yoshi seems to approve

The kitchen renovations required a lot of different skills that I haven't used for quite some time, if at all.  I don't remember every doing tiling, so that was a bit of a learning curve.  Then there was water plumbing, gas connections, electrical, painting... 

And that is just inside the kitchen.  I also did a painting job for our elderly neighbours two doors over, scraping, priming and painting the back wall of their house while they were away on vacation.  That momentum then was applied to our back wall...

Duncan and I demolishing a little wall at the bottom of the stairs

We opted for a sort of pale straw yellow for the walls, which reminds us of the old farmhouses that we remember seeing in Aix-en-Provence.  The railing is strong but a temporary one, as we eventually plan to do something different with the veranda and terrace/patio/deck.  The next project will be to do surface preparation for the edge of the staircase and the brick wall underneath the stairs, and also the other walls.  I don't like the italianate balustrade above the garage door, but can't remove it without also removing the glass panels that close off the veranda, and that will have to wait until the new windows and doors at the end of the kitchen and living room are installed in the first week of September.

Christopher and I have also done several runs to the dump to get rid of a lot of junk from his cellar and a fair bit of our own discards.  We borrowed a trailer from Alain, a friend of his, and when we returned it I went along, and loved seeing the vintage tractors that Alain regularly buys and restores.  This one is a Massey-Harris from Canada, made in 1951.

I'm not at the point yet that I would need a tractor like this for my garden, but it is a nice thing to dream about...

tallest sunflower topping out at 3.63 metres (almost 12 feet)

Maggie is on a pickle-making strike, as we have enough dills to last us for the foreseeable future.  We've used every jar in the house, and have had to buy new ones.  One thing that works is to buy large jars of beans or other vegetables, and then cook with those so that you can reuse the jar.

The green beans are still going strong: I think we've harvested at least ten kilogrammes from the maybe 25-30 plants, and there are still more to pick.  This variety will also dry for storage if I let them stay on the vine longer, so I might try that as well.

The corn on the other hand, while delicious, has been a mixed success.  I think that the prolonged dry conditions had an adverse effect on the plants, and also I see a big difference between the earlier cobs that were hand-pollinated and ones that were left to be pollinated by wind.  There are almost twice as many kernels of corn on the hand-pollinated ones, so if I grow corn again next year I will keep a better record of when the silks emerge, and regularly do the pollination.  

Back to the summer camp that I mentioned earlier... it is still a "go" for this coming week.  The conditions will be similar to those being imposed on the sports camp: small bubbles of a maximum of twenty students, activities held outside wherever possible, indoor activities in well-ventilated places, regular temperature checks and symptom questionnaires, masking and social distancing.  Obviously the kids won't be able to dance and sing wearing masks, but it looks like our total enrollment is less than twenty kids all-told, and we'll be breaking them into two groups, so it should be ok.  It will be nice to get a head start on the high school production, which is set to be performed at the end of November.  At this point my contract has not yet been confirmed, but I am hopeful that it will be, so that I have something artistic and remunerative to focus upon.  Perhaps I will receive news during the coming week?  Certainly Maggie returns to staff meetings in the school in person on Thursday, with the students arriving for classes on the following Tuesday.  It's going to be quite interesting to see how this will all unfold.  I just hope that the weather is less hot that the past few weeks as the school can get pretty warm, and wearing face masks on hot days is a chore.

In other musical news, I received the confirmation from La Petite Bande that the Japanese tour of Bach scheduled for October/November 2020 was indeed cancelled.  As well the quarantine rules for Canada meant that I would not be able to sing the No Tenors Allowed concert in Stirling on October 25th, as my flight was to arrive on the 16th October, and I would therefore be in quarantine until the 30th October.  The director of the Stirling Theatre was gracious and so we have postponed that concert until 2021 at the earliest.  But on the plus side that means that I will have time to devote to Grease.

Then yesterday there was a bright spot: the Japanese tour has in fact been rescheduled to take place at the end of January/early February 2021.  Unfortunately it doesn't correspond with Maggie and the boys' holidays so we can't piggyback a Japan trip for them at the same time.  But I am encouraged...

As well, the group with whom I sang the Homilius Passion in March has asked if I will participate in the Flemish baroque programme that they will present at the end of February 2021, and they have sent me the scores, which look very interesting, particularly the nice aria for bass by de Croes.  Here it is sung by the English baritone Peter Harvey.

.

Also, the Flemish group that I performed with at the Bach Wochen Thuringia last year had asked me to sing three performances of the Christmas Oratorio in early December.  They have changed the programme to a much scaled-down project, also of early baroque music, with composers like Schütz, one of Bach's most important influences.  No choir, a chamber orchestra of single players, and a few soloists... like the other concerts that are allowed to proceed social distancing will be practiced between the musicians and singers and audience.

Also, since I'm not going to Canada/Japan, Julius Stenzel from the Minimes has asked me to sing the Hunting Cantata and the Coffee Cantata on October 25th.  These two cantatas have no choir, just soloists, and the same type of performance practice will apply.  A reduced audience is not a big hardship for the Minimes organisation, as they have royal sponsorship to cover the costs of production.

Happy Sunday to one and all...