Confinement extended; sunny weather; new chickens; gardening

movie night

The National Security Council announced on Friday that they were extending the confinement measures by at least another two weeks to the 19th of April, with some indication that they might extend it another two weeks beyond that into early May.  It would seem that Duncan will be celebrating his 17th birthday at home with us this year (April 30th), but it may be that Malcolm can come home for the party.  We are hoping that he will be here for his 21st birthday (May 14th).  For now he has to stay with Antoine in their apartment in Boom.

We have been keeping fairly busy and have been calling various friends and family members regularly.  For us living overseas it's kind of a normal thing to not see our family members in person for long periods, so nothing much has changed in that respect.  As well we've watched some tv together; Young Frankenstein was our choice a couple days ago.

I've continued with more distractibaking: most recently it was a double batch of Montreal bagels.  I was able to go to the Moulin de Bierges supply store on Friday, and pick up a 25kg bag of flour and some active dry yeast to replenish our stocks.  I prefer to use the fresh cake yeast but I'm not sure how available it will be in the near future.  As well I got some wood chips for chicken bedding, another garden trowel, and three beer kits to make over the next little while.

I needed the wood chips because I decided to go get some more chickens: we bought two of the standard brown egg-laying hens, and two white Sussex hens.  For now we will let them roam around the garden during the day, but stay closed in their coop during the night.  I don't want whatever killed the last two chickens to attack these ones as well.  Usually it takes some time for the hens to settle down and start producing eggs, so I'm looking forward to when that happens.

We've taken advantage of the nice weather to dismantle our composters and distribute the finished compost on the area of our planned vegetable garden.  It will be the full width of the lot and maybe five metres deep, a total area of around 35 m3, or a little less than 400 square feet.  So far I've got seeds for lettuce, butternut squash, english cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, snow peas, green beans, radishes, carrots, parsley and sweet corn.  If the feed store is open this week I'll also get potatoes, onions, garlic, turnips, beets, cabbage, and maybe some other herbs.  Peppers enjoy this climate, but tomatoes don't usually do very well here in Belgium unless you can cover the plants, because the later summer is usually too wet and rainy, and the plants end up rotting.  But the last two summers were exceptionally hot and dry, so maybe we will give them another try.

We've continued with our semi-regular cocktail hour via internet video, and also regularly have a late afternoon beer in the garden with Christopher and Isabelle next door.

I have had a couple of responses to my offer to teach singing lessons remotely, and will be starting that on Tuesday.  I'm sure that the students are going a little batty with the confinement so I hope that singing will help.

...and that's a wrap on 2019/2020

Today it just passed the one-week mark for the confinement here in Belgium: the instructions for people to stay in their homes took effect at 12:00 on Wednesday the 25th, and they are to remain in effect at least until the 3rd of April.  In reality the two-week Easter holiday begins on the 4th of April, so I am expecting that the confinement will be extended.

The last concert in my season just got cancelled, so I guess that it really is time to clean off that white board!  I am sad that I won't sing Beethoven's 9th Symphony this year, but I hope that someday I get a chance to do it.  I received a nice letter from the organiser of the Beethoven Festival, and he indicated that they are determined to present it either next year or the year after, and are hoping that I could perform with them then.

Really everything is delayed by a year, it seems: Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Johannespassion... we also had tickets to see Eric Clapton in Antwerp in June, and that concert has also been rescheduled to next year.  So everyone is in the same situation.  Also the Bouillonante Trail Race is moved from April to September.  I don't know yet if Homilius has been rescheduled or will be cancelled...?

There are lots of videos out there of opera singers and musicians doing performances on their balconies, or in their houses.  Frankly I just haven't felt motivated to do that at all.  Instead I've been doing lots of "distractibaking": oatmeal date sandwich cookies, english muffins, no knead bread.  Last night I started a sourdough starter with pineapple juice and flour; we'll see how that develops over the next couple of days.

oatmeal date sandwich cookies

no-knead bread baked in a dutch oven

As well I have been running, another 15km on Monday.  Maggie did her longest run in quite some time on Sunday (8km), and Duncan went out for the first time in over a week, running for maybe an hour yesterday... so Yoshi is one tired but happy little dog!

I am also a bit bummed out at the loss of our two laying hens: on Saturday night something must have come into the yard and killed both of them.  The body of the red/brown hen was lying on the lawn outside of the fence, and the body of the black one had been hidden behind some pallets that I had leaning up against he back garden wall.  The black one was chewed a bit, but the red one was pretty much intact.  I don't see how a dog could have gotten into the yard and out again, and usually a fox will take the hens with him back to his burrow.  A weasel might have been the culprit, but I have read that one usually tears the hens to pieces on the spot, and there was not much sign of a struggle.  I am really mystified, and sad that we lost them.

I am thinking that I will replace the hens, but not before I devise a more secure structure to keep them safe at night.  As well we are planning a vegetable garden, so maybe I will wait until that is well established before I get the new hens, as they can do a lot of damage scratching for worms and bugs, and disturb the seedlings.

Christopher next door is unable to do any installations, and he also had decided that he will wait another week or so before coming over to help me with the attic.  That's okay with me; there are some things that I can do myself to get some things organised ahead of time, and little fiddly things that are better to do at one's own pace.  My plumbing and heating guys are still working, and happily will come to move some pipes around for me next week, so that I can move ahead with some insulating and finishing up the last bits of drywall.

We have had another online apero with Lawerence and Bryan and Kiana, and on Sunday we had dinner with Malcolm and his housemate Antoine, via Facebook Messenger.  I tell you it would have been good to have stock in Zoom teleconferencing software, because it has gone absolutely through the roof since the confinement was announced.

Yesterday we took Yoshi out for an afternoon walk to our usual tennis ball throwing field, and it was really obvious how few airplanes there are in the skies these days.  Here you can see that there are no planes at all, which is quite unusual.

I think the only time I remember the skies being clear were around the time of the Brussels terrorist bombings four years ago, and also during the Icelandic volcano eruption ten years ago.  Amid all the worries about the economic fallout from this pandemic there is a silver lining in that the air quality is much improved...

We have continued to also have our usual 18:00 beer with Christophe next door, over the fence, and our elderly neighbours Jacqueline and Maurice have rung our doorbell a few times this week; I think they are getting really lonely.  But we have to be careful to maintain that 1.5 - 2 metre distance for their safety and ours.

For the most part people are observing the instructions to stay home.  The groceries are full of food and drink but they are very thinly populated, and private security staff is making sure that the number of people in the store is controlled to a small number.  We've been eating very well and have no concerns about the food supply chain.  Maggie made apricot chicken curry yesterday, and I'm going to do up a big whack of bolognese today, and maybe make bagels.

I hope that you are all doing ok, and getting some nice long walks, and catching up on your reading and other projects.  Happy Wednesday!

p.s. Fun Fact!

The word "quarantine" comes from the Italian word for "forty" and it refers to the forty days and forty nights that people were forced to remain in isolation during outbreaks of plague during the middle ages... so we are definitely "going medieval" on COVID-19.

For more information on the origins of "quarantine" see this post, from Science Diction.

p.p.s. Fun and games!

If you are in confinement with one or more people with smartphones or tablets, there is a fun social game that you can play together called SpaceTeam.  It's written by a Canadian developer named Henry Smith, based in Montreal, and it's described as a "cooperative shouting game".  Duncan, Maggie, and I have been enjoying it a lot.  You can download it for free here.

Keeping calm (mostly) and carrying on

The distance education programme is really proving to be a challenge for Maggie.  The workload has increased a lot, and even with the time saved by no commuting, she is still finding it pretty tiring.  Also I don't think that she is used to sitting at a computer all day... she can't get up and walk around, and deliver lectures, or have the kids do practical activities.  All of the work is done via computers:
 she gives an assignment; they receive it and post it to a shared server, she has to read it and mark it and repost it; I'm sure that the kids are finding it tiring too.

Duncan received his bulletin today; it wasn't catastrophic, but his results are less good that the first bulletin, and frankly that wasn't stellar either.  He's not moving in the right direction, so we are trying to encourage him to take some initiative and use this time for some disciplined review of the material that he didn't master earlier in the year.  He did receive a code to log into his school's homework server, and he's at another computer that I set up in the attic, doing that right now.  It's lucky that I am a bit of a pack rat when it comes to computers, so there are plenty to go around.

My run yesterday was nice: 15km in beautiful 16 degree weather... I didn't push my pace very much but stayed around the 6 minute per kilometre mark, and my heart rate never hit the high zone.   I realise that I am now in pretty good shape from a cardiovascular point of view: I took a look at a similar run in Auderghem from around this time last year, and at the same pace and distance but less elevation climb, I was in zone five (the top heart rate) for two-thirds of the run back then, while for this race I was in zone three for the same amount.  I have been trying to increase my distances to prepare for the Bouillonnante race that is scheduled for the end of April, but I am not optimistic that it will happen, given all of the other public events that have been cancelled.

When I got back from running I found that Bonnie had made a nest in my bluejeans, so I didn't want to disturb her and wore a different pair from the dresser instead.  The animals seem to be enjoying the fact that there are lots of people around to give them attention.  Yoshi is a bit of a pain when we are working outside though, because he associates the garden with playing catch, and is insistent that we throw the frisbee for him, even when we are trying to work.  But he gets lots of kilometrage by going alternately with me and with Maggie.

After I got cleaned up after my run, I decided to finally take the opportunity to do one of my favourite solitary activities: sit in the garden with a good book, smoke a cigar, and drink a nice Trappist beer.  I do not often smoke cigars, and have been so busy with singing until now that I think it might be my second one since September.

But I'm not very busy with singing now, and won't be for a while.  I just read that Air Canada has suspended its Brussels-Montreal route until the end of April, so that means that I couldn't fly to Toronto on the 27th April even if the Vaughan Williams concert was still going to happen (which it isn't).  One frustrating complication in getting a flight refund is that I booked this trip on Expedia... the first leg is a Brussels Airlines flight, albiet one that is operated by Air Canada, so.... whom should I call?  Expedia says call Air Canada, and Air Canada says call Expedia... I am thinking that I will have no choice but to call the Expedia customer service line, and will make sure that I have enough provisions (strong beer) on hand to wait through the hold music.

We've been eating pretty well: for breakfast I made burritos with scrambled eggs from our hens, shredded ham, shallots, green peppers, red salsa, and shredded queso oaxaca, which Maggie and I last enjoyed in Oaxaca, Mexico, back at Christmas 1995.  Oaxaca cheese is made so that it shreds into strings easily, and so it works well in a breakfast burrito.  I buy it from MexiGo, our Mexican importer, the same place that I also buy my Mott's Clamato when I get a hankering for a Bloody Caesar.

Yesterday we also took advantage of the nice weather to have lunch sandwiches outside in the garden.

Today it is still nice out, but overcast, and so I am starting a few small projects.  I did some garden tidying, picking up branches and twigs, and other garden waste, and Duncan cut the lawn for the first time this year.  Maggie has requested english muffins, so that has to get started this afternoon.  And I think that I'll get some fresh air, walk over to the AVEVE store and see if it's still open, so that I can make some decisions about garden plants.

There are other projects: I measured up the kitchen cabinets that we reclaimed from that client, and will send them to Christopher, so maybe we can get going on that job this week or weekend.  And the attic work can resume; I'm not sure if I can get the plumbing guys back out here, but I have to figure out how to continue with my wall insulation and gyproc work while still making it possible for them to reinstall the radiators, and do some rearrangement of the drain pipes in the attic bathroom to accomodate the thicker insulated wall.

It's getting a bit stuffy in the house, all of us being here together all the time.  Maggie took some time at lunch to go running today, and I am encouraging Duncan to continue with his running training also.  The uncertainties that have come with this whole pandemic response introduce additional stress, and exercise is one way to compensate.

On the social side we've had lots of phone conversations, and have been catching up with friends and family.  As well, our apero yesterday seemed to go off without too much trouble; we had four different people on Google Hangouts, and it worked fine.  We had it on the option of automatic video switching based on whoever was speaking, which is an interesting function.  One important thing about multi-party video conferencing is that it is important to observe good etiquette, and not talk over top of another person, otherwise it gets quite garbled.

I do have some good news from a conductor that I worked with in the Netherlands this season: he's asked me to sing a Beethoven Mass in C major in middle November just after I get back from the Matthauspassion tour in Japan.  It's a new piece for me, so that's a nice thing to have on the books.  I hope that these concerts are far enough in the future that they can still happen!

Currently the schedule is:

• June 12th, 2020 Beethoven 9th Symphony (Netherlands) so far still not cancelled but I am not optimistic that it will go forward

2020-2021 Season

• October 25th, 2020 No Tenors Allowed (Stirling, Ontario)
• October 31, November 1st, 3rd: Bach: Matthauspassion (Japan)
• November 15th, 2020 Beethoven: Mass in C, Choral Fantasy (Netherlands)
• March 27th, 2021 Bach: Johannespassion (Brussels)
• May 2nd, 2021 Vaughan Williams: Sea Symphony, Five Mystical Songs (Toronto)
• ? Homilius Passion Cantatas ?

2021-2022 Season

• February 2022 Schubert: Winterreisse (Kingston)

Beautiful weather; first few days of distance teaching; new health rules

Everything is going fine for us here in la Belgique.  The first couple of days of distance teaching have been okay for Maggie, although it's a bit of a challenge for some of the students, who aren't very good at keeping their virtual workspaces well organised.  She and the other teachers have to be available according to their usual timetables, which is also a bit of a chore, but we'll see how it goes moving forward.

So far Duncan hasn't done any homework since he left school on Friday.  The school has arranged for the students to have access to a Microsoft 365 workspace to receive their assignments, complete, and submit their homework via computer, but the access codes haven't yet arrived, and so he hasn't received any assignments, and has instead been treating the beginning of this "social distancing" phase of the national health response as a long weekend.  I am hoping that he will be able to use this fallow period to review the material that he has already studied, and position himself well to have a strong showing in his final exams, but we shall see.  (*I just received an email from the school saying that the codes were mailed out with the report cards on Monday, so he will be getting to work soon.)

I spoke with Malcolm last night; he and Antoine are doing fine with their instrument making projects.  They are well supplied with tools and materials, and also have a good stock of food laid in, so they should find this period to be quite a productive one.  Hi girlfriend Camille is staying in the Ardennes with her mother, so that means that Malcolm will have nothing much to distract him from his building work.  His band has also suffered from the health precautions, in that the Strawberry Storm gig that was coming up this month has been cancelled, and they have suspended their weekly rehearsals.  I expect that you will see lots of instagram posts from him (malcolmrosezadow), as he completes his harp guitar, finishes the Gibson L5 that he's building for me, and starts the steel string acoustic that someone has just commissioned.

Monday and Tuesday I had quite long days helping my neighbour Christopher with some cabinet installations, which will help to replace a little bit of my lost income from cancelled performances and lessons. Currently I am expecting no students for the rest of the month of March, certainly, and then the Easter Holiday starts on April 4th and runs for two weeks, so there will be no work for me then either.  As well as the two Homilius concerts for last weekend that were already cancelled, I have now received confirmation that the Vaughan Williams TCS concert that was to happen on May 2nd will be postponed until the same time next year, and the Bach Johannespassion concert that was scheduled in Brussels for May 9th is also postponed until March 2021.  It's not clear at this point if my Beethoven 9th Symphony will still go ahead on June 12th in the Netherlands, but I'm honestly not optimistic.  It's probably ok to go ahead and erase the whiteboard for this season!

I was going to help Christopher with some more cabinet installations today, but that activity was also cancelled.  The National Security Council has expanded the social distancing rules to the point that they are directing people to stay home from noon today until the 5th of April, and to not gather in groups.  Non-essential travel is also discouraged, and a number of stores are closed.

It sounds a bit grim, but we aren't lacking for anything, in fact.  We have lots to eat and drink; food stores, pharmacies, newsagents and pet food stores are all open, and while some food items (like potatoes, onions, pasta) are selling fast and are usually gone by the end of the day, the supply of groceries is refreshed every day.  There is no danger of us running out of anything.

As well it is really gorgeous weather today, with lots of sun and clear skies, and the temperature is forecast to reach 18 degrees!  The obligatory confinement rules actually encourage people to go outside and exercise, as long as they are not doing so in a group, so I am going to head out for a very long run today, and hopefully it's not going to be too warm for Yoshi.  As well I figure that we will take some time to do some gardening if we can get the plants.  The Brico (or "Belgian Tire" as it might be called) is now closing for the next few weeks, and I am not sure about other garden centres.  Aveve is a pet food and garden centre that's quite close to our house, and I hope that it will stay open, because they have some nice quality plants, but I am not sure.

I do have material here to continue with the attic renovations, and if it turns out that Christopher is not occupied with doing cabinet installations, then perhaps I will hire him to help with some of the electrical work.  Also we do have the new kitchen to install, so I am sure that we will have lots to occupy us in the next few weeks.  And I think I will do a rebuild of the chicken coop, and maybe get another couple of laying hens.

Tonight we are going to have a video group apero with Bryan, Kiana, Lawrence, and a few other people.  I imagine that there will be much more of that over the next few weeks!  If you want to have a drink together via video conference, let's set something up!

Homilius concert success; student showcase; cabinet installing with Christopher; Duncan paratrooper test; COVID-19

Friday the 13th!

We had a great time last weekend with two performances of the Homilius Passion-Cantata.  Both performances were nearly at capacity, and the orchestra and choir was exceedingly well-prepared.  I really loved listening to my colleagues present this work, first published in 1775, and I had a lot of fun with my dramatic solos.

As Homilius was widely regarded as being the finest church composer in Germany at the time, and his Cantata was published in his lifetime, it seems very probable that Haydn and Mozart would have been familiar with his work.  Perhaps that is why I hear so many passages in this cantata that seem to me to be similar to the work of these two slightly later composers.

On Saturday early afternoon before my first performance, I went to the school to warm up the three singing students of mine who were performing in the music and dance showcase that evening.  They seemed well-prepared, and had a run-through performance that afternoon, and then the show was in the evening.  According to my "informants", in all three cases the performances were even stronger than the rehearsals, and I got lots of good feedback.  I am very proud of the kids and glad that I could help them achieve a more mature performance than they could have delivered without my help.

We were ready for two more Homilius performances this weekend, but unfortunately the news came late last night from the government health agency that all public performances are cancelled in Belgium until the 3rd of April.  As well, all hotels, restaurants and cafes with be closed, as will the schools, starting at the end of day today.  This is a preventative measure to try to slow down the spread of the virus so that the health care resources can cope with the volume of infected people.  In Italy, for example, there are just not enough resources to cope with the spike in infections, and so the care of patients is suffering as a result.

This cancellation and closure order did not come as a huge surprise: the other two big international schools had already suspended classes because of confirmed cases of COVID-19, but the regular schools had remained open.  St. John's had managed to avoid any infections and saw no need to shut down operation, but the leadership team was busy for the last few weeks developing contingency plans for distance learning.  As nearly all of the students have computers, and homework is already largely being submitted and marked online, it should work as a stop-gap measure in most cases.  Some of Maggie's classes require direct hands-on supervision, so she is not looking forward to doing distance education for those subjects, but we'll have to see how it goes.

It is less clear how Duncan will be able to continue his studies, as the work at his Belgian school is all still done the analog way.  In any case he is emptying out his locker so that he has resources here, and we will know more about how his studies might continue this evening when he gets home.  His karate class is cancelled this weekend, but he is in the process of getting ready for his black belt written exam, so maybe that is something that he can study up on while he is at home.

Malcolm, on the other hand, is planning to go to his school today with his housemate Antoine, and "liberate" any tools that aren't tied down, so that the two of them can continue to work on their various instruments in the apartment.  His school was forced to cancel their three-day trip to Cremona, Italy, at the end of this month, but fortunately it looks like Malcolm's three-week internship in La Herradura, Spain in April will go ahead, barring any new developments.

After the performances on the weekend I was up at 6:20 on Monday morning to travel into Brussels with Christopher, our cabinetmaker neighbour.  He had a client who had ordered a new kitchen, but the "old" kitchen was only a couple of years old and still in great shape.  The client agreed to give me the kitchen for free if we would remove it, and so we went and dismounted everything and brought it back to the garage here in Wavre, where it will sit for a week or two until we've done our planning to install it in our house.  The removal only took a few hours, so in the afternoon we went to Kiana and Bryan's to do the installation of their cloakroom cabinets.  Tuesday was another very long day with an early wake-up and commute into Brussels, and then lots of carrying of very heavy panels up to the third floor of the client's apartment, and then working together on the installation until around 17:00.  Wednesday also involved cabinet installation until noon, when I left to pick up Duncan to go to his Paratrooper Junior physical test.

It was a bit of a drive to get to the Schaffen air force base, but we made it in time and luckily the weather was clear for his tests.  Duncan really surprised me by doing 61 situps in two minutes and also managed 5 pull-ups.  Unfortunately for him though, the competition had obviously spent a lot more time training, and most of them were able to achieve the maximum possible score of of 71 situps and 10 pullups, which meant that the real competition was the run.  In this he did really well, finishing in the top third of his group, with a 2,4 km speed of 10:35, which is almost 14km per hour, or around 4:23 minutes per kilometre; the fastest runner ran it at a 3:59 pace, so he wasn't far off from the leader.

In the end he did not make the selection, because there were more applicants than there were places, but I was super proud of him and he didn't seem too disappointed.  In fact I think it was a good thing because it showed him that with a little bit of training he can get a surprising result, and with more work will come more success.  Also now he has a clearer idea of his competition, and because of his age he will still be eligible to apply for the same stage next year.  However, we learned last night that because of the virus outbreak the Para Junior stage for Easter vacation is cancelled!  So it wouldn't have happened anyway...

We are well supplied with food and drink, and the grocery store was packed to the limit with food this morning when I went to get something for dinner, so we are not worried at all.  I expect that for the next few weeks we'll be doing lots of trail running, and working together on the attic renovations, and very likely Maggie will do lots of sewing and embroidery, as she will save on the commuting time to work.  As well there are lots of gardening projects to move forward on: the raspberry, blueberry and currant bushes all have buds on them, so I am motivated to maybe put in a more ambitious vegetable garden...

I hope that everyone who reads this isn't too worried about us.  We are all doing just fine, in good shape and so far without direct exposure to any infected parties.  We are doing our best to wash our hands frequently, and are avoiding potentially contaminated surfaces.  I just heard from Maggie that the three private lessons that I had scheduled for today are also cancelled, so I guess that I will be staying home today... it's nice and sunny, with a high of 10 degrees, so maybe I'll go out for another run?  I've been putting in maybe 35 km per week, and am assuming that the Bouillonnante Trail race on April 25th will still go ahead, so I need to keep in good form.

As well I have music to review: yesterday in my spare hours in the afternoon I sang through the first parts of the Beethoven 9th Symphony, which is scheduled for June 12th in the Netherlands, and the Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs, which will happen on May 2nd in Canada, assuming of course that a travel ban is not imposed... my parents have informed us that because of uncertainly about the infection they have decided not to do their Scandanavia/German/Belgium trip this spring after all, which is really too bad... we hope that they can find a way to reschedule that once this whole pandemic blows over.

I will close off with Job 1:21: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away..." after the cancellation of the two Homilius performances, there was some consolation: I received offers this week for some exciting projects, including the Weihnachts-Oratorium of Bach with the award-winning Hildebrandt Consort in Halle, Leuven, and Maasmechelen in December 2020, and also my debut in Winterreisse of Schubert, with my long-time friends and colleagues, pianist Dina Namer and narrator/actor Bruce Kelly, at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in Kingston, Ontario, in February 2022.

Bon weekend and happy handwashing...

Nice first rehearsal for Homilius!

evening rehearsal with the orchestra in Binkom, near Leuven

Today I had some lessons early in the day in Waterloo.  Those are going rather well and now I am up to perhaps eight regular students, with maybe a few more to come.  It's a lot of fun and I feel that I learn many things about singing as I try to teach it to others.  A. was a new student today, and she was really very excited, and a bit shocked to discover that there was a whole area of her voice that she never knew was there... that is quite rewarding to see.  The enjoyment that students experience when they are able to do something new is a powerful stimulant to continue in the teaching arena...

As well there was a good lesson with E. my first singing student at St. John's.  She is making some great progress, and today she sang a classical piece in front of a grade seven music class as a preparation for a concert/recital that will take place this weekend.  This impromptu recital was suggested by the pianist, the main music teacher at the school, and it was valuable because it let E. rehearse a performance, which is a completely different practice than singing in a lesson.

If would be honest, I would say that E. produced a more confident sound in the rehearsal room while preparing the piece than she did in the hall with the audience.  But no matter: she did not crash and burn in front of an audience, but managed her tension well, and delivered a performance, which is the important thing.  She now also knows that there is a bit of a gap between what she can achieve in the studio" and "on stage", and this disparity bugs her, so now she's fired up to make "mock" concerts in her living room, with her family as audience.  This can only help her nerves, and help her realise that she can "go big" with her sung emotions without any fear.

Most people don't realise how debilitating stage fright can be for singers, particularly.  Our technique depends on deep relaxed tension-free breathing, and that is one of the things that is most often affected by nerves.  Canadian stage director Tom Diamond mentioned this many years ago in a master class, and he's right: it's really important to know how your body reacts to stress as a singer, and to not panic when it starts to tense up.

After the lessons I lit out for the rehearsals in Binkom/Lubbeck, with Hortus Musicalis, conducted by Luc Laurent.  I first sang with Luc and his ensemble some years ago in Carmina Burana, and then in the Mozart Requiem last year.  I am particularly impressed with the orchestra this time, and am having a great time with the bass solos... Homilius was one of Bach's most celebrated students and it seems that he was the most famous church musician in Germany near the end of the 18th century.  I really like his compositions and find that he reminds me very strongly of Haydn.  So it's a lot of fun to sing...

More storms; weekend activities; back to school for boys; getting ready for Homilius

Right after I hit "publish" on last Wednesday's blog post I went to rehearse, and it started to hail!  It's just par for the course here in Belgium: the last three weekends have each involved major storms, with heavy winds and lots of rain, and the weather during the week hasn't been much better.  Fortunately our new roof is just fine: there were no leaks and we didn't lose any tiles from the roof.  But we have been burning lots of firewood to keep the house toasty.

On Monday I took Yoshi for his vaccinations, and as I was starting to feel better after being ill the preceeding week, decided to run the 5km to the vet, and then back again. Yoshi is doing fine and his weight hasn't much changed since the last visit.  This veterinarian is great, and I had thought that we were going to have to find another one when I heard that he was retiring, but it turns out that he is only stopping the walk-ins part of the practice and will still take clients by rendez-vous.

I also ran a long 17km on Friday, and then did another 10km yesterday... plus Maggie also went running yesterday, so Yoshi is definitely getting his mileage in.  Not just Yoshi though... I took Duncan to Decathlon on the weekend and bought him some new running shoes, and on Saturday we went for his first training run here in Wavre.  He has the admittance test for the Junior Paratrooper training coming up later in March and so will need to run a fairly quick 2.4 km among other things.  So I took him out to a section of straight pedestrian walkway that is about 600m long, and timed him while he ran.  He's pretty fast...

I also bought a chin-up bar as that is another paratrooper admission test, and I'm hoping that we can train him up to that in time.  He's got a good base fitness from gym class and his twice weekly karate sessions, but it's good to see him stretching his limits a bit.

Maggie made some great progress on her "bluebell path" embroidery project during the week she had off, and she is continuing in the evenings and on weekends... the photo above represents about eight months' work, and she's maybe 1/3rd complete.  

On Saturday, Malcolm and I had an interesting experience: we both went into the recording studio in Mechelen!

Last year a Flemish television show called #LikeMe, along the lines of  "High School Musical" or "Glee", was released.  Like these two American shows, #LikeMe explores the experiences of several secondary school students and their families, but the differences are that firstly, #LikeMe is largely a drama, not a comedy; and secondly, it is based on the "revue" format.  By this I mean that the songs are not new songs that were written for or naturally emerge from the narrative, but instead are all well-known popular Flemish songs from the 1960s-1980s with a story that is written after the fact to try to tie the songs together.  (This type of musical entertainment was most popular in between the first and second world wars, and was more or less pioneered in America by Ziegfeld with his "Follies" in New York.  After the Second World War, narrative musicals like Oklahoma! more or less replaced the revue on Broadway.)

The producer of this show had the idea of doing a revue show, with the goal that teenagers would watch it because it was a bit like "High School Musical", but their parents would watch it too, because of the more dramatic themes, and also because they recognised the songs from their own youth.  This formula appears to have worked, because it was a huge hit in Flanders and the Netherlands, and so the series has been renewed for a second season.

After this success, the production company wanted to export the series for international release, and so they decided that instead of recording many different translations, they would subtitle the series.  This was ok for the dialogue, but the international clients weren't happy with the sung Flemish, and so they decided to record all of the songs in English, as it is well-known internationally as a pop music language (think of ABBA from Sweden singing English phonetically in the 1970s).  The producers wanted North American singers, with neutral accents, for the re-recording of the songs.

Somehow the production company heard about me while I was Musical Director for Hello, Dolly!, and sent me an email asking if I could recommend some students from St. John's.  As the musical had ended, I no longer had their email addresses, but did pass on the call for auditions to the permanent teachers at the school, and a few of the kids did contact the production company, and some did audition.

After several weeks, the company was still not complete with their casting and so they called me again, and I mentioned that I had two sons who can sing, and that I was also a singer.  So they invited the three of us to audition.  While they liked Duncan's voice, it was a bit on the youthful side for the parts that they still needed to cast.  But they asked Malcolm and I back to do some of the recording work.  That is what we did on Saturday evening...

It is a big challenge to try to match the timing of the original Flemish singers, especially given that a) we didn't have a video to look at while singing, b) the original singers were not really singing from sheet music but were phrasing and ornamenting freely, and c) sometimes the English translation doesn't feel terribly easy to sing.  But we managed it ok!  I have worked in a recording studio before and have done some radio interviews so for me it was familiar, but it was my first time re-recording voice over, and Malcolm commented that this was probably his first professional gig as a voice actor/singer.  Voice acting is a very well-paying gig, and it's difficult to break into, so I'm happy for him.

Today was my last day before the rehearsals begin for the Homilius Passion Cantata, which will be performed twice this weekend and twice next, so I am hoping all will go well.  It's really quite a nice piece and not too terribly taxing for the bass, so I'm looking forward to it very much.  I also have quite a few students to teach this week, as it is the start of a new term, so I hope all goes well.