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!