It's been quite a busy time since last I posted, with lots of professional and personal news...
Malcolm made it back from his trip to the USA, with lots of energy and new ideas. He was eager to get building again, and has spent a lot of time reorganising his shop space and planning for future projects. He's already started on a new experimental archtop project, and has enjoyed meeting up with old friends and colleagues again.
Duncan is enjoying his one shift a week at the University bar near the Cimietière d'Ixelles, not far from our former home in Watermael-Boitsfort, and planning to finish his Bachelor's degree this spring, and will continue with a Master's degree starting in September.
Maggie and I had a great time in Prague with our colleague Ben. It's really a very open and friendly city with a lot of good restaurants, and cultural attractions. We didn't manage to see any concerts as our days were too full with training sessions to have enough time, but did eat at some amazing restaurants, and got in a visit to the newly renovated Mucha Museum.
I've had four concert performances of my own since mid-Feburary, starting with a fun performance of an unpublished duet for two bass singers, with the Belgian Viola d'Amore Association. This instrument, chiefly used in the baroque period, has admirers in the early music field, and many fans in Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the third project I do with this group, and they are all very warm and enthusiastic musicians and great colleagues, whom I respect very much.
After that concert I had a cluster of three performances of Brahms' German Requiem in the last ten days, conducted by Anthony Vigneron, with the Choir of the Brussels-Wallonie Federation. I had sung with Anthony several times before, and was very happy to perform in this amazing piece again. The choir was excellent and it was a very emotional project.
Squeezed in amongst these performances were rehearsals for the Bach Matthäuspassion ahead of the performance in Brussels in June. This is significant for me, as the conductor has asked me to bring along a small ripieno choir (this literally means "padding" but in this case it means "additional reinforcements") of eight boy sopranos, which we can find among our St. John's choir singers, to sing in the first and last numbers of the first half of the Passion.
Speaking of St. John's Choir, it's been one big success after another, with our own projects, as well as the Association for Music in International Schools (AMIS) festivals... We had an honor choir festival in London in October, for middle school girls (Maggie and I accompanied six of them), followed by the High School honor choir in Warsaw with two sopranos and a baritone chosen by external audition for the select choir that happened in March.
As well, in the middle of these events (not to mention our academic schedule, and the rehearsals for Guys and Dolls) I was invited to take a small select choir to the Irish Embassy in Brussels, for the launch of 2025's "Darkness into Light" suicide prevention initiative. This is something that started in Ireland, but now has become an international movement, and in Belgium it has partnered with the Community Health Services (CHS) counselling service. British singer Melissa James had agreed to have the organisation use her song for the launch, and we received an arrangement of it the weekend before the concert. But the kids learned it quickly, and Malcolm and I backed them up on archtop guitar (one that he built) and contrabass (his debut playing with a bow). It went very well and the audience was very emotional and appreciative.
I feel really excited to give our student singers a taste of the professional world, where you sometimes have to learn arrangements quickly, and travel to an unfamiliar location with an unfamiliar audience, and deliver a good performance. Here's a video...
Today all four of us are at home for the first time since last September, which is great, and we're enjoying a nice family meal of homemade pesto pasta with potatoes and green beans, and traditional Ligurian (Genoa is the capital of that Italian province) dish that I've never tried before. It worked out really well!
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6078-pasta-green-beans-and-potatoes-with-pesto
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Wednesday, April 16th
Monday evening after I started writing this blog post I went up to Antwerp Cathedral, to rehearse for an Easter Sunday concert with a ton of different music. Peter Van de Velde is the organist there and this is the third or fourth project that I've sung with him. Most of the music is two-on-a-part singing with a few solos, but all of the singers are soloists, and so it's quite exciting, and it's nice to stay sharp with learning new and unfamiliar music at short notice, not to mention it doesn't hurt that it pays well.
Malcolm has a couple of new developments: an archtop commission that just came in, as well as a lot of repair and setup work. As well he may be moving his shop, or at least a portion of it, to a place in Brussels that is the new home of an artistic and artisanal music collective / concert venue / recording studio, in Anderlecht.
At the halfway point of Holy Week, we are sending you good wishes for a pleasant and happy Easter, and if you're celebrating Passover, Chag Sameach!
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