And they’re off!

It’s around 19:00 in the evening of our first day of the trip to Portugal and we’re relaxing at the Municipal Camping site of Poix-de-Picardy, not far from Amiens.  We have several stops planned in France for the next few nights before we arrive in Playa de Pormenande Spain, where we will visit with our colleagues Isabel and Alex for a night or two, before continuing to Portugal.  We plan to pick up Malcolm who is building with his friends Pablo and José in A Coruña, and continue for a night in Porto at the home of my childhood neighbour Mary Wilson, before arriving in Pontével on the 12th.

This is just a quick post.  June was packed with activities… the Matthäuspassion in Brussels on the 7th was a huge success, and my boy sopranos were a high point much to the delight of their parents.  The following weekend I had to drive to near Delft in the Netherlands for the rehearsal and performance of the Mozart Requiem, which went very well, and it was also the first time that my new Amsterdam agent was able to attend a concert that he had arranged for me.  The next week ended with a really very good classical recital / concert with my choir, several pianists, a cellist, and also a very beautiful Beethoven quartet with private students Simeon, Diego, Helmi, and Ulfhildur playing the roles from the opera Fidelio.

I went up to Antwerp Cathedral for a mass performance of my own on the Sunday, and then immediately we had the Rock Extravaganza on Monday evening.  It was really quite a success with about 90 minutes of music, with the majority of songs coming from grades nine and ten but also with some younger students, and a teacher band performance as well. The bar was well-used, and we sold a lot of hot dogs and ice cream for the fundraising committee.

The last week of school was less personally demanding as I had no performances, but was filled with other activities both focussed on the end of the year and doing lots of planning and preparation of scores, recordings, audition materials for Les Miserables, which we will perform at the end of November this coming autumn. I’ve brought my scores along and hope to have time during the three weeks that we are in Pontével to get everything ready for later in August. I also managed to squeeze in a Canada Day performance for the ambassador to the EU in Brussels, which was a lovely celebration.

More reports from the road to come… Happy Belated Canada Day!

June is Bustin' Out All Over (1945)

 

1945 seems like a long while ago... but based on the crazy behaviour of our students, not THAT long ago...

Lots happening here in June.  We closed our production of Guys and Dolls with great success, and the kids had a great time.  We're looking forward to autumn of next year when we produce Les Miserables which promises to be rather exciting, especially given our talent pool of enthusiastic students.

Speaking of talent we just heard that one of our grade 10 singers/actor/dancers who played Cinderella in our Into the Woods has been accepted (exceptionally) into the Royal Junior Academy of Music in London!  Normally they don't take students outside of the UK, but she made an impression and will be commuting every weekend from Belgium to London to take her Saturday classes.  They have also recognised that she is a "legit" soprano so they are steering her also towards classical repertoire, which I'm very happy about.  There are many cases when you have a private singing student whom you have advised has the chops and the instrument to do classical music, but it's quite another thing for their family to hear the same advice from an independent professional, so I am very pleased for her and hope that both she and her parents will listen to this good advice...  Watch this space.

This past week I've been busy with the Family Day performances with the choir as well as the grade 9 and 10 rock bands... 

Should I stay or should I go?  Grade 9

Twist and Shout Grade 10

Consider these a rehearsal for the 20th of June.  Now I'm busy preparing the grade 6/7 boy sopranos to perform the ripieno choir parts for the Bach St. Matthew that I'll be singing on the 7th June, right after our larger school choir opens the grade 12 Graduation ceremony.  I'm probably going to have to bundle them all into the school van immediately after their performance of Bruckner's Locus iste and the anonymous Gaudeamus Iguitur to make it to the generale on time, but I'm pretty sure that the timing will work...

For Bach, we had the first rehearsal yesterday and the boys are really excited about this coming weekend's performance, and they did rather well considering that it was their first moment with a bunch of strangers and an unfamiliar conductor.  Again I am struck by how many wonderful opportunities to teach good singing practice there are in Bach's ripieno part: rules about phrasing, dynamics in rising intervals, the old idea of breathing where the text allows for a question... boring stuff for the non-singers but familiar to me, and also to composers who wrote later music (like Guys and Dolls) and soon, I hope, to them.  Our kids are really doing very well at internalising these ideas, and presenting them calmly and confidently.

Then it's shifting gears for me the following weekend to sing the Bass solo in the Mozart Requiem in Den Hoorn, arranged by my Netherlands agency, and then shifting back home to the final end of year concerts of the classical recital with choral, solo, and ensemble classical works, including the Beethoven Fidelio quartet for my private students, as well as the Rock Extravaganza, then a mass in Antwerp for me, and probably the Hockey version of O Canada at the embassy again... 

I feel like this year, my fifth at the school, has really been a productive one.  I feel a lot more comfortable than ever before, knowing that the T's have been crossed and the I's have been dotted academically, and now we can just make beautiful music together until the end of the year... Fingers crossed!

Guys and Dolls

 

It's been a very busy four months since we started auditioning students for Guys and Dolls, and all of that work is coming to fruition tomorrow night when our show opens.  It's entirely cast with Middle Schoolers (Grades 6, 7, and 8) and nearly every one of the 16 or so roles is double-cast, so we have two different casts on alternate nights until we close on Saturday afternoon.

If you haven't seen it already here are some trailers on Instagram.  You don't need to be an Instagram subscriber to watch them....

Trailer 1

Trailer 2

If you are an Instagram subscriber please like and follow the our Sports and Performing Arts Instagram account for updates: 

Since last I posted I had a couple more concerts: an Easter Sunday Mass at the Antwerp Cathedral, and then a Passion concert of all Bach music in Bruges.

 

The last couple of concerts for me before the season closes include the St. Matthew Passion in Brussels on June 7th, followed by the Mozart Requiem in Den Hoorn NL on June 14th.

I have to conduct a performance of the St. John's Choir this Sunday, the day after Guys and Dolls closes, and also set up and perform with my grade nine and ten music classes in their respective rock bands.  Sunday is the St. John's Family Day so it's always good to show the community that, in addition to our musical theatre shows, we also perform other kinds of music.

June 20th is our Classical Recital with an extended choral programme, as well as solo performances from instrumental musicians and private singing students.  I have four of my students performing the Beethoven "Mir ist so wunderbar" quartet from the opera Fidelio, and there are other solos still being prepared.

Finally we have a big blowout on the last monday night of classes, the 23rd of June: our Rock Extravaganza!

You can tell that we're definitely in Belgium and not in Canada, because my big music classroom is turned into a nightclub.  I build a stage, we put up lighting, cafe tables with candles, and set up a cash bar!  It's going to be a great time, and the kids get to rock out.  My grade ten class in particular is excited, because this is the last year that I teach them music; we don't currently offer music as a grade 11/12 class.

I've been teaching at St. John's now for five years, and I've had most of them as students since that first year when they were in grade six.  It's going to be pretty emotional!  This is I think our third or fourth Rock Extravaganza since we resumed doing them, and we also expect to have some grade 11 and 12 self-organised bands, as well as some alumni returning to play, which gives a great sense of musical community and continuity.

Until next time...