Creation tomorrow

Tomorrow is our first performance of Haydn's "The Creation", at the Convervatoire Royal de Bruxelles; we had our orchestra rehearsal tuesday evening, the recitatives yesterday morning, and finally our generale is tonight...  Lots of rehearsing and preparation have led up to this first concert of the season, and I must say that I owe a lot to Peter Tomek in Brussels and to Don Tarnawksi in Toronto, both of whom did a lot to prepare me for this piece when I sang it with the Kingston Symphony back in May of 2012, for the first time, and then in Antwerp a few days later with Chorale Caecilia.  The work we did then really does stick, and I've very grateful to have it well-prepared for this time around.  The other soloists - soprano Hilde Coppé and tenor Vincent Lesage - have performed the Creation many times before, so I am in very good company.  The orchestra is a dedicated one and the choir is extremely well prepared; quiet when they need to be and very powerful when the score so indicates.  It's going to be a real pleasure.

The November 11th concert at St. Andrew's is also taking shape.  I have already rehearsed twice with the pianist, and last week had a rehearsal also with the 'cellist, and our material should be fine.  The senior choir has started preparing its pieces as well, and two Eleanor Daley anthems will be part of the programme: In Remembrance, excerpted from Daley's Requiem, and In Flanders Fields, her setting of the John McCrae poem.  I was first introduced to Daley, who was born in Parry Sound and studied at Queen's, by my friend John McFarlane, and it's really nice to have her two Canadian pieces in the programme, as well as our Oskar Morawetz setting of Grenadier, which Dina and I performed in Canada this spring.

Apart from rehearsing and planning ahead for the coming season, I have also been taking my weekly piano lesson, and am enjoying those very much.  I find it most convenient to ride my bicycle to the Academie, even though there is a very large and challenging hill to climb to get there, but there are some visual rewards that come with the trip.  Here we see a flock of sheep that are grazing on some land just down the street from the Academie; this parcel of land is also used for garden allotments and backs onto the largest plant nursery in Brussels, les Pépinières de Boitsfort.

This past weekend we all skipped Sunday services and instead went to the FACTS expo in Ghent, which is the largest comics and sci-fi convention in Belgium.  There were many booths filled with action figures, comics, swords, costumes and so forth, and many people were dressed up as their favourite characters from video games, movies, stories etc.  This cosplay (from the Japanese combination word kosupure which means "costume play") is taken to extreme lengths by some people, but it all seems to be in very good fun.  If you dress up then you get a few euros off your admission ticket, so perhaps if we go another time we'll have to choose a good costume.  This time we just wore our Star Wars t-shirts.  The one Malcolm is wearing is a real vintage one from 1977 that I found in an antique store in Toronto, still in its plastic bag, with a $1.99 Dominion Grocery sticker still on it.  He only wears it on very special occasions, as I am sure that if it was washed on a normal cycle it would disintegrate pretty quickly.

What I enjoyed the most was not the commercial booths, but rather the fan village, which had booths from all sorts of fan clubs; the club Teekay-421, the Rebel Legion Benelux, the Jedi Order (for Star Wars) the Belgian Whovians, the Star Trek Voyagers and so on.  There was a group of people who machine R2 units out of aluminum, and build their own electronics to go inside them.  One group had action figure boxes... I'd like to collect this limited edition figurine pictured below, but maybe it's more valuable if I keep it in the box?

There was a booth for a company that restores and sells vintage video arcade games, so Duncan had a go.

All in all it was a little exhausting.  I found myself more and more reminded of the film Galaxy Quest as the day went on...

So many people crammed into such a space is quite terrifying for me now; I find myself drained by spending any length of time in a crowd, and so I soon found myself wishing for a TARDIS to whisk us all back home immediately...

 
This was about as close as we got; the Belgian Whovians had built their own TARDIS and so we had a photo taken...

A lot of the people who go to these comics conventions are excited about celebrity visits... Carrie Fisher was there, but it cost over 50 EUR to get our picture taken with her, so we decided against it.  Sylvester McCoy (who played the seventh incarnation of Doctor Who) was to be there but he cancelled at the last minute, and we weren't excited about any of the other celebrities, and we started to get pretty tired out, so we took a break to get outside where there was more oxygen to watch a little bit of the Quidditch match that was underway.

 

We needed a little rest time, because the real reason for going to FACTS in the first place was to take part in a workshop run by Aardman Animation animator George Watson, who showed us how to make a Gromit figure out of plasticene, and we wanted to be in a good state of attention.  George was a good teacher; we all had our hand at trying out model making and are now the proud owners of four Gromit figures in various finishes.  There is a new Shaun the Sheep movie coming out shortly from Aardman, and we are looking forward to viewing it with an apprentice's watchful eye, now that we have completed a little training...

But back to the Creation: we have a second performance on Sunday, but by then Maggie will already be in Canada.  She's leaving Saturday morning for a week with her parents at the cottage, lucky thing... I'll try to convince her to do a photo-rich guest blog post when she gets back... next week will be fairly quiet for me artistically as both boys will be home for the Toussaint vacation...

Thirty days hath September...

September has been a very busy month, and in some ways I can't quite believe that it is already passed.

September, October, November, December... when I was a child and adolescent, after the lazy hot days of summer, spent filling the tank with sunlight and fresh air and clean water, the autumn was always a time of new beginnings, of excitement, and energy.  Our scout troop camped three times a year, and the autumn one was often the most exciting.  I liked the crisp, cool air, the pleasures of warm fireplaces after walks outside, the colours of the turning leaves, the feel of new school clothes, the pleasure of new books and school supplies, of getting to know my new teacher.  I enjoyed the sharp initial leaps of progress in new subjects, as I quickly tackled them and frequently worked ahead with enthusiasm...

This energy also was obvious in university where my fall term marks were regularly ten points higher than my spring ones.  My birthday is in the fall, as is Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving, and these are followed by then the lead-up to Christmas and New Year's Eve, filled with sports activities, concerts, plays, and festivals.

All that activity is wonderful but also quite draining... somehow for me the long grey cold winter that followed these autumn months would pull all the liveliness and energy out of me so that I would often be running on empty by the time spring finally rolled around.

Now that I pursue a singing career my adult life follows a similar pattern of September-to-May work, with relatively quiet periods in the summer, barring the odd summer opera festival gig.  Being married to a teacher makes this work rather well for us; the fact that I am usually working around Christmas and Easter holidays is counterbalanced by the long summer.

I need that time.  As I get older and more mature in my technique I find myself giving more and more of myself to the emotional part of singing... The profession involves so much giving that without some quiet to re-fill the tank I would be unable to continue.  It's one thing that I never realized when I was starting out; that emotional and dramatic energy isn't just created out of nowhere, there is a finite limit to how much energy you have to spend, and striving to reach new heights of expression for yourself and your colleagues means that there are also concomitant lows that will follow, and everyone needs to figure out how to manage that themselves.

It helps to have rewarding artistic work to focus upon.  It's a cliché that actors and singers are always looking for work, but that's because without it they can lose momentum and get discouraged.  One lucky thing here in Belgium is that the Easter Passion season is probably the busiest time of the year, so full of concert possibilities that there isn't enough time on my schedule to say yes to all of them.  That means that I don't really have time to get "blue", but am vitalized and energized by the excitement of getting to know new conductors and colleagues, putting on costumes or fancy clothes, and throwing my energy into the musical challenges of the pieces.  It also helps that the spring here in Brussels can start earlier than it does in Ontario, and it lasts a long time.  The city is filled with flowering trees and lush gardens, which helps to lift my spirits.

 

This season is particularly busy on the concert front throughout the year.  As I have written before I have many projects that allow me to revisit familiar work.  In some cases I haven't sung these pieces for several years, and there are other cases where I am singing a different part (the Johannespassion for example) or singing the piece in a different language (the Viennese operetta pieces for our China tour will be sung in German rather than English), so this offers some new challenges.







Right now a lot of my time is being taken up as artistic director of a Remembrance Day project scheduled for this November 11th here in Brussels.  St. Andrew's Scottish Presbyterian Church was built as a memorial church following the First World War, and so I was asked to plan a concert on this year, the centenary of the commencement of the war.  Fortunately there are many talented people who will be involved, so my own vocal contributions will be modest; I will sing a Bach aria with organ and a Massenet song with piano, and both with 'cello obligato, and will reprise the Oskar Morawetz Grenadier piece that Dina Namer and I performed three times this past spring in Canada.  As well we will excerpt the Libera me from the Fauré Requiem with choir, organ and 'cello.  We will have a number of choral pieces, some a capella, some accompanied by organ; we have two accompanists participating, and a 'cellist, and there will be two other vocal solists, a tenor and a soprano, presenting works on the theme of war and remembrance, and some solo piano music, and a hymn or two.

A big part of the project is selecting the readings... I have found a good bible passage, and a choir member has researched some good Scottish war poetry, but there are other items that I would like to include.  The letters sent to and from the trenches during the war fascinate me as primary source material.  I've ordered a book on the topic called Love letters of the Great War that arrived in the post this morning, and I hope to find something appropriate to give to a strong reader from the congregation to present.  Ideally, along with the texts written by the soldiers, I would also like to have a letter from home, perhaps in a young person's voice, or a woman's voice; the immense sacrifice touched more than just the soldiers who died, and I hope to share a variety of perspectives.

The Imperial War Museum has licenced the use of a painting I found by Sir William Orpen, a war artist; his A highlander passing a grave from 1917 will be the basis for our publicity poster.  Maggie and I saw some of Orpen's work in Tate Britain this summer and I made note of him, and searched their image archive until I found this painting shown above.

What else?  Besides resuming my daily singing practice I have enrolled in piano classes, and the family has been "treated" to my daily practicing of Bach, starting with the easy pieces in Anna Magdalena Bach's little book for the clavecin.  Here's a rather pleasant Youtube recording of the book complete. 

And Duncan and I have been going to the bagpipe group on Monday nights at the Church.  I am not really sure if he will continue but I am finding it interesting.  My childhood neighbours the Davis boys all played the pipes, as did Henry Muth, a highschool friend, so I am happy to revisit them a bit.

Last week Malcolm and I went to see The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari at the BOZAR, in its newly restored version that debuted in Berlin this past year.  The Brussels Philharmonic played the score, adapted and conducted by Timothy Brock.  Wow.  Talk about an amazing film... released in 1920, it uses the "frame story" method, by which is meant that the film opens with a scene, and then the story is told via flashback.  It is a masterpiece of expressionist cinema, and is widely regarded as the first real horror movie.  It was great both sonically and visually...  If you want to watch the pre-restoration version with English cards, you can see it for  yourself by clicking the link here.

We've been doing a lot of clearing out of things that we no longer need; last weekend was the brocante or street sale in our neighbourhood.  Being a brocanteur is a serious business in Belgium; the organizing committee no longer charges a licence to set up your tarp and tables but you have to put up a paper sign two days before the sale day, and then you must occupy your spot by 7am, otherwise others will swoop in and take it.  We were lucky to have good weather, and Duncan sold his unwanted toys to the tune of about 75 euros.  Maggie and I also sold quite a lot of unwanted items.  Some of the rest we have put up on ebay, and others will be donated to the jumble sale at the church next month or given to Oxfam.

Okay, that's all for now.  Happy end-of-September!  October will be an exciting month for us, with Maggie's birthday, my two performances of the Creation at the Conservatory, and then a trip back to Canada for Maggie to visit with her parents during the week-long holiday of Toussaint.

London: part two

London: Part Two
exploration by bicycle

 

One of the the things that was so fun about Paris was our experience of the city by bicycle; it inspired us to make use of the cycle hire service operated by Barclay's bank in London.  For a low price of only 10 pounds the week we had access to rental bicycles at a myriad of locations (see screenshot from a smartphone above).  You don't need a special card, just a credit card; each purchase of a weekly membership allows you to rent up to four bikes at a time; using the bicycles for less than 30 minutes at a time incurs no additional cost, and each 30 minutes overtime is one pound.  It's a fantastic system, and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in seeing a bit of London while they are visiting.  The yearly rate is a steal also, at only 90 pounds a year!

 cycling by the Serpentine in Hyde Park

Of course with all of that cycling on summer days in London we needed to pause infrequently for a little refreshment...

We had a mission, that is to find some good fabric for Maggie's sewing projects, for embroidery and for quilting.  We stopped at three different fabric stores that Maggie had researched through her Threads sewing magazine and through the internet.

MacCulloch & Wallis Ltd, 25-26 Dering St

 

 

Liberty London, Regent St

Shaukat & Co, 170-172 Old Brompton Road

The first one pictured above, MacCulloch & Wallis, specializes in millinery, that is, hat-making, but also has lots of fabric for clothing production.  The second, Liberty, is really a very posh department store built in a half-timbered neo-Elisabethan style, that sells lots of finished high-end textiles, and also produces bolts of cotton prints, many of which are designs by, or homages to, William Morris.  The last one, Shaukat, is a veritable Aladdin's cave of a fabric store, which purports to have stock of every Liberty print ever produced.  We were really blown away by this last one, and the prices were lower than buying directly from Liberty itself.
 

L. Cornelissen & Son, 105A Great Russell St

Another store that we enjoyed visiting was an art store, right around the corner from the British Museum.   Cornelissen & Son is my idea of what a great art shop should be, with drawers and cupboards in mahogany wood lining every wall up to the ceiling.  It reminded me of Olivander's wand shop in the Harry Potter books.  Fine drawing and painting instruments, specially treated paper, special types of paint, it was all on hand, and the staff is plentiful and helpful.

Lastly I managed to find a great used music store just around the corner from the Royal Opera House, and picked up three scores: Humperdinck's opera Hänsel und Gretel, a copy of Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music that belonged to a close friend and personal librarian of Benjamin Britten, named Rosamund Strode, and a copy of Benjamin Britten's Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, a cycle that was written for and premiered by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1965.

Monuments

The Tower of London is currently being occupied by a large art installation of cermaic poppies.  As you can see in the photograph above, each handmade poppy is about two feet tall.  They are now being placed in the moat around the tower of London, and the placement will take several months.  At present only a small fraction have already been placed, but by November the 11th this year, 888,246 poppies will have been planted in the moat as a memorial to the estimated number of British soldiers who died in the first world war.

Buckingham Palace is open in the summertime, but one has to reserve the tour in advance, and the line-ups to get inside were tremendous. Maggie and I hung about the front gate for a bit...

Buckingham Palace

  

Canada memorial gate

 

Directly across from the front gate is the Victoria memorial, and just behind it is the Canada memorial, with coats of arms from Canadian provinces.

 

We also visited the Lions in Trafalgar Square, which I first did back in 2004 on my first visit to London...

...as pictured here.  (I wish I knew where those Ray-Bans were)...

 

  ... and I said hello to Sir Henry Irving, whose statue graces the back of the National Portrait gallery.

Flower shopping on our last evening in London

 View of the Shard tower from our window

We met up with our hosts Craig and Deborah on our last evening, and enjoyed a meal together before getting up quite early in order to catch our train home.  Many thanks!

 
Back home in Brussels
 

the Grand'place flower carpet

view from the balcony of the Town Hall

panorama of the flower carpet

The flower carpet in the Grand'place of Brussels is a wonder, and for the eight summers that we have been in Brussels, we have missed it every time, until now.  It happens every two years, and we were really excited to hear that we would be in town to go see it.  Constructed from begonia flowers, of which Ghent is the largest producer of in the world, it is a marvel.

But Belgium has other marvels, the two chief of which (for us) are our two boys, who made it back home safely.  They had a great time in Canada but were very happy to see us again, and the last week or two of vacation were very calm, happy, relaxed and quiet.  It wasn't all joy though as they had some review pages to do, in preparation for the rentrée scolaire. 

Malcolm's secondary school starts a few days later than Duncan's primary school, so the three of us walked together for Duncan's first day this year...

Now both are back in the swing of things; Malcolm's full day classes started yesterday, and he has a provisional schedule already, to be confirmed after the first few weeks.  He is continuing with the Latin/Greek option, which is the most labour intensive of the various streams but also the one which allows for the greatest flexibility in later academic choices.  Next year he can add German or Spanish to his list of English, French, Flemish, Latin and Greek.  His first day with his new crop of teachers seems encouraging so I hope he has a good year; he has a new math teacher, and his English professor has agreed that some special accommodation can be made so that he is able to do some alternate study, such as read an English book and do a report on it, instead of sitting through four hours a week of elementary classes that he really doesn't need.

Duncan on the other hand is entering his last year of primary school, and so will have to write his departmental exams to move up to secondary.  While that should be a breeze for him, he does need to develop some regular study habits, so we have bought some extra conjugation books for him to work through.  As the sibling of a student at Malcolm's school, he will get preferential acceptance, so I am assuming that he will go there also.

I've also confirmed the boys' registration in a host of activities.  Malcolm will be continuing his studies of music theory, transverse flute, and has added theatre arts at the Music academy, and has joined a drawing studio at the academy of art and design.  Duncan is doing two sessions of karate, as well as theatre arts, ballet classes, and modern dance, and last night the two of us went to the bagpipes meeting together.  I am not so sure that we will continue with the pipes but we'll see...  As well I have signed up for "piano for singers" which I hope will give me some practice structure and help me improve my piano skills.

This weekend we engaged in a Brussels activity for grown-ups: the beer weekend at Grand'place.  Bryan and Kiana were newly returned from the Ultra-Trail Mont Blanc, which Bryan ran for the second year in a row.  We had a great time together, over a few hours Saturday afternoon, and Malcolm stayed home with the three Hammer children, his first babysitting gig, while Duncan helped entertain the kids.  There were forty-seven different breweries participating, and the card of beers on offer was huge.  Fortunately the glasses are small tasting ones, which prevented us from enjoying ourselves too much...

As for Maggie, her school year is in full swing.  She is still finding some time to continue working on her Mucha embroidery.  This summer she really put a huge push on, so it is more than half completed and looks great!

As for me, I think that's enough blogging for today.  I have some more music contracts that have just come in, but I'll write about those next time... now I have some errands to run.  Bonne Rentrée everyone!