School photos / Luther mass done / 27km success / Toussaint Holidays / renos

I forgot to post Duncan's school photos.  He apparently didn't get the memo that it was a white background, so his shirt kind of disappears; I think he should have worn a darker one.  I don't have a school photo for Malcolm yet; I'm not so sure that his school has a photo day scheduled for the lutherie students, but I don't see why they wouldn't.  He'll inquire about it when he goes back after the holiday.

 

Saturn V rocket at NASA

Grandpa Zadow has been sharing some photos with us from Orlando; it would seem that both Duncan and his cousin are enjoying the time with their grandparents very much.  We're looking forward to more photos and lots of stories when he returns next weekend.

I have had a busy time the last few days.  Two days of preparation on Thursday and Friday culminated in our second performance of the Luther Mass in Brussels.  Fortunately for the organisation's finances, there was a substantial crowd, and again the audience gave the ensemble a very enthusiastic reception.

I also managed to get some more work done on the Zadowcaster.  I finished sanding down the heel of the neck, and have retouched it with cherry lacquer.  The headstock decals have been applied, and the electronics have been screwed onto the body and soldered into place.

my headstock

body completed

Malcolm's bass headstock decal applied

Next all that is needed is to do a couple of light spray coats of clear lacquer on both headstocks and in my case the heel of the neck, and then I can bolt everything together, string it up and see what happens.

Prior to my guitar work and the concert on Saturday I took Maggie to the airport.  It was a long flight to Toronto and then to Ottawa, but she made it to her parents' home without trouble.  No pictures to post yet, as the weather has been too rainy and windy for her to get out in the canoe, but I see that the winds are back down to 10-15km, and the sky should be clear today.  Unfortunately the temperature there is currently three degrees celsius, so I don't know how much canoeing she's going to do!

The race was on Sunday and it went pretty well for me: I finished 61st out of 104 in my age category.  I made a good time (for me) of 2h40m for the 27-28km, and managed to avoid any knee tendonitis pain.  Unfortunately it was Lawrence's turn to drop out this time, as he had a nagging calf muscle problem that forced him to stop around km 12.

goofing off early in the race

hill climbing in the last 6km

I think that's pretty much it for my running season; I haven't registered for anything else.  Of course I plan to keep up with training runs, but I think the longer races won't happen until next spring.

what's on deck for the next couple of months

I received some happy news this week, that I will sing two Bach Cantatas on December 17th at the Minimes.  These will be my fourth Cantata with Philippe Gérard conducting, and my twenty-first and twenty-second cantatas with the Minimes.  Julius has already said that there are more coming this season, so I'm feeling very lucky.  That means that my schedule has tons of Bach in it, as well as Mendelssohn and Brahms (both of whom idolised Bach):

• December 1st and 2nd: Mendelssohn Paulus
• December 9th: Bach Weihnachtsoratorium
• December 17th: Bach Cantatas BWV 36 and 61
• March 23rd: Bach Johannespassion
• March 25th: Bach Johannespassion
• March 26th: Bach Johannespassion
• March 30th: Bach Matthäuspassion
• March 31st: Bach Johannespassion
• May 6th: Brahms Requiem (Toronto)

As you can see there are some empty spaces in the schedule at the moment; in particlar there is a pretty quiet January and February; These are good times to audition for more opera, I should think. 

As for projects that are in development but not yet confirmed, I think that Lisa and Daniel and I will try to perform the Love and Marriage programme again this coming Valentine's Day; we will pitch it as an event to the American Women's Club of Brussels, as most of the music is from Broadway.  Bruce and I are trying to arrange another performance of our No Tenors Allowed programme in Ontario while I'm back to do the Brahms in May.

As well my friend Korneel Bernolet - an amazing Belgian harpsichordist and conductor who regularly assists quite famous french conductors, and has a respectable recording career - has asked me about doing some Schubert lieder on a historical square piano from 1810-1825 that he is having restored.  That would be very interesting: we usually hear Schubert played on a modern piano, but these instruments didn't really exist as we know them today until quite a bit after Schubert.  The cast-iron-frame grand piano harp wasn't patented until 1825, and so it seems likely that for those Schubertiade evenings, Schubert and his fellow lieder enthusaists heard something quite different as they played his songs for the first time on those older instruments.

I had a chance to sing a little bit of Winterreise last month at Ayman Jarjour's benefit concert, and I am eager to have a crack at the rest of the cycle.  If I can keep it together emotionally, that is... The opening song is one of the most moving things that I have ever heard.  The text in English translation (by Celia Sgroi):

1. Good Night

I came here a stranger / As a stranger I depart / May favoured me / With many a bunch of flowers.

The girl spoke of love / Her mother even of marriage / Now the world is so gloomy / The road shrouded in snow.

I cannot choose the time / To begin my journey / Must find my own way / In this darkness.

A shadow of the moon travels / With me as my companion / And upon the white fields / I seek the deer's track.

Why should I stay here any longer / So that people can drive me away? / Let stray dogs howl / In front of their master's house.

Love loves to wander  / God made it that way / From one to the other / My dearest, good night!

I don't want to disturb your dreaming / It would be a shame to wake you / You won't hear my step / Softly, softly the door closes!

I write in passing / On your gate: Good night / So that you may see / That I thought of you.

Here is a gorgeous performance by the German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, and the Argentinian/Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.  What kills me every time is the impossibly gentle and poignant transition at around 4:18.  Trust me, wait for it... you won't be disappointed.

Tonight Malcolm and I have been invited to dinner with Benoit and Sophie and Matteo in Brussels; they want to catch up with him and show some of their vacation photos.  Today Malcolm and I are going to continue our dismantling of furniture and the building of an "airlock" structure over the top of the staircase on the top floor.  I want to do my best to limit how much dust falls into the rest of the house during the attic demolition and roof replacement.  Photos to follow...

Rehearsing for a remount of the Luther Mass / Duncan to Canada / Guitar building

Just a quick update.

Yesterday morning early Maggie drove Duncan to the airport.  He flew out to Montreal and met his Grandmother and cousin, and now they are on their way to Florida for the week.  Lucky guy!  They are going to visit LEGOland, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and NASA.  I'm sure he'll have lots of great stories to tell when he returns.

Yesterday I also resumed rehearsals for our second performance of the Luther Mass, which happens on Saturday in the Dominican Church in Brussels.  It's a lovely place and one can hear the instruments very clearly, which is a change from the last performance space in Leuven.  I will sing the Christmas Oratorio in this church on the 8th of December, so it's good to get acquainted with it now.

Today I will go into Brussels on the bus and resume work on my Zadowcaster, and also take in the SG to see what Ben has to say about it.  I hope to have some new photos soon!  For now I will post the headstock decals that I had made.

Malcolm's has a serial number of MORZ-002, which indicates his initials and that this is the second "Rosado" guitar made; his first was the cigar box banjo.  For me, I chose MGR-443 as my serial number.  For those who own the 2000 Moses Gillespie Redemption album "Roots Blues and Cowboy Songs" MGR442 is its catalogue number.  It's only natural that this guitar be numbered next...

Maggie leaves early tomorrow morning to go to the airport for her week at Skootamatta, and I have my performance.  Then on Sunday morning I will run the 28 km trail run in the Foret des Soignes, with Lawrence as my partner.  I really hope that there is no return of the right knee tendonitis that has been dogging me for the last couple of weeks.  On Sunday I ran an 8km with Maggie here in Wavre, and then did a 6:05 min/km run of 17.2km run with Lawrence in the forest, without any pain, so I have my fingers (and toes) crossed that I will be ok.  I hope that my regime of lots of stretching before and after, application of ice, some anti-inflammatory gel on the knee, and an easy pace will help.  Also I am using some straps that limit the movement of the patella and the outside tendon, much like those forearm straps that people wear when they have tennis elbow, and that seems to help.

Some decorating ideas / contracting while-u-wait / curry / running / remembrance

On Monday I was scrolling through some Brussels For Sale items on Facebook and just about jumped out of my skin when I saw a large buffet from around 1920 that had a marble top made from pretty clearly the exact same marble as our fireplace... marble which I was assured at the supplier was no longer being quarried, and so was no longer available.  The two other pieces that we already purchased on speculation could be renovated or used as is, but when I saw this one, whose marble top was 5cm wider than the one we had settled on, and 5cm deeper - which means a more protected floor when the woodstove was open - I pounced.

Maggie is really very much pleased, and so am I.  Unfortunately the scheduled installation of the woodstove will be delayed a bit.  I've often said, "Soon is a long time in Belgium" and in my experience nothing ever gets done here on schedule.  If I was a project manager here I am sure that I would have a stroke from the frustration level I would experience, as it is almost impossible to plan anything with any degree of accuracy.  For example, in the home renovation or repair field it is almost impossible to get workers to call you back.  It's like they don't want your money or something!

It turns out that the woodstove installer wants to wait for the chimney liner guy, and the chimney liner guy felt that the roof tiles were really fragile, and - kudos to him - didn't want to damage them while doing his work, especially in wet weather, so when he heard that the roof was getting replaced, he wanted to coördinate his chimney repair with the roofer, so I had to have a big conversation (of course they all only speak french) on the telephone to arrange that.  It would seem therefore that the stove installation, and the roofing replacement and insulation and chimney repair has been pushed back by at least a week, to the second week of November.

This is actually not a bad thing as it means that I can spend the week of Toussaint with Malcolm here, while Duncan and Maggie are away, demolishing everything that is presently in the attic.  We have the time to break it all out and really take stock of how it should all be rebuilt.  Perhaps I have the time as well to do some carpentry work up there to build the false ceiling that I am planning, at around the 3m height.  In the event that we can track down a furnace/boiler/plumbing installer (we've been trying for a while) there is the chance that we will install a high efficiency condensation boiler to handle the water for the radiators as well as the water for washing, and those are most effectively installed in the attic.  More on that later...

Some more deco updates: we realised that the sconce lights that are in the house now were most likely part of a Brico come-on, dating from around the year 1995 or so.  They house those long thin halogen tubes, and while they are very bright, they don't to our mind match the age of the house.  So I've been doing a little ebay shopping, and for much less than new light fixtures have managed to find a few fixtures that I'll be installing over the next little while.  Here are some photos:

I have one other item arriving as well, but I am thinking that these will do very nicely.  We have three sconce sockets in the living room, plus two or three in the front hall, two in the stairwell, and two on the archway into the dining room.  It's going to be fun searching for the right fixtures for each spot.

Malcolm was home on the weekend and so we were lucky to have his help loading and unloading firewood.  We had a lot to stack: I found someone about 90 km away from us who was interested in selling 30 cubic metres of dry split firewood, for the ridiculous price of 40 EUR per cubic metre.  That compares to between 68 EUR per cubic metre (our best-ever price) and 120 EUR at the Brico, so we contacted them immediately.  They even threw in three cubic metres of wood for free if we agreed to take the lot; apparently the family switched to a pellet stove and want it gone, which is good news for us.  We have only the one woodstove (coming soon!) and our outdoor fire pit, but the Hammers are planning on doing most of their heating with wood, so it's clear that a cheap supply is an asset.

However we had the problem of transport to consider.  I reserved a dumping trailer but when we went to get it, they told us that we needed a special licence, something which they had neither made clear on their website nor on the telephone.  So instead we made do with Bryan's trailer, improvising some side rails with pallets.  In the end we managed to move around 3.5 cubic metres of dry firewood.  We've found someone local who can drop off a container for the rest, at a cost that still leaves us with a considerably lower price than any other we've found; the vendors will load it up with the neighbour's tractor and then it can be dumped out at Bryan and Kiana's for us to stack up at leisure.  We can probably accommodate about five cubic metres here, and Bryan and Kiana are ok with us taking more as we need it.

Sunday we pretty much kept to ourselves.  Maggie wanted to show me the running route she discovered very close to our house, so we walked up the hill to the cimetière de Wavre on our way, and stopped in to see the Commonwealth graves.

Anywhere you go in our part of Belgium you will see these little green signs indicating that one or more commonwealth soldiers died here, a century ago.  In our case, the cemetary holds seven gravestones, three of them Canadians; two from the UK, and two graves for people who could not be identified.  They are at the back wall of the cemetary, perhaps 500 metres from our house.  I am sure that it would have been well out of the limits of the town, back in 1917 when they were buried.

 

The First World War is all around us at all times here in Belgium, as is the second to a slightly lesser degree.  That's one reason that I'm really excited about some news I just received from the Canadian Embassy...

As I have written before, I've been honoured to sing the Belgian, Canadian, and recently the Luxembourgish national anthems at Canadian functions here in Belgium.  During the Luxembourg celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation I mentioned to a consular staff member that I would be honoured to contribute something to the commemorations of the battle of Passchendaele.  The Canadian contribution to that protracted and horrific engagement ended on November 10th, 1917, with a victory, and a horrible cost.

The Embassy has asked if I will sing "Danny Boy" and "I'm Dreaming of Home", two songs which were well known to Canadian Corps soldiers, and allegedly sung by them often in the trenches.  As well there is a concert in the church of Passchendaele that is still being planned but I have signalled my willingness to participate as well.  More on this later...

But back to the Belgium of today, and the concerns of the household: we realised last weekend that as Duncan leaves for Montreal and then Orlando on Thursday, and Maggie leaves for Skootamatta on Saturday, and Malcolm will be at school all week, there would be little chance to have dinner together after Sunday.  So we made a heroic indian meal, with my grandmother's chicken curry, mustard garlic chili beans, spinach and chickpeas, basmati rice and pappadums to set everyone up for the week.  Malcolm even contributed a mixed berry pie, with his own short crust lattice top.  A real craftsman...