I've been back in town since last Thursday, now on my fifth day, and I'm only starting to get into my list of projects that have been building up for the last year. As tomorrow is the last day of RRSP season I've got to jump online this afternoon and transfer some money in a hurry. I'm also working on getting a contractor lined up for my kitchen, and I've been doing a lot of singing in the last few days, and spent a chunk of Saturday and Sunday playing computer games, and... oh yes, I started a new project at work on Friday so that's been keeping me busy, too.

As I expected, the trip back from Seattle was awkward with all my luggage, but surprisingly Air Canada managed to get it all home in one piece. I almost missed the connection in Vancouver due to a late flight up from Seattle, but in the end everything worked out nicely. I even had a chance to study some of the music for the Consort Caritatis concert.

On Friday I started my new project, meeting the client team in their offices Friday morning and beginning to get oriented with the project partner and my lone co-worker. Friday afternoon I left a bit early and had a quick nap at home before heading up to the Exultate concert, where I manned the doors. The choir did a great job (the Durufle Requiem being the title , and the turnout was fantastic: Exultate's best attendance ever, in fact. A lot of people showed up to see our guest conductor, Wayne Riddell, who now lives in Florida. I didn't get to sing with him, of course, but he seemed to bring a lot of energy to the group and managed to produce some wonderful double fortes, not an Exultate specialty. Composer John Beckwith hosted a party at his house afterwards, which was fun (but by that point I was TIRED).

Saturday we had a Consort Caritatis rehearsal, which went very well. I spent the rest of the day playing computer games with Dave (viva the home network) leading up to a humiliating series of Starcraft games in which he whomped me mercilessly. I resolved to review my tactics. He won't get off so easily next time!

Sunday morning I sang at Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill's church, Christ Church Deer Park. He has a solid choir, with some excellent leads, although I missed the sense of blend and overall musicality that used to exist at Saint Mary Magdalene's, where I sang until last fall. (I still haven't decided if I should go back to SMM or not, and hearing nasty rumours about the current state of the choir hasn't helped.) We performed Missa Pape Marcelli, by one of my favorite composers, Palestrina. (Ok, so that's hardly an envelope-pushing opinion, but it's true.) Sunday afternoon Bruce and I went down to the Elgin Theatre to see A Flea in Her Ear, which friend Andrew Ager (time for a new bio picture, Andrew) was accompanying on the piano (dressed in a slightly ridiculous bowler hat). He did a great job, and it was a very enjoyable play.

Monday (good lord I've been busy the last few days!) I got back into the project work, and completed my first 'deliverable' for the client, but had to leave work at 1pm to meet up with Bruce, Kelly and Diane and drive to Kitchener. The concert with Ben Heppner was a big success (about 1,700 in attendance) and as the 'backup group' we had a great time without too much stress. We only really had one difficult piece to perform, in German at about Warp 8, but it went decently well and we joined the audience in the pleasure of hearing Ben's incomparable singing bouncing off the far walls of the Centre in the Square for two and a half hours.

I finally made it to today... I'm working on some client work, but also catching up on some administration activities from the last project, and getting the highest-priority personal projects (e.g. that damn RRSP) started as well. Back to the grindstone...
posted by Tom at 1:45 PM | link |