Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

...and so we begin the last month of the year.

Monday, Dec. 1, 2008
8:26 a.m.
All weekend I thought I would have opportunities to update my diary, and all weekend I either wasted them doing something else, or just missed them altogether.

The concert on Friday night went really rather well. We had a good house, there were no major gaffes, and the baton only once leapt of its own will out of Herr Doktor Professor’s hand as he accidentally hit the music stand with it. He kept going, and the concert mistress returned it to him as soon as she could. There was a reception in the faculty lounge afterwards for the musicians and soloists, and Hubby and I went with our violist friend. It turns out that the bass soloist and I had sung once together around 10 or so years ago in a production of Kurt WeiII’s Mahag0ne that I had practically forgotten. He was a very nice guy, and a very good bass.

Yesterday was Hubby’s actual 50th birthday, so we celebrated by going out for lunch with Buddy Boy to a nice restaurant in town. I gave him a card and presents (the CD I ordered has not yet arrived, unfortunately), and we spent a pleasant lazy afternoon together. Then I had to carpool kids to the church for the second concert, and when I arrived, the student who was doing sound and recording asked if I would do him a big favour. He needed to download the latest version of some software, but there was no internet available at the church. I drove him to the bus station where he knew there was a ZAP wireless, and he was able to download his software to his laptop and we could go back to the church and continue as planned.

The second concert was not as good as the first, from the point of view of the performers. We were tired from the night before (we were standing for the entire show, which turned out to be three hours, including the intermission) and the acoustics of the church are incredibly woofy. As a result, our mistakes were not really heard by the audience, which I suppose was a good thing for them. The soprano next to me kept making snoring noises as we stood for pages and pages of recitatives and arias. The last chorus never felt so good.

Then I drove my three students and one violist through freezing rain back to the music department where we had a party. The old Steinway was pulled into the lobby and tables were set up and we drank and people played and sang, and eventually I just had to go. I have to teach at 10:00 this morning, so I’d best get on with my life.



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