We're back in the groove again today. No more running around Vancouver for us.
Our faculty presented a wonderful concert of Haydn works last night. It's such a thrill to have such good performers and then get to be taught by them. The other thing is, here it is the middle of the summer, and the auditorium at the music building was FILLED with people from the community at the concert. (There are only 21 of us in the program, so we were not the ones filling up the hall.)
Master class this morning was great. Two new additions. Rose Terada is here -- I met her one year at SFEMS Baroque. She was sick last week and couldn't come. Alvina is now a full-fledged performing member of the class. She made sure she saw the rest of us struggle last week before she set finger to keyboard. But both of them did a nice job today. Alvina is one of several local Vancouver people who are attending. Later this week I think we're taking a field trip to her house to see her new harpsichord.
Last week we had a concert, so today we got new ensemble music and got mixed around into different ensembles. My music is much easier than last week. I'm in two different groups which consist ot two harpsichords, a melody instrument and a gamba or cello. In one group, I'm playing the "solo" harpsichord part, which is the violin part, and Rose is playing the continuo part. In the second group, we're playing another Telemann from the same series and I'm playing the continuo harpsichord part and Dawn is playing the solo part. I think I might be the only harpsichord player who got two relatively easy parts this time through. No weird clefs, no really bad printing, though they could be a bit larger, no facsimiles. Of course, rather than be grateful, I take this as a sign that I'm not up to snuff. But it's okay, because I can be pretty relaxed for the rest of the week, but not so relaxed that I don't get anything done or make any improvement.
But I know that a lot of friends who are reading this blog aren't really particularly into music, so we'll move on to the more interesting stuff: The food.
Granted it's only Monday, but dinner seems a bit better this week. Last night we had a very good shepherd's pie, and tonight we had apples and pork over rice. Plus, as you can see, you can buy wine with your dinner here in the dorms. I find that very civilized. The so-called salad bar now had a dish of cooked beets, in addition to the giant lonely bowl of mixed greens. And dessert is, as usual, wonderful. I think the woman who bakes loves lemon and whenever she bakes anything with lemon in it, it's really tart and yummy. Oh, and last night, she made chocolate volcano cakes.
Sorry to be boring, but after dinner it was back to the practice room to work out my continuo part.

It's Not All It Seems

A few interesting non-music things and mostly pictures today. 

I did a very small campus walk today, haven't covered the entire campus.  There is some interesting architecture here, but it's kind of difficult to see because there is construction going on everywhere.  No doubt they're preparing for the Republicans who said they would leave the US in droves if Obama got elected.  But then, they'd have to have a national health care plan if they were here, so what's a Conservative to do?  A dilemma.

But I digress.  Here are a few pictures of the campus:  The gothic building with glass on either end is unidentified as of now, and the dark one with a lot of glass is the Darth Vader Business School.   (Okay, I made that up.  So sue me.)  Some of the buildings I could see the names of, others I think I was seeing the backs of.               The all glass one is the library.  It must not be as new as it looks, because an all-glass building like that doesn't seem particularly energy efficient in a place as cold as Vancouver.    And on that topic, they are having a drought up here.  Check out the grass in this picture.  Pretty much all brown.  But they don't have water-saving shower heads.  You could get waterboard training in the showers here.  Actually, it's pretty nice.  

On the other hand, paper products -- like table napkins especially, are about the softness of newspaper.  Paper towels are much less soft than those at home.  Toilet paper is about the same quality as in most public buildings in the U.S. 

But now, I must tell you of a conspiracy I have discovered.  FAKE TREES!  As I was walking around the campus today, I noticed this little grove of cedar-type trees.  They were growing very close together.  But when I walked closer, they were not growing at all, but were cut trees nailed into sort of Christmas-tree stands.  Not the kind that keep the tree watered, but just nailed onto pieces of wood.  Not easy to see in a picture, but the first picture is of the little grove of trees, the second is a closeup of one of the stands.  If you care, you can click on it to enlarge.  But wait, that's not all.  These were real trees, and they probably hadn't been in these stands very long, because they were still flexible and not dried out.  However, as I walked around this grove, I found an ominous sign of even more perfidy. 

There were large tree-trunks with holes drilled into them for the insertion of branches.                       Why would they need fake trees in Canada?  Have they secretly depleted their entire stock and don't want the rest of the world to know?  What do they have more of than trees in Canada?  Is it particularly ominous that the fake trees were located outside the business school (which by the way is located on Agriculture Lane)?  Another conspiracy.  You know these Canadians sit up here acting all polite and stopping for pedestrians and not shooting each other and watching hockey games where the players have all their teeth, but I'm here to tell you.  They have fake trees!!  It's clear that there's a conspiracy up here, and I think the U.S. should graciously allow Fox News and Rush Limbaugh up here to investigate and report on it.  We can't have this so near our sacred borders. 

The travel day

I'm sitting in the airport feeling as anxious as if I were one of those people who hates to get on an airplane. But nothing about this is about airplanes. In fact, the flight is the soothing part. I also feel like I'm dragging this much stuff with me.

I'm getting ready to go to the Vancouver Early Music workshop "The Apotheosis of the French Baroque," and get my butt kicked for the next two weeks. (The picture is the one they're using on their brochure, by the way.)On the good side, I'll be getting my butt kicked by some pretty good people.
Here's the list of the designated butt-kickers for the week: Marc Destrubé, violin: Wilbert Hazelzet, flute: Jacques Ogg, harpsichord & fortepiano: Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba & cello; Julie Andrijeski, baroque dance & violin: and lectures, etc. by Ton Amir, harpsichord builder & lecturer.
Kind of looks like a summer vacation for people from the Netherlands, doesn't it? Interesting they'd choose somewhere cold & rainy like Vancouver for their summer vacation. Or maybe when Vancouver put this together, this was the only group of people who would come to a cold rainy place in the middle of the summer. I will have to be on my best behavior and not complain about how cold it is there, since I know that I am the coldest person on the planet.

It's supposed to be in the 60s and rainy this week and in my suitcase I have three wool sweaters, I'm carrying another onto the plane, and I have a coat!! Of course I also have an umbrella.
I have exactly two short sleeved shirts, mostly for the mottos on them: One says "Earlier than Thou" and the other says "Go Figure" and has the first note of Chaos by Rebel on it (which has every note of the scale in the figure).
These shirts are one of the moneymaking schemes of a group called KatastroPhe. There is noplace else that I can wear these nerdy t-shirts and have anybody grasp what they mean. The other funny part about the earlier than thou shirt, is that I will probably be the oldest person there. I'm pretty sure I'm older than most of the faculty.

Back to my anxiety: I am woefully unprepared for this. This is a competitive program, i.e. you have to audition to get in. I can only imagine I was accepted because they didn't have enough full-paying students apply. I have some very nice recordings of the pieces I intend to play. They sound nothing like the versions I play. I made the really woeful mistake of picking one piece that had been recorded by Jacques Ogg. My version sounds nothing like his. This could be good if I were going in another intelligent direction, but it is just bad. Don't know why I need to go there to have my butt kicked, seems like I can do a pretty good job of it myself.

There's a dance component to this workshop as well. Baroque dance is usually an elegant affair, with lots of lovely hand gestures and pointing of toes. The best I could do in the way of shoes for this event (they were supposed to be soft) were some multi-colored Addidas. And of course once I get all my old-lady arch supports, bunion protectors, hammertoe splints and extra socks stuffed in them, they are about as flexible as army boots. My vision of myself dancing is along the Dumbo Elephant but not quite so graceful line.

We've just been told that our flight is at least a half hour late. This means I probably won't have enough time to get Canadian money in the Seattle airport. It's good to have something non-musical to worry about, though this is pretty low on my list of things that matter. Obviously they'll change money in the airport in Canada, too. I just don't want to give Bank of America another cent of my money in moneychanging fees.