The Day After

Now I have a free day, and I'm looking forward to a long mountain bike ride in the hills above Claremont with my beloved brother-in-law, Mark the Mountain Bike Master. Just as soon as I get my Christmas lights down. kind of embarrassing!

Recital last night

My thanks to everyone involved in my rectal last night on the USC campus: To Mitsuko Morikawa for her excellent piano collaboration. Sorry I didn't have readable music to you sooner! You did great, especially the Messiaen, which is almost unplayable! Thanks to Kevin Kumar for his great solo on "Oif may'n kas'neh" and to Timothy Landauer on the beautiful Elijah excerpt. And to Maia Jasper and Meredith Crawford for completing the quartet for Dover Beach! To Morten Lauridsen, who made a special guest appearance to play the duet version of his "Sure On This Shining Night" with me and Carin. That was really amazing! Of course, I love singing with my daughter Carin, who ALWAYS says "yes" whenever I ask her to perform with me. Thanks Cari!!

World Premiere of Gesualdo in Zürich

Getting to the end of an arduous rehearsal period here in Zürich. I'm creating the title role in the world premiere of the new opera "GESUALDO" by Marc-André Dalbavie. Carlo Gesualdo was an Italian Renaissance Prince, and he's famous for his amazing madrigals and sacred music, but also because he murdered his first wife and her lover, for reasons that should be obvious from the first part of this sentence! It's been really challenging, mostly because of the density of the French text. But it's pretty exciting. We have had 4 orchestra rehearsals now, and it's really coming together. Preliminary reaction is extremely positive. We open on Oct 9.

South Pacific, Houston

The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts is a cavernous, but beautiful and highly functional venue. It's a strange sensation to hear your voice so loudly from so far away (because of the amplification): sometimes it seems like it's louder than my voice in front of my own face! The audiences here are harder to read, due to the distance to the back wall, but they have been extremely receptive and appreciative. We have such a good time when they have a good time!

San Antonio

Too bad we were only there for a week! The Riverwalk was just great. The people are really friendly. The audiences were wonderful. Now it's on to Houston.

South Pacific Seattle

We had a terrific time in Seattle. What a tremendous place! No wonder half of California has moved there. It's gorgeous, the food is exceptional, the climate, though rainy, is mild, it's just a very civilized place to live. My wonderful cousin and her family live on this idyllic lake just 15 minutes north of the city, and we watched a bald eagle on a floating log eating something for about 40 minutes! Another cousin lives in Port Townsend, right at the inlet of the Puget Sound, and that's another breathtaking place. Can't wait to go back!