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We took my in-laws to the see the Radio City Rockettes “Christmas Spectacular” at the Hummingbird Centre last night. It seemed somewhat incongruous to have the synchronized dancers with numbers MC’d by Mr. S. Claus and then a nativity scene at the end of the show. Apparently this was what the original 1930’s era performance was like so they’ve continued to this day. I would have preferred to watch the Rockettes only. The secular-sacred combination was a little jarring.

Maybe I’m getting old or more sensitive but the music was TOO LOUD. It was much louder that sitting behind a 40 piece symphony orchestra for 3 hours and singing Handel’s Messiah.

On a cheerier note I parked for $5 just a block away from the Hummingbird Centre and the in-laws enjoyed it.

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Yesterday the Bell’Arte Singers and the Oshawa-Durham Symphony Orchestra performed all of Handel’s Messiah: about 3 hours with one intermission. On Friday and Saturday I sang the Mozart Mass in c and seasonal fare with the Oakville Choral Society. Needless to say my voice was rather gravelly this morning.

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We just had our mainly Mozart concert this past Saturday. It went quite well. The church acoustics were great. However…

In my choir manager role I gently complained about the transept window renovation we weren’t told about. Street noise and the occasional flapping tarp provided unwelcome ostinatos from time to time. The reeds on the organ were out of tune, probably because the church temperature varies a lot with that renovation work. We seemed to be charged for the sexton even though there was another group in the church at the same time as our rehearsal. I managed to get a $500 concession from the church. For a non-profit organization that donates part of the ticket sales to charity as well this was good news today.

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My wife couldn’t pass up this great drum set for half-price at a music teacher’s conference this past weekend. The merchant had set up 5 drum sets for a workshop and didn’t want to have to re-package everything. Now I’ll either have to take lessons and/or see what I can find on the Internet about playing the drums.

I look kind of stunned in this self-portrait, probably because I wasn’t really sure when the self-timer on my camera was going to take the picture.

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This past week there was a regular rehearsal on Tuesday, a dress rehearsal on Wednesday, a concert on Friday and one on Saturday as well as a regular rehearsal with a different choir on Saturday.

And on Monday I donated blood.

My voice actually feels pretty good. It’s just another muscle that responds well to regular workouts I suppose.

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Well, it seems I have either a) lost interest, b) lost time, c) found other things to do or d) all of the above with respect to this blog. My first post was way back on Feb. 25, 2002. Our dog, now almost one year old, accounts for b) and c) as well as becoming choir manager, and a) arises because, after walking the dog in the evening, I don’t feel much like spending another half an hour posting something.

Perhaps I should try posting just a sentence or fragment instead of paragraphs.

Anyway, my software find this week is Audacity. I decided to start digitizing choir concert tapes from years ago. I can record one side of a tape and then slice out the selections, creating mp3 files out of them. So far I have done one Bell’Arte Singers set of two tapes from Nov. 1998 and one Toronto Chamber Society concert from Nov. 1981. The TCS turned out all right. The BAS tapes have either been played too much or they weren’t recorded at a high enough level. Their sound is kind of rumbly and muddy. I tried the FFT filter from the Audacity library to cut out the low frequencies: less rumbly now but the vocal sounds still aren’t very clear.

As for the 1981 tape, I don’t have the program just the titles I wrote on the cover. Through the “miracle” of the Internet though, I can search for midis based on the titles and, from listening to those, I can determine the correct title and composer.

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As the Bell’Arte Singers domain name seems to have expired for the moment, I thought I should post the season brochure here. Send the manager (yours truly ) an email (bas DOT manager AT gmail DOT com) for a printed copy or for further information.

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With a dog you don’t sleep in, even on your day off. So, I have been tired today as I sang in a chorus of about 60 singers, 27 in the orchestra last night. We sang almost the entire work save for a few solos and choruses from Part I. My personal review may follow tomorrow night’s performance.

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Since last Sunday, I have been spending rehearsal and my own evenings' time learning the music for last night’s concert. I was hired to augment the bass section since several of their bass section members were to be absent. I was kind of discouraged on the choir’s behalf at Tuesday’s rehearsal as they didn’t seem ready for the concert. However, Friday’s dress rehearsal went better. They added an extra rehearsal on Saturday morning (which I didn’t attend) and this seemed to do the trick. They sung well and did a good job last night.

I had to concentrate at that concert because a) I was still sight reading and learning the music and b) there were a couple of pieces that both choirs (Vox Finlandiae and Jubilate Singers) seemed to be less familiar with so that I felt I had “lead” the section and bring out the bass line.

That pint of Steamwhistle tasted great at the pub after the performance. Unlike most choirs I have sung with, a greater number of them get together to relax after the show. It was a homecoming of sorts as I had sung with the Jubilate for a season about 5 years ago.

Was it fun? Somewhat: it was a lot of work to learn to sing in a new language and passably sing new repertoire “at speed.” This morning John Stainer’s Crucifiction was the featured work on Choral Concert reminding me that singing the role of Christ was one of my first (paying) soloist jobs some 15 years ago.

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Our practice for Saturday’s concert went well. The Dvorak Mass in D sounds particularly “grand” with the tracker organ at Christ Church Deer Park.

In non-musical ponderings, I wondered if the young lady I saw on my way to the subway has problems with chest colds: I saw a lot of chest and some cleavage in these -6°C temperatures.

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A choir I was in several years ago is “desparate for basses” and I’ve been asked to join them for their next concert on March 5. So, I have just a couple of weeks to cram in a concert’s worth of music starting this Saturday when I get the repertoire. Of course, the Bell’Arte Singers have their concert at the end of next week. I have given notice to the “Messiah 2005” choir in Oakville that I’ll be missing a few rehearsals.

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I was part of the chorus for Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance several years ago. It was fun; however, I didn’t enjoy driving the half hour or longer commute at the tail end of rush hour to get there. The performances take place at the end of January so there are rehearsals around Christmas and snowy weather to drive in. The stage director, a friend, asked me in an email if I would come out and see the show this year. As the title suggests I probably won’t. Upon reflection I can think of these reasons:

• I’m not partial to sitting for a couple of hours as an audience person.
• I don’t like being in the audience when I could have been part of the show. This also applied to being in the congregation and not the church choir.
• The older I get the less I can stay awake in the evenings—especially if I’m just sitting and watching.

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I handed out scores for the Mozart Te Deum, the Haydn Missa Brevis and the Dvorak Mass in D for our upcoming concert. I have performed the Mozart and Haydn before. The Dvorak Mass appears to be quite charming. It should be a great concert.

Today I found out I had falsely “accused” a choir member of not returning one piece of music. It turns out that another member who returned their music today, about three weeks late, had one “odd” numbered score: a 34 in a bunch of 40’s. That 34 was the copy I had assumed the first member had. Hmmm, it seems I should be careful to cross off the music numbers returned and by whom when I get some early returns before the concert.

I’ve offered to assume the choir manager role as the current manager is resigning effective the end of this season. Of course, I will do this only if I can pass on the music librarian’s job and the 16 or 17 bins of music. Five years ago my wife and I became the music librarians. She has been too busy with her own music teaching duties and class prep work to be able to help out much with the borrowing, returning, sorting and filing duties. I think it’s time for someone else in the choir to take a turn.

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According to this article, the brain may “store” music differently than other memories. One example described one composer who suffered a stroke and could no longer talk or understand speech but continued to compose for another decade until his death. Perhaps this would explain why I can almost “instantly” remember performing a particular work after hearing it again but it will take much longer for me figure out when I last sang it. That is, my musical memory doesn’t appear to fade that much nor does it usually have any temporal characteristics. I might remember a piece I sang just recently as well as one I sang thirty years ago. I can’t say the same, say, for books I have read unless they were “really good.”

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A boring job is now out of the way. I’ve sent an email to the few individuals who didn’t hand in their music. A couple of them couldn’t make it to sing at the concert but some others were there. I’m not sure what’s so hard about this: if the music doesn’t belong to you, you need to hand in the music immediately after the concert.

After the concert, instead of being able to entertain and mingle with our audience guests, my wife and I have to run around asking and reminding people to hand in their music. What a pain. At least I have found a pretty illustration for my whine/rant.

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I pretended I was a music teacher these past two days and registered for the Ontario Music Educator’s Conference. Through present and former choir members and my wife, I know a few music teachers (including my wife). The conference took place at the “Double Tree” hotel o.k.a the Skyline, across the street from Toronto Congress. We took a room for Friday night so we wouldn’t have to get up so early to hear Saturday’s keynote speaker(s): the Canadian Brass at 8:30 a.m. Well worth the price of admission, IMHO!

I attended some workshops, one of which I’ll certainly remember as the teacher presented the uses of technology and software to help his students learn their music. How about, for example, learning a duet by sending sound attachments to each other and re-mixing their own parts and sending it back for review? The other workshop I remember was on Latin rhythms. One bit of trivia I learned is that despite Hollywood’s depictions, maracas are not Mexican—they are an instument from Venezualan and Columbian music culture. Oh, and our choir was part of a workshop on choral techniques by way of an open rehearsal.

There was also a vendors' mall: no Encylopedia Britannica though. I told my wife I would buy her the two-congas-with-stand set for Christmas as long as she would share them. And, yes, I agreed she didn’t have to wait until Christmas to open them.

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About a month ago a choir member was cleaning out her trunk and gave me a box of some new music. This box had been given to her by our director: I figure at some point last May as he was a pedestrian most of that time. As music sorting is rather tedious work I stashed the box in the basement with the other piles of music until such time as a sorting mood strikes (not too often ).

Today was rainy and too wet to rake leaves. I even felt like sorting music. In that box were invoices to our choir and another entity, from whom we borrow music from time to time, for over $600 and due last May 30. This explains a message on my work phone regarding an invoice from a certain music publisher. I was too busy on Friday to call back. Good thing: I would have had no idea what they were talking about. I scanned the invoices and emailed to people who know more about them I do. Now somebody was to sweet talk that music publisher and try to avoid the stated 1.5%/month overdue charges.

BTW, pretty well all that music is sorted, envelopped and put away. There’s now about 240 separate works in 14 large plastic bins. That 14^th bin is now full, too.

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I found out from an article in the Mississauga News why my wife had to wait for the opera to start. Apparently the musicians had said “no pay, no play” for the final performance and Maestro Bennett finally arrived with their pay a half an hour after the program was supposed to start. Of course the 'News couldn’t contact him to get a statement. Typical! Once again I’m glad the Oakville Choral Society said ‘no’ the second time they were asked to “join” with the Opera Mississauga. (The latter’s web site redirects to Royal Opera Canada, perhaps because Opera Mississauga and the Living Arts Centre can’t agree on lease terms. I wonder why. )

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We had the pleasure of hearing our good friend and excellent organist play a recital at Melville United Church in Fergus this past Saturday evening. He played music of the great organist-composers from the 17^th to 20^th centuries including Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-, a Choral Partita and a Choral Prelude by Buxtehude, one of Bach’s teachers, a Prelude and Fugue in G+ by Mendelsohn, Choral Preludes by Vaughan-Williams, Willan and Franck. On a dare from one of the congregants, who said he’d come only if he could work in a Beatles' tune, Matthias improvised on Yesterday and The Yellow Submarine. Good stuff!

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It’s not too early to think of Christmas concerts. One of the choirs has been rehearsing already. See my events listing.

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Today I helped my wife set up the recital hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music for the Orff to Jazz course given by Doug Goodkin. Basically we moved all sorts or percussion instruments (drums, glockenspiels, xylophones, etc) into the room. In exchange for this “work” I audited the first afternoon of the course wherein Doug introduced several different songs via body percussion, singing, dancing and gestures. It is too bad I wasn’t “raised” on this stuff. I have to analyze the steps, count the beats, etc and then assemble them at speed as well as sing. It made me feel maladroit at the end of it. But no one cared and I didn’t either.

In between the fun stuff, Doug gave some background about what he was teaching. The part I remember was that teaching music (to kids) should be like a musical work. There’s an opening to grab your attention, a middle section where “things happen” and a final section, climax, release, whatever. Your teaching should just flow. He compared this to a symphony concert. The conductor doesn’t stand at the podium and say, “This second section is played andante which means 'at a walking pace.' The strings will be playing a fugue with the brass section. Blah, blah, blah…” She and the orchestra just get on with it. So should the teacher.

A tutor who tooted the flute,
Tried to teach two tutors to toot,
Said the tutor to the two tutors,
It is easier to toot,
Than to teach two tutors to toot.

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On Wednesday I had my first, and the choir’s second rehearsal under Maestro Brott of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. I discovered many of the assembled choir had done Carmina last year while it has been 3 years since I last sang it with the Bell’Arte Singers. Oh well, I have got a few days to brush up on the rapid-fire latin words to a couple of the movements.

Today I found out we get a modest honourarium payable to our choir. (You can get it personally if you supply your SIN but do I really want the hassle of declaring that small bit of income?).

The concert is part of the Brott Festival taking place at Hamilton Place, 7:30 p.m., Thursday, August 19, 2004.

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It was a great experience today singing with members of the GTA and area’s foremost choirs including the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Amadeus Choir, the MacMillan Singers, the Elora Festival Singers, the KW Philharmonic Choir, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Orpheus Choir and ourselves, the Bell’Arte Singers. It was relaxing not having to lead your entire section but just sing!

We rehearsed under the emminent conductors, Robert Cooper, Lydia Adams, Helmut Rilling, Howard Dyck and Mario Bernardi. Apparently, tomorrow night’s concert is almost sold out.

Anyway, the reason for today’s article was that we can’t just do one verse each of O Canada and God Save the Queen: we have to do three more! The four part harmony is no problem (for me ); however, we have to know the words from memory — by tomorrow!

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My wife and I signed up to sing in a performance of Carmina Burana to be given at Hamilton Place on August 19 as part of the Brott Music Festival. This is one work that demands an orchestra and a large choir.

I made a quick trip by subway at lunchtime to pick up our copies of the music for The Joy of Niki tribute next Sunday evening. There are a couple of new (to me) pieces I’ll have to get familiar with between now and next Saturday’s rehearsals. These include the Franz Schmidt “Hallelujah” and the “Prisoners Chorus” from Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio.”

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The Singers had their first evening with Stephen Hatfield last night. As well as being a composer, he has fine conducting, speaking and educating talents as well. After working all day, an evening rehearsal can be rather fatiguing. However, Stephen entertained and encouraged us and told us the story behind several of his compositions. I encourage everyone to come out and enjoy the concert!

Here’s the program:

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Here’s what we’ll be singing (in alphabetical, not program, order):

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It’s been a busy time for those of in the Oakville Choral Society with two concerts and two rehearsals this week. Worth the effort though, as I believe the choir performed very well and, especially, “my” section of eight basses. There were mistakes here and there but the only one that showed was a muffed entry in the second concert. Perhaps, this was due to some confusion between two similar Hossanah entries in the Haydn Little Organ Mass and the Mozart Requiem. Anyway, I stopped singing for a bar or so in order that I could find my place again in the choral-orchestral tapestry.

I personally enjoyed singing as part of the double vocal quartet plus string quartet plus percussion performing the Ward Swingle arrangement of Mozart’s Rondo from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Well done OCS and kudos to the director, Bev Stainton.

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Our music director was away for this Saturday’s rehearsal. Three of the choir members did a fine job taking rehearsal. After break we broke into section groupings and discussed “whither the choir?” The discussion is required because a) we’re in debt and b) there was a fall concert that, though it went well in the end, had a rough and rocky rehearsal road. Do you want to sell tickets if it is likely the choir might embarass themselves?

I believe there were some good suggestions—we will see what the other sections thought next Saturday. The men agreed that men, being men, we weren’t as senstive to “issues” as the women are. We come to sing under the direction of a fine conductor. Period!

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It took me a while to find the midi percussion key map with pitches. I ended up copying it from a web page, transforming it into a csv file, importing into Excel, fixing up a couple of errors and then importing that into a Word 2000 table. I then saved it as html and include the result here. Now I can add persussion parts to my Noteworthy Composer songs.

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I was asked to conduct(?) the vocal warm-ups for the choir on Tuesday evening. What with the March Break school holiday week and a late winter snowstorm, we had just over 50% attendance. I’m not sure what sort of impression I made on the choristers. I’m usually a one or two finger “piano-poker,” so I can’t accompany the vocal exercises like the woman did last week. Personally, I don’t really like warm-ups: you know scales and the me-meh-mah-moh-moos. Just like modern car-starting advice—you turn on the engine, let it idle for about 30 seconds and then drive off slowly. That’s all you need to warm-up vocally I believe. Sing one or two songs, not too loudly, that are in a comfortable range for your voice. Then I would get down to the serious works of the evening.

One problem I discovered. I sit at the computer and stay pretty silent. I may chat with a colleague now and then. But at this warm-up session I had to talk loud enough to be heard in the small lecture hall that we practice in. I guess I should have warmed up my lecturing voice first as my singing wasn’t up to snuff for the rest of the evening.

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It’s been quite awhile since I have used Noteworthy Composer; however, I’ve been asked to be part of the octet(?) of singers to perform Ward Swingle’s adaptation of the Rondo from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik at the April 30^th and May 1^st concerts. All those dah bah dah’s and repeated eighth notes make it a fairly easy task to Noteworthy it. Then I have a couple of months to learn it in my “spare” time.

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In the Credo at the end of the bar 64, at letter `O', the piano reduction has the first 6 notes of the Mexican Hat Dance. It doesn’t seem to fit with any of the music before or after. A little Mozart humour perhaps?

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My wife graduated with her diploma in early childhood music education today at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. Now she has the initials: A.R.C.T., D.E.C.M.A after her name. There were zillions of piano students receiving their ARCT in performance or teaching. Someone asked why there were so many oriental students? Well, how many oriental students do we see at the hockey rinks across the land? It’s just a different set of priorities depending on the culture.

The graduation had the usual speeches from a bank CEO and the-famous-orchestra-conductor and lines of grads getting hooded and pieces of rolled up paper. Bob Rae, as chairman of the Royal Conservatory, shook everybody’s hand. The woman who received the gold medal in organ performance ARCT told Mr. Rae that he was responsible: when Mr. Rae was the 21st Premier of Ontario she lost her public health job because of his government cutbacks. Apparently Bob was speechless. The woman felt great after that.

Today’s musical instrument is the erhu. Even though it was a virtuoso performance by George Gao at the graduation ceremony, it still sounds to me like a whiny violin and resembles a long stick and a tin can.

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The director of the Bell’Arte Singers delivered a heart felt homily at rehearsal on Monday. His 6 or 7 month old twins are exercising their best sleep deprivation techniques on him and he’s tired of it. Or us. Or something. And the choir is in debt and the bank is recalling its loan. The last concert turned out great but it definitely required Herculean efforts on the part of the music director to wrestle the musical message out of the awkward choral composition, piecemeal, and lately delivered commissioned work. Kudos to Lee and choir for pulling it off.

I have chocolates to sell for the Oakville Choral Society. I think it is a worthwhile cause — raising the funds to hire movers to schlep risers in and out of the concert venue. I don’t really mind helping to do this but I’m not available during the day nor do I like moving stuff in my tuxedo après le concert. So, I have 25 (Oops, make that 23. Quality testing you know!) boxes of caramel and mint chocolates for just a toonie and a loonie each.

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I brought the thunder sheet and ABS pipe frame to choir rehearsal today. By bending the sheet I managed to fit it into the trunk and close the lid. Somebody asked me about painting lighting bolts on it. That would be fine except I need to step on the sheet and bend it to get rid of the kinks arising from the folding and the stuffing it in the trunk.

I got to “thunder” it at rehearsal during the appropriately named piece, “Cloudburst.” Apparently I should be using a bass drum mallet — probably the #8 size in the image. According to the description, it is a fuzzy-felted piece of cork on a stick. Maybe an old tennis ball on a stick might do. In that same piece I sing a brief solo, too. Should be a fun concert next Saturday.

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Today I cut up the ABS piping and made a frame on which to hang my thunder sheet. I decided to use the galvanized shed cladding. It bangs more and I can roll it up a bit to put it in the car trunk; though, I’ll have to tie down the lid. The chop saw works great for cutting the ABS to length. I had to use 0000 steel wool and varsol to remove the printing and price tag gum off the pipe and fittings. Tonight I glued it all up. One brilliant move I made, inadvertantly, was the decision to use coupler fittings. The frame comes in four pieces so it can fit in the car. The benefit of the coupler is that the alignment of the frame is no longer as critical as the now the four sides can be rotated into alignment. While I was gluing I had to be careful about which fitting goes where but, for example, I didn’t have to worry about aligning the 90° elbows.

I hung the piece of galvanized sheeting from the garage rafters and experimented “playing”the instrument. A gloved fist seems to work best.

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I plan to make a thunder sheet for our choir’s next concert. We will be doing at least two works which require thunder. Tonight I bought the parts. After shaking sheets of stuff at the lumber store, I couldn’t decide between plastic laminate or the galvanized sheeting used for shed or roof cladding so I bought both. Good thing I drove the ol’ Grand Caravan as the laminate was 4' x 8' and the sheeting was 3' x 10'. Oh and I bought two 12' lengths of inch and half ABS pipe and fittings for the frame. I think I’ll flatten out the corrugations in the galvanized sheeting to make it more flexible and more thundery-like. From what I’ve read — the bigger the better i.e. the lower and more realistic the sound. Of course the other criteria is that the ensemble fit in my wife’s Buick Century so I can’t go overboard here. That’s a plus for the sheeting since it will bend more easily than the laminate. To be continued…

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As music librarian for the Bell’Arte Singers, it becomes quite a challenge to locate some works. This season’s challenge is the Missa Solemnis by Franz Liszt. I had thought another big choir in Toronto had the work but it turned out there had been a mis-communication. Their librarian thought I was asking about the Beethoven version. After a little googling tonight I came across this concert notice. So, I polished up my French and sent email asking if they can rent the music to us. Otherwise it will set us back around 1,000 CAD to purchase it.

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We heard the African Children’s Choir on CBC Radio on Wednesday morning. My wife looked up the information and discovered they were performing at the World Vision Canada office in Mississauga that very evening. So, she picked me up from the GO station, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed up to 1 World Drive on Hurontario Street just north of the 401.

What a great concert! Those 26 kids, ranging in age from 7 to 11, really know how to sing and dance. I especially enjoyed their “African”numbers with just singing, dancing and drumming. They have “North Amechanized”many of their concert songs with recorded backup music and typical songs such as “He’s Got the Whole World;”however, their delivery was superb. I could have done without the “give and give often”messages but, after all, the event was “free”and certainly not like those “free”trips to Collingwood where you’re subjected to a high-pressure sales pitch about condo living. I digress. In short I liked the African drumming, the singing and the dancing. The children didn’t need canned music in my opinion. Another added bonus was the number of pre-schoolers in the front rows and aisles dancing away. Very cute.

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The scanner makes it handy these days to copy pages of a particular movement from a larger work. I use imaging software to crop each page and expand/contract as necessary to fit on an 8''x11”page. Then its off to the copy shop or sometimes a little Xerox subsidy copying (but only on my lunch hour, of course ). The choir will be singing at a wedding while I’m away (singing with another choir in Canterbury Cathedral) so I had to sort and assemble the repertoire as I’m the music librarian. The “rep”by the way consists of several Ave Verum/Marias, a couple of movements from Vivaldi’s Gloria and Wie lieblich sind die Wohnungen from Brahms' German Requiem. Someone will surely have fine music at their wedding.

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My wife and I will be singing with the Cathedral Singers of Ontario 2003 for choral evensong and Sunday services at Canterbury in August. I thought I’d better start going over the 19 pieces of music we received. Over half the pieces are Magnifcat – Nunc Dimitis combinations so the words are well known. I’m already familiar with a couple of the anthems but, prior to our rehearsals in Stratford at the end of July, I thought I would familiarize myself with the rest.

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Last night I attended the AGM and dinner of the Oakville Chorale Society at an Oakville hotel. Usually AGM’s are rather dull affairs — but not this one. Just before we ate supper, each of the seven tables was handed two sets of song lyrics. Each table was to choose one song to present to the rest of the choir and friends in any way they saw fit after the AGM business portion of the event. Our table chose to present Ol' Man River (none of us knew the other song). We rewrote the lyrics as Ol' Man Stainton in honour(?) of our director, poking fun at some of his choir rehearsal mannerisms. I’ll bet some of us didn’t even notice what we had for supper, busy as we were rewriting and planning our presentations. Mercifully, our president kept the AGM business brief. Our table was up first: a good thing for a couple of reasons. We “set”the standard and we didn’t have a “tough act to follow.”The “secret”judges, including a French judge, apparently voted our table the “winner”— though one of thoses judges actually sat at our table. In reality, of course, we all won: every table provided singing, dancing, general carryings-on and lots of laughs with their renditions of “Idle Vise'', “So Long, Farewell'', a G&S number and other songs whose titles I can’t recall. Hats off to James. Even though he’s a tenor he did a great job setting up the evening’s (self-)entertainment.

Aside: I sometimes wonder whether the “premium, all juice”wine I make at the local wine making store is a good value. The price is usually between $180 to $220 for 30 bottles. At the hotel bar, wine was $6.50 a glass. So that makes my batch worth 4 (glasses/bottle) x 30 × 6.50 = $780!