and on the eighth day ...

Having enjoyed all 25 hours of All Saints' Day (thank you day light savings time - see you in the Spring!) I'm wondering if we can just keep that extra hour in the day, every day, and while we are at it, add one extra day in the week? I could get SO much more accomplished!

Great concert yesterday afternoon with Da Camera. In particular, the Mendelssohn Sechs Sprüche was a highlight for me, and much of the audience I think. The rest of the program was also well received, and the choir's first attempt at Jesu Meine Freude was full of highlights. Bravo to all I say.

So what's next you ask?

• Next weekend is a "dark" weekend for me - in the sense that I can actually get my tux to the cleaners and not worry about needing it for at least 14 more days. I do have a full slate of rehearsals to prepare for a Pro Coro Concert, the annual "Men's choir" concert, which is becoming a mainstay for the choir and is always a personal highlight for my concert year. That concert is on the 15th.
• Then in a blink of an eye Richard Eaton Singers performs the Verdi Requiem on the 22nd (a first sing for me, if you can believe it, and I'm loving it!)
• Then six days later I have to prepare the choir for the annual Christmas Wish Foundation concert with the Royal Canadian Artillery Band, not really a musical highlight, but good old fashioned fun, and anytime you get to sing the Sir David Willcocks' descants with the Davis Organ makes it worth it.
• A day later it is Advent I, which includes the Advent Carol Service.
  
• A week after that Da Camera sings with Alberta Baroque on their Christmas show, with BWV 140 (apparently I have to sing the tenor recit - frankly, I'm scared). Also on this program I get to conduct Haydn's Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo (aka the "little organ mass")- which has one of the most beautiful Benedictus (Benedicti?) movements in any of his masses.
• A week and a half later I'm singing with RES for the Edmonton Symphony's lighter Christmas Classics concert. Again, not particularly musically fulfilling, aside from RVW's Fantasia on Christmas Carols, which will always have a firm place in my heart, however the Christopher Rouse "Karolju", is just not doing it for me. Perhaps worth a later blog post. It will, however, attract a good sized audience, and they are sure to love it all.
  
• On all weekends in December I got talked into doing a few caroling gigs, something I haven't done since I left Ottawa, and figured I was pretty much done, but the fee for this is almost embarrassingly good, too good to turn down. And the other three singers are great friends, so aside from the financially rewarding aspect, it's going to be a hell of a good time, even if it is four hours a day singing in a shopping centre.
  
• Then it is Christmas! Two Christmas eve services and one Christmas morning service.
• Then my wife and I are packing up the car and heading HERE for two nights for our annual "sit in the lodge, swim outside in the huge heated pool while the snow falls, enjoy the mountain backdrop, skate on the lake, play cribbage, eat good food, drink good wine, leave our computers at home, and DO NOTHING for three days. A good way to spend the extra money made on caroling!
  

Of course, by the time we get to the Lodge, it will probably look like this, but you got to trust me on this one - there is nothing like swimming in a 90 degree pool when it's below freezing outside!