The Next Few Weeks

It's been a hectic academic year so far, with a lot of returning students in my RCM studio and a fair number of new ones, in addition to my new duties as voice department head at the Community School.

The rest of September promises to be no less busy, with rehearsals starting Monday morning for Opera Briefs 7, comprised of scenes chosen from the August Composer/Librettist Laboratory, now semi-staged and in a more finished form. I'll be working with the same group of singers as in the Liblab, with the addition of director Liza Balkan.

And right in the middle of rehearsals I'll be taking a day off to play Yom Kippur services at Temple Sinai with Cantor Lori Salzman, with whom I just worked most successfully in the Rosh Hashanah Day 1 morning services (getting through the complex web of English and Hebrew cues in the 2.5 hour service twice in one morning without major glitches counts as success in this regard).

After a few days off (to be spent catching up with teaching) we move into the final stages of Opera Briefs 7, which will be performed September 28th and 29th at 8pm in the Ernest Balmer Studio. Weather permitting on the 29th, we will be performing the last few scenes outside in the festival tent at the Distillery as part of Nuit Blanche, an all-night extravaganza of contemporary art in downtown Toronto.

The very next day at 1pm, we reprise several of the scenes at Word on the Street in Queen's Park. However, I'll be sure to arrive several hours early and grab some awesome discounted books at the largest one-day literary festival on the planet.

That's my September. Which leads to my next big announcement:

On October 1, I will be starting a month-long series entitled "31 Days to Better Practicing", in which I will be discussing various ideas and elements that can improve the quality and efficiency of time spent in the practice room. More on this series in the next few days....