Busy weekend. The worst was yesterday, when I hastily uploaded some practice dictations for my class to the website before dashing off to the symposium's second day of papers at 8:30. I ducked out just before 10 to go to a Pro Arte dress rehearsal, then at 11:30 ate a packed lunch and practiced piano. At 1:15 I played through my piano minor exit exam materials for Doc Shaw, and at 2 I headed back to the symposium to attend two sessions in a row for the first, and only, time the entire two days. At 5 I ran home to grab my Monteverdi music, then ordered out to dinner with some friends since the weather was horrible. I actually relaxed at that point for about half an hour. Then the food came, and I dashed down the sandwich in ten minutes before running to the Monteverdi rehearsal. Then was the keynote address of the symposium, followed by the recital, for which one of my singers showed up about halfway through (though the performance - in fact, all of the performances - were terrific). After the recital, it was about 10, and I hung around at the reception and mingled till everyone was basically gone at 11:30. I helped clean things up, but some of the people in charge had had too much wine and things were going slowly, and nobody had any idea what to do about the dirty floor. Finally Kyle drove me home to grab my vacuum, and we vacuumed the floor, finishing about 12:45 this morning. I got home and listened to my voice mail and had a message from the choir director at church asking me to sing at a service this morning since two of their singers would be missing.

So, long day. But actually it was really fun, and this Monteverdi group looks to be perhaps a semi-permanent thing, which is terrific. The singers are amazing - one has been cast as Orfeo in the Early Music Institute's production of Orfeo, one had a role in a recent opera department production, one has his own professional early music group, 9 of the 10 singers are in either Concentus (13th-15th century music, sometimes earlier) or Pro Arte (16th-18th century, and debatably the best choir at this school), etc. The theorbo player was also terrific. Some of us had so much fun that we're talking about working our way through all of the book 5 madrigals, possibly for a concert around here or at another school, or maybe to get on next summer's Bloomington Early Music Festival. Anyway, this has been really exciting - I'm getting visions of singing in a professional group! I really think that we sound in some ways better than the "standard" recording of this repertoire.

Today Grandma and Grandpa Chenette came down for the Pro Arte concert, which was fabulous (both the concert and the fact that they were there). I teared up several times, but because it was Haydn, it was in joy, not sadness. Mostly at the syncopated "Amen, Amen!" Afterward, G+G and I played a truncated game of 3 to 13 and went out to Siam House for a delicious dinner.

And now I have to go back to real life, where academic work calls and I can't sing in amazing choirs and hear brilliant talks all day. Kind of a come-down...