I don't even know when it was, but quite a while back I was told that auditions for the IU Early Music Institute's production of Orfeo (to go up during the Bloomington Early Music Festival, in late May) were short on tenors. So at the urging of my friend Craig, who's actually playing Orfeo, I went to callbacks unprepared, and sight-read something. They said they'd like to hear me prepared, and they'd be back in touch next week. Two weeks later I heard back from them that they were holding more callbacks and to sign up. So I prepared the first Pastore aria from the opera and went in and sang it. Almost two weeks later I asked a student who'd also auditioned if she'd heard back--she said she hadn't, so she'd emailed, and they told her if you haven't heard, you're not in. That seemed unlikely to me, since I knew they were short on tenors, so I emailed, but the response was, "Oh yes, sorry, I've been in Europe for a while. But we've already cast that role." Within the week, an email went out that they were short a tenor. I ignored it, thinking if they wanted me, they knew I was interested, and they could contact me personally.
Several weeks later, a tenor friend asked if I'd be interested in participating because there weren't enough tenors and he'd suggested my name to the people in charge. I said sure. I saw him the next week, and clearly no one had really acted on his recommendation.
Two weeks later, another tenor friend emailed:

Hi Tim,
I don't know why I'm the one doing this, but it seems that no one in the administration of Orfeo can actually take the time to get in touch with you. In their infinite wisdom they didn't hire enough tenors...and it took them this long to figure it out! Anyway, if you're still interested in doing chorus for Orfeo, we'd love to have you. It'll be a crunch to learn the stuff, but the choruses are pretty easy...
I've also attached the schedule as it stands now (it changes daily).
-B

I've heard (and experienced!) so much about how disorganized the musical director is, but this friend does say he's having fun, and the director and other people in charge are apparently good. I feel like I might sign up. We'll see.

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I got my paper back from Dr. Mathiesen today. I don't think I've ever had a paper this ripped apart before. But he's a demanding and extremely intimidating person: in class, Tim B asked him about two pieces of ancient Greek music printed in treatises by Vincenzo Galilei and Gioseffo Zarlino ("The Big Z"). Dr. Mathiesen went on about these obscure manuscripts (The Hymns of Mesomedes and the koine hormasia--to give you some idea, googling "koine hormasia," even without quotes, returns ONE hit, in a jstor article by Dr. Mathiesen) for at least five minutes about the notation, how they appear in different manuscript traditions and in these two treatises, their potential purposes, different editions in which they've been published (with editor's and publishers' names and years of publication), and potential avenues of future inquiry.