Weekend concert marathon

It began Saturday morning when I participated in the Chalgrove Music Weekend Coffee and Concert. I decided to choose a program that challenged the boundaries I had created for myself musically. Instead of sticking with the usual Sacred repertoire, I ventured (for half the concert anyway...) into the world of Schubert Lieder. The other half was a mixture of arias from Bach's St. John Passion, two duets for Bass and Soprano from a one of Bach's cantatas, as well as arias by Dowland and Purcell. One of the major organizers and also my duet partner was Bass-Baritone Jonathan Arnold. Jonathan is a living saint! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING!!! It was nice to have my fan club in attendance (both above and below... Don't get jealous now!!). I don't think it was my singing that brought them all to the concert though, it was the endless coffee and cakes served through out the whole event.
The excitement of this huge concert that I had been preparing for since January was short lived however. It was only the first of two concerts I had to sing on Saturday. After a fabulous lunch with all the above fans, Mark and I went into Oxford for the Oxford Bach Choir's Summer Concert. The choir had it's dress rehearsal in the afternoon for three hours followed by an hour for dinner and the two hour concert. It was a VERY LONG day! Especially considering I had been singing from 7am-9:30pm!!
Saturday evening's concert was not to be the last concert... I had agreed to sing the Soprano arias in the Chalgrove performance of the Messiah on Sunday the 15th. It was a very enjoyable experience!! Both days were filled with so much fun and excitement, I would almost be crazy enough to say I'd do it again tomorrow!! Almost... :P

Glorious garden

In the last three weeks, the local gardens have absolutely exploded with roses and other amazingly beautiful flowers! There are so many types of roses around it is incredible to see all them in full bloom. All so different, but so beautiful!!

New hobby!

I am officially addicted to scanning! Many, many years ago my Dad had purchased an attachment for his already amazing scanner to scan negatives and film. At one time both my parents where huge consumers of slides, which being a negative film have become a real fascination for me. I feel like it unlocks a piece of history that either I saw way too long ago to remember or that I've never actually seen. For example this image of my Grandfather with one of his horses, which I had never seen was taken on his farm in 1972. It is now a digital image that I can reprint or archive at will. One of my major ambitions is to scan all of my Mum's slides from her travels to New Zealand and Hawaii, but they seem to be in a "safe place"... I'm sure they will be uncovered sooner rather than later at this point.
This is a picture of my older Sister doing one of the things she does best! I scanned it from negatives of the pictures which were developed originally from normal camera film. Isn't she cute?! :P
This is another one from normal camera film that I scanned. My motivation was that I can keep the original printed picture for the family photo album, but digitally print another copy for my own photo album. This picture was originally taken to show my Grandfather that despite my gender my genetics remained clearly a family camper. The leather strap on my head was part of a tumpline which was supposed to make it easier to carry heavier loads through the deep woods.
In one of the tidyings that is going in the house, my Mum found these black and white negatives from family archives from the early twentieth century. This a longer process because the negatives needed to be inverted. We believe this is a picture of my Great-great grandfather's car and chauffeur in the snow.
Finally, before realizing that my concert on the 14th of June is in need of some attention I found a picture of my Grandmother, my Mum and my Aunt Lorraine at my Mum's undergrad convocation in the 1960's.
I have lots more scanning to do and more negatives to find to do! But at this point my enthusiasm is motivated by my anxiety leading up to a major concert in ten days time. Mark seems to have this amazing ability to remind me that due to how much of my creativity I'm having to focus solely into this concert, it's trying to rebel into as many creative activities as possible. I'm going to pretend that blogging is not one of them ;)