More adventures

Coming to your from a megabus somewhere in between Kingston and Toronto… I just got back from Houston, Texas! My hotel wasn’t that close to Rice, but I decided to walk it anyway. Google directed me to a route almost entirely on residential streets with huge, nice houses and PALM TREES where I felt very safe (except for the omnipresent Canadian semi-disbelief at the idea that at least some of the houses I was walking past probably contained guns.) I also had my final chamber music performances of the semester last week. My quintet– by quintet, I mean violin, clarinet, horn, bassoon and double bass!– performed an arrangement/parody of Till Eulenspiegel entitled Till Eulenspiegel Einmal Anders (Another Way), and my sextet performed the Poulenc two nights in a row on different concerts. The last concert of the Poulenc was also my last time playing chamber music at McGill with our oboist, Alana Henkel. Alana is an amazing oboist and equally good English horn player who just graduated from her Masters’ and left this weekend to start the next phase of her life in Minnesota with her husband. You can find her at http://alanahenkel.com –she is an excellent musician and a wonderful person and I highly recommend her if you need an oboist in her area! This week I have family and pops concerts in Niagara, go back to Montreal to make up the theory exam I’m missing the day after tomorrow, and then finally back to Toronto for the holidays!