A busy week or two. We gave our paper at the Renaissance Society of America conference in Montreal and it seemed to be well received. (see previous entry for the subject matter) Then it was lunch with Prof. Alejandro Planchart, an old friend of Hallie's and off to play the music for papers given by Katie Larson from University of Toronto, and Gavin Alexander from Cambridge. Their papers were in a session on the Sidney family. It was great to meet Gavin Alexander since we poached much of his research to put together our Philip Sidney/Earl of Essex concert When Silly Bees Could Speak of a few years ago.

After getting takeout (see picture above) from Schwartz's Deli (now the topic of a musical) it was off to see McGill's opera department and baroque orchestra perform Handel's Imeneo conducted by Hank Knox and starring Hallie's daughter Eleanor Verrette on the viola.

Tuesday was a rehearsal for our continuing Wednesday Vespers services at St. John's Dixie Chapel in Mississauga. As well as hymns we played a movement from an Alessandro Scarlatti motet for soprano (Ms. Fishel), 2 violins (Chris Verrette and Edwin Huizinga) and continuo (Laura Jones, baroque cello and John Edwards, theorbo).

Wednesday was particularly full. We gave a lecture demonstration on music in the life of John Milton for Prof. Deanne Williams at York University. I'll post more on that event tomorrow.

Meantime here's a picture of us posing in the chapel at St. John's Dixie. You can get a sense of the lovely ambience of these contemplative services from that. The Scarlatti is great music and we hope we can play a whole motet soon.