Author: Laura Conrad

Sad news

He wakes up a littleSunny on his last morningAftermath

Sunny’s last morning, a set on Flickr.

Sunny was uncomfortable enough to be saying “do something” yesterday morning, so I made him an appointment at the vet. It turned out that his constipation was caused by a massive tumor in his colon, and we decided to put him down.

These are pictures from after I made the appointment. I don’t have one from his last decision about where to lie down in the examining room at the vets — he was famous for figuring out how to be as in the way as possible, and this talent didn’t desert him at the end. He had a whole room to pick from, including a comfortable blanket in the middle of the room, and he lay down in front of the door to make it hard for the vet to get in and out of the room.

I told him how much everybody was going to miss him, and he ate lots of treats and barked at the vet when she took his paw to put in the solution. And then it was over.

News of the week of July 28, 2011

Meeting report

We played:

Schedule

We’ll be having dropin meetings as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM
at my place.

Other events

Our playing at the Boston Wort
Processors Pignic was well-received. Ishmael, Jan, and I
played Susato, country dances, Ortiz and van Eyck.

The Wakefield Summer Band, with Laura Conrad on tuba, will be
playing its first concert this Friday, July 1, at 7 PM at the
bandstand on the Wakefield Common, as the sun sets over Lake
Quannapowitt. Come kick off the Fourth of July weekend with
marches, polkas, and concert staples. Other concerts this season
are scheduled for July 22, August 12, and August 26.

Musical Intelligencer review of Acis and Galatea

Is here.

Joseph E. Morgan makes some good points about how demanding
BEMF can be of its audiences:

In all it was a wonderful concert that I enjoyed immensely.

Unfortunately however, several members of the audience around me did not. As part of my preparation for this review I did some research concerning the opera’s plot, music and libretto — preparation that is generally not expected of a concert-going audience. And yet, in a move that only be ascribed to their ambition to sell as many of their $10 “yearbooks” as possible (which included the complete libretto), BEMF did not distribute the typical program book for the performance. Instead they handed out single-page flyers that listed only the performers and sponsors. Coupled with the lack of supertitles, this left too many of the audience members completely ignorant as to what was happening on the stage before them. Despite the singers’ excellent diction, it is really rather difficult to make out a text in operatic performance — even if it is in English. Because of this several people left at intermission and I doubt that they will return next year.