My flurry of spring gigs is over. In addition to March’s Jesus Christ Superstar, I’ve sung in a concert, played horn in another, and music-directed another (those last two over the last two weekends). They all went really well and, most importantly, they were fun. I’d sorta kinda steered away from performing last year, as I wasn’t sure what recovery from the heart block was going to look like (it looks like normality, actually, but I didn’t know that at the time), and I’d also meant to spend the year working on my retirement and my estate planning. I ended up getting derailed with a sequence of important anniversaries, and also with the one gig I did do, chorus for The Mikado at the G&S Festival in England.

Anyway, I’ve known since last October that I’m going back to the Festival this August to music-direct HMS Pinafore, and so that’s been in the works, along with the traditional unofficial dry run concert of the show we do here in NYC (which is what went down this last Friday). And we had the exciting news of doing a separate little show (The Zoo) alongside Pinafore, and I ended up getting a small principal role in that, which means I’m returning to the stage in a named role for the first time in quite a while.

Meanwhile, when the heart thing happened two Octobers ago, I was in rehearsal for two orchestra concerts: QUO, and then Doctor’s Orchestra, which was doing Mahler’s first symphony, the only one of his symphonies I’m intimately familiar with (and adore). I’d say pulling out of both those concerts was heartbreaking, except the heartbreak happened first, haha. But the bottom line is that the horn went back in the case and didn’t come out again until I had to get in shape for JCS, so over a year. And I missed it. Playing horn is always terrifying, but it’s also really fun and rewarding if you’re in shape.

So, not only was JCS a complete delight to play, this time it was QUO that was doing Mahler 1 and I made it super-clear that I wanted to be in the 7-person horn section. So after JCS and my Florida trip, I was in rehearsal for that, interrupted only by our Zoo dry run. The QUO concert, just two weekends ago, was fantastic and I was very proud of us and of me. So nice to be in hornistic shape again, and I’m going to try to do some videos of solo stuff before I lose my chops again.

And then immediately afterward into the final flurry for the Pinafore concert, which was wonderful.

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All this to say that I’m been so buzzed to be performing again, and all the gigs were total fun, and the last two weeks or so have been hopping. I have quite a bit to blog about, including those concerts, a production of The Grand Duke involving many many friends which I saw twice, a production of A Little Night Music involving a different but overlapping set of friends, a G&S musicale and.. oh gosh, I’m sure there’s more.

So I’ll be following this post up with several giving all these juicy events the attention they deserve. But this week and next are unusually not-booked and I’ll be catching up with various patient but neglected issues. And probably spending the three-day weekend on apartment stuff.

So… Happy Monday and stay tuned!