Tonus Peregrinus

The first full day of the workshop was, as ever, LONG and tiring. But also as ever there were new wrinkles and new opportunitites.

Our enrollment is lowish. The economy is taking its toll on the discretionary spending of people who like to sing madrigals so we have fewer participants than in years past. I have heard laments of this type from all sorts of retreat- and workshop-based activities over the past two years. As a result we have enough people for 4 groups -- and 6 of us to handle them. We decided to have a large group co-facilitated by El and Laura, other groups taken by Todd, Bill and Kristina -- ans I would act as floating extra facilitator, to work with break-out ensembles. KB dubbed me the Tonus Peregrinus (wandering tone) of the weekend. I am thinking of myself as the drive-by coach, spending half hours or hours with various constellations of participants but not responsible for their repertory choices. I am having fun, getting to work with a much wider range of the total enrollment than is usual when I am assigned to a single group.

Our caterer outdid himself with lunch -- he's big into roughage, but red bean chili and cabbage salad at the same meal?????? Excellent, but very stimulating.... I ran into Brattleboro for a brief shopping adventure after lunch and found a 2CD collection of Woody Allen routines at Turn It Up. Now I can share "I shot a moose" with my kids.

KB asked me for some Barbershop music for the guys in her group -- she knows I always bring some. But somehow this time I had left the Yale Songbook at home! So I phoned home and got C to scan 2 numbers and email me the pdfs. Truly the computer age is full of marvels!

The rest of the day ran smoothly, and suddenly it was almost 10pm: we had sung and worked on our singing since 9 in the morning. I was totally wiped out and could barely keep my eyes open for the short drive to the place where I am staying (an awesome house well up a hillside with a commanding view of snowy slopes and grey trees).