The 2021-22 season was the first time I've played horn for a whole season with a group in... decades?  But I played almost all of the QUO season, and got a lot of warhorses under my belt for the first time: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Sibelius's Second Symphony.  Plus some really interesting new repertoire by trans and non-binary composers.  We had a couple of concerts cancelled because of COVID (I was really looking forward to another go at Tchaikovsky 4).

And then we were rehearsing for our fun June "Gay-La" program, including the Star Wars suite... and I had to drop out.

My beloved spouse, Charles, had been dealing with health problems for about a year, and a week before Memorial Day, he passed away unexpectedly.  This was as devastating as you could expect, and, as you can imagine, my life has been mostly about that since then.  I'm functioning OK, for the most part, and my friends and family have been marvelously supportive.  But Charles and I had shared our lives for 27 years and it's a complete sea change to now have to go it alone.

His memorial site is here.

However, aside from personal tragedy, things are looking up on a music front.  I will be music-directing again next summer at the Gilbert & Sullivan festival, and may have another show this upcoming spring.  I will go into more detail in a later post.