Touring begins for the 2009-10 season!

Welcome, Cantus fans, to the 2009-10 season!

After singing a very successful show last week at the Minnesota State Fair, as guests of Minnesota Public Radio, we're kicking off a three-week tour of the midwest tomorrow--Please check out our concert page to see when we'll be near you this season. This first tour is for Allied Concerts Series, and takes us to smaller communities, performing a bit lighter fare, before we begin touring our full, more classical-oriented Elemental program.

We get asked often about the touring lifestyle, and how it affects our relationships. It affects each member differently, but I have a special case, because my wife is also a professional singer, who also travels from time to time for performing. The quick and dirty answer to "is that difficult?", is "YES! It's difficult". Sometimes we have to contend with international calling rates, time zone issues, and even daily schedules can be problematic. But thank goodness for the web and Skype!

Here's an example of the kind of thing that goes on:

So, my wife was recently in Germany singing for a month. I went with her for a week (had a great time, btw), while Cantus still had a little vacation, but had to rush home for the start of rehearsals.

We only just got ourselves webcams for our last-generation PowerPC macs, so we were able to connect some mornings for free with video chat--fantastic. Except that she was 7 hours ahead, making her afternoon break my 7 am. I actually managed to stay up till 2 a.m. a few times to catch her at her 9 a.m.!

As it turned out, she needed some sheet music for an audition that she didn't bring, so I needed to scan in some scores and post them for her to download. All pretty simple, if a little tedious, but we accomplished it without spending a fortune in postage and time. Gotta love scanning technology!

Now, the crummy part of this is compounded because when she arrives home, a few days later Cantus goes out on tour. (acute failure on so many levels!) At least we'll both be in the same country, so we'll be able to talk every day.

All this aside, we all hope to see you on our travels this year, and we'll have numerous updates throughout the season to connect with you, which is one of our favorite things to do!

Take care, everybody: we'll see you on the road.