Last night I played at Winter Opera’s Masquerade Ball.  It was a four course meal at Dominic’s in Clayton with music in between the courses.  Most of the music was singing of course, but Gina Galati (director and friend) asked if I could play with some of the other musicians for one of the sets.

I played with Tony (Antonio) and Jen.  We did Haydn’s London Trio no 1.  I was more nervous about talking than playing, but the talking went fine.  I even made a joke that everybody laughed at!  (We realized that Haydn was really light music compared to the Verdi and Puccini people were singing, so I said something about how I hoped they weren’t too upset by our repertoire choice being fairly lame in comparison.  Everybody laughed.)

We tried for awhile to get a good photo.  There were five photos with my eyes shut, and a couple with Jen laughing hysterically.  This was our last try, and I suggested everybody try to look serious…I wanted to commemorate our not wearing running clothes or all black.

Cheesecake.

It was a masquerade ball.  This mask was on the table so naturally I had to try it on.

It was a bad picture night.  I took about ten and had other people take another ten.  Everything was unusable…maybe I wasn’t terribly photogenic tonight.  (I have to blame myself a little since my eyes were shut in quite a few of them.)

However, the performance was successful, I think, and the singers were fantastic!  Overall it was very enjoyable.