January: Paris - Le Dansoir

From the sacred to the profane...We couldn't have been further from the Oratoire du Louvre with our sacristy dressing room when we crossed the Seine in light rain to go to Le Dansoir. Le Dansoir is a tent between two of the four towers (which are designed to look like open books) of the Bibliotheque Nationale Francois Mitterand - the last of the 12 great projects he did for Paris during his Presidency. An eclectic variety of concerts is presented there by Karine Saporta ( who invited us) in January and February.

Le Dansoir is where choregrapher Karine Saporta presents her dance company as well as the other concerts. Judging by the props in the dressing room, they must do some racy stuff!

The whole place in fact has a pretty racy feeling - lots of red and gold and a round floor designed for dance. Very intimate also. Most of the people who came were known to us in one way or another which was really nice. The evening began and ended with cocktails, and in between we did a shorter version of "In time of" the program we'll be doing for most performances on the tour.

On this program we did Epithalame by Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, a 20th century French composer, which has become one of our favorite pieces of music to sing, and we were thrilled that Lesur's son Christian came last night to the Oratoire du Louvre and tonight to Le Dansoir. (Here with Matt and Cecile Auzolle, who has written the definitive biography of Daniel-Lesur.) We're doing the American premiere of "L'Annonciation" by his father at our National Youth Choral Festival in San Francisco in March, and we hope that Christian will come.

Brendan O'Connor, here with Michael, brought about a dozen people from Galway in Ireland who we had come to know in July when we toured for a week in that country.

Goodbye to Paris and on to Vienna tomorrow. The Oratoire du Louvre one night, Le Dansoir the next, and the Musikverein on Tuesday -quite a ride!