Pam Crane...

An online acquaintance of mine was murdered a few weeks ago, though we just learned about it. She was a friend from the Dorothy Dunnett mailing lists. I'd never met her face to face. She was doing what so many of us want to do - travelling and visiting Dunnett sites. She was going to the monastery where Lymond met Diccon Chancellor in The Ringed Castle on the day she was killed. I don't know whether she ever got there.

I think every Dunnett fan must be thinking: "That could be me."

We learned she was missing about ten days ago, and hoped for a while that the explanation for her disappearance wasn't murder. But it was.

There's a news article about it here, and another one here.

I might as well continue to collect them.

British Tourist Killed.

Torchwood quote...

Just read a good quote about Torchwood in an Australian article: But Torchwood is Dr Who in a dark room and on Viagra.

Lisa's concert: Sing like you like to sing...

My friend Lisa takes singing lessons - and sometimes I want to, too.

Every year her teacher's students hold a convert and if Lisa is participating, I attend. I love it. Some of the singing is superb and some isn't, but it's always fun, one way or another.

This year they started out with four arias: one by Caccini, one by Monteverdi, one by Mozart and one by Donizetti - the last one being my favourite. It was Bella siccome un angelo from "Don Pasquale".

Then they sang "20th Century Classics". First, a song by Gustav Mahler called Oft denk'ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen. The singer explained what the sone was about, and I was feeling pretty smug that I could follow the German almost as well as I could understand the Italian in the previous song. Then the next song was Orpheus with his lute, sung in English, and I couldn't understand a word - I realized it had more to do with the clarity of the singer than with the quality of my linguistic abilities.

The next singer (who was very good) sang one of my favourite songs of the evening, Youkali by Kurt Weill. I'd never head of the song before, but I was reminded of a CD I'd once owned, Lost in the Stars, which was a collection of Kurt Weill songs sung by modern singers - well, singers of the 1980s. I particularly loved Sting's version of Mack the Knife.

Lisa sang A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. She had in fact, been unsure what she was going to sing when I talked to her last week, and since this was one of the options, I urged her to choose it. And it was such fun to hear her singing it: and there I was, getting all sentimental over the idea Captain Jack dancing with Captain Jack, and not even telling Lisa why I loved her song so much.¹ It had a whole introductory first verse I'd never heard before. Who knew?

The singer I enjoyed most was named Phil Lecompte, and he sang, of all things, two Barry Manilow songs. I never much liked Barry Manilow songs but he made them sound wonderful.

The final section was of Broadway songs - yes, just my thing. One girl sang Ten Cents a Dance from "Simple Simon", a musical I have heard of but never seen. A young man with Down's Syndrome sang a medley from Richard Rogers, and did fine on the repeated lines, but got nervous and couldn't remember the words of the rest and tended to get lost, singing "la, la, la" as necessary. He got the loudest applause just for doing what he could, and looked very proud afterwards.

A woman with a French accent and Italian name sang Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again from "Phantom of the Opera" - she sang it beautifully, but gave it the most incoherent introduction I have ever heard. Someone sang a song from Wicked and then the finale was the very funny duet from Spamalot, "The Song that Goes Like This".

~ ~ ~

¹ Yes, I could have explained. Lisa knows me very, very well and has an abstract sense of my many and varied fannish passions. But it would be rather difficult to explain, when I suspect she's never heard of Doctor Who, let alone Torchwood.