Up at the crack of dawn to drive to Providence to see a few patients, too much paperwork at home, sorting the mail. Speeding back to Newport. I'm late. I'm late. I come crashing into Ochre Court in the midst of Julia Anne Wolf singing the three big arias from "Samson and Delilah." I sit on the floor. She is magnificent. A real big commanding mezzo with a great low and a fine ringing top. I am talking about her voice. After the intermission, there is a piano quartet by Saint-Saëns with Livia Sohn, violin, Christina Castelli, a double-threat on the viola, Luigi Piovano on cello and Kevin Fitz-Gerald on piano. This is not your standard repertoire. They must have worked very hard rehearsing it to sound so good. And what an interesting piece of music it is--not terribly French in style, very innovative, quirky, avant-garde for its time.

     I picked up Carol at the train in Kingston, and we had dinner at Tucker's Bistro. I forgot to say Ayshet Hayil. We both had some good local striped bass, filling up with our annual quota of mercury.

     Saturday morning, we're off to The Elms. It was a potpourri of various short pieces. The highlights included a Grand Duo Concertante for clarinet and contrabass, played by Jon Manasse, who looks like a professor of astrophysics at MIT: suit, tie, short hair, glasses, thin--and Alberto Bocini, tall, good-looking with curly ringlets down to his shoulders and a winning smile. They played this farcical piece with good humor, enjoying the musical jokes and each other. Another highlight was Bernadene Blaha playing the Larghetto from Chopin's Second Piano Concerto--exquisite.

     Sunday, the Barrons, who were in town visiting Elaine Kroll, Elaine, and the Pages came for brunch.

Carol, you outdid yourself yet again. We had mimosas, wild mushroom soup, quiche, Willy Krauch salmon slices with cream cheese and basil sandwiched in a tiny pie-shaped wedge of thin burrito, salad, Jordan Marsh original recipe blueberry muffins, coffee. Then we went to St. Joseph's Church for what was supposed to be an organ concert by Berj Zamkochian of Saint-Saëns works. But Zamkochian was ill, and rather than cancel the concert, Malkovich arranged for Carlo Grante, an Italian pianist, to repeat the concert he gave last night at midnight, called "Bachanalia," consisting of Bach variations as transcribed by Godowsky and Busoni. They were bravura pieces, but a grand piano in the cavernous stone hall of a church, no matter how well it is played, sounds indecipherably mushy. So, we left to return to Providence, read the mail, get to bed to prepare for a day of hard work so that we can make the 7:00 PM concert tomorrow with the Browns.