La Maison de Laury

I so wanted to link a very special piece of music to this blog post. Alas, my blogger skills are not quite sophisticated enough to do it. I received a double CD in the mail a couple of weeks ago from Marina Gendel who is a pianist/composer/arranger for the Boston Ballet. Her CD "Musical Compositions for Historical Dance Lessons" was composed and arranged for the most part in this pretty stone house, Laury's Chatette, where I stayed last September. Marina sat at Msr. Winkelmann, Laury's lovely baby grand piano, and created while Laury worked in the other room. One of the pieces, "La Maison de Laury", was arranged specifically to reflect the beauty and mystery of the Chatette. I purchased the CD directly from Marina as it's not available in the usual places. While I love all the pieces, Laury's House and the very last song entitled "Chateau de Cadrieu" are my favorites for obvious reasons. Laury blogged about the CD here at Soar-Dream-France. Since my skills are not good enough to bring you the music automatically, I'd invite you to click on the song links. For "La Maison de Laury" you need to scroll down to where it says 'anonymous French' with the song title. Click on the little speaker for a brief clip of that song.

"Chateau de Cadrieu" is found at the very bottom of the list. It is appropriately haunting and matches the Chateau perfectly!

Greetings from Cadrieu!

I was very pleasantly surprised to find this letter in my mailbox one day last week. First, because it's a treat to find something besides bills and offers to fit me for cheap hearing aids  in there. But most importantly because this was a note from a newly-made friend in Cadrieu! If you've read this blog regularly, you've already seen two pictures of the note's author, Christiane. She and her husband, Jean-Paul, live up the hill from Laury, and they are all very good friends. Christiane's note was newsy and fun...how they spent Christmas (yes, Pere Noel came and the grandchildren were captivated, at least until they opened their gifts. Then they ignored him!) and a description of New Year's Eve...'we laughed a lot and ate a lot.' It closed with news that they are going to the Pyrenees the end of Jan. and need to start getting in shape for that! A real letter, a beautiful stamp, a new friend...life is good!