I love my job as General Director of the COC, every moment of it. But today was one of those days when I love it even more than usual and feel humbled and privileged by what it allows me to do, experience and participate in.

The day started with a meeting of arts leaders at the AGO with our Mayor-Elect in attendance as a surprise guest, with positive and encouraging results. After the meeting I decided to stay at the AGO to spend more time at the Julian Schnabel Exhibition which I had seen a few weeks ago for the first time. In my opinion, it is the most exciting thing the AGO has done since I arrived in Toronto, a truly amazing display of great works by an amazing, multi-talented artist. One just has to see the many facets of his work and the huge canvasses on the 5th floor of the AGO's new building. Suddenly, a group of people entered the exhibition. It was Schnabel himself with a group of friends from New York and one of the AGO's curators who was kind enough to introduce me and I got to enjoy a tour of the show by the artist himself. A real pleasure and privilege, you can imagine how lucky I felt! I believe the show is on until early January and certainly worth seeing.

As if this weren't enough for a really good day I spent the rest of it with the final group of applicants for our Ensemble Studio. As with every year, we had been holding auditions in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and New York and invited the best young singers to Toronto for working sessions and the final round of auditions. I can already say that the level this year is extremely high and the choices for the few available positions will be really tough tomorrow.