Was it the end of 2025, or was 2025 the end?

So … 2025 has finally come to a quiet and gracious end. At least for me. 

However, I can’t say it was a year that I will look back on with happiness, satisfaction, or many good memories, especially musically speaking.

For the first time since 1962, I went through a calendar year without a single concert. Not even one. A streak of sixty-three years has come to a sad end, and in my humble opinion, it was through no fault of my own.

After 40 years of performing good music, of endless efforts and sacrifice, a lot of loyalty, and many recordings, opera performances, concerts and tours, Les Arts Florissants – for reasons known only to them – decided to ghost me, and to pretend that I no longer exist. 

A year ago, LAF founder and music director Bill Christie turned 80, and he spent the month of December 2024 and part of January 2025 letting himself very deservedly be celebrated. I spent HALF OF HIS LIFE making great music with him, and I always gave it everything I had, but I was never asked to take part in any of the celebrations,  unlike so many others who were invited. 

Let’s be clear: they can hire whoever they want, whenever they want. That’s up to them, and I have no problem with that. I know that they want to get younger musicians on board – even as their music directors get older.
But after 40 years, and while still perfectly capable of continuing to do what I had always been doing, they just simply cut ties. They could have at least said something, I would have been grateful had they just said thank you and goodbye. Even better would have been having me one last time so I could say farewell to my colleagues.

Instead, just silence. Numerous emails I sent went unanswered, no one contacted me. It was as if I had never been there.

It couldn’t have been because I didn’t know what I was doing (I still do) or that I wasn’t good enough (I still am). Ask any of my former bass colleagues. 

So: I’m going to forget about 2025 as quickly as I can. I knew that one day or another, my time with LAF would come to an end, as it does for everybody who ever worked there. I would have loved for it to be more gracious, instead of just being unceremoniously kicked to the curb without a word from anyone.

But it wasn’t to be, at least not so far. Who knows what this new year will bring. 

That said, I wish all of you a happy, healthy and successful 2026.

Written and added on January 4, 2026