I remember having been flamed, a long time ago, when in this column I ventured to claim that there was an inflation of physics conferences and workshops around, which to me looked both counter-productive (if there are too many such events, they become a distracting factor from research work, and returns are diminishing) and, I went as far as to propose, even unethical in some cases. I do not like being flamed, if only because it is yet another unproductive distraction, so I will not fall in the same mistake again here; rather, I have to observe that these days I am rather on the offending camp, so who am I to cast the first stone?
It turns out that in our profession, as you age you become less and less of an actual research producer and more and more of an organizer of other (younger) people's work. One of the consequences of this general trend is that you get involved, willing or nilling, in organizing committees of conferences and workshops. I may be an exception in some sense, as I fight mightily all things that subtract time to research, but sometimes you cannot say no. As far as conferences are concerned, I was able to sort of keep the count in the single digits, but it is still significant. Here is a list:

- I am an organizer of the EUCAIF conference, which tries to foster and organize European initiatives in AI research for fundamental science; this year we had a huge event in Amsterdam in May;

- I am the convener of a parallel session at the QCHS conference series since 2016. This parallel session focuses on "Statistical Methods for Physics Analysis in the XXI Century" (nice name, ain't it? I coined it). This year we go to Cairns, Australia, August 19-25;

- I founded and direct the MODE collaboration (https://mode-collaboration.github.io), a group of physicists and computer scientists developing co-design optimization solutions for particle detectors and similar instruments; as such, I participate in the organization of our yearly workshop - this year it will be in Valencia, September 23 to 25;

- I am the president of the USERN organization (https://usern.org), and as such I of course help and oversee the organization of our yearly congress (this year we will be in Plovdiv, Bulgaria November 8-10). At the congress, we give cash prizes to the best young scientists, and invite and give prizes to the authors of the best drawings in an international art contest among pediatric patients;

- I also help the organization of the ICNFP conference, which is held yearly in the beautiful Kolymbari, in Crete. For some reason my contribution there was never formalized and my name is overlooked, but this year e.g. I co-organize a parallel session on Machine Learning for Physics there; the conference will be from August 26 to September 4.

Leaving aside EUCAIF, which has already happened this year, I am looking forward to taking part in those four other events until the end of the year (plus a few seminars, lectures, and workshops I do not take part in organizing). So I am going to travel to Australia, then Crete, then (after some hiatus) to Heidelberg for a SWGO Collaboration meeting, then to Valencia, and (after another hiatus) to Plovdiv. In all cases I will be presenting some research results, but in four of these events I will also play the unusual role of the music performer.

The idea of offering conference participants with some evening concert or other musical entertainment is of course not new, and many events do include music in their program. In my case the story goes as follows. In 2012 I was attending the first-ever edition of ICNFP in Kolymbari, and I had traveled there alone (my wife had some other business in Italy). One evening, after dinner I snuck into the conference hall and started playing some piece on the grand piano they have there.

Soon, the conference organizers overheard and followed the music to the hall, and found me there playing. They must have liked what they heard, because they asked me if the following year they could organize a concert for piano, with me as performer. I politely explained that I am a dilettante and that I felt utterly unqualified for that; but they insisted a lot. Eventually I told them that I had a better idea: if they really wanted music in the conference, why not inviting my wife, who is a professional soprano singer, for an Opera Gala? They agreed wholeheartedly, and since 2013, ICNFP invariably features a concert where my wife sings opera arias and songs, accompanied by a pianist.

Until 2018 I was able to avoid being caught in the middle, as my wife used to come with a pianist of her choice. But then one year there was no pianist available, and I ended up being the one. I remember it as a bit of a shock, because it was really hard to prepare well, but I pulled it off somehow (actually I think I played quite well that time!).

Fast forward to this year: I have acquired a bit more confidence with my piano playing, and in the meantime several other events to which I am in some way involved found it attractive to offer a concert to their participants. So we are going to play in Cairns, in Kolymbari, in Valencia, in Plovdiv (and in Thessaloniki at another event I do not organize, too). The program includes several famous opera arias from Rossini, Bellini, Puccini, and songs by Kurt Weill. In three intermezzos I will play classical piano pieces by Schumann and Chopin. The pressure of playing non-stop for over one hour is significant, but I have prepared decently during the past few months, and I know by heart all the piano solo pieces - plus, I think I could probably play also a few of the accompaniment ones by heart, but I dare not try).

As a taste, I leave you with a prova recording of a piece I love from Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana, the first of the series. Hope you enjoy it.