Thomas Quasthoff, in rehearsal for tonight's opening of the 33rd annual Oregon Bach Festival with the B Minor Mass, had three TV interviews during the day, in significant contrast with his first appearance in Eugene in 1995, when he received minimal coverage even locally. One of the TV reporters asked one of those "TV-interview questions" - "What does fame mean to you," and TQ actually thought about it for a while and then said "That I am asked to sing with people like Helmuth Rilling, Seiji Ozawa, and Simon Rattle! I don't sing for the money, but gettting this kind of performance opportunity is wonderful. Every time I see Daniel Barenboim, he asks when we could work together. I sang with the Berlin Philharmonic 15 times... 15 times! I will sing opera with them next year in Salzburg. You don't get to do that without `fame,' so I am glad it has come." Asked (not by a TV reporter) about his cancellation of the Elgar concert in Europe a couple of weeks ago, he said he caught a cold, but he is OK now. He then went on to to prove it, singing a performance-grade rehearsal of the Quoniam, while rooting for the obbligato player, Guy Few, as if the Canadian trumpeter were on German team against Brazil in the World Cup finals. Few is performing on a festival-commissioned, custom-made corno di caccia for the first time... and he scored decisively. Rilling, who introduces exciting young singers in Stuttgart and Eugene every year, has come up with another winner for the B Minor Mass - Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. Janos Gereben/SF In Oregon, to July 8 [log in to unmask]