Happy New Year!

Hi everyone! Happy New Year to one and all!  2014 was a pretty good year for my music endeavors and I thank all of you for your continued support. A lot of good things happened for me this past year that I summarize on my webpage at this link.  In the meantime,  I am really jazzed up about this new year ahead. I have some new music programs I will be doing that I'll be reporting here about to let you know how they turned out. In one project, I will be collaborating with an art teacher, bringing music to her room while the kids do expressive drawings to the melodies I play on my instruments.

For now I am enjoying a bit of a holiday before next week's new gigs begin. Something I really have fun doing is making what I call " sonic scrapbooks." I do that by going through some of the music I have of other composers and find motifs I like. I grab that motif and instead of learning the piece as a whole, I go to different musical places than they did in the piece. It is such fun to do but hard to describe. Imagine you have an interactive mystery book and at one point there is an action that is taken that will change the plot significantly. Sometimes you have had hints of this change to come, other times it takes you by surprise. You can wonder what would have happened if another thing _____ (fill in the blank) had happened instead. It would change the story.

This is what i like to do musically. I read a melodic passage on a page and instead of continuing to play it as written on the page, I go off in my own direction, in my imagination. I reinvent the piece and come back to the original motif later.

I find that as a working musician, it's important to continue to "play" and take an experimental approach to grow and continue to learn. 

The picture above was taken at UVA hospital lobby on Christmas day. I was playing holiday music on my guitar when a woman (pictured) approached saying she had planned to play the piano. So I suggested we play together and we did! Then a man came and sang with us and we made a fine, merry band. A nice way to ring out the old year.

I wish you all good health, happiness and success in the coming new year! Thank you for stopping by.