Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan.
You inspire me and a whole lot of others-
Play on...

Incidental Music for a Foggy Wednesday:

Let the mind be warned that though the flesh be bugged,
the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
-Jack Kerouac

Good morning , fellow artists-


What I Just Finished Last Night (whew!):
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
(a happy ending worthy of Miss Austen)

What I'm Reading This Morning:
Borrowed Light by Thomas Troeger

What I'm Drinking This Morning:
black tea with peach and passion fruit

What I'm Enjoying Most:
pale pink blossoms on the cactus next to my computer

Good Morning, fellow artists-

What I'm listening to:
Blossom Dearie
'The Best Is Yet To Come'

What I'm drinking:
Green Tea with orange rind and cloves

What I'm watching:
huge white waves in a mettalic grey surf
clouds moving faster than the traffic

"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge."
-Tuli Kupferberg


What I'm Listening to:
Stephane Grappelli, Jazz In Paris
S'Wonderful, and it is

What I'm Having for Breakfast:

Tasso Lazzi espresso, a banana

Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies
suddenly I'm in third grade again
thank you for supporting troop 508

What else I'm listening to:
raindrops on the patio outside my office,
now rain hitting the windows
did I bring an umbrella?... uh, no

Dear fellow artists,
(you know who you are)
Today's lesson is a lesson re-learned...
playing in a pit orchestra for a musical is a strenuous team sport.
Making music as a homogeneous ensemble is just damn hard work. Supporting other artists as they make their way through new material is exhausting work... but with immediate payoffs. Watching novice artists gain confidence and strength with every tedious rehearsal seems to lessen that tedium.
And as for me, learning new music in woodshedding and practice, finding the chords and runs in my own hands, discovering the highs and lows of my own performance, is a stretch (and a high) for which there is no substitute. I get to find the emotion that the composer had in mind, and make it personal, by investing and spending my own emotion... and in that, I make it my own. I am given the gift of sharing in a performance that will never be duplicated in exactly the same way. I am feeling very grateful to get to do this rare work... and the idea that I'll get a paycheck besides, is just too lovely.

What I'm reading:
"The Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes
It's about the founding of Australia...
(It makes me want to re-read "The Playmaker")

What I'm drinking here at my desk:
short double shot hazelnut latte
beyond wonderful

What I'm listening to:
Dvorak, third piano trio
poco adagio movement