Happy New Year everyone! All my various projects began again Monday, Jan. 2nd so I've been pretty busy this week with the various groups. Anyway, have a few random thoughts that I thought I'd share:

1) A friend sent me this You Tube video last week. It's very funny, but also very clever. It is a video of the musical group Mnozil Brass being silly. I highly recommend following one of their related videos to see them doing more traditional performances--they're fantastic. However, it seems that everything they do has a touch of humor to it.

2) Today I changed the guitar strings on both of my work guitars (the ones I use all the time). It's a bit time-consuming, so I often like to listen to music or watch something on TV while I do it. So, I popped in my DVD of Giulio Cesare and watched Act II. This is definitely one of my favorite operas for many reasons. For one, it features male soprano Michael Maniaci. No, he isn't a counter-tenor; he's the closest thing we have to a living castrato. Anyway, he's got a beautiful voice and it's a fantastic aria. If you like opera at all, you should check this out. If you don't like opera, still check it out to see a man singing in fantastic ranges.

3) For the Christmas Eve service at St. Mark's I arranged a ton of Christmas carols and hymns for the praise band to sing. One that I am most pleased with was this pop-rock version of "Hark The Herald, Angels Sing". Here's just a snippet of the piece (mind you, this is just the backing track that I recorded, but it gives a good idea of what was going on).

I think there was something else that I wanted to share, but I can't remember what it was now. Anyway, I think that's enough for one post anyway.

Happy New Year!

It's been a great year! I'm slowly piecing together all the recordings and videos of the recital (while also spending plenty of time enjoying the holiday and all the friends and relatives that have been visiting). Here's a piece that we played at the recital that I'd like to post separately. Taylor, Tyler and I (aka the Tempe Guitar Trio) had a load of fun playing it and I've posted the score at Score Exchange.

Happy New Year!

I was recently asked if I could arrange "Happy Birthday" for small band to be performed 'flash-mob' style for a friend. At first I made a simple, basic arrangement. But then, I couldn't help wanting to do something more fun. Here's the result: A basic birthday song, with a bit of ragtime thrown in. :-)

Today I posted another piece for my student jazz album, Rubber, Meet Road. I really enjoy writing these short pieces. It's very satisfying to begin and end a project in a relatively short period of time. They're also fun to play.

On a personal note, it's good to get back into a working rhythm. We travelled a lot this summer and just returned from our latest trip this past Friday. Anyway, no more trips planned for a while (at least until October). Now I can finally start checking things off of my to-do list.

I've posted two new pieces in my album of jazz piano for students (RUBBER MEET ROAD). I wanted a picture of Maggie for the "Fat Cat Strut", but I didn't have any that were suitable. Maybe Anali can find one for me?

This was a particularly fun piece to write because, no matter what other music I play and enjoy, there will always be a little part of my musical heart that beats to a heavy metal riff. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to write the next Mars piece in a 80s rock idiom.

I'm very pleased with the way I got the raw image data to fit into a groove. Aside from the opening, which is just me vamping a few steel-string arpeggios and playing an opening electric guitar solo, the rest of the guitars you hear in the piece are all from the image data. Even the drum solos you hear are the image data mapped onto a set of tom-toms. The vocals are all me. :-)

Go check it out! You'll have to scroll down to the bottom to see it: RETICULATED DUNES

These are my original pieces that I wrote for my mother to use at a church retreat that she is organizing. She also asked me to prepare recordings of several other pieces for her to use, but they aren't of my own composition so I didn't include them here.

I deliberately wrote the four pieces in different styles in order to convey a range of moods, but I also feel that they are all compatible with one another. In particular the musical connection between Revelation 7 and Revelation 14 is strong. (For one verse in particular, my mother wanted an instrumental work that had 'thunder' in it; "Revelation 14" is the result).

I called the entire collection "Revelation(s)" because its a pet peeve of my brother's when people refer to the Biblical book as 'Revelations' (it should be called Revelation--no 's').

Anyway, here's something that I've been up to for the past couple weeks. I hope you enjoy them!

April's been a busy month! I have a lot of music that I've written recently, and more yet to write this week. Towards the beginning of April I was writing music for a Taize service we were having at St. Mark's. Taize is a monastic tradition from France that uses Latin texts and a very acoustic and intimate style of music. Anyway, after getting the music written, copies made and the musicians rehearsed, the service went very well. In fact, so many of the people liked it that Fr Scott says we'll be doing another Taize service again. I'm looking forward to it.

Then, last week I began writing music for a worship retreat that my mother is organizing for her church. I like the songs I've written so far, and maybe I'll post a few of them on this website when I'm done. I'll be finishing all of the songs and recordings of the songs this week.

Also, I'm beginning to get myself, my fellow musicians and my students ready for my Perry Project Spring Recital on May 14th. I think it will be an even better concert than the one in December, so I'm really looking forward to it. I really like the music that we're doing.

And, on top of these things I'm busy keeping the Mesa City Band going until the end of our season in May. Our final concert of the season is May 2nd at Three Fountains Resort.

It's good to be busy! Anyway, I hope to get some more of my compositions up soon.