Concert season is in full swing! Lots of stuff going on between Swing Memories, Silveridge Pops and the Mesa City Band. I've updated the swing band's webpage with a YouTube clip of music and still-shots. Check it out here.

And what's more... my Perry Project recital is tomorrow! Check out the program below, or even better, come and see us. I've made my usual batch of fudge (although it's a little crumbly).

I've had three gigs with Swing Memories in the past week. Here's a collage of photos taken of our Veteran's Day event and a snippet of a recording from the same.

I have finally finished preparing my New Guinea music web pages. Even after making web-pages for a little over a year now it hasn't gotten any easier. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with them, but I'm certain that I'll be correcting things and adjusting things as they occur to me. Take a look and let me know what you think!

The Music of Papua New Guinea

In other news, all of my performing groups are up and running again:
• Swing Memories has our first gig at the VFW this coming Saturday (11/5).
• The Mesa City Band has another concert coming at the end of the month.
* The Silveridge Pops is rehearsing and getting ready for our first concerts in December.
• The Sunland Singers are off to a good start and working hard for our Dec.15th concert.
• I'm writing & arranging music for St. Mark's next Taize service on Dec. 18th.
• And, of course, I'm getting students & colleagues ready for the next Perry Project rectial, on December 10th.

I'm sure there's some other things that I should post here, but I won't think of them until later. Keep making music!

My thanks to everyone who attended, performed, helped, baked, cleaned, etc. yesterday! I was very pleased to see such a large audience, and even more pleased to hear my students and friends play their music so well. A special thanks to Steve Swenson, who recorded the entire event and to my father who videotaped the entire event. Once I get those things processed and sorted I will upload them to the web page. Also, if anyone in attendance took pictures, I would love to have copies of them!

It feels like we have been preparing for this recital for a long time. It was only five months ago that we had our last recital, but so much has changed and happened since then that it seems almost a lifetime ago. Now we will begin to ease ourselves into the summer months and take a moment to pause before beginning to plan our next recital.

Check back soon for the recordings and videos! Meanwhile, I've begun to create the recital page, so go take a look.

Today I've added several new flute quartets to my site in a new album titled "Four Flutes". I've been playing with a new flute quartet lately (Connie Backus, Chuck Dick, Elaine Austin, and myself), and I've made some new arrangements for us to play. I also have some more ideas for pieces that I think would work well with a flute quartet and I'll post them on my album page as I complete them. We'll be performing some of these pieces at my Spring Recital in May, so hopefully some of you will be able to see us live.

In other news, I conducted the entire Mesa City Band concert last night at Venture Out (Larry will be out for the rest of the season but is recovering nicely). Anyway, the venue has a beautiful concert hall and it was a pleasure to perform there. The band sounded great and we had a very large audience so it was a very satisfying evening all around.

As a final unrelated thought: this time of year is festival season and I can't help but miss the long rehearsals and preparations of the school bands and orchestras as we got ready to compete. It was always a very satisfying process, and I hope to be involved with school groups again someday. Of course I also miss going to Disneyland with the kids. :-)

Last night, while filling in for Larry Baedke at the Mesa City Band (he is recovering from heart surgery), I was surprised at the end of the rehearsal when the president of the band's board announced that I had been awarded the official position of Assistant Director. I am deeply honored to be conducting this excellent group of musicians.

I consider myself truly blessed to have encountered so many musical opportunities these past few months. Not only is it an honor to be leading so many knowledgable and talented musicians (in both the Silveridge Orchestra as well as the Mesa City Band) but conducting is truly a joy for me.

Anyway, due to Larry's absence, I'll be in charge until the end of the season (in May). I wish Larry a speedy recovery and I know he'll be back on his feet in no time.

In Mainstage I've created a template for the format that I use each week. Mainstage, in a way, is like Powerpoint in that you can pre-program a bunch of tools and elements of a presentation that then you are intended to use live in front of an audience. Instead of slides, however, Mainstage lets you program patch changes for instruments and backing tracks, among other things. To read about how I make backing tracks, see my previous post "The Birth of a Backing Track".

Here's the Layout screen of Mainstage, with the layout I created for use with the band. You can see some of the different controls and readouts that are available at the bottom of the screen. Each of these can be dragged onto the workspace and programed to do many different things, such as activate backing tracks, adjust the volume of individual tracks, or adjust the gain on the guitar (which is what I play during the performance). This layout is what I currently use, but it has evolved little by little over the weeks that I've been using it. Every time I discover something else that I need to do during the performance I add a control or indicator to my layout.

Then, the next step is getting a set list ready for the performance. I create a separate page for each song that we will perform, and each song then gets it's own levels, settings and backing tracks.

In the Layout screen I programmed all of the foot controls on my GiO to perform different functions during the performance. Aside from starting and stopping the backing tracks, and selecting different songs from the set list, I also have programmed controls to allow me to add or remove the individual backing tracks as needed. The GiO is very neat in that even the lights are programmable to whatever colors I want. So, to make it quick and easy to see what tracks are currently activated during the performance, the buttons on the screen match the buttons on my foot controls. I also have a kill-switch programmed if I want to mute everything.

Once all my settings are made for the performance, I can save them all as a file and load it up ready to go on Sunday morning. Mainstage has a Performance mode that focuses all of the computer's resources and removes all other distractions from the screen. Once in this screen, I can use the mouse to adjust the various knobs and controls as needed, but mostly I use the foot controls while rehearsing and performing.

...the opening number from Friday night's dance at Mt. Brook.

On a related note, I found out that Friday was the last night that Skeets will be playing with the band. I've learned a ton from him, and he'll be greatly missed. His solos all night were fantastic, and his solo (tenor sax) on this recording is no exception. What a great musician.

Just a couple things to share: 1) A photo of Swing Memories and 2) a recording from our gig Monday night - "Canadian Sunset"

Canadian Sunset - performed by Swing Memories at Crescent Run RV Park, Feb.7th 2011

Last night we (Swing Memories) had one of our best performances yet at the Superstition Sunrise Resort. However, the evening began awkwardly: I showed up later than I would have liked (due to the traffic from a lesson in Scottsdale). I hustled into the ballroom 10 minutes before downbeat and Skeets says, "I know we didn't rehearse the opening piece but we'd really like to do it. Oh, by the way, it starts with a piano solo. What'cha think?" Anyway, I think it came out very well--maybe my best solos yet (if I do say so myself). :-)

Anyway, the opening piano solo was the first of a line of great performances by the entire band. We were in an excellent ballroom with wood floors and walls; the room had fantastic acoustics. The dance was sold-out, so the place was filled up and... everyone was dancing! More and more I am getting to the point where I don't have to watch the music so much, and there was a moment when I looked out on the dance floor while playing and saw that the entire room was filled with dancers. The lights were dimmed and there was a glittering ball spinning above the hall. And, the most incredible thing was watching the dancers were moving in perfect rhythm with the music. My hands on the piano, the dancers, the music--everything was in perfect sync. It was awesome.