In order to try to keep things tidy around here, I’ve reorganized the site a bit (again). One thing that happened was that the old “articles” section disappeared and some of the old articles have turned retroactively into blog posts. The official start of the blog was May of 2008, but some of my old stuff (going back to 2001) can now be found there.
There’s a nice interview by Joan Sparks at the Flute Pro Shop blog, with two woodwind doublers who happen to be married to each other, Tereasa Payne and Simon Hutchings. They discuss doubling, careers, and married life.
I can’t imagine being in a marriage with anyone other than a musician. Everyone makes sacrifices for what they value in life, but the time and commitment involved in becoming, and being, a professional musician…it’s so time consuming, and emotionally challenging – I imagine it’s like being married to an athlete. That being said, given that we are both woodwind doublers, with different “primary” instruments, our marriage is perfect (in so many ways!!!) in the sense that we are able to advise and support each other to a greater degree than almost any situation would allow.
A more poignant aspect of this year’s conference was the conspicuous absence of Dr. Kenneth Fischer, my former saxophone teacher and the intended conference host. After Dr. Fischer’s very untimely passing a few months ago, many among the NASA leadership made extra efforts to ensure that the conference went on as planned. Surely not the least among these was Dr. Stephen Fischer, Kenneth Fischer’s son, my old classmate, and a brilliant saxophonist in his own right. I noted that the conference program read:
Hosts
Dr. Kenneth Fischer
Dr. Stephen Fischer
I was in attendance Thursday through Saturday (the conference began on Wednesday). It’s such a big conference that lots of things are going on at once, and there’s no way to get to everything. But here are a few events that I caught that were highlights for me: Read More “NASA 2010 Biennial Conference report”
Here are some videos from a guest recital I did at the University of Tennessee at Martin a few weeks ago. Among other things, I played Ástor Piazzolla’s Tango Etudes, originally for solo flute, in my own arrangement for multiple woodwinds soloist.
I always think that the worst blog posts are the ones where people blog about their blogs. So brace yourself. Sorry. I try not to indulge in this kind of thing too often.
Anyway, today is the fifth anniversary of my first, rather inauspicious blog post. (You might notice that I do have posts dated older than that; those are older writings, many from college courses, that I retroactively turned into blog posts.) Five years isn’t that long by most measures, but it seems that, in the sea of abandoned blogs out there, five years and still active isn’t something to take for granted.
What excites me even more than the traffic is the engagement. I’ve been pleased and flattered to hear from many, many of you—everyone from young, aspiring doublers to old friends to colleagues in academia to musicians who are some of my real heroes. Thanks for your emails, blog comments, content contributions, donations, and other shows of support.
This year I played all jazz at my Delta State University faculty recital. Program and some selected videos are below.
I’m very much a part-time jazz player, so it was fun to spend the summer trying to get my chops in shape to play tunes in a variety of styles on a variety of instruments. This was my new record for number of instruments on a recital: flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon (electric bassoon), soprano/alto/tenor saxophones, and EWI, 9 in all. I’ve written previously about the challenges of improvising on multiple instruments, which I suspect might be surprising to non-doublers or non-improvisers.
An additional challenge is that I live in a small town in an isolated area, so I had to bring in some rhythm section players from out of town and rehearsal time was extremely limited. Enjoy the videos warts and all.
I have previously done some things with bassoon and electronics, but I took that to a new level this time around with a Little Jake pickup and a few new effects pedals. This was lots of fun and I’m already brainstorming how I can use the Little Jake with some other instruments.
The pedalboard setup I used for electric bassoon and EWI
He’s hoping his skills on multiple instruments will eventually land him commercial gigs or even a position playing in a pit for musical theater performances.
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“The most important thing now is to find something unique about my playing that I can market in a positive way.”