Saturday, May 17, 2008

Visit from David Nevue



David Nevue came to visit me last weekend! Several years ago David was brainstorming ways to promote his piano music, and decided to start an online radio station that played nothing but solo piano music-including a lot of his, of course. I was one of the very early artists that he contacted to include on the "Whisperings" broadcast, back in the days when it was funded almost entirely by David, supplemented by monthly contributions from "partner" artists. Well today that broadcast has over a million listeners (you can find it on iTunes and at www.solopianoradio.com) and the days of artists funding bandwidth are gone. But David didn't want to stop there, as part of his vision was to create a community of pianists collaborating online, learning from each others' experiences, and performing together--all of which has come to fruition in a great way!

In any case, David has been on the East Coast touring for Whisperings and his own shows, and he stayed at my house for a couple of nights last weekend. I and my friend hosted a house concert for him, and then later in the weekend he came to mine and Jody's monthly gig at Beans (the pic is from there). It was great to spend some time with David, and as a result of our visit I might start working on my own version of a couple of his pieces.

Overall, though, the weekend was really exhausting for me because on wednesday and thursday last week I was putting together all new Ikea furniture for my newly designed office (and changing my flat tire in the Ikea parking lot).

Then the weekend brought three concerts for myself. Saturday night last week Jody and played at PSALM in Philadelphia... and NO ONE came except our two spouses and my mother-in-law. At least that's all who were there when we started... another couple did come a bit later, and it was very nice to have them in our audience. Well, since it was a very casual audience, we decided to turn it into a recording session! Several of the songs turned out really great, and just in the nick of time, as I have a grant app due in a week and a half that I was really wanting some strong material of the duo for.

I've been working in the garden a lot this week.. transferred all my seedlings from the basement to the outdoors, and been planting meadow flowers and grasses. Today I took a "Digital Garden Photography" class at Longwood Gardens. I had a blast. Here's the pic of mine that the teacher liked the most. He even said if I had a body of work like this, I could get published. Add another goal to my list! :-) More pics will be posted on my website in the Misc Photos section. Check it out!