Concertizing

What fun to perform again!  Sunday's concert was lots of fun.  Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church is beautiful and the Boston piano surprised me- was not expecting to like it but it was very sweet and filled the space beautifully.  Just listened to the concert recording and am very happy with the way it turned out.  I'm hoping to post some selections online for listening- but, alas my couple of hours of free time today are almost past.  So, soon!  The Ginastera especially turned out nicely, and will likely be one of the first things I record in my new recording studio at home.  As for originals, everything seemed so free and open to me.  River Dawn had more depth than I've heard myself give it before- probably something to do with all the Haydn I've been playing.  The Asymptote too had lots more intricasy.  Perhaps my favorite part though was the free improv.  I haven't done too many free improvs in solo concert before, but the ones I was doing at home and then for Red Leaf, Grey Sky in the studio gave me the confidence to accept what would come.  And, I liked it after the fact!  Actually, I liked it during the fact too.  What a joy to be enjoying playing.  What a joy to know the audience was appreciative. 

Feeling Sleepy

Taken by CMC at Moosehead Lake, Maine

Well after our vacation and with the start of the school year and teaching I haven't really been improvising much since that huge hurrah a few weeks ago.  I was really dreading the start of the school year since I'd been spending so much time with the wee one, not really wanting to get out of our comfortable rhythm of our days - but now that a week with most of my students has gone by, I think it will be good for me to be thinking outside of myself again - but boy am I feeling pressured for time to practice-- I know I know it's the first week of teaching and everything will develop into a new rhythm... as it is the little guy seems to be slowly moving away from morning naps - so no more morning yoga for mommy, but every day is a new challenge and adventure to see what will be coming.

My January concert has been posted on the web, so I guess it's really official now (although the contract's been signed for a while).  I'm really hoping to play a movement of Keith Jarrett's Koeln Concert, and to that end I'm working on memorizing it.  It's so slow going so it's really hard to imagine how I will make it through it but I know I always seem to find a way to make it work.

Tonight I wanted to get back in the habit of improvising, so I did record myself.  I'll share it because it has sweet moments but the editor in me doesn't like it much - too improvisatory?  I'm pretty sleepy though so maybe I'll like it better another day.  But... you can decide for yourself:
http://catherinemariecharlton.com/@/BlogMusic/_tracks/8/file.mp3

p.s. update the next morning... I'm really liking this one now.  Funny what a night's sleep can do!

back from cape cod

Catherine Marie & son at Cape Cod

We had a lovely family vacation to Cape Cod last week, despite the fact that I was inbetween books and had no idea what to do with myself during the little one's naps - with no piano and no yoga props and not immersed in a book.  I was even out of magazines- did a crossword puzzle and browsed our hosts' bookshelves.  Learned a thing or two about homeopathy and natural cures for babies, also got to think a lot.  We're back home and today was a great day.  Got the yoga studio (i.e. my old office before I moved the computer to the piano studio) set up and even squeezed in a short yoga session.  Went to a new library and had fun picking out kids' books and several for me- even made my way through most of a book about organizing and throwing stuff out- physical and mental clutter.  Was a good affirmation for the work I've been doing to live in each moment and actually DO the stuff I want to be doing.  Tonight I had a great piano session - worked haltingly through a Hanon exercise in all 12 keys - lots of stumbles, but boy did it feel great to have warmed-up fingers- amazing what that one exercise can do.  Then improvised for a long time.  Lots of neat rhythms and patterns coming out from the Hanon and lots of sinking into old songs of mine (but ones I hadn't played in a long time, so old friends).  Recorded a bunch but nothing really in one smaller chunk that I feel like posting.  But, tomorrow is a new day! 

raining and giraffes

So I'm not actually expecting anyone to be listening to these as I'm now getting the feeling I will be posting a lot of them.  But, if you are inclined to do so, by all means, you are welcome here.  It's starting to rain this morning and we're moving a little slowly.  Baby was playing with the giraffe in the playpen next to the piano while I played.  This one has some really beautiful moments that I might actually go back and try to recreate to form a more polished piece that I could practice and take to concerts or a recording.  I really love some of the chord changes in here!

http://catherinemariecharlton.com/@/BlogMusic/_tracks/3/file.mp3

putting it out there

So the improv I recorded on Sunday gave me great momentum and I decided to completely rearrange my piano studio and move my computer down from the office into the studio and actually hook up my keyboard and have a home for the playpen for the little guy... so now I can upload recordings right away and play piano while I'm waiting for stuff to load and have all the creative juices flowing in one place.  I was so motivated and a dangerous woman on a mission that I even managed to move the Steinway off of the casters by myself, whoaa.  Picture here was taken with my computer's webcam this afternoon... yay!  That means I might even be inspired to do some webcasting or recording some video.  In the meantime I recorded another improv tonight.  The editor in me wanted to "try again" and record another.  Well, not only do I not have the time because baby will need me soon, I figure that's not in the spirit of me letting go of the editor.  I almost didn't upload this file because it's not in "finished" state and wouldn't really be on a recording somewhere... but there are some really nice moments in it.  And I'm putting it out there.  baby calling gotta go.

http://catherinemariecharlton.com/@/BlogMusic/_tracks/2/file.mp3

Something about Babies and Mountains of Chores

I've really been yearning to play lately - have had writer's block for 6 years or something... gave a sermon at our UU church last week about piano passions and inspirations and have been on the nursing couch imagining how I will set up my piano studio for recording and update website, blah blah blah... but needed a kick in the butt... so I figured tonight as soon as baby was asleep I needed to get down at that piano darnit and record myself.  I think the key to getting myself to where I want to be is to turn OFF the editor and not care one bit what people think of my music and if anyone would buy it or book me or even like it, and not care if my piano is tuned (it's not) and where to set the mics (probably a bit bass heavy here) and not care if I actually eat dinner tonight (okay, well I probably should eat, but will work on that later).

So - here it is.  First recording of myself improvising in a few years or something.  Post classical concert last year, post baby, post sermon, post literally months of me not touching the piano, pre- new me?

http://catherinemariecharlton.com/@/BlogMusic/_tracks/1/file.mp3

where did I start?

I have a cousin who has lost an insane amount of weight, something like 160 pounds or so.  She now runs marathons.  Talk about inspirational!  A few months ago she was cleaning house and found a pair of pants in the back of her closet from when she was extremely overweight.  She posted a picture of herself on Facebook standing inside of one leg.  She said that sometimes she gets caught up and discouraged by the ups and downs of daily life and forgets just how far she's come.  Finding the pants reminded her just how incredible her journey has been and re-centered her.

I was thinking of her post last week when I revisited the Cornell University campus for my college reunion.  Lately with a baby in my life I've been frustrated by the amount (or lack of) time I spend really and truly practicing the piano or composing, or working on my website.  That's not to say my life isn't full of joy at the moment, because it absolutely is wonderful and awe inspiring to be taking care of a little one.  But-- there are certainly days that I wish I could focus just a little bit more on my passions outside of motherhood.  Well, I know the days are coming that I will have that time (babe is only 7 months at the moment), but it really was wonderful to visit Cornell where I had my first solo recital, where I composed my first piece on the piano, where the first person told me how much they loved my music and how it impacted their life.  I sought out the piano in the student union where I used to play as students were drifting through on their way to breakfast and classes.  There were some extra walls in the building, but I found the piano and the windows it used to sit under look the same.  I had memories of Lila, who sat crying while she listened to my piano music and proceeded later to write a beautiful note that I have framed in my piano studio about how my music brought her the "spark of life".  I visited the piano in  Willard Straight Hall where I had so many of my early concerts.  It really was centering to me to think about the incredible journey I've had with my music in the ensuing years.  As an engineering student, I never would have imagined making the albums I've made, the concerts I've given, the students I've taught. 

plans

Today I have 4 hours of babysitting with no teaching!  The school year is wrapping up; I have a half schedule of students this week and just one or two starting next.  I have so many things on my to-do wish list it's hard to know where to start.  And frankly, I'm so sleepy lately that maybe a nap is in order.  I scheduled an eye appointment so maybe that will end up taking up the whole time too.

In any case, I'm looking forward to more time this summer to devote to my office and piano time.  I would like to make some updates to my website, like adding a link to the "Nursing Our Future" video that uses my music and adding a place where people can submit public performance of my works info to me, finish polishing the sheet music of River Dawn and Shenandoah and post those up for sale, etc.   Updating fan lists and connecting, etc etc. For piano, I have a concert in January that I need to finalize the program for (thinking about tackling a Keith Jarrett transcription).  I would also like to get my home studio set up for recording.  I bought a great microphone over a year ago and have yet to get it set up and working, alas.  Grant applications, etc etc... I guess the list could go on and on.  I have not been at a computer other than to glance through e-mails and do Twitter and Facebook posts in ages and ages.  Even the social network posts I'm doing mostly from my iPod while nursing, so I'm not sure that even counts as computer time.

I wish I had been practicing more lately but after I performed Ginastera at Andrea Clearfield's Salon in April, all my free time ended up being filled with gardening and housework.  The Salon was great-I thought it very cool that my classical playing got several people interested in my own music and I sold an album or two afterwards.  Wishing that I could get a copy of the recording of that evening, but the guy who recorded it hasn't responded to my e-mails over 6 weeks- wondering what's going on there.  I do have a video of my performance that hubby took so I guess I will need to sift through that myself and edit out my performance.  Funny how I spent all this time working on my classical technique over the past year or two and my technique is a million times past where it was before- but sometimes I feel like it never happened, as I was hoping for a testimonial from my Maine concert and a recording of some sort, but neither has materialized (yet).  Oh well, all the work I put in will certainly change my own music for the better.  Wishing that I was feeling more inspired lately to write some more music but nothing seems to come... no surprise though as it's not like I spend a lot of time in the studio.  I play during baby's naptimes but really only lullaby relaxing type stuff, and lately he's been napping in the crib anyway so I've been distracted by housework while he sleeps.

on the baby front, he's adorable (of course) and it's so amazing to watch him learn and grow every day!

swinging in the studio

baby just got a new cradle swing that he loves for naps.  I put it in the piano studio, and our routine now is when he gets really sleepy during the day, he goes in the swing and I play piano for him.  I have played a lot more this week than I have in a long time... sort of hard to play w/him in the sling.  In any case, now I understand why so many musicians come out with a kid's album after having children.  It disturbs his nap if I play anything too abstract or loud.  I find myself naturally improvising in a swinging motion in sync with the swing.  so... swinging naptime cmc collection coming?

Note by Note

Just finished watching the DVD "Note by Note: Making of a Steinway". Loved it! I especially liked the Extras... interviews and performances with amazing, inspiring pianists.

Hoping to teach some today... lessons have been closed down for all this SNOW. Already one student today canceled for a weekend ski trip (as if they didn't have enough snow here!). I'm itching to see some older kids - a bit of cabin fever here with the little baby (although I can't complain, it's been tons of fun). My students have a theory festival/competition coming up in a few weeks, and it's been really gratifying seeing them all work so hard at studying intervals and major scales, etc.

new year, new adventures w/baby...

been posting on twitter a lot, but hoping to post here a little bit more this year. starting to fall into a rhythm w/the baby (11 weeks old now!). he's cooing now when I play piano for him (couldn't ask for more, right?). he especially likes Bach, and River Dawn.

Speaking of River Dawn, I finally got moving and had River Dawn and Shenandoah transcribed into sheet music. The first drafts look amazing! I can't wait to post them. Only problem is finding stretches of uninterrupted time to concentrate and make edits. time is certainly hard to come by these days!

concert nerves? nah.

Wow, it's been forever since I posted here. Gave a concert in August in Maine of Mozart, Debussy, Ginastera, Haydn, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. Barely a CMC original in there (I did have to throw in River Dawn right before the intermission). I'd been improvising for so many years that I'd really been out of the loop of classical preparation and performance. It was so refreshing and amazing and a really neat journey to have to pour my focus, concentration, and energies into memorizing the music and preparing for the concert. Towards the end I was putting in over 30 hours a week of practice time. It all paid off and the concert was a tremendous success-- at the very end as I finished the last chords of the Rachmaninoff Elegie, there was complete silence from the audience... no one wanted to the be the first to clap and disturb the experience we all shared together. My husband started the clapping, and I had one of the best feelings of accomplishment I'd had in my life.

It wasn't a smooth journey all the way, as I'm pregnant (officially due in late November) and much of the early work had to be done in my first trimester... can we say no energy, sleeping all the time, major hormonal mood swings and super lack of motivation? Luckily for me (and all those I love around me) my energy came back full swing for the second trimester and I was able to have focus and concentration and even-keeled moods again.

Well, the focus was there-- but I was a nervous wreck... so nervous about performing from memory after so many years of improvising my way through performances. What finally brought me through in the end was two-fold: 1) focused practice -- being able play all of the pieces with my eyes closed, by memory with hands apart, and on a silent keyboard w/visual but no sound-- in other words, completely preparing and not letting muscle memory have the opportunity to sneak in there and fail me and leave me lost - and 2) self-hypnosis/relaxation techniques/visualization/affirmations.

River Dawn has been licensed for a hypnobirthing CD in the UK (yes, I'm using it for my own pregnancy), and as part of the preparation for that CD as well as my own private preparations for childbirth, we had a private hypnobirthing class in our house, which happened to fall just a few weeks before my concert. Our teacher saw that I was a nervous wreck and modified some of the relaxation scripts to specifically address concert nerves... and after she left I was palpably more calm, serene, and confident. She gave us a fear-release script that my husband read to me every night leading up to the concert, and even read just moments before I walked on stage. I also printed out affirmations of my confidence and posted them all over the house for me to see throughout the day, and I put one of them inside the piano during the actual performance so I could touch back on them while playing. What an incredible experience... to feel the nerves lift, to have them not come back, and to have a great concert experience afterwards.

Well, I'd best be off. Several students coming this afternoon. It's the first full week of teaching and I'm so happy to be back in a more structured schedule. Now for baby prep and figuring out how to fit piano practice into the day on top of all that...

playing in the dark

Our power was out for several hours this evening--with all the super strong winds outside I'm not surprised.  In any case, I was trying to figure out what to do with myself w/o electricity (no internet, no TiVo, no stove for cooking... what's a girl to do?).  I decided to give my hand at playing piano in the dark (no electricity needed for Steinway).  I've been working on Danzas Argentinas by Ginastera, and my teacher had made a comment at my last lesson about my phrasing at one particular section of the piece, and although I'd been working on it since then, it still hadn't really clicked and felt comfortable in my hands.... until i played in the dark, that is.  Wow, my other senses were so amazingly alert and in tune without my being able to see my hands.  The phrasing of the double melody line in the right hand instantly sang to me what it wanted to be.  What surprised me even more, though, was that I could actually feel a difference in my thought process when I closed my eyes versus when I had my eyes open in the dark.  When I closed my eyes I was accessing a different part of the brain and my muscle memory ruled (which wasn't a good thing because my muscle memory was playing the phrasing the old way)... but when I opened my eyes, I was relying on my memory of the note names and listening very intently to the sound of the output.  I can see that this will be an amazing thing for me to do more often.  I'm glad I have the black curtains on the door to my piano studio to block out daytime distractions... but now I know to also turn the lights off and maybe lie a blanket along the strip of light that leaks through at the bottom of the curtains.

On some other notes, a friend bought an amazing piano footstool for me at a silent auction... it's adjustable to 7 different heights and is super easy to change for each student that comes in the door.  I'm so excited!  www.pianofootrest.com

I've been keeping up with the daily yoga and still feeling amazing.

yoga

I'm seven days in now to a daily yoga practice. Boy, do I feel fabulous! I finally got all the great props I need to aid the poses -bolsters, blocks, strap, blankets- I'm working through "yoga a gem for women" by Geeta Iyengar. I've been a student of Iyengar yoga for over 12 years, but hadn't practiced in a couple of years, and I've never done a daily practice, and I never had the props at home to encourage me. So, now I start this amazing journey... great thing is that already I'm feeling stronger in my lower back, which is really helping me at the piano. I'm working on a technically difficult piece that historically I've been tensing up while playing, and lately have been more at ease while playing, but last night I made it through the entire piece with almost no tension, and it felt really easy! I could really feel my back holding me up.

On Monday night I returned to my original yoga teacher... I had studied with him for 7 years I think, but hadn't seen him in 5 or so. Since I moved I'm now about 25 minutes from his studio... and I can tell you that as soon as I saw him and heard his voice, I felt like I was home. Every time he talked us through the poses and the affirmation he gave during the holding of them felt so comfortable and familiar, and wonderful! It's great to be back.

25 Things about me

All my friends on Facebook were making lists about themselves... I enjoyed reading them so much I finally agreed to make a list of my own. So, here it is.

1. I once got stuck in a moat at a castle in England by jumping off a wall that I couldn't re-scale. It was early in the morning when it would be hours before anyone would find me.

2. I never dreamed of being a professional pianist. When I was very little I wanted to be a meter maid so I could ride around in the cute little truck. In high school I thought I might study Latin and Greek. I studied engineering in college. Took a while, but I'm very very happy to have found something I am truly passionate about--performing and teaching music.

3. At pre-school I used to read stories aloud to all the other kids.

4. As my high school friends would tell you, I used to wear huge plastic flowers and knitting needles in my hair.

5. My hips are super flexible. As a kid I would always put my feet behind my head and in yoga and dance classes those hip opening stretches never feel like they're doing anything for me.

6. I am typing this as I walk on my treadmill. I figured out how to set up my laptop on the control panel and multi-task that way.

7. I come from a long line of gardeners; our cousins have pics of our grandma and great-grandma sitting amongst their flowers. My grandma and sisters all had specific flowers they specialized in growing. I've come to really love gardening the past couple of years and built an herb spiral in my back yard out of 2.5 tons of local quarry stone.

8. One of my favorite performances ever was dancing tango in Evita on the stage at Longwood Gardens. I wish I had had dance lessons as a kid, because I often think I love dance as much or more than playing piano--but not starting until the 20's made it more difficult to go the pro route.

9. I'm a direct descendant of Henry Hudson (or so I've been told).

10. I took my application to Cornell University to the post office at 10 pm on the day the postmark was due. I got my application to Glamour Magazine's Top Ten College Women to the post office 10 minutes before closing on the day the postmark was due, and hyperventilated for about 20 minutes afterward because I ran through the bitter cold across campus to get it to the last post office that was still open before it closed. Both were successful applications.

11. Speaking of procrastinating, I was the only person in my high school AP English class that had to take the final exam because of missing the grade cut-off (I had a D every other marking period for turning papers in late, and Aís every other marking period). I really hate writing, but I got a 99 out of 100 on my final exam essay.

12. I still procrastinate but I've gotten it mostly under control.

13. My husband and I are mostly vegetarian (I say mostly, because we are known to eat fish at restaurants). I absolutely love to cook, and one of my favorite activities is browsing cookbooks looking for (vegan) recipes that use ingredients I have that need to be used up. I really love the energy I've had since cutting back on my dairy tremendously, and my inherited high cholesterol is no more.

14. My students' piano recital in May is my favorite day of the year.

15. My husband and I got married aboard the "Catherine Marie" dinner yacht. The band played the theme from the "Love Boat" while the guests were boarding.

16. I've always struggled with a out-of-whack menstrual cycle. If I'm not actively managing my diet, exercise, etc, my mood swings take control and I'm usually only productive for 2 weeks out of the month. I'm so sincerely sorry to everyone in my life who has been on the receiving end of this. I love you all. Good news is now I know how to manage through diet, exercise, and discipline.

17. I was mis-diagnosed with epilepsy in college because I was having continual seizures and arm thrashing throughout lectures. My first year out of college I used to kick the underside of conference room tables and had to use a walker because my legs would collapse underneath of me at unexpected times. After tons of doctors and a couple years of mind-numbing meds, I was finally diagnosed with a psychosomatic "conversion disorder" and was cured through hypnotherapy and a career move from banking to music. I've been healthy for well over 10 years now, but my legs still occasionally give out when I am stressed. I don't mind talking about it.

18. I come from a family of scientists. I'm pretty sure I was the only kid on the block with a lens grinding machine, a chemical separator, tons of oscilloscopes and 50 years of Scientific American in the basement. Before I met my husband I dated a long string of scientists. Although I think scientifically about most everything, I'm glad to have "broken free".

19. I used to give names for 6 sides of my personality: Catherine Cassandra Kooten Kalesa Creusa and Tarin. I actually don't remember what they were now.

20. I am embarrassed to admit that I like watching The People's Court. Marilyn Milian rocks.

21. I used to have such a messy room that I had to refer to the "strategically placed footholes" when my mom said I had to have a path from the door to the bed. Now I'm on a super-organizing bent and my house is most of the time very neat. (helps to have a husband who hates messes!)

22. I just started making a t-shirt quilt. I'm still in the color/design planning stages, but I have confidence I will complete this project.

23. I've studied Iyengar Yoga for over 12 years now, more intently in some years than others. I'm returning to it now after a a couple of years of not practicing much, and I'm very excited. I've been studying with an Alexander Technique teacher for a little over a year now. Both disciplines help tremendously with mood swings.

24. I haven't released a recording since 2004. However, in the meantime I've moved 3 times in 2 years, got married, had a death in the close family, had a part-time job as a reference librarian, been establishing a home and garden, and started studying classical piano again. My creativity has been blossoming the past few months, and I can feel the music flowing again.

25. To be written...

random new year's thoughts

so here I am walking on the treadmill with laptop in front of me and listening to the Esbjorn Svensson Trio on my iPod. what? on the treadmill you say? yeah, I discovered last month that our treadmill's operation platform actually supports a laptop quite well and I've been walking and twittering/facebooking/cleanng out my e-mail quite a bit while walking. I guess I was looking for a way to not be bored on the treadmill and not feel guilty about time spent on social networking. also over the holidays we set up a second tivo in the workout room that can stream videos from netflix. my new rule for myself is that all frivolous tv watching (e.g. hgtv, people's court (yeah, yeah, I'm actually admitting I watch it... am I really typing that out loud?) must be while I'm walking on the treadmill. over the summer I found all my pants getting tight and I didn't want to have to go buy new clothes, so I invested in a pair of great walking shoes and starting walking every day... got harder when the time changed and the weather got cold, but after a few weeks I migrated indoors to the treadmill. I also read "the China Study" by Colin Campbell, and was inspired to migrate to a predominantly vegan diet, after being prominently vegetarian for a few years (predominantly meaning I'm not militant about milk and cheese when visiting friends or in a restaurant where there are no other choices)... in any case the combo of fresher diet and walking every day led me to lose the 13 pounds I had gained over the course of a few years.. and now I weigh again what I was when I was dancing tango as much as possible a few years ago. ironically, I had to go buy new clothes because my others were all too big.

i've been thinking a lot about music and discipline lately, but I think I'll hold off and try to commit to writing a blog on the treadmill again soon.

The Piano Cave: Help Me Pick a Color!

Welcome to my piano studio! I've really been working hard on decorating it in such a way that helps me force focus... I used to go in for a few minutes, but then think of an e-mail I wanted to write, or a cup of tea I wanted to make, or some weeds I wanted to pull in the garden, or to go check the mail when I heard the mail truck go by, or go pet my kitties when they look in at me all pitiful-like:

(note kitty Rosemary staring at me from the other side of the door, begging for attention).

In any case, you get the idea... I'm a big time "P" on the Myer's Brigg personality test... thoughts always racing from one to the next. So, how can I shut out the world and get real work done? I had my Aha! moment at the beginning of September when I was practicing for my Volvo concert... and I wasn't getting any good practice done in the day, but having amazingly creative sessions at midnight, way past my bedtime, but then was exhausted the next day. I wondered how I could create "midnight" during the middle of the day when I actually have time to practice. And I figured it out:


Black curtains over the doors, shutting out all the daylight and kitties (who are still sitting right on the other side of this curtain in the picture). I make sure I have no appointments or phone calls coming that really need my attention, set my timer for an hour or so (sometimes two hours), eat a snack, go to the bathroom, make a cup of tea, and then enter the piano cave. I do not let myself leave until the timer rings. If I don't want to practice, I do my Alexander Technique lie-downs, or I sometimes allow myself to read piano teaching related articles. However, I'm finding that I'm actually getting real work done, and not wanting to leave when the timer goes off. It hasn't been easy, there have been many times when I start to leave, or my mind wanders... but then I just bring myself back to the next task. I guess it's a kind of meditation/mindfulness practice--but I'm just so incredibly excited that this "P" girl (I think that that P on Myer's Brigg stands for Procrastination) actually is getting Forced Focus.

Being in the curtained room also inspired me to hang more art on the walls... so I have something to look at when I'm playing:


And that makes me feel good when I enter the room:



But, here's where you can help! We've been in our house for over a year now, and this color-loving-girl is desperate for color on the walls. In new construction, it's recommended that you leave the walls without color for a year so when there are cracks and peeling from the inevitable settling, it's easier to do all the touch-ups throughout the house with the same 'builder's white'. But... now I can put color on my piano studio walls!!!

What color should I use? I want something warm and cozy, but yet helps me FOCUS and fosters CREATIVITY. It has to look good with the art on the walls... that huge orange blow-up of my "The Undershore" cover, and the red accents throughout the room, including the chair. I've been thinking a pumpkin-ey gold since all the art has gold somewhere in it, but I'm open to any and all ideas.

In the meantime, I just heard the mail truck go by... gotta go get the mail!!

Happy Autumn (or, "What I Did on My Summer Vacation")

Happy Fall, everyone! I hung my autumn acorn wreath on the front door yesterday, so I know it's that time of year. Not to mention these cooler days and it getting dark earlier and earlier (makes it harder to get an evening walk in!).

I hope everyone had a great summer. I'm glad to be back in the swing of a more structured schedule, but boy was my summer fun... the first time in I don't remember when that I had no commitments and nowhere to be. So, I traveled! I visited my mother for a week in Virginia, visited in-laws in Michigan for a week and got a behind-the-scenes tour of a 2000 acre cherry farm. Did you know that on a production farm like that, the cherries are shaken out of the tree for only 3 seconds, and then never again until the next year? The entire harvest for an individual tree is 3 seconds a year! Wow, that amazed me. On the Michigan trip we also spent a day at Mackinac Island, on a tandem bike pedaling around the island. Later in the summer I spent a week in Maine with a friend of ours whose family owns a 6 acre island in the middle of Moosehead Lake, no electricity, no bridge:


Looks relaxing, right? Well, it was amazingly relaxing most of the time. However, for almost all of our trip, it was raining and cold and the wind was whipping. The island is 5 miles from the nearest marina, so getting back and forth on the family sailboat was over an hour's trip... and the motor boat over 20 minutes. And boy, let me tell you... an hour on a sailboat in the rain, even with the cover is pretty WET! and COLD! (when you're in the northern areas of Maine). Here are my hosts shuttling to the main boat so that we can load our bags to return home:


I wish I could re-create the wind and rain on this blog. Just suffice it to say that while I was struggling to hold the tarp over our bags on the dock, I felt like I was in the middle of the movie "The Shipping News".

Later in August I treated my husband to his dream trip... one to visit the last 4 states of his endeavor to visit all 50 states! His last four were adjoining... and so we flew into Denver and drove 1400 miles in 4 days, visiting Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. I normally wouldn't schedule every minute of every day on a trip, but I had to for this in order to get all the states in--and we were so busy we both completely lost all sense of time and forgot all about any at-home stresses. In Kansas we visited the oh-so-enthralling (facetious) Wizard of Oz museum, in Oklahoma we were in the tippy point of the panhandle staying in a cabin in a town of 13 residents, and saw some of the most amazing star views I have ever seen in my life. We also visited the tri-state marker on the borders of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado:



In New Mexico we hiked around the crater of an extinct volcano at Capulin National Monument, and saw fossilized dinosaur footprints! We also saw fossilized wagon wheel ruts from the Santa Fe trail (after my GPS at one point told us to turn the car into a field to drive on the Santa Fe trail to get to our destination, LOL). But, maybe the GPS wasn't so far off after all... here is our rental car when we went to see the wagon wheel ruts:


To round up our trip, we went to the Colorado State Fair and saw a rodeo. All, in all, great fun!

My garden is looking spectucular at the moment, despite my having traveled so much. The only thing I regret (sort-of... the trips were worth it!) was that I let my amazing basil harvest go to seed. I had great hopes of making tons of pesto batches... and I had the basil to do it, too... but alas, I guess I can't do everything!

Now the fall schedule has started. I'm back in the swing of piano teaching and planning lots of music stuff. I decorated my music studio with great art and hung black curtains over the french doors to encourage me to sequester myself in there to work on piano projects. Jody and I gave a very fun private concert for Volvo Powertrain last week at the incredibly beautiful Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown. I also spent a bunch of time in my at-home stretches this summer working on a new version of The Lonely Cobbler, including sheet music that will be forthcoming. I put together a kids' show on creativity that I auditioned before a group of librarians last week, looking to get hired for summer reading club performances next year. Now I'm working on a collaboration with guitarist Tim Farrell, and gearing up for my trip to Nashville this weekend for a Whisperings solo piano concert with Joseph Akins, Philip Wesley, and Greg Maroney, and also practicing some Jewish music to perform for at a High Holy Days service at the Nashville Unitarian church. Lots more stuff is coming up this fall... and I'm very excited!

My next garden project is cleaning out my "meadow beds" in order to sow wildflower seeds and plant meadow perennials.

happy fall!

Great View!

Here's a picture I took on a recent hike to "The Pinnacle" on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. Just posting it as a reminder to relax and enjoy the view!

summer/time management

Well, all of my school-year students have wrapped up their lessons, and I only have a couple of students coming here and there over the summer... so I have tons of unstructured time ahead of me! This is definitely the first in a long time this has been the case for me (I was working as a part-time reference librarian the past couple of summers). I think though, that it's a lot harder for me to accomplish things when I don't have specific deadlines and goals. I'm trying to avoid the trap of wondering where all the time went... spending my time walking, gardening, and cooking with all the yummy fresh veggies of the summer. I have a few trips planned to visit family. I also have a handful of big piano projects I want to work on, but for the past couple of weeks at least I've been tending to garden and walk rather than go into the studio. My life-long pursuit, it seems is to find the ever-better way of organizing my time and tasks. Yes, this is the girl who turned in her Cornell application at 10 minutes to midnight the date it had to be postmarked... and friends who know me know that this has been a pervasive trait in my life... okay okay, I admit it, I finished a major grant application at the end of May, and drove it to the airport post office at 10 pm on a Saturday night so that it could be received on the deadline on Monday. The cool thing is that I wasn't taking the train into the city on Monday to hand-deliver it... I'm making progress! :-) Actually, I've made tremendous progress in the past I don't know how many years. Right now my office is completely clean, all my paper has places to go and I'm actually putting it in those places, and this past week I revamped my "Remember the Milk" task lists in a way that I think will really really work for me... I've been working towards this over the past year or so, getting better and better with each revamp... (check out the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen) ...did I mention my e-mail inbox is empty right now!!?? AND I have a method all set up for very easily recording follow-ups in my e-mail and transferring them over to my task list as needed? My goal is to keep this this way over the whole summer, so that I get into the piano studio more. Well, if it works, I'll write another blog post in 10 days, as it will show up on my task list then...

have a great week! go find a farmer's market!!

cm