Spring Success and a Summer Show

A successful (and busy!) spring concert

The solo piano concert I put on last month (March 9th) ended up being a great success, although it had about the same so-so turnout as the last time I performed at the Chico Women's Club (about 30 people). The fun part of this concert was that I got to sell my sheet music for the first time. This is definitely something I plan to do for my next concert, in addition to selling my CD's, because a few of the sheet music I brought actually sold.

The busy part of the day was not just preparing for the concert, but putting on a student recital the same day. My colleagues and friends didn't really describe this as "busy," because I think their word of choice was "insane".

Despite my insanity, which should be no surprise to anyone, the recital was enjoyable, inspiring, and as much of a success as the solo concert. Nineteen of my students performed, and 50 or so parents and family members showed up. I had already collaborated with other teachers in helping them with recitals over the years, and having my students perform in those recitals, but this was the first show I organized for the students myself.

A number of people usually ask me, after I do any of these concerts, "How do you feel now?" The best way I can answer that question is, always, "I want to do more." And this, of course, brings me to my next exciting excursion. A summer gig... er, gigs?

Time to pose! Our group shot with me and my students, after a successful recital at the Chico Women's Club (3/9/19)

Wine Time in the Mean Time

I have been trying to book a solo piano concert at MONCA, the Museum of Northern California Art. I may wait for a while before actually performing there because I just played a big solo concert last month, which means many of my "regulars" may not necessarily bother coming to see the same kind of show a month later. I was thinking about playing MONCA in June, but either way I was still able to book a live show at Wine Time Restaurant on June 29th. The great thing about playing at Wine Time is that it's perfect for practicing, and the acoustics (and the staff!) are both wonderful.


Recording Woes, and the Ultimate Cure

At my spring concert at the Chico Women's Club I brought two different CD's, my demo album Heart of Storms, and a CD that featured various recordings, including a cover of the theme from Princess Bride, and six songs from the future album called August In Bloom. This worked out well because many people urged me to bring a second CD (The Heart of Storms album is an old one and many fans already have it). The only downside was that there's a glitch on the newer CD, where there's about two to four minutes of silence after each song. It just means that people have to skip to the next track after listening to the first one. It should be an easy fix, but either way I am in the process of recording all of the August in Bloom songs, and I may use this album as a way to send the tracks to a company that packages the CD's for you professionally.

As many people know I own a Yamaha C3X, which is a 7-foot grand piano, and I plan to one day record off of this acoustically if I can. Part of this depends on whether I convert the room to a professional recording studio, or if I wait instead to buy my own home to do this. The fact that I'm renting and unsure of how long I'll continue living there (the housing situation in Chico and the difficulties resulting from last year's terrible wildfire are a part of this) makes the issue slightly more complicated. Either way, the C3X has a silent system, and I'll soon be testing the recording quality on it as well as the acoustic recordings from my hybrid piano. I have a microphone that I haven't yet used, and I may be able to use this along with a high-quality video camera that I bought shortly before I went on my trip to Iceland and Greenland last summer.


More videos are afoot...

Speaking of videos, I plan to make quite a few more of them. My approach to getting more people to subscribe to my music and come to my shows is going to involve a lot of effort on social media and online videos, because 1) that's where most people go initially to find out about artists, and 2) the potential in terms of how many people you can reach on the Internet is pretty enormous. I added a brand new video on YouTube (below) and plan to make a lot more of these. This means, of course, I'll be just as busy as I've been... but not busier, because I don't think that's possible :D