A Strange Courage

Working with color is a challenge for me--one I confronted head on in my latest drawing...

El Hombre

It's a strange courage 
you give me ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!  

    ~William Carlos Williams 
   from his collection, "Al Que Quiere!"

    
I stumbled upon this poem while idly browsing the web a few months ago, and liked it enough to bookmark the page for later reference. Upon reading it again late last week, an image began to take shape in my mind. Things seemed easy enough starting from my comfortable home-base of black and white, but I realized early on that the piece would eventually require a more ambitious exploration of bright color.

As a kid I remember hearing somewhere--don't know where at this point--that in order to master color, an artist first needed to master black and white. It was a reassuring thought as I delved even deeper into my emerging preference for stark contrast, crisp lines, and austere form..."I'll get really good at black and white and then...just imagine the possibilities!" Maybe I got too comfortable. These days, if I use color at all, it's generally one shade, maybe two, and used without much nuance, blend, or shading--bold areas of color that mirror the distinction of their equally unambiguous frame.

 For El Hombre I envisioned a sort of middle road. I knew I needed a lot of color, but wanted to avoid ruining things with a sad attempt at shading or gradation. I just don't have that skill at the moment. I resolved instead to select a limited palette and apply it in big blocks--more in the style of mosaic or stained glass than a pencil drawing.

I'm more or less satisfied with the result...though I can't help but cringe just a little at its brightness whenever I look at it. It's like I'm practicing really loud excerpts on my trumpet and just KNOW that the neighbors are about to pound the door down with threatening expletives.

Scribbles

Since finishing my last drawing, I've had a few ideas for the next one floating around in the back of my head, but nothing that's asserted itself enough to actually inspire a formal beginning.

This latest project of reinterpreting astronomical subjects has been really enjoyable for me. Though most of the drawings have required a mind-numbing amount of painstaking sharpie work, experiencing every small step as definite progress toward a specific goal has helped keep my head above water during a time when the rest of my professional life is mired in uncertainty. I guess that's one thing that has always appealed to me about drawing, and perhaps why I've gravitated toward the stark materials and style that have become my standard. Once a line is applied to the paper, it remains. Once a work is complete, it can be easily and repeatedly viewed in its original finished form without concern for physical alteration. No matter my physical or mental condition, if I need to demonstrate my creative accomplishment, I can always pull out a drawing or two for display.

Creation for a musician, however, exists from moment to moment, and concrete impressions of a performance recede into the forgetful past soon after its final notes have dissipated. True, recordings can mediate this to some extent, providing an exactly repeatable performance at the press of a few buttons, but just as a Van Gogh print doesn't do justice to the texture and color of the original, even the most faithful recording cannot capture the richness and depth of live performance.

A performing musician strives for an elite physical capacity that infuses flawless technique with profound artistry and enables both to be called up in front of an audience on demand. One great performance of a piece does not necessarily guarantee another. Just because I once had a very successful performance of the Arutunian Trumpet Concerto (played here by Tine Thing Helseth), doesn't mean I can just push my internal Arutunian button and play it all again for you right now. Staging a repeat performance would require several weeks of practice and rehearsal. Musical ability is active, dynamic...and impermanent. The highest standards of proficiency must be rigorously maintained. In the best of times, this practice is exhilarating. During tougher times it can can be exhausting, discouraging, and downright terrifying.

I suppose this comparison is a bit simplistic. It's never desirable to sit back and "rest on your laurels" so to speak, and I'm of course always trying to improve my ability as a visual artist as well.

While waiting for my newest formal ideas to gestate, I've been experimenting with new techniques just for fun. I tried sketching more views of the moon through the eyepiece of my borrowed dobsonian, but had quite a lot of trouble. Those sketches went straight into the recycling bin! Though as I think about it now, maybe I should've saved them just as a laugh. In any case, I decided I'd need some practice before going out again, so yesterday I tried sketching a lunar landscape using an online photo as a reference...and as an added experiment, employed scribbling as my method...

The scribbles appearing earlier in this post show a few "details" close up.

In a way, the roughness of these scribbles--the way they resolve at a distance into something resembling a recognizable object--reminds me that all of it...the music, the drawing, my career, my life...is a never ending work in progress. I can't help striving for improvement and even yearning for (an unachievable) perfection, and it's often difficult to forge through tough times still believing that things will eventually work out. But in my better moments I remember to step back and take the long view. Sometimes those scribbles do add up.

Pleiades

It's been my habit these days to take one day off from trumpet practice per week, and today was one of those respites. Before I knew the weather forecast, I'd fantasized about heading off to one of the metro parks, or even the Cuyahoga Valley for some long walking, but since we got a fresh heap of residual winter last night, I decided instead to make the best of things at home.

The latest addition to my astronomical drawing project had been lying dormant for a couple weeks. After finishing Accretion, I'd ridden the excitement and started another drawing right away...a smaller one that I hoped wouldn't take me nearly as long. A little ways into the work however, I ran into some creative road blocks and frustratedly set it aside. I'd walk past it every day...look at it for a while...maybe fill in a minor detail or two...and then, just as frustrated, walk away again. After a certain point it just didn't seem to flow. I'd lost the original vision somewhere, and was left scratching my head over what to do next.

So today...left with few options with which to occupy the hours...I loaded up some podcasts (Science Friday, This American Life, and Radio West) and set to work. I figured I'd just muscle through and hope it would start to make sense at some point. Not the most ideal creative frame of mind I suppose, but sometimes you just gotta do it.

With a little coaxing and last-minute improvisation, it seems the result isn't half bad...an expressive and abstract elaboration on the Pleiades star cluster...

As I may have said on previous occasions, The Pleiades has been a favorite object of mine since before I knew there were such things as open star clusters. I saw it first from the back seat car window during a childhood trip to visit my grandparents in North Dakota. While absent-mindedly gazing up into the dark sky, I was puzzled and intrigued by a little fuzzy patch that eventually resolved itself into what I thought looked like (and this is immediately what I labeled it in the back of my young mind) an "itsy-bitsy-teeny-weenie-yellow-polka-dot -bikini dipper". I smiled and adopted the little patch of stars as my own personal secret constellation...though, of course, I eventually came to find out that it is widely known and much beloved.

I want to reiterate that the drawings in this series are not meant to represent reality in any precise or scientific manner. Though I did use a detailed star map to place most of the "stars" you see in the work, and referenced many astro-photos while adding aspects of nebulosity, my motivation behind all of these works is only to express the sense of the rapture I've felt while viewing the night sky. The astronomical wonders that surround us (whether viewable to the unaided eye, through binoculars or telescopes, or invisible to all but technologies that gather data in wavelengths beyond human perception), and the true stories of creation and cosmic evolution that surround them, inspire my imagination.

The Beehive Cluster

So, maybe this abstract astronomy art idea I've been exploring recently is turning into something bigger. I finished my second piece this morning after picking away at it for more than 2 weeks. The drawing is loosely based on one of my favorite star clusters--the Beehive, M44, or Praesepe (the manger)--and is done in bic pen, black and red sharpie, and colored pencil on white paper.

A fun fact I learned while preparing this post, is that the Beehive Cluster is Utah's official state astronomical symbol...fairly obvious, I suppose, for "the beehive state, but I had no idea that states even had official astronomical symbols to begin with. I guess not all of them do. Ohio, for instance, has quite a few official symbols: our state beverage is tomato juice, state bird is the cardinal, state bug is the ladybird, state flower is the red carnation (I'm sensing a pattern here), the state rock song (no I'm not making this up), is Hang on Sloopy...and the list goes on...but still no official star or astronomical wonder. Maybe the buckeye state should continue its penchant for red symbols and adopt Antares, or Betelgeuse (both beautiful red supergiants prominent in the northern sky), as its symbol. A ruby-red carbon star might also be nice...or why not just boldly claim all the universe's glowing red hydrogen?

Anyway...I've strayed from my topic...

I haven't seen the Beehive in quite a while. These days it doesn't come up until after midnight (which isn't itself a good excuse, as I could just as easily buck up and pull out the scope before sunrise...except that lately I've been a bit of a lazy bed bug...and its been cloudy here for nearly 2 weeks straight anyway), so my work on this drawing is based entirely on a few online images, and my own memory. I first saw M44 as a new member of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society while volunteering at an elementary school star party. When the constellation Cancer is high in the sky, the Beehive looks to the unaided eye like a hazy little smudge in between two of the crab's central stars, so is super easy for a beginner to find in binoculars or a telescope. The cluster is populated by a bunch of tight little triangles of stars, which to me (after I learned the cluster's name), appeared as little bees swarming around the heavens. 

It is these triangles that have really stuck in my memory. A few months after my initial sighting of the Beehive, I wrote a little trumpet etude whose triangular note patterns mimic the angular sense of fun that I associate with the cluster. I have yet to record it or otherwise share it publicly, and my handwritten copy (pictured on the left), is quite rough and lacks important expressive markings for dynamics and tempo, but it's still a fun and challenging little ditty to play around with. Perhaps as I continue my visual musings on astronomical sights, I'll make further attempts on the musical end as well. Triangles also feature heavily in my new drawing, and I think the two creative experiments make a good pair. 

I want to stress again that my focus with these astronomical abstracts is not necessarily to represent scientific meaning, or achieve perfect visual accuracy (this should be fairly obvious), but rather to portray some sense of the aesthetic and emotional experience I have while participating in amateur astronomy. I love seeing the fine work of dedicated astrophotographers, and (especially now that I have a borrowed Dobsonian to play with...courtesy of my friends at BRAS), I hope to continue practicing more realistic astronomical sketching, but I'm excited by both of these new drawings, and hope I find the inspiration to continue the series. 

Nine Attic Studies

As most of you have heard, my practice space these days is set up in the beautifully maintained third-floor attic of an old Oberlin home. The room is long and thin with an east-west orientation, and two large windows at either end allow streams of sunlight to illuminate its interior. I love this room. The acoustics are average, but it's clean, well lit, and spacious enough to give me the sense that I can really let my sound travel. On days when my sound seems stuffy and tense, it helps to gaze out over the treetops and imagine my tone is vibrating the shingles on the house across the street. 

I've also found the attic to be a great place for drawing. One of this house's owners is a visual artist whose pastel creations adorn the walls in almost every room. The attic usually serves as her studio and I've often wondered if the creative vibe she lent the place is still resonating in her absence. The walls slant gently inward--following the line of the roof--and I enjoy the geometry this creates around the small winding stairwell leading back down to the house's second floor. 

Tonight's practice session extended from afternoon, through sunset, and on into the darkness. All the while, shadows and patterns of light danced over the interesting contours of the attic walls. During practice breaks I began snapping photos as the scene evolved...eventually even using various floor lamps and photographic lights to create some shadow play of my own. Finally, as is often my habit these days, I enhanced each shot in iphoto in order to highlight, and in some cases intensify, specific aspects of form, color, and mood. The following series of nine studies is the result. Each image is unique. I did not take one picture and then just change it 9 times. Rather, each variation was inspired by distinctive characteristics present in each individual photograph. Also, nothing has been overlaid or cut-and-pasted together. The shapes and patterns present are simply the result of light and shade playing over the folded surface of plain untextured walls.

   

A creative spurt like this makes me really wish my camera were a bit better quality. As it is, I'm not certain these images would be high-resolution enough to exhibit. Well...maybe if they were fairly small...

In any case, I enjoyed the exercise. Artistic playtime is never a waste.

Half Full...

Three nights ago, Rob and I made pasta and enjoyed the warm Ohio evening picnicking in our big new backyard.  Rob had set his usual glass of bubbly water out on the table and we watched as the sun sent playful reflections and shadows out over its surface.  "That would make a great picture!" I exclaimed as I ran back inside to get my camera.

I had arrived in Oberlin the day before, exhausted after a three day drive from the International Music Camp, but relieved to be with Rob again and excited to begin my life afresh in this beautiful little college town.  During the last leg of my trip I drove north from Columbus and passed through quaint villages and lush rolling fields just as the sun was setting.  Everything was lit with the hale glow of late summer and my insides were churning with a blush of anticipation.  "My new home is gorgeous!" I thought "I can't wait to explore!"

For the next year we'll be living in/caring for the home of another professor who is on sabbatical.  The place is lovely.  With walls covered in artwork and exotic memorabilia adorning each room, it's a space that inspires both comfort and creativity.  We've been asked to be extremely careful with the wooden floors and furniture, so I've had to check my casual living habits a bit and make sure to bring a coaster with me wherever I go, but that's a small sacrifice to pay for the privilege of such nice living arrangements.  

We're still unpacking a bit, so I apologize for the clutter, but here's a view of the dining room...

...the 3rd floor attic studio I've claimed for my own (check out that windowseat with a view!)...

...the spacious front porch...

...and the long wooded backyard, whose boundary stretches beyond the furthest trees pictured here...

Especially when compared to the tiny, and very noisy studio I had in Evanston, this place is paradise!

Now that I'm more or less settled in, I spend my days searching for work and slowly reintroducing my chops to the horn.   I've been told that, when done right, an employment search is basically equivalent in time and energy spent to a full time job.  Though I've already submitted about dozen applications, I have yet to secure an interview, but I suppose this is to be expected and I'm trying not to let the process discourage me.

In between job searches I jog upstairs for mini practice sessions.  At the moment my mouthpiece still feels like a foreign object and I sound a bit like most 7th graders...but again, after a month away from the instrument this is to be expected.  I've never taken so much time off from playing, but I've been told by numerous colleagues that this kind of "reboot", when approached with patience and intelligence, can actually be quite healthy.  If there's anything I do have in abundance these days it's time, so now I'm just relying on my drive and eager work ethic to carry me through the slow process of growth and learning.  I hope to be playing well enough in a couple weeks to feel comfortable performing publicly and, ideally, begin recruiting some private students.

Two nights ago, Rob and I went out for Thai food (which I haven't had in months) in the town of Avon, a few miles northish of Oberlin, and then capped off the evening with a sunset stroll along our new great lake...Lake Erie.  Though it felt odd to be watching the sun set over a large body of water after having spent two years watching it rise over Lake Michigan's eastern profile, the experience was no less satisfying.

It's good to be here.  Opportunities are on the horizon.  It's only a matter of time...

Northern Lights

PLEASE Forget that it's been an eternity since I last posted.

A brief sum-up:

I graduated!!!!! (Miracle of Miracles!)  Here's my diploma.

I am currently working as a Music Librarian at the International Music Camp on the Border of the U.S. and Canada about 14 miles north of Dunsieth North Dakota.

There are 5 wonderful trumpet players on staff here (2 equipment managers, a dean, a concessionist, and a librarian...that's me!), and during the first three weeks, we teamed up with the 2 trumpet faculty members and performed some trumpet ensemble stuff before the annual Old-Fashioned "Ice-Cream Social" concert at the Masonic Auditorium.

Here we are enjoying a sweet reward after the show.  From left to right we are: me, Miles (from Winnipeg), Mark Boren (Professor of high brass at Minot State University), Dr. Tim Farrell (music dept. chair at the Univeristy of South Dakota...and an NU alum!), Anthony (from D.C.), Ryan (from Minneapolis), and Clayton (from Brazil).

Yesterday was my day off and Clayton, Anthony, and I drove down to Minot State for a group lesson with Mark, whose teaching time at IMC has ended for the summer.  We spent a fantastic afternoon learning trumpet together and then treated ourselves to a great dinner at the Alaska Alder Grill.  I really should talk more about our experiences here, but I have about 10 minutes before I have to get back to work, so must be brief.  Suffice it to say Mark is an outstanding teacher and we hope to return for more next week.

We didn't start heading back to IMC till about 11:00, but the sky was still glowing with the last vestiges of the northern sunset.  After about an hour of driving, darkness finally arrived. Even through a bug-spattered windshield I could see we were traveling under pristinely dark skies.  Though it was late and we were all eager to reach our beds at the camp I felt myself longing to pull over and bask under the starry vista.

Almost in passing I began to observe an interesting sky glow to the north.  We were out in the middle of nowhere farmland and I knew there were no substantial cities that would be radiating such luminescence.  I leaned over to Clayton and said, "I might be crazy, but I wonder if those are the northern lights..."  Once I noticed the shine changed shape over time I decided I had to pull over and get a better (and safer) view.  We were virtually alone on the highway--hadn't passed a soul in either direction for some time--and once out in the open air a chorus of insects was the only sound to be heard. Anthony stayed sleeping in the car, but Clayton and I stood at the side of the road and marveled at the spray of stars gleaming above our heads and that strange pale shimmer in its slow dance across the northern horizon.  There was no question now.  Though not quite as brilliant as in photos I'd seen, the waving sheets of light were unmistakably the Aurora Borealis.

After a few minutes of excited observing, we resumed our tired journey back to IMC.  As we left Dunsieth and ascended through the Turtle "Mountains" a pumpkin orange half moon rose in the east and Clayton speculated about whether or not Bigfoot might reside in the surrounding woods.

Lower Partials

Last night I performed Handel's Te Deum with the Elmhurst Symphony and Apollo Chorus on a concert held at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel.

The church itself was beautiful. Not quite as colorful as Salt Lake's Cathedral of the Madeleine, or as gaudy as churches I'd seen in Europe, but ornate and lovely in a classic and understated sort of way. Rather than every square inch of available surface area being covered in murals, carvings, or mosaics, there was still a lot of bare gray stone to make the portions that were decorated stand out exquisitely.

I especially liked the finely gilt ceiling.

I had never heard of the Te Deum before this gig. Actually, Handel wrote two Te Deums. The one we played, subtitled the Dettingen, was commissioned by King George II to commemorate the British defeat of the French at the battle of Dettingen in 1743. Just like you'd expect from a triumphal victory celebration, the music is absolutely loaded with big bold trumpet fanfares, and I was surprised that this music hadn't yet come up in any of my previous trumpet studies.

As 3rd trumpet I spend the piece blaring away on big fat low notes in D Major...often doubling the timpani while the two higher trumpeters sing away on more melodic material. There's a practical reason the music is written this way, and (contrary to what you might think) it's not because Handel thought his 3rd trumpet player was not as talented as the other two. Back in Handel's day valves had not yet been invented and trumpeters were confined to play only notes in the natural harmonic series...

This meant that to get anything even approaching a melody you have to get up into a register where the partials were really close together...i.e...play really high! Handel's 3rd trumpet part is comprised of only 5 lowish notes in D Major, but it provides the harmonic and rhythmic foundation for the more florid doodlings taking place above. While 5 notes over and over might sound boring, it's actually pretty exhilarating...especially when the other two have long notes and I get to boom away with the timpani on awesome little rhythmic fanfares!

I took this shot while the orchestra and chorus were rehearsing the other piece on the program: Mozart's Requiem. Man, this church is HUGE! And amazingly the place was completely packed for the performance.

One unexpected, but pleasant, surprise was that the 2nd trumpet player on the gig was Brian Reichenbach, a guy I'd met during my summer at the Aspen Music Festival WAY BACK in 1999...that's nearly 13 years ago...sheesh!

PPC

One of the classes I'm taking this quarter is Performance Practice and Criticism. The name pretty much says it all. We all draw lots at the beginning of the quarter to determine our two performance times and then each week five members of the class present a piece, up to 10 minutes in length. During the performance the rest of us scribble comments and criticisms that are both turned in later for a grade and also given to the performer at the end of the class period for their reference.

Each week there is a different faculty member that presides over the masterclass and gives spoken feedback to the performer on the spot. We've had a flautist, a bassoonist, a percussionist, a conductor...(the list goes on) and finding ways to constructively criticize players proficient on an instrument other than your own can be a challenge for everyone. As a trumpet player it's tough to come up with useful things to say to a harpist or guitarist. Most of the time I think they just sound good! So the class has provided me great practice in getting my ears tuned in to details of approach and musicality that I might not have otherwise noticed. Conversely, it's always interesting to see what my peers hear in my playing. Advice that I get from the cellists in the class is often quite different from typical criticisms I get from other trumpeters.

Today I completed my second and final class performance and fortunately the video recorder worked this time.

This is Intrada by Otto Ketting...

Though it was certainly not perfect (gosh I wish I could take back the first note!), I feel pretty good about the performance. I think I dealt with the effects of my nerves reasonably well and though it hadn't been the best morning chop wise, I still made most things in the piece basically work. The feedback I got from John Henes--our resident Alexander Technique teacher and former professional trumpeter--was largely positive. He especially liked my entrance and bow--which was great because that's something I worked on with him in Alexander last quarter.

Just to give you an idea of the class, here are some snippets of what a few of my peers wrote to me on their comment sheets...

"Your dynamic contrast is superb. If anything, I'd be curious how soft you could get while keeping the gorgeous dark tone you have in your playing."

--a sax player

"Sometimes when you're holding a longer note to its finish, it's hard to tell if you're using vibrato because it gets a little uneven/airy sounding."

--a horn player

"A few of the grace notes (or quicker notes) sounded too flippant. I missed the effect of the short interruptions in the melody."

--a flute player

"I really love your feel for this piece. Your playing is extremely mature and I really appreciate how comfortable you are taking lots of time in between phrases."

--another flute player

"The way you arrived at the end of the middle section (immediately prior to the recap) sounded perfect for an ending. If you are going to do this, perhaps pausing a moment longer before continuing will create some tasty tension in the audience."

--a trombonist

"Cool ending"

--a euphonium player

"I liked the kind of schizophrenic nature that it had and yet you had such a peace that it all flowed really naturally. But I really liked your sound."

--anonymous

UFF DA

We had a NASTY blizzard last night. Not much snow--maybe a half an inch or so--but the wind!!! UFF DA!!!!!

This morning a departing bank of clouds took center stage above the lake...

It's funny that I still label these occasional morning pictures "daily sunrise." They seem to get more occasional as the days go by. This has been true lately for a couple of reasons. First, as we've had an unusually mild winter this year, the lake hasn't been quite as bizarrely picturesque as it was last year. Without massive ice flows and stretches of sub-zero temperatures that unpredictably change the lake's surface from a frozen tundra to a gigantic mirror within the space of a day or two, I've been a little less inclined to lose sleep in order to make the sunrise.

Second, I've been insanely busy these days finding ways to both hold on to the few pennies I still possess (though I already live so frugally it's difficult to find anything else to cut), and seek out ways to earn more of them. I've been in panic mode because unless I find a regular source of income--even a small one--I'm going to go broke before the end of the school year. In addition to taking part in as many research studies as I possibly can ($6 here and $6 there helps a little) I've submitted countless applications for every entry-level no-brainer job I can think of, still without any luck. The main problem as far as I can tell is that everyone is looking for someone who is outgoing, gregarious, sociable, and "fun", and as I complete the personality-assessment portions of job applications I can't claim to possess those traits and still honestly answer the question that inevitably comes up later on the page, "Do you sometimes lie to make yourself look better?"

About a week ago I heard about a new book just out that looks like it addresses my predicament head on. Quiet by Susan Cain explores the difficulties that natural introverts, like myself, encounter both when applying for jobs and then later as they try to survive within today's typical work environments. Here's an excerpt from an NPR interview about the book that spoke so well to my past and current experiences that it gave me goosebumps:

"We moved from what cultural historians call a culture of character to a culture of personality. During the culture of character, what was important was the good deeds that you performed when nobody was looking...But at the turn of the century, when we moved into this culture of personality, suddenly what was admired was to be magnetic and charismatic."

Here's a link to an excerpt from the book if you are further interested.

Though I haven't read more than the excerpt above, I gather that her argument is not that extroversion is bad and introversion is good, but rather that our current culture is unhealthily imbalanced to favor those who work well in open sociable environments, while those who operate more effectively in calmer spaces and perform well as individuals are shut out or struggle as they are forced to conform to an ideal that grates on their nature. I'm interested in reading more. Hopefully the book will come to my local library soon!

Anyway, though I've been thus far discouraged in my search, I've made it a point to do at least one thing per day that will either get me some cash in the short term or further my prospects for making money in the future. I finally put my name into the NU "gig referral service," I apply for every local part-time job I might qualify for as soon as I hear about it, I have an appointment with the NU career office on Monday to have my resumés evaluated and go through a list of questions I've typed up about how I can set myself up for a measure of success in the days, months, and years to come, I contacted a faculty member from the NU art department who gave me a list of places I can go to see about exhibiting and/or selling some of my art, I'm becoming a research-subject-pro and have signed up to be a "healthy control" for a number of upcoming medical studies--though when or if they'll call me is iffy (and no mom, these do not involve me taking any medication...I would never put my body through that kind of madness), I'VE GOT A JOB TOMORROW making $12 per hour for 7 hours helping out with an audition that's taking place on campus, there's one really great (but temporary) job I hope to apply for that's been getting ALL my extra energy at the moment (more on that later if my application comes together well), and I obsessively check Musical Chairs for any new audition listings from around the globe that are advertised there.

Fortunately I DO have an Easter gig (yay!), I DO have one final loan disbursement that I'll get at the beginning of next quarter (whew!), and I DO have a summer job lined up (I'll be a music librarian at the good ol' IMC again!), so all is not lost...there are a few short-term helps on the way.

So anyway, I hope you can forgive my having disappeared from the radar lately. I'm doing my best.

Two Good Endings

Over the last couple of days two good things have come to a satisfying conclusion.

On Saturday and Sunday the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra performed Mahler's 3rd Symphony. Our Saturday evening concert ranks as one of my top musical experiences in recent memory--right up there with Mahler 2 in Carnegie Hall, the Arutunian Concerto at Aspen, and Peter Cetera in Abravanel Hall (ok, so that last one is a bit of an oddball, but I was playing in a section led by Tony Dilorenzo--one of my trumpet heroes--and the audience cheered so loud that I felt like a rockstar all the way down on 3rd trumpet!).

Anyway, Mahler 3 was a riot! I felt like I played as well as I ever had in rehearsal, our brass section as a whole was rockin', and there were several moments where I was so overcome by the energy and excitement of the piece that I couldn't help but smile from ear to ear right there on stage. It was really a lot of fun.

Second, I finally finished the drawing I'll be submitting to the music school art competition! (My hands are rejoicing!) Just for fun, I took pictures throughout the process (some of which I've already shared with you here) so you could get an idea of how I approached the piece.

So here it is from start to finish...

I'll admit...I'm kinda proud of the final product. No, it is not a self portrait--I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm not nearly as lovely as the female trumpeter I drew--but maybe it's my ideal self in a way...I dunno.

Anyway, whether or not I get picked for the postcard, I'm glad to have been given a reason to indulge my creative side.