July? What July?

Now I understand how bloggers come to feel the need to apologize for long time gaps between posts. I suppose I have an unusually quiet life that normally exists outside some 'real world' of constant busyness that I have no comprehension of. I know that I am very lucky that I am able to work out of my home and pretty much choose my own hours -- though this has been a conscious choice that does include a certain amount of (mostly voluntary) financial sacrifice. For these and many other reasons, I am fortunate to have long quiet mornings most days of the week, and at least in summertime, time to throw dirt around and hang out with the flower fairies to my heart's content.

By any measure, though, this month has pretty much vanished from the standpoint of my doing anything but music, music and more music. From the standpoint of the piano monster concert as a soil-less garden, July was a banner month. The concert was amazingly fun, exciting, and successful for all concerned: students, teachers, parents and most wonderfully of all, our unexpectedly huge audience. We actually filled the small hall (400 seats) with a warm, enthusiastic audience composed of not just family and friends of the players (47 kids in all, plus 14 teachers/adult performers) but seemingly random community members of all kinds. I have heard from parents of long-ago piano students, community choir members, a couple of bank workers, bicyclists, next-door neighbors of adult piano students, even my acupuncturist and many other surprising folks who somehow got the word and thought hearing 8 grand pianos played at once by a bunch of kids sounded like a good time out on a midsummer Wednesday evening.



That's me, on the front left, leading the charge in a piano quartet (2 pianos, 4 players) X 3 arrangement of 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' with all my best piano playing buddies. It was SO fun I could hardly stand it. And just so you can see that I do actually play the piano, here's another shot of me, filling in on one of the student pieces........



This soil-less garden was conceived over a period of about 4 years, but the actual planning, 'layout', 'seeding', 'cultivating' and ongoing maintenance took place over the last year. I'm giving myself a few weeks off, and then we start planning for 2010. Yippeee!