What a Beautiful Mess I'm In

Well the biggest thing that has happened in my life recently is meeting Christie. We met online, which I was very skeptical of. I don't normally do these things but since I was new to the area, I thought I might meet someone to show me around.

Well I forgot about it until I graduated and thought I might check it out again. She responded within a week of me resetting my profile up. We traded e-mails and finally met up for coffee. She was really pretty and I think we carried on a good conversation getting to know each other.

We planned a second meeting and our first date for a Tuesday we walked around DC and ate in Chinatown and got more comfortable with each other.

We continued hanging out meeting up until finally we cooked dinner last Thursday and she gave me a card that she had written to me telling me she liked me and it was so sweet. We have spent so much time together lately and I really like this girl a lot! She's a special girl.




She's my beautiful mess!

"In the Mood"

Well, here's the biggest bit of news that has happened to me lately:

I auditioned for the second alto chair of the Glenn Miller Orchestra back in May. I have been taking auditions since I got to Maryland for military jobs and non-military jobs and nothing had panned out, so I just went for it.

Met up with them in Hagerstown, MD and auditioned during the sound check. It was pretty scary, b/c they basically just had me sit in with the band and even though I tried to look at every chart I could get my hands on the charts I read were ones I had never seen.

I did ok at the audition. The concert was great. They played great together. Told me that they would be in touch, but I felt pretty good about the audition. Organizer said they were impressed with my doubling skills.

Well Ed Walters called m for a gig at the Kennedy Center and the guy I sat next to was Walt Borys. Great player and gentleman. I had told him about this audition and he said he knew the leader Larry O'Brien really well. So he said he would call him and put in a personal recommendation for me.

Well after about a month and a half of waiting for them to get everything straightened out. Bart, the road manager, calls me during Big River when I checked my message he said that I had the 2nd alto chair when the current guy left!! I am so excited to have this opportunity. Can't believe I will be traveling across the country,Canada, and going to Japan to play my horn, then getting to play with such a great group, then getting paid really well to do so!!!

Gonna be fun!

Big River

Well, I got called to play "Big River" at Olney the whole month of July. It was great. Major props to Katie for recommending me. I owe her so much!

I got to work with a great pit. Aaron Broderick is a cool guy and talented pianist and director and was a blast. Pat Klink on guitar, bass, and drums was amazing, great guy and very versatile musician, I mean come on who can do that plus be an opera singer! Pretty cool

Annelisa on violin/fiddle, played the crap out of the book every night, and she's a classically trained violist! way Cool!~

The cast was amazing, great acting and singing, plus everyone was real cool and we hung out with them a lot. It was really cool.

I really enjoyed this show so much! Definitely was a great time!

Whew

Well it's been a long time since I have written in here. So much has happened.

I did actually graduate and soloed at the Comcast center in front of 20,000 people. That was wild.

Above are pictures from the DVD of me performing "Carnival of Venice" on 5 woodwind instruments. Very scary but very fun!

In the end I am glad that I went to UMD, have met so many great and talented people, and I got what I needed out of the program, which was how to make music and still make a living do it. It's fine an great to be devoted to a vision in your artform, but if you're homeless and starving, it's kind of hard to make that vision go anywhere.

I will make a seperate posting for each thing that has happened this summer.