Wonderful Trip back from Scrippsies Reunion and Wedding

Just got back from a trip out to Los Angeles to see our good friend Serena get married and to have our annual Scrippsies reunion. Most everyone was there and we had a blast hanging for a few days.

Also got a chance to see my old Long Beach pals Jessica and Shura but unfortunately traffic prevented me from visiting Cal State and Carolyn Bremer.

All and all, a nice weekend and a nice relief from the sweltering Texas weather. I was cold all three evenings!

Yet another Personal Best

And I finally broke 90! Woo-hoo!!! (84 to be precise)

Europe, it goes without saying, was fantastic

There's too much to mention from our 8 day trip to Europe, but it was awesome.

Visiting Paris for the first time and England for a second, we crammed as much as we could, seeing the Louvre (highlight!), Musee d'Orsay, the Pompodieu, Eiffel Tower, Cathedral de Notre Dame, Big Ben, Canterbury Cathedral, the Tower of London, etc. etc. etc.

The people were absolutely wonderful. (The French, I think, especially in the United States, get a bad rap.) I was also wonderfully amazed by the public transportation in both Paris and London. SOOOOO efficient and convenient.

And this was my favorite picture from our trip, courtesy of the Louvre:




And my illegal video from the Musee d'Orsay:

Trip Home and Ft. Worth

Had a great time (really!) driving from California to Texas. I hadn't driven that trek yet, but my brother was moving to Ft. Worth and my parents were so kind as to give me their old civic so that Jac and I could have a second car.

I originally thought we were going to leave on a Saturday, but it made sense to leave on Sunday instead (July 31).

The first leg of the trip had us driving down to Claremont, CA for the night. We ended up leaving (of course) about 2 or 3 hours later than we had anticipated, since we needed to make a trip out to Genentech to get something (it was only a little out of the way, but we already had left later than planned and this put us out another 30 minutes or so)

SYS-CMW 2011 Week II

Another wonderful week of music making came to an end on Sunday. We had another great group of kids as part of the Sacramento Youth Symphony Chamber Music Workshop (week II), in its 22nd season!. What was especially nice with the group of assistant coaches this year was the addition of the Tatman twins, two of my favorite players from the workshop from the last several years.

The repertoire this year consisted of selected movements from Grieg's Holberg Suite, the always fun Hoedown from Copland's Rodeo, and a new piece commissioned by the workshop to continue our own composer-in-residence series by my good friend Zack Wilson, Swallow Falls. I was also happy and very honored to have been commissioned to write a piece for the very capable assistant coach sextet (who in previous years performed Brahms' first sextet, among other pieces).

The students and coaches worked as hard as always and us coaches had nice time inaugurating an annual mid-week happy hour!

Pics to come.

Best 9 yet!

Shot a personal best 43 on the back 9 at Wildhorse to improve to my second personal best of 93 (had sort of a crap front 9).

Funny that at Wildhorse one of my worse scores happened the first time I played it (December 2010: 122) and my two best scores ever have happened in back to back weeks (July 19 and 26 2011, 92 and 93).

Yay for improvement on something that ultimately has no real bearing on my professional life (sigh)...

Back from Camp

Worked at week at Sierra Mountain Music Camp up in Nevada City, California. Haven't been there since 2003, when I was counselor. Came back this year as a staff member. All and all, had a nice time. Can't complain: got paid to hang out in the mountains for a week playing music with some wonderful kids, some of whom remembered me from when I was a camper.