News January 6, 2009

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Big Happy New Year to all;
Let’s hope that this one is better than the last one! There were bright moments last year, but they were beautiful sparks in a sea of uncertainty and misfortune.
Wonderful gestures by good friends close and distant made the year more bearable.
a heartfelt thank-you to all you wonderful people and deepest apologies to those folks who know who they are.

Still great that we’ll have a new prez. Dancing in the streets, don’t slip on the ice!

Just like everybody else, I’ll be having a sale on selected CDs from the catalog:
Anger/Marshall Band, Republic Of Strings, Diary Of A Fiddler CDs will go to $10 for the month of January. And for those winter evenings, don’t forget the Heritage recording… not on sale, but a bargain for the amount of music in there.

Wristathon 2008 conclusion:

Cast came off on November 18th! the arm is still there!

hurts a little, but it’s so great to have that thing off.
Played with the Anonymous 4 in Reading, PA and Notre Dame… and at an E-Town show in Portland on the 24, with Nick and Helen Forster, the incredible Darrell Scott, and Sarah McLaughlin…good singer. I hung in there! Didn’t play anything that hard, but I made music. December featured long trips away from home, bad weather on both coasts, an amazing show with the Most Wonderful String Quartet Ever with the Yonder Mountain Dudes in a pre-NYE show in Denver with Yonder Mt. and holiday shows in both Portlands.

Recently finished a recording project for the amazing young band The Bee Eaters. Also did some really fun string arrangements for the terrific Canadian vocalist Marc-Andre Fortin, adapting disco and country rock tunes to String Qt… it’s my thing, Rosie.

As time rolls on, the list of thank-yous grows… what a year! Special thank yous to Jon Cooper, Ron & Wendy Cody, the Yonder Bowling League, Peter Milliken and 317 Main St, Harald Azmann, Kalev Freeman, the Hargreaves family, Jon Levene, Robert Kogut (I play his fiddles — he’s also a physical therapist!) some amazing people at www.explorethejourney.org, Richard Zirinsky, and Amber & Paul Vachon for help beyond all expectation.

I did get to do another terrific teaching residency in Boston, for the high school, middle school, and 6th grade orchestras in Belmont there. The kids were amazing and played my orchestra charts incredibly well, and we had a nice Republic Of Strings set folded into that concert too. Some of the ROS members came with me earlier in the week to help me demonstrate some of the techniques used in the music, and I wound up conducting the orchestras; a brand new experience for me! Slightly harrowing, because I don’t really know how to con