New Event!

Hello all,

A new event has been added to the calendar! I will have the privilege of performing John Corigliano's Three Irish Folk Song Settings with my friend and colleague, Aurelia Ward-Lockhart, on Thursday, April 18, 2013 in the Jomie Jazz Forum at Marshall University.

I've wanted to perform this piece for awhile now, so I'm very excited that we have this opportunity! I absolutely love Corigliano's work.

Hope to see you there!

In Memoriam

This is a very sad day for Marshall University's School of Music and Theatre. We've lost a great staff member and a loving, caring person. Mrs. Beverly McKinney went home to be with the Lord on Saturday, January 5, 2013. She fought a long and courageous battle with inoperable brain cancer.

Beverly was always able and willing to help the students and the faculty in any way she could. When I transferred to Marshall in 2010, she was so helpful with organizing the paper work and with helping me to get acquainted with Marshall's faculty and ways.

Beverly's obituary can be viewed here, along with condolences to her family and friends. She will be greatly missed.

Yay!

I made it past the preliminary round for the Wind Symphony Concerto Competition! The final round will be on January 27, 2013.

Proof of Progress

In setting up this site, I went through several of my old recordings, trying to decide which ones to upload and post. I was able to listen to my progress from my junior year of high school to today, and I was amazed by how different I sounded even a year ago. And that first recording from my junior year didn't sound like me at all.

There was a time when I got very discouraged with practicing, and almost gave up on music altogether. I was pushing myself to practice for six hours every day, and I wasn't learning a single thing. Nothing seemed to change. I wondered if I was unintelligent or untalented, and if I should just give up.

After two and a half years of being away from that situation, I can listen to these recordings and realize how much I've grown in technical ability and musical philosophy. Although it still needs (and will always need) improvement, I have a much more refined sensitivity to musicality. The very ideal of what I want my overall sound to be has changed.

We use recordings for different things: practice reference, archiving for posterity, and commercial interests, to name a few. But they can also be a great source of encouragement, and proof of progress. If you feel like you've hit a plateau, listen to how you sounded a year, two years, even seven years ago, and hear what a difference there is between each one. I guarantee you'll be surprised, as I was.

~

Testing.

This post is for test purposes only. Please ignore.