Music at Starbucks

After a long break, I'll be playing at Starbucks on February 19 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. The address is 110 West Lincoln Avenue, Anaheim, CA. Hope to see you there!

Godspell

Don't miss this one-of-a-kind performance
of the classic musical
featuring...
music and dancing
video projection and pantomime
humor and heart.

One night only:
April 2nd, 2010 (Good Friday) at 7:00 pm
Admission is free!

I'm directing...Come see it!

Hepta Meme

I was recently tagged by my friend, composer Paul Bailey, in his blog. I've spent several years performing new music with Paul - mostly his and a little of mine. Recently we've done more talking than playing, but all things come around. I'm always at my best when I'm involved in new music so another concert can't be too far off. Anyhow, the rules for the meme are:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. If you don’t have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

Here we go...

1) I have nine rabbits and three dogs. They are the joy of my life. I owned a potbelly pig who died last year at 16. I miss him.

2) I absolutely love “recreational mathematics.” Martin Gardner is pretty much my favorite author. My night stand is packed with books – science, literature, religion, music – but it's the math books I read and reread and re-reread. Prime number theory, tessellations, fractals, irrational numbers...I can't get enough. One of my most dog-eared books is the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, which is hard to get now that it's online. This hobby doesn't really overlap much with my music or professional life. I'm not typically interested in the composers who have approached music in a highly mathematical way; it's the emotional and aesthetic aspect of music that make it interesting to me in the first place. I would love to find a full color poster of “squaring the square.”

3) I met my wife accompanying High School show choir. Yes, show choir. Her first words to me, when I walked into the choir room, were “Who the hell are you?”

4) My dad is a Christian pastor. When I was a teen, we planted a church in Diamond Bar, where I was eventually in charge of music. Most of the people in our church had not attended anywhere else and thus had no preconceptions of what church music should look like. This gave me several years to try out new ideas and find my own voice.

5) Early in our marriage, my wife and I tried to adopt a seven-year-old girl. Falling in love with her and then losing her to another family had a profound effect on me, and I wrote several songs and pieces of art music to deal with the loss. We found her a couple of years ago on myspace. She has no idea that she is such an important part of my life. I still pray for her. I now have two great kids of my own.

6) I make awesome snowflakes. If you don't believe me, go get me a piece of paper and some scissors.

7) I have simple, rather juvenile tastes in food. Carl's Jr. is just fine for dinner, and nothing could make me happier than stopping by 7-11 for Chocodiles and milk for dessert.

And now my victims. Pass it on if you're so inclined.
1) Carrie
2) Kara
3) Laurie
4) Jim
5) Jill (I'm finally blogging and you've stopped!)
6) Steffan
7) Bud or Beca – at least one of them should have a blog! (If not both)

Unusual to do something like this. I never forward emails or even add facebook apps. Guess this one seemed fun.

Bunny Kingdom

Wanted to share this picture of the whole bunny family. It's not that often you can see them all together, but it helps if they're really hungry. (I guess that's what happens when we run out of food for a day.) Clockwise from 12:00 they are: Wilber, Chicken Little, Max, Buster (a dwarf), Herbie (dark brown), Columbus, Sammy (light brown & white), Patch, and Mini-Patch. Like you really wanted to know that...

Herbie and Patch are the parents of Wilber, Chicken Little, Columbus, and Mini-Patch. Sammy and Max are the outcasts, and Buster is like the retarded uncle. Herbie's a girl, by the way. We didn't know that until she had babies. Columbus was the bravest of the babies, venturing out into the unknown, and Chicken Little was always running away. Mini-Patch looked like his dad Patch, and we thought Wilbur was the runt, like the famous story-book pig. Max is the most friendly, pure white and sweet and very gentle. Patch bites and Sammy has no brain. I guess we'll cover the dogs later...

I couldn't say it any better

This is why I've been buying from amazon.com whenever possible.

From xkcd.com, reprinted under Creative Commons License

Cat's in the Cradle

The interesting role of the involved parent- The kids had a Halloween Dance Friday night, and somehow I ended up being the DJ. (Am I a DJ? No, well, not until Friday night I wasn't.)

Back when they were in preschool and kindergarten, I gave little weekly music lessons to their classes. It was sort of early music appreciation (insert surly looking picture of Beethoven) plus Gymboree (Head, shoulders, knees and toes...) Most of the time, I absolutely loved it. In all my life's musical performances (and there have been many), playing for 3-year olds was definitely the time I felt most like a rock star. Every time I went, there was this little chorus of voices shouting "Mr. H! Mr. H!" as soon as I got out of my car. The coolest thing was being recognized by some kid in a grocery cart at Stater Brothers, although Mom & Dad were never too sure who I was.

But for my kids, those days are pretty much over. Hence the DJ gig- I heard they needed somebody for the dance, and hey, I've got a sound system, so why not? It went great, everybody was happy, I learned a lot of new Jonas Brothers tunes. I even heard that one of Alyssa's friends asked her, is it true your dad's the DJ? And Alyssa was really proud to say yes. Good dad, day #1.

Then on Saturday, I was a judge for the music performance category of our church district's annual talent fair. I got there at the crack of dawn to make sure everything was set up. I ended up doing both the judging and working tech. Oh, and accompanying the choir. I cheered for my kids when they got their ribbons and I told them how proud I was on the way home. Good dad, day #2.

Sunday morning, we had an "Encounter" service at my church, which requires extra time & effort on my part. I played for a reprise of the kids' choir number (from the talent fair.) When I asked the kids what their favorite part of the day was, they didn't even remember the service. What they loved was getting to help me after church by crawling through the attic to help re-attach a cable. It was like they had just lived through Goonies. Good dad, day #3.

And all I can think about is that when we were cleaning Jacob’s room last week we found his baseball glove, which is almost too small for his hands now, and that I’ve never played catch with him. Yeah, I know I’m not an athlete, and we do all kinds of other fun things, but catch is sort of standard, right? I did play catch with Alyssa once. Yeah, once.

I look at the pictures of the dance, and Alyssa’s adorable. We even have a video of her doing the Macarena in her little Flapper-girl costume. Jacob tries to get in on the act, and he just ends up doing some karate kicks. But in those pix, I’m not with them! I’m behind the sound system. After the super-dad weekend was over, you know what Alyssa told Laurie? She said that she missed me. Just something I need to think about.