Skip to main content

Where Did the Month Go?

Juggling Work, Family, and Volleyball

Work has been nonstop, and I’ve been coaching volleyball on the side. Most importantly, I’ve been prioritizing time with my 15-year-old daughter—helping with her studies, shuttling her to school and volleyball practice, and taking evening drives where she belts out Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams. These moments are precious. She’ll be driving herself soon and won’t always want to hang out with her mom, so I’m soaking it all up.

Do I miss playing piano? Absolutely. Would I change my priorities? Not a chance.

Gearing Up for a Performance

Next week, I’m scheduled to play at a local assisted living facility—less than a week away! I need to carve out serious practice time to prepare. Here’s what I plan to have ready:

  • The Entertainer  
  • Maple Leaf Rag  
  • Solace  
  • Pineapple Rag  
  • Bare Necessities Rag  
  • America the Beautiful Rag  
  • You Are My Sunshine Rag  
  • Amazing Grace (gospel with a bluesy solo)  
  • Liebestraume  
  • Rondo alla Turca  
  • Misty  
  • What a Wonderful World  
  • Music Box Dancer
  • The Lovers' Waltz (Unger/Malone)

My "setlist" is just shy of an hour. I could add some hymns, but I’m rusty on those. I’d hoped to have more polished by now, but life got in the way. Time to buckle down.

A Weekend of Inspiration

Tomorrow I’m heading to the Blind Willie McTell Music Festival to see Chuck Leavell perform live. I’m thrilled, but it means missing most of Saturday’s practice time. I’ll squeeze in a couple of hours in the morning and maybe some in the evening if I’m energized. I’m counting on the “inspiration effect”—where watching a talented pianist sparks something in my brain and vastly improves my playing. Let's hope it works!

A Small Bragging Moment

I don’t have a performance video to share (sadly), but I do have a photo from my company’s digital billboard. 

I was August’s Employee of the Month—pretty exciting!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to  IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ode to Joy Day 3: Patterns, Shapes, and Short Breaks

As I work through Rebecca Bogart's Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge , I'll be posting more extended updates here on my blog. Days 1–3 Day 1 was analysis, listening, and generally scoping out the territory of the music . The road trip to Florida last week turned out to be Day 1, even if I didn't label it that way at the time. Day 2 was fingering and the start of my first "batch": measures 0-7 (intro), 8-15 (Section A), and 16-23 (Section A'). Day 3 (today) was about recognizing patterns and continuing work on Batch 1. Batch 1: Intro, A, A' The intro isn't difficult, and it will likely be one of the two easiest sections in this piece. Still, the syncopation is a little tricky, so I took some extra time with it. I've already memorized it, as the chord progression is pretty straightforward and the melody is just a single line (no harmony notes). There is one big augmented chord at the end that required some focused work. Sections A and A' ar...
Post a Comment
Read more