Dúo Flamenco in Pistol River, OR

Dúo Flamenco performed in concert for the Pistol River Concert Association on January 10. What an amazing audience we had - thanks to all who came out and so enthusiastically appreciated our music. Also, special thanks to Les and Mary Stansell - our hosts for the weekend. Les is Grant's luthier and he makes one beautiful guitar! Here we are backstage before the concert.
Here's Mr. Cool Les:
The next day we gave a workshop - Grant taught palmas, compas, guitar and led the workshop. I taught cajón and Dawn taught dance. It was great fun - thanks to the eager participants!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone - I hope yours is off to as great a start as mine. I started the new year fly-fishing the Rogue River on New Year's Day. What a perfect way to start the year. Well, not quite perfect as I didn't catch any steelhead, but I still had a fun day!

On Jan. 2 I headed up to Mount Ashland for a great day of snowboarding with my family. Here we all are getting ready to head down the mountain.
Over the holiday break our Music Recital Hall at Southern Oregon University has been getting a major facelift. This is the final step to a major renovation project I have been working on with an anonymous donor for the last year or so. We put in a new stage floor last summer, and over this holiday break we installed all new seating and carpet. Our old seats were 30+ years old and terribly squeaky. The new chairs, floor, and carpet are beautiful!

Here's a pic of the new seats. This is taken before the carpet went in.


Our first concert is this Saturday, January 10th - Quartetto Gelato presenting by Chamber Music Concerts at SOU. I'm so sorry I'll miss this wonderful performance but...

Saturday and Sunday I'll be performing with Dúo Flamenco (Grant Ruiz and myself) at the Pistol River Concert Association series in Pistol River, OR. We'll perform on Saturday night and give a workshop on Sunday. I hope to get in some steelhead fishing on while there on Pistol River! Here's link to the concert association.

Sonoluminescence

Here's some pics from our recent Sonoluminescence series in Ashland at the Black Swan Theatre. We hope to have some video up on the sono web site soon - check back!

Percussion Ensemble Concert

Tuesday, Dec. 2 we presented "Incantations. The highlight of the evening was the performance of André Jolivet's "Suite en Concert" for flute and percussion featuring flutist Tessa Brinckman with the ensemble. Tessa played beautifully and the ensemble sounded great. Here are some pictures of some of the highlights:

Fly Fishing the Klamath

Saturday after Thanksgiving I fished the Klamath River in Northern California for the first time with Maddy and David.

David is my father-in-law to whom I owe the immeasurable thanks for introducing me to fly fishing. It has become an addiction. The river was beautiful and I caught my first steelhead on my new spey rod. OK, it was a little half-pounder, but at least the skunk is off the rod!




Maddy scouted out a nice little hole and caught several smolts on dry flies. We saw some beautiful stretches of this river and I can't wait to go back!

Party for the Parkway

On November 15, I performed with Matt Darling, Associate Professor of Music and Director of Percussion Studies at California State University Fresno, for a benefit party for the San Joaquin River Parkway Trust in Fresno, CA.

The party was at the beautiful home of the Hallowells in the foothills outside Fresno. The sold-out party was great fun with wonderful food and a great crowd. It was fun to see some old friends and to perform with Matt. We played one time many years ago in the Sacramento Philharmonic together, but this was the first time we really played "together".

We performed Nagoya Marimbas by Steve Reich, Duet for Vibraphone and Marimba by Daniel Levitan, Just a Bunch of Notes... by Stephen Whittington, and Saint Agnes and the Burning Train by Sting. We also each performed two solos.

Thanks to the James and Coke Hallowell, David and Linda Grubbs, and to all the enthusiastic people at the concert and party. It was great fun!

CSU Fresno Clinic/Master Class

Thanks to Dr. Matt Darling for inviting me to give a clinic/master class at CSU Fresno last week. His students performed John Cage's "Third Construction" for me and rocked it! It was a great performance - congratulations to Mike, Mike, Sarah, and Gary - and to Matt - great performance guys!

I enjoyed sharing my music with you all and thanks to Matt and everyone for welcoming me.

Thanks to CSU, Fresno, Remo, Vic Firth, and Yamaha for sponsoring the clinic!

And thanks to Matias for layin' down some tangos and bulerias with me!