Merry Christmas (late) and happy holidays to all of you! As of yesterday, I have two weeks off from teaching, and I'm kinda laying low with my other work for a while. A chance to clean my office and maybe even create some new music.

I had a wonderful christmas with some of my extended family, along with "an embarrassment of riches" in the gift department (including some new CD's, the book "Lyrics by Sting", the complete Flying Circus and the complete 1st season of 30 Rock, both on DVD). I also landed a sweet deal on some expansion packs for my "groove" software (Stylus RMX), which I can't wait to play with, and maybe spark some new tunes for Cathy's and my next project together!

I gotta say, making a living doing what I love is such a blessing. Playing some of the most glorious music ever created for the Church with Cathy and her flute at my side is soooo fun. Christmas Eve at EBF was a little gift for me as she played some of my arrangements and the room filled with the sound of singing, worshipping people and some very excited little kids (including our own).

On Saturday, we played Christmas music for a local assisted living community. 15 or 20 beautiful people sat and listened as I played on a fairly trashed baby grand and Cathy played her flute and our kids just played. You can never have a more appreciative audience than you have in a place like that, where so many of the musical acts come and assume they want cowboy music or something like that. In fact, I think I found myself improvising better that morning than I have in a long, long time.

Yeah, some other gigs can be a drag, but I love this time of year. I hope we all can step back and reflect on how blessed we are here, and reflect on what this season is supposed to be about.

Eternity invading history and inviting us to join it.

Happy New Year!

n

Just an update to let you know that CD Baby now has both Horizon and Impromptu in stock and ready to ship! They take credit cards, checks, and money orders with a few different shipping options.

Also, if you have the time, go on over there and write some reviews for my CD's. Nothing like testimonials from people who have already heard the music!

Thanks!
n

On Friday, I drove up to Portland and picked up a thousand copies of Impromptu! It looks and sounds beautiful, and I can't wait for everyone to hear it. CD Baby is still processing the discs to get them ready for shipment, so online orders aren't possible quite yet. I'll post here as soon as they are. In the meantime, you can e-mail me and we'll work something out to get discs to you.

Thanks!
n

Here I am, launching my first real website! I'm so excited about this, because it means my new CD, Impromptu is almost ready to ship. I haven't released a recording of new music since 1998, with my first CD, Horizon.

Impromptu is quite a departure from the music I usually write, as it's entirely made up of instrumental solo piano pieces. I felt strongly this was a good way for me to re-enter the world of recording, as it forced me to return to the basic elements of music: melody, harmony and rhythm. It can be so easy to hide behind complex arrangements and studio special effects. 88 keys and my ten fingers were all I could use to paint my ideas. I'm very proud of the results, and I think a lot of people are going to like this stuff (if I may say so myself...).

Many of the songs on Impromptu began as, well, impromptu improvisations (I suppose that's redundant, eh?). For the older ones, I had no proper recording equipment nor a recordable piano. So I "recorded" them using a MIDI sequencer (MOTU's Digital Performer) on my Mac and an old Alesis QS7 synthesizer, saving them for possible future use. Over the years I ended up with quite a collection of sketches and improvisations waiting for completion.

When I began to plan this project, I found that I really liked the vibe that these original recordings had, and I wanted to keep that. Using a newer digital piano (a Yamaha S90ES synthesizer), I revisited these songs and "tweaked" them to get them ready for prime-time. This mostly involved shortening them by cutting out overly repetitive material, the result of my improvising and trying different avenues of melodies and rhythms on the fly. (One of these improvisations, Dawn, remains exactly as I played it the first time, including a couple funky notes that probably only bug me...)

Other pieces on Impromptu were written especially for the recording. These include Water of Life, First Steps, Looking Back and others. Again, what a joy to sit and write for my own enjoyment once more! This project has been a catharsis for me, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity and the freedom to finally do this again!

When I got ready to finally present these pieces to Michael McDonald for mastering, I had to admit they still sounded too much like a digital piano pretending to be a real piano. So I imported everything into Michael's PC using Tascam's GigaSampler and played all the sequences (except Dawn) through a "virtual" Bösendorfer Imperial Grand. The results were stunning! Yeah, I'd sure rather be playing a the real Bösendorfer, but the nature of how this project came about made this an ideal approach to getting these songs out to the public.

In future posts, I'll tell more about the individual songs, as well as what's happening with new projects (including an upcoming release of instrumental pieces featuring my wife, Cathy on flute and myself on everything else...

Thanks for visiting, and pick up a copy of Impromptu. You won't regret it!

Yours,
n