This summer (June 9 - 11, 2010), I and Suzuki violin teacher Laura Tagawa are starting a Suzuki Piano & Violin Camp (or, as we call it, Academy) in Prescott, Arizona. Currently, the nearest Suzuki camps are in Colorado, New Mexico, and California. With strong Suzuki contingents in Flagstaff and Tucson, one wonders why Arizona doesn’t have a camp.

We are not yet Suzuki Association of the Americas endorsed - that is a lengthy process that must start almost a year before the camp. Next year, we’ll expand the camp a bit and apply for SAA endorsement.

Visit our informational page and download our brochure and print out our registration forms for more info. Read More...

In this post, I talked about my method for using a SMS number to receive text messages that then were automatically forwarded to a wordpress blog. Rather than have the text messages go directly to the blog, I wrote some scripts on my mail server to process the 3Jam messages and prettify them.

Here is what I did. Read More...

(This is a repost from my Prescott High School Wind Ensemble residency blog)

When I compose, I sometimes like to bounce ideas off of my wife, Maria. It has its risks, though. An idea that I have in my head may provoke a completely different reaction from her than what I envision. But one of the nice things about being married for almost 20 years is that I no longer need to tell her if I disagree with her. She can read that look in my face … the one that (unintentionally) says, “OK, I hear what you’re saying, but I disagree, and this conversation is no longer helping me.” And she politely backs off from her point and lets me take what ideas I did like from her.

I find it well worth bouncing ideas off of her, because sometimes, as a composer, I need a fresh perspective to throw in some new directions.

So, today I took a risk, and I learned what it was like to get fresh perspective from a high school band. Read More...