February 2009

Cameron and I spent a week in Costa Rica, which was awesome. We were at a resort in a little out-of-the-way beach town called Montezuma. We lounged in hammocks hung between palm trees looking at the ocean. Monkeys played in the trees. It was ideal.

Work-wise, I had occasion to learn the basics of SQL because I got an interesting job from the Future of Music Coalition. The project was a preliminary study of the state of jazz radio in the US. We put together a database of playlist data and crunched some numbers. The findings will be released soon.

I started taking guitar lessons. It's been a long time since I had any formal instruction, and it's about time! Now I'm playing scales for 30 minutes every day. Fun. Too bad I didn't take care of this a long time ago.

I've been playing in an instrumental rock band for a little over a year. Progress has been steady, but slow. Now we have a name and a gig! The debut performance of Reversal (I'm not crazy about the name, but let's not get into that) is coming up on April 2nd at Solly's Tavern on U Street. Mark your calendar now. We will rock.

DCIC has been active. We had a fun show in Silver Spring a few weeks ago, at Kefa Cafe. Very small venue, but a nice turnout - and we were well received which was nice. I feel like we are often met with indifference, but that night there was an audience of interested listeners, which felt great. We're performing again soon - Monday, March 23 at Galaxy Hut in Arlington. We're opening for Altamira from Philadelphia.

The Low End String Quartet was awarded a "small projects" grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, for the purpose of developing a program that we can take to elementary schools. Now I just have to raise the rest of the money we need to do that project...

The Maryland State Arts Council "Individual Arts Awards" have been awarded, and I didn't get one. Again. Rejected for eight years straight. Awesome.