Seen a Lot, Done a Lot

I  sometimes feel about like this piano looks--a bit beat-up and somewhaworse for wear. But I wonder if that's really a bad thing.

This big old Mason-Hamlin is in the Youth building at my church in Atlanta, and it's interesting to speculate on its life. Who knows how many times it has uplifted, encouraged, or just been central to a great evening of singing around the piano?

Probably people have fallen in love around this piano. Maybe it's soothed some bad times, and maybe it has inspired. I know that it has been a practice piano for talented kids with no piano at home. It has been well used, and it looks the part.

It would be nice if it were shiny and perfectly kept up. But it's better to be needed, loved, and a real part of a real community. At least that's what I think.

A New Glimpse of the Familiar

Walking through my living room, I caught a glimpse of the late-afternoon light on the curve of our piano, and it really stopped me. I've passed the back of this piano a thousand times, maybe ten thousand, but never saw the light reflect like this before. (Or maybe I saw it but didn't notice . . . .)

I was reminded that this is exactly what I want in my playing. A new view, a sudden freshness, a new vision of the familiar.

If I could only figure out how to make that happen, to get fresh musical ideas on command. But I've never even come close to that secret. When it happens, it happens and the cliche, the old, becomes fresh and new. And that's always a welcome moment!

Not Music, But a Recent, Big Project

I guess it's true that 'once an English teacher, always an English teacher.' I can't seem to get away from my love of writing. Years ago, I wrote four books for Writers Digest Press about the music business, but that was long ago and far away. A good experience, but I won't do that again.

But I have been working recently with my wife, the recently retired college professor, on revising a book we did together a few years ago, and now it's finished. Or, at least the Kindle edition is finished, and a print version will be out soon.

For years, Sandra had what I always thought was the best job at Georgia State University. She was Director of the Learning Assistance Center, and got to work with thousands of students to help them directly improve their college performance. Often the results were nearly immediate and their gratitude was real, because she had helped them transform their lives.

So now, her systematic approach to college learning is revised, updated, and ready for the Kindle. If you know someone going to college, or (perhaps more importantly) returning to school after an absence, this book could be a gold mine.

Visit our site for lots of 'going to college' info, or check out the Kindle version at Amazon.

A Big, Old Steinway is a Wonderful Thing!

Big Steinway Video
A few months ago, I spent some time at the big old, wonderful Steinway  that's a fixture of Glenn Memorial Auditorium on the Emory University campus here in Atlanta.. My good friend, Fitz, did his usual video wonders and here is his compilation of some of the random things that happened.

Several of the songs are truly oldies because I needed some public-domain tunes for videos---thus there is some older material here. But I think the oldies, like My Wild Irish Rose, for example,  have become classics for a very good reason--they're just great songs.
 
I hope you agree.

The Breakthrough Moment is Pretty Close to the Goof . . .

Sometimes a photo is really worth quite a few words.








 This one is the reaction you DO want.

And here's the one you DON'T want!






Searching for the AHA! moment. Trouble is, the HA moment is pretty close to it. .

Well, Everybody Should Have a Hobby, I Guess . . .

Maybe you read, on the front page of The New York Times, the incredible tale of the mysterious grand piano found on a sandbar in the Miami harbor. It was burned to a crisp. No one knew where it came from, and most sandbars don't have pianos on them, even in Miami.

It turns out that, apparently, burning grand pianos is something of a family project.

If you didn't happen to see the story, here it is.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but . . . burning a piano, even for a music video, seems an odd thing to do.

I have a lot of photos of pianos, but nothing to illustrate this post. The picture in the Times says it all.

Office Christmas Parties . . . RIP?

So, 'tis the season, but there don't seem to be many traditional office Christmas parties this year. Probably the economy, and that makes sense to me.

In years past I'd play--usually with bands--for fifteen or twenty big, huge, extravagant company Christmas parties. We learned to dread them because they could be so brutally bad. Seems odd, though, doesn't it? But not if you think about it for a minute.

First, there is almost always an open bar, which invites overindulgence. And once people have one drink too many, it's easy for jealousies, resentment, suspicion and just plain stupid behavior to take over. If you've been to many of these parties, you know exactly what I mean. It doesn't have to involve a lampshade on the head--it can be a husband dancing once too often with his secretary, or a VP making snide remarks on the microphone about the boss, or . . .

The worst of the worst company events I ever played, in the sense of just a depressing evening, was  years ago, when a big Atlanta architectural firm that had its blowout Christmas party on the first Friday night in December. That afternoon, they had laid off about a third of their workforce, and the rumor was that more pink slips would be issued on Monday.

It was the darkest mood I've ever witnessed in a party setting, for sure. The managing partner in charge of the party kept harassing the band to get people on the dance floor, to "get the party going." Talk about divorced from reality. Those people wouldn't have danced with guns to their heads.

So, I'll not be missing those blasts from the pasts. Maybe younger musicians are happily playing those events, or . . . maybe they have deservedly gone away for good.

And f the recession killed them, then there is a silver lining!