This coming Wednesday, September 10, I’m playing at the UNT Syndicate with the 3 O’Clock Lab Band. We’re playing some pretty nuts charts, including an arrangement of Elvin Jones’s “Three Card Molly” and a less often heard arrangement of “Frame For the Blues.”

Roommate Betsy told me that I may have some more gigs at Hector’s starting next week. I’ve yet to get confirmation on this, but it looks promising.

I’m in Minnesota for a short while, then it’s back to Texas in order to gear up for fall auditions and the school year. Also, I anticipate to be recording some original pop/rock tunes when I get home.

Last Thursday, I subbed for my roommate Betsy playing solo piano at Hector’s on Henderson, a fancy restaurant in Dallas. She usually plays and sings, but I just played piano. I did a mix of standards and well known pop tunes. I got a few requests for Elton John and Billy Joel, which is fine, because I knew both the tunes (”Tiny Dancer” and “New York State of Mind.”)

This coming year, I’m going to try to focus in on practicing for these kinds of gigs, as they are pretty good. Solo piano offers you a lot of freedom to do what you want. It’s a little lonely playing without other folks, but the independence allows me to take such gigs on short notice, without having to organize a group of people. Also, it’s easier to get weekday gigs on solo piano rather than a larger group.

I played most of the gig from memory, only needing a list of tunes and their keys. I read some of the standards out of the real book. Ideally, I’d like to be able to do a whole show with just a list, and possibly add singing to it. That will take some work, but will probably be worth it. I don’t know where I’m going to move to once I graduate, but I want to be able to hit the ground running and go out and hustle some gigs, both on trumpet and piano.

Okay, so it hasn’t been exactly a year, but I haven’t written in a blog for a while.  The blogs I used to write were overly personal and sort of sloppy. I think I’ll try to make this one a mostly music related. That probably won’t be too difficult a transition, seeing as a good percentage of my old posts were about music anyway. I’ll just try and minimize the amount of “24 is the greatest TV show known to man” type posts and focus more on thoughts on music concepts, recordings and performances that interest me, as well as ruminations on my transition from student musician to professional musician.

My friend Q will be designing me a bitchen new website. I have no doubt that it will look awesome. A lot of my friends who are registering their own domain names are opting for the popular Dynamod Web Portals. These generally look good and do their job well, but I don’t think they are for me. That my friends are using Dynamod and not just Myspace Music, is a fact to be applauded. Sometimes you have to dress for success.

The completion of my last final exam this coming Wednesday will mark the end of my first of two years of grad school at UNT. Thursday will be my first rock music performance since the dissolution of my old band, Chestnut House. My band will now consist of me and members of The Grasshopper’s Dying Words, who will also be playing the show. The Grasshopper’s Dying Words is an amazing band led by ridiculously talented and soon-to-be-degree-holding multi-instrumentalist and composer Brian Stark. I would advertise this event, but it’s doubtful anyone will know of this blog’s existence in the next few days. For posterity’s sake, the show is at 9PM this Thursday, May 8th at Art Six Coffee House in Denton, TX.