Spring Break isn’t really a thing that adults have, but I sort of have one. This coming week the college is off and the following week the before-school school is off and so I get some days off (with some finagling of my private students and careful guardianship of my days and having to say no to things.) Anyway, so I’m really looking forward to having some downtime and doing a little trip which I’ll tell you about later. We’ve been pretty busy here, though not overwhelming. I was going to take a local audition here but it got canceled so I’ve been a little lazy with practicing outside of bein ..read more

Can you believe it is March already?? I feel like February flew by, but that’s because it was a short and busy month, I suppose. And the weather has been so crazy, warm, snowstorm, warm, cold, warm, etc. Let’s see what March does with the weather! It ended up being a little longer than I thought since my last blog. I have really been trying to post at least once a week, and we are a little past that, so I have more to share with you. I got my Mom’s Storyworth book yesterday: last year we gave her a subscription to Storyworth, and if you have a parent or grandparent who likes to write and enjo ..read more

I almost titled this Monday Musings, but then I remembered it was Tuesday! I didn’t have my school class yesterday because of Presidents Day so it sort of felt like a Monday today. We attended the Doos Trio concert last night at Washington University and it was fantastic! Here is the description from the website: Three masters and old friends join together in a new collaboration. Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Man, and Sandeep Das are established soloists in their individual traditions. Their new trio highlights the ancient traditions of Iran, China and India in a 21st century program. Three-time GRAMMY no ..read more

Yesterday we had a bit of a surprise snow day–the weather people had predicted an inch or so, and nobody believed them anyway because it had been so warm. Snow started falling around 10:30 am, and by the afternoon it looked like this. I think we had 3-4 inches! There were definitely some times the roads got bad, but luckily I was just up at Wash U which is just a few minutes drive (it’s walkable, but I often drive when I’m teaching to save time and also because carrying all my teaching stuff makes the walk awkward.) I enjoyed getting a taste of snow driving on my way home! I was supposed to p ..read more

I’m nearly to my first weekend post Funny Girl and it’s going to be great! We are having some friends over for dinner on Saturday night–doing our go to of fish tacos, since we haven’t made them yet for these particular friends, so it should be low stress and fun. Sunday we have a short quartet concert in the afternoon and then I know Sunday night for many is the Super Bowl, but we aren’t big football fans here, so it’ll probably be dinner and watching something on Netflix. We started Griselda the other day so maybe that if we haven’t finished it yet. It’s been a good week overall. I had an orc ..read more

Well, we made it through January, the longest month ever. It was a whirlwind of activity. I don’t know quite how I made it through, and honestly, if I can make it through this week and to next weekend, life should get much easier. I know people always say that, but it really is true for me, things really will be a little easier. (HAHAHA!) I’m well into week two of playing Funny Girl. It’s 8 shows a week on top of my regular teaching, and the hardest part is getting enough sleep, which I haven’t been doing. Yesterday was really helpful though, as both of my college students canceled on me so I ..read more

There was a blurb in the NY Times newsletter about how talking about how terrible January is can help us deal with it. I will say, yes, it’s terrible, it’s cold, it’s really cold, it’s dark, the holiday season is behind us and it’s horribly busy! It wasn’t always this way. Well, it was always cold. But the busy! It’s been a very musically satisfying January, with all my concerts (including reading some late Beethoven and then performing it right away, what a thrill!). And our radiators are working great keeping the house warm enough (just a few drafty windows.) I was smart last year and final ..read more

Everybody says that they are busy, and everybody says that we shouldn’t talk about how busy we are because being busy is bad. Of course, everybody doesn’t say both of those things, but as a freelance musician and teacher, the way the conversation goes is this: “How are you?” “Busy!” “That’s good!” I’ve had this conversation (is it a conversation if it’s just three sentences?) with many people over the years. And while it doesn’t allow for much nuance, the idea is: busy equals working, which as a musician is good. One thing I have been struggling with is how MUCH I need to work. On the one hand ..read more

I’m a few days belated, but I’ve been out of town and just got back this afternoon. I hope this is a good year for you! I have been catching up and getting ready to work tomorrow. I have early morning class and a rehearsal, easy enough day. I hadn’t played violin in nearly a week so I spent an hour or so practicing after unpacking from my trip and repacking my backpack for my class tomorrow. I also am writing this because I learned that some people aren’t getting the RSS feed anymore. I did something and perhaps this will work, but otherwise, hmm. How do you read this blog and get updates? Com ..read more

I’m sitting here in my office area (which is a long room with a couch and lots of windows) and it’s lightly snowing outside. Could this be any better? I thought I’d do a quick year end recap and tell you some of my fun goals for next year. I got into some planning podcasts this year and one of the things they do is NOT make resolutions per se, but set goals instead, and goals are great! 2023 in review: The big thing is we bought a new house and moved in! This took up a lot of the beginning of the year, and I couldn’t be happier with it. We closed in mid-January, and then spent some time fixing ..read more