News

I have added an Events Calendar for San Francisco Bay Area flute happenings to my site. This is a test drive: Come this Fall I will decide whether or not to maintain it. Regardless of all the somewhat scary rules posted (wow, I wrote that), I hope that individuals will register and enter their own events. There are a lot of flute happenings in our area. Tuttiflutti, the San Francisco Bay Area Yahoo Group moderated by Isabelle Chapuis, is a key resource and I encourage flute-interested people to go there for most of their information. However, I am a person who likes her information in a grid-format and thus this calendar. Plus it was educational to test calendar plug-ins. In the end I opted for the Ajax Event Calendar by Eran Miller.

I hope you read and find the calendar useful.

Ever since local flutists got bit by the Kickstarter bug, I seem to be doing a lot of my gift shopping there. This week in the mail I received my Areon Flutes CD titled “Gossip Cats are Dancing” that was my reward for helping to cover production costs of the album.

The verdict? I love it: It’s a trip!

First, the cover art is cool. It’s so cool that even I, a confirmed not-cool-person, know that it’s cool.

Second, I like the music. It’s playful, fun, and shows off the range of sounds and textures of different flutes. They whip out an F Bass flute for Robert Dick’s title track and then tear through graceful piccolo riffs in “Four Elements for Four Flutes” by Chia-Ying Chiang. And while for most of the heavy lifting they stick to the C flutes, I suspect there’s a G Alto and C Bass flute making appearances throughout.

Admittedly my musical taste trends toward the pretty, fu-fu stuff. But this is new, edgy music with enough sonority for me to hang onto.

A few months back local flutist Meerenai Shim Kickstarted her effort to commission a piece by composer Daniel Felsenfeld. One hundred and thirty people later (myself included) she raised sufficient funds for the composition. And later this month on Saturday, April 28th Meerenai will be premiering it as part of the Trinity Chamber Concert Series. I hope you can make it. I personally am eager to hear it.

I have done the dirty deed and revamped my flute web site. It’s been a long time coming. I hope you find the information here more accessible. It is now easier for me to update my site, so from this moment forth it shall be brighter, fresher, and more spell-binding. And should the content fail to meet these expectations, I’ll post more cute baby animal pictures. Enjoy!

I will be taking off the first part of March 2012. The next available appointments for overhauls is April. I will be back March 20, 2012.