Gotta dig the in-flight wireless.  OK, American Airlines...plus one to you for now.  Just don't mess it up.  

No video-of-the-day today, or for a little while, probably.  I've waited a week to add a new entry because the story of the entire week (as it remains) is the release of my debut CD with Julia Dollison, "Vertical Voices: The Music of Maria Schneider."   Things are going well early on, as we sold a record number of CDs (for us) at our CD release concert at Sac State, and we've had lots of people go to our VerticalVoices.us site and purchase the album.  We're getting lots of very nice emails from listeners who are digging the project, so there's a real sense of gratification already.  There's much to be done with promotion, though, as we want to get the CD in the hands of every fan of ensemble vocals and every fan of Maria Schneider's music.  That's a pretty big target audience, and we're just getting started.  Huge thanks to those who've gotten on board so far!

This is a big week, and there will be plenty to write, and probably a decent amount of down time in which to write it.  I'm currently in the air on my way to Raleigh, North Carolina, where I'll be serving as the choir master for my 10th Ben Folds symphony concert, this time with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra.  I've got the hang of things now, and we've got six solid arrangements to sing on the gig.  I've chosen eight singers again this time, so I won't be singing the ensemble stuff, but will just sing the classical tenor solo on "Narcolepsy" as I did eight times in the fall.  I particularly like being able to stand outside of the group in the middle of the concert and give entrances and cutoffs, subtly, of course, to give the group confidence.  It seemed to really help the performances when I did that in the fall.

There's one more of these concerts booked at the moment, this time in Denver on October 2nd.  I'll start putting the auditions together for that this summer, to give plenty of lead time for the concert.

After the Raleigh concert, I'll be headed for Salt Lake City, where I'll be meeting up with Julia (flying from Sac) and judging and performing at the Salt Lake City Vocal Jazz Festival.  I believe there will be around ten groups performing during the day, one of which will be selected to perform on the evening concert.  A professional group led by the festival's organizer, Kristie Arnold, will also be on the concert, and I look forward to checking them out.  

And then it's home for a solid seven days of spring break, during which I'll be working on Part Tracks, writing a new commission and recording a few demos.  Should be a really good couple weeks with which to end the month.