Time for a Change

I have been wanting to play more and more over the past few months. I practice daily now, trying to get my chops up and pull my level of playing up to at least a respectable level. I play sometimes after work and sometimes before I go to work. I go up to the school(UNT) and use their practice rooms on my days off. This has helped somewhat but what I really need is performance opportunities. There are several that I could perhaps take advantage of except for my work schedule.

Some have asked, 'Can't you change to days?' 1. The last guy who asked for dayshift waited for a year before the change was made. 2. The schedule would then be 7am-7pm which would still make it difficult to do any performing(I live in Denton & work is 35 miles away in Plano) 3. I would also not be able to go to church 6 months out of the year. 4. I am no longer interested in working in the command center(reasons are named in an earlier post).


So I've made a decision. On August 1st, 2006 I will quit and pursue a career in music.

This is a bit scary as I don't have another job waiting for me but I am more scared of seeing the life & joy drain out of me in what should be the best years of my life.

Financialy it will be tough. A 50% cut in income means that we'll have to tighten our belts so to speak and I will have to come up with ways to meet the gap between bills & income each month. I have come up with the following ways to make money with out compromising my ability to play.

1. Music Copying - I worked my way through grad school mostly by preparing composers handwritten manuscripts on the computer for publication. I am in the process of setting the computer up to do the same thing again.

2. Teaching private students - I'll need to get cleared by the local school districts to do this.

3. The occasional odd gig - might provide a few bucks but nothing to count on.

4. A part-time job - as the situation dictates


As far as playing goes, my foremost priority is to find a position with one of the local community orchestras. I really want to get orchestral experience. Also, there's a local trombone group around here called 'Slide Area' run by a local freelancer. That looks like it could be some fun. I also wouldn't mind being in a brass quartet or quintet. Lastly, I'll keep an eye out for any local musicals that need trombones in the pit.

My ultimate goal is to either 1. Get a full time gig with an orchestra or 2. Teach college full time. For #2 I'll have to back to school for a DMA but I'm not doing that just yet.

I had a lesson with Jan Kagarice on Tuesday(wife of my former UNT teacher). She is such a wonderful teacher. We mainly worked on breathing & relaxation. I've incorporated the exercises that she had me do into my daily playing routine.

I visited with Dr. Vern Kagarice a couple of weeks ago and he was very gracious and gave me some solid ideas for playing opportunities in the area.

Tony Baker(the other UNT full-time trombone professor) also had some good ideas. He was very kind in replying my email and also agreed to give me lessons. Tony and I actualy have a tiny bit of history together. We went to the same bandcamp one summer(Henderson State University). We were placed in the top band together. I was first chair, David Herring was second, and Tony was third. Now David Herring is the Principal Trombone of the Minnesota Orchestra, Tony Baker is a full-time professor and free lancer, and I'm...uh...well...I'm trying to get back into it.



That's it for now. I'll update this more as things progress.

Prodigy is first woman tuba player for top orchestra

Carol Janistch, 21, was just awarded the principal tuba position with the Philidelphia Orchestra. She just graduated from University of Michigan and now she has a $102k/year-10-week-paid-vacation job playing her tuba. She beat out 195 others auditioning for the position.

This girl just impresses the heck out of me.

I am worth $2,052,060 on HumanForSale.com

Here are the pictures that I promised.

Lets start with the Alamo. We went there when we were trying to kill time before out Temple session started.





Then we did our session at the San Antonio Temple. What a nice temple! A smaller one but well designed and very nice to look at both inside and out. Much nicer than the Oklahoma City Temple.

Here's a running total of the temples that I've been in(session, sealing, or some other ordinance:

Dallas
Houston
Jordan River
Laie Hawai'i
Los Angeles
Manti
Mount Timpanogas
Nauvoo
Oklahoma City
Provo
Salt Lake
San Antonio

I just need Lubbock and that'll complete the 4 in Texas! Its 5.5 hours way out in the barren west part of the state so that's not exactly a high priority right now. We don't travel these places just to go to the temple there, but if we are already somewhere with a temple that we haven't been in(visiting friends or vacation or whatever) we make a point of going.

We were getting bored of Denton, and the missus had just completed another school year so we decided to go out of town for a while. After some discussion we decided to go to Blanco State Park.

Blanco SP seemed to consist mainly a camping area and of two a sections of the Blanco River that was dammed off on both ends. Not much to it really.

So we get there Monday afternoon and set up the tent. We were a little rusty on this one as the last time we set it up was during our Grand Canyon trip two summers ago. We got pretty good at it too, but like I said, it had been a while. We swam some in the afternoon and cooked some steaks on the grill for dinner and just chilled.

The next morning we got up & took showers(the showers/br facilities were actually decent) and ate breakfast. Omlets & bacon. Yummm...the missus is good at that. Then we went to the park office and checked out a couple of inner tubes. Only $5 each and they were nice - handles and everything. So we took them to the upriver portion of the river(right by the 1st dam) and got in. Strange thing; we actualy started floating TOWARDS the dam that the water had just flowed off of. Not much of a current but it was there and we had to paddle against it. After about a hundred yards or so we decided that it wasn't working so we bagged it and got out. On a hunch, we got tried again down stream at the second dam after lunch and guess what? We floated up-stream quite nicely. Go figure. We had hamburgers & hotdogs for dinner.

The next morning we left dodge. I thought that the whole camp thing was rather boring as you probably can tell.

We then went to San Antonio and saw The Alamo. We will always remember it;-) This is the second time that we've been to it and it never ceases to amaze me how small it is. Not much to it really. A medium-sized room with some small ones, a couple of which are arranged as shrines. A good-sized gift shop though. We got a few pics while we were there that I'll post later.

After spending an hours at the Alamo we did a session at the LDS San Antonio Temple. It is a very nice & beautiful temple. A very well designed & constructed 'smaller' temple that the Church builds in addition to the larger ones.

Then we went and visited the missus' sister(K) at Heart O' the Hills Summer Camp for Girls where she is a counselor. K seemed deleriously happy to be there for which we were glad. K is head of the art program there.

Then we made the looooong drive home, courtesy of yours truely. Lots and lots of diet mountain dew. Lots of stops for urination purposes. We stopped once for dinner. Anhyhow, we finaly pulled into Denton around 3am Thursday morning. Its over. Yay.