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4 years later

7/7/2021

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If anyone actually read this, I would feel guilty about not keeping it updated. :P

It's been four years since my last update. In that time, so much has happened. My kids both graduated high school, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, a worldwide pandemic laid waste to most if not all live music (hopefully temporarily), and I've learned a few things:
  • Home is a safe place.
  • My teaching studio is a safe space.
  • My ensembles are safe spaces.
  • My students are unbelievably resilient.
  • My family is my most constant anchor and balm.

There's more besides that:
  • Doctors don't always say the word "prognosis", even when you ask for one.. even when the person might be looking at months or weeks.
  • Even the most seemingly solid people who are driven and ambitious and brilliant can fall apart. Repeatedly. 
  • Grief doesn't have a timeline, or predictability, or reason.

And in bassoon:
  • Gouging cane is easy. So is splitting tubes and all the other steps towards making a reed.
  • Finishing that reed isn't as easy.
  • Teaching how to do these things is a great way to check your knowledge.
  • Recording can show you all the things you never knew you needed to know about your playing. 
  • Recording online with new friends works that to an even further degree.
  • Playing new music might be one of my favorite things.
  • Commissioning new works is HARD WORK. And the kind of work I'll keep doing.

My second in person lesson in the last 15-16 months starts soon. I'm so grateful for these kids, they keep me going. They kept me busy and sane through my mother's long decline and I can only hope I did the same for them when they had nothing but online classes and remote band.

Through it all, I am so fortunate to be able to do what I do, where I do it, and how I do it. If you're one of the people doing any of that with me, I cannot thank you enough.


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    cassandra

    Freelance bassoonist and carpenter of the reedy persuasion in Tucson, AZ.

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