4 years later

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.