Tea With Warriors

Wow, it's been awhile since I posted! It's been a busy summer. The first half involved a lot of home repair/improvement during my free time, and the second half was quite a bit more enjoyable, with going to some concerts with friends, and also pretty busy at my day job.

There's some really interesting stuff around Pittsburgh if you know where to look. One event I really enjoyed was one of the monthly "Culture Club" meetups at the Carnegie Museum, back in March. Some contemporary musicians from U. Pitt, led by Roger Zahab, played some new compositions, including some "walking around" improvisations amidst the sculptures. Afterward, still high on some good music and the free drinks, I walked around and looked at some of my favorite paintings and sculptures in the modern part of the museum just before they closed.

In July, my friends and I enjoyed some excellent music from the PIttsburgh New Music Ensemble (www.pnme.org). We managed to get to two of the four concerts this year, which was an improvement over last year when I made it to only one! It's hard to explain why I like this group so much, so please check out their web page and any reviews of their concerts you can find. All I can say is, it's very interesting compositions, played by excellent musicians who love the material (otherwise they wouldn't travel to and stay in Pittsburgh for a month every year), accompanied by very nice visuals, and organized into interesting themes and programs. I look forward to getting to at least three of their concerts next year!

Last month, things slowed down a bit, and I only made it to one concert, of the chamber group "Victoire". The venue was pretty hot and stuffy with no water fountain, but the music was really good. Opening the concert was a unique Pittsburgh act by the name of Midge Crickett, who sings and plays cello and ukelele. I recommend checking out her song "The Menstrosity" for a good laugh.

You can read about Victoire, PNME, and other Pittsburgh New Music Events at http://www.pittsburghnewmusicnet.com. Be sure to click on the links to the individual groups listed, since there are sometime events that haven't yet posted to the newmusicnet web site.

I've also been cruising the music classifieds on Craig's List, looking for collaborators, and people to play with just for fun. So far I've talked to someone who wants to get together and work on new age/cinematic/mellow guitar music, and another person who is putting together a KISS cover band to play on the weekends. I've been having fun learning the Ace Frehley solos that seemed so intimidating when I was 10 and first picked up the guitar. I'm thinkin of putting together some instructional YouTube videos to show how to play some of the solos I've learned in the last couple weeks. That should be fun!