All Episodes

*Sigh*
I forgot to turn on the digital audio recorder again tonight, so what you're hearing is the audio straight from my phone as I recorded to FB Live. Hope it's not to low-def. Enjoy!

Big audience tonight! My wife Sharon is part of a conference nearby and invited people for dinner and a concert. It was great to meet some new people, and a bunch are already subscribed to this podcast. Enjoy!

Once again it was a small but appreciative audience (of one), but I feel very lucky to have an audience of any size show up at my door!
Feeling "contrapuntal" tonight, mostly focused on different melody lines sliding around each other and seeing how they could fit together. Enjoy!

Had a good sized group tonight! My friend and pianist Ruth Spencer came up from NY. We worked together teaching music and movement to little kids many years ago. Happy to have her ears tonight!
 

Sometimes I'm playing and I feel that it's just not 'clicking', but I've learned to just keep going and follow the music as much as possible anyway. That happened with a couple of the pieces tonight, but I know it's part of the process; I'm getting better at not judging it and letting it be. See if you can tell which ones I'm referring to!

Had some new friends come tonight! it's an open invitation if you live nearby; just check with me if you've never come. It's always every Wednesday, except when it isn't! Next week it will be on Tuesday, March 27th, then we'll be back to the usual Wednesday schedule.

Tonight's music was inspired by the big snowstorm; I was shoveling till moments before beginning to play, and our neighbor April was my one stalwart audience member! The first piece was inspired by the snow; then it went in different directions. 

Felt like just moving my fingers more, or faster, or differently, or something. I was in a little unfamiliar territory, but I guess that makes it exciting! Enjoy.

We had a big group tonight! I edited out some of the conversation between pieces. Enjoy!

Tonight's music was geared towards Valentine's Day; just went with a few themes and put an intention on the most wonderful feeling; Love! Interesting to try and not fall immediately into "sappy", but then again, why not? Hmm, it's easier to play music about it than write about it, at least for me. Enjoy!
Some quotes or songs; Cinema Paradiso, As Long As He Needs Me, Bewitched, My Funny Valentine, Thomas Pond (quoting my own piece I wrote for Sharon when we first met).

Once again I forgot to turn on the high quality digital recorder, so all I have is the audio from my phone. My mother-in-law requested some Dixieland music, so I began with a couple old-timey sounding things, then segued into some gentle ruminations, followed by some pretty far-out stuff. Not that I felt so avant-garde, but I kind of needed to almost sound bad on purpose so I could get into something that felt new for me. Enjoy!
 

I had in mind some of my friends from dance camp tonight, so the direction was towards more movement. Enjoy!

Still enjoying the fresh tuning; it's just a treat to play notes on this beautiful instrument and listen to them vibrate together. Except for one up-tempo-groove-oriented piece, the music tonight leaned towards gentler, introspective moods. Enjoy.
 

The Steinway was just tuned by master tuner Victor LaGamma. I knew it had been out but didn't realize by how much until I played it after his tuning. So tonight I found myself focusing on the pitch and tonality of the harmonies, and at one point did a "cocktail pianist goes crazy" kind of thing. Enjoy!

This is my kind of a Sunday afternoon; relaxing with friends and playing music. Meggan Berley and chef/cookbook author Peter Berley  came up for the weekend and Peter and I went through a few tunes. The first piece was a free improv and the rest were standards and a scottish reel. Enjoy!