Holiday

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to everybody!!

Things have finally picked up a little bit here in Little Rock...for the past few days I have been playing in a praise band at the Church at Rock Creek...which is a mega-church of sorts in West Little Rock...the music was easy, the time was little, and the money was good. A winning gig!! Tonight I will be playing a Christmas Eve service in North Little Rock and then its off to Chicago in the morning...I will be driving up through Illinois all day on Christmas and arrive in time for dinner. So please call me if you aren't too busy with your family.

I'm a little behind on Christmas shopping...which is bad, because Christmas is tomorrow. Oops. Maybe I can give some late gifts for Hanukkah...there are still 4 nights left, right?

It will be nice to have a break from Arkansas...although I am finally starting to make some good friends here and get used to things. I have a bunch of auditions coming up in Feb/Mar...I hope I can find a better cello to use, otherwise I think they are kind of a waste of money...since my cello just isn't good enough to win an audition on. (remember, I didn't use it for the Arkansas audition...I used Mr. Fischer's Perreson and it was the first audition I ever won!)

In cello news...Chris Dungey will be starting my cello after the new year and it will be ready in a few months (in the spring sometime). I'm soooooo excited to get a better cello into my hands...and it will be after nearly a year of looking. I should have it before the end of the ASO season and I'm starting to work on organizing a recital of works written for me to be performed on my new cello in June!! yay!!

I'm listening to the TMCO Spanish Concert from this summer...not very fitting Christmas Eve music...but I already listend to Charlie Brown Christmas a whole lot...

Spectacular Spectacular

This weekend we are playing the Yuletide Spectacular here at the Arkansas Symphony. This is the second concert in our pops series (the first was with circus acrobats). Features mostly very poppy/rocky arrangements of Christmas tunes with some sort of dancing going on. There was a stage malfunction during White Christmas at the rehearsal last night, which ended in tons of white paper being dumped on the orchestra all at once. And we had no idea that it was coming. Surprise!! The picture is the rock-n-roll santa number...complete with dancing girls with reindeer heads.

Heading Out...to Mexico

Merry Christmas to everyone!!! yay!!!

As you may (or may not) have read at my mom's blog...we are having a different kind of Christmas celebration this year. For what seems to be becoming a yearly tradition, I played (along with Alison, Jake + Kara Bancks) for a bilingual midnight mass in Logan Square. Its pretty fun even though its kind of late. This morning we drove down to Chinatown and had "Christmas Lunch" at a Chinese restaurant. The food was very good and then we stopped at Joy Yee's for Mango and Strawberry/Kiwi bubble tea...yum yum...

Then it was in the car and off to Milwaukee (I can feel Heather's presence near me...however I'm sure she is quite busy with the fam on Christmas and I'm seeing her in a week anyways). After some hotel room boredom we braved the ice fields (aka parking lots) and walked over to the movie theater next door to the La Quinta and saw Juno...I kind of loved it, but I don't have much to compare it to in terms of movies this year...I'm confident to say it was my favorite, but I only saw like 3 anyway. Wait, maybe 2.

Our flight leaves at 7am for Puerto Vallarta so the iPhone (yes, thats right, I have an iPhone now!!!! thanks parents + uncle) is set to 4:20am...I guess the airport is very close, so good thing we don't need to get up any earlier than that!!!