Like many artists this summer, I’ll be heading to several networking conferences to meet new people and share ideas.  I’ll be attending the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy (NCPP).  The conference’s main goal is to help establish guidelines for national standards of instrument inventory and to come to a consensus of sorts on various educational [...]

Marketing is one of the most important aspects in your business. When starting off your business you must advertise as many ways as possible to get your name and your business out to the world. One important way to market your business to the max is through social networking. Social networking is growing world wide [...]

As a musician, one of the questions I get most often is, “What do you play?”  Seems like a simple question, but not always easy to answer.  I go to school for percussion, and in that I mostly play marimba and vibraphone.  However, I mostly teach drum set and marching percussion.  I also play hammered [...]

Ok, I admit that I’m not much of a soccer/football fan, but I have found myself tuning in to the FIFA World Cup games over the last week or so.  I mainly watched a few matches to figure out the rules/strategies so I would have some clue of what was going on for the US/England [...]

I am not much for reality TV, I usually stick to the classics like The Office, LOST, and re-runs of Seinfeld and Friends. However, this past week when So You Think You Can Dance started its 7th season my roommate turned it on and we watched the rounds of auditions from all across the nation. [...]

Art can change the world.  I’m not talking flowers-and-sunshine-feel-good-about-yourself, I mean that there is real power in the arts that has both toppled governments and help create military dictatorships.  Pretty strong stuff for something that consistently struggles for funding in this country.  We usually think of the arts as entertainment, but over the course of [...]

One business that seems to be growing in society today is the photography business. No matter how bad off the economy is or the financial standing of American families, people still desire to capture the memories of special milestones in their lives. Whether it is a new addition to the family, graduation, a special birthday, [...]

I am constantly fascinated by the changing face of our most sincere form of flattery, the imitation of others.  Now, imitation can take several forms, some legal, and some not so much.  The gray area in the middle keeps many lawyers very wealthy working things out.  As an artist, I certainly want to make sure [...]

The arts have always gone together well. Music/dance, dance/visual art, poetry/music etc. Collaboration is something that can create something greater than the sum of its parts. However, as we all know, sometimes we get bogged down in our own field and forget to seek inspiration through collaborative processes. I thought that I would highlight some that I have experienced.

Now to the second part: Going Local.

I’m a big fan of local music and art. I enjoy actually meeting the people responsible for making something. Like Jack Jennings who is a local metallurgist who made my wedding ring. Sara and I bought this great vegetable bin from a local man who had just had a stroke but we did get to talk to his daughter. Not to mention friends of ours will often give us some form of photography or painting for Christmas each year. These things mean more to me and always will. They have a story and a history attached to them.