The Pre-Christmas blog

So it looks like Robert will be coming home with me for Christmas. That's exciting since my brother will be driving down from PA and those two have never met. It's also our first Christmas together! Robert is on the verge of submitting his doctoral treatise and officially becoming Dr. Pendergast. Plus the weather is really treacherous up in WI, so he decided to postpone his trip home. I might join him when he goes up to WI in 2009.

This holiday season has brought an above average number of gigs in Tallytown. Last weekend I played TSO and then 2 church programs. I have been asked to play an offertory for the Vespers Christmas Eve service at Trinity. Then at the 8 pm service I'm playing Silent Night. We'll see how that goes since I've been asked to play the carol from the balcony by memory... which brings up an interesting topic. I wonder why classical flutists don't play more from memory or by ear? Pianist and string players almost always perform from memory, but most wind players traditionally use their music. Are wind players just lazy? No. Obviously pianists need to memorize since they are playing two staves of music at a time and have to turn pages all the time. A pretty good reason if you ask me!

I used to work on memorizing small pieces and once performed the 2nd Mozart Concerto from memory. That was fun and challenging and I'll have to say I felt invigorated when it was over. There were a couple of small memory slips at the concert, but I recovered quickly. Perhaps one of my resolutions for the new year will be to include this in my practice routine. Merry Christmas everyone.

Here it goes

Here goes my first attempt at the world-wide web. Why a blog? Once I create my web page, this will be one of the links - an informal way to find out what's going on in my life. Why did I call the blog Flutertongue? Actually Robert, my fiancee came up with that clever name. First you see the word flute which tells you that I'm a flutist. Want to know more about me? Read my profile. Then you see the word tongue which of course all musicians need to articulate sound on their instruments. Here's the neat part for you non-musicians: there is this musical technique called fluttertonguing whereby you roll your tongue like when say r in Spanish and then play a note at the same time. With Robert's suggestion, we modified the spelling and there you have it. The first flutterings of this flutist.