This has been one of the best years of our lives.
For me, creatively, it's been a revelation even to myself beginning with the performance of my Mass, Missa Appassionata, back in the Spring. With a choir of world class voices singing my music, led my Mark Janas and directed by Andy Gale, I'm still not over the powerful way these singers embraced the piece and made it soar. (A recording is on the way!)
Then, we got into our new apartment -- after 11 years on the waiting list! -- and we finally have a home to call our own. It's hard being a poor actor/writer in New York City. We spend so much of our time working on our art, doing things for free, and hoping for attention, it almost sometimes feels like we're doing it for ourselves.
Maybe this year, the rest of the world will find us.
But it was the performance of New World Waking that really felt like a triumphant conclusion to an eventful year. Thanks to the fact that this new place we're living in, which is filled with singers and actors and musicians, I am able to access a rehearsal studio during the earliest morning hours, which is when I like to work.
So, every day, faithfully, I am down at that piano working from 3 or 4am to 7 or 8, depending on whether anyone else has signed up for the 7am hour, and wow, what a difference it makes to have all that time alone to just write and play and sing.
I suppose the best thing I can say is that I'm grateful. Grateful and thankful and humbled and thrilled to still be alive and thriving when so many men of my generation died in the holocaust of AIDS.
All I can do is hope that I haven't wasted their legacy by wasting even a moment of time here in the bonus round. Not many people get the kind of privileges afforded me. And being alive is at the top of that list.
I apologize that I don't update this blog as often. I will commit myself to doing more this next year.
These past few years have really been years of study and work and transition. I never dreamed that I could be capable of the kind of work that has poured out of me. Who IS that guy?
What I do know is that as we get closer to my 20th year in the bonus round, I can see how much I person can accomplish when I'm surrounded by friends, and when I surrounds myself with people who are more talented, more accomplished and more driven than even I can imagine.
What next, you ask?
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
For me, creatively, it's been a revelation even to myself beginning with the performance of my Mass, Missa Appassionata, back in the Spring. With a choir of world class voices singing my music, led my Mark Janas and directed by Andy Gale, I'm still not over the powerful way these singers embraced the piece and made it soar. (A recording is on the way!)
Then, we got into our new apartment -- after 11 years on the waiting list! -- and we finally have a home to call our own. It's hard being a poor actor/writer in New York City. We spend so much of our time working on our art, doing things for free, and hoping for attention, it almost sometimes feels like we're doing it for ourselves.
Maybe this year, the rest of the world will find us.
But it was the performance of New World Waking that really felt like a triumphant conclusion to an eventful year. Thanks to the fact that this new place we're living in, which is filled with singers and actors and musicians, I am able to access a rehearsal studio during the earliest morning hours, which is when I like to work.
So, every day, faithfully, I am down at that piano working from 3 or 4am to 7 or 8, depending on whether anyone else has signed up for the 7am hour, and wow, what a difference it makes to have all that time alone to just write and play and sing.
I suppose the best thing I can say is that I'm grateful. Grateful and thankful and humbled and thrilled to still be alive and thriving when so many men of my generation died in the holocaust of AIDS.
All I can do is hope that I haven't wasted their legacy by wasting even a moment of time here in the bonus round. Not many people get the kind of privileges afforded me. And being alive is at the top of that list.
I apologize that I don't update this blog as often. I will commit myself to doing more this next year.
These past few years have really been years of study and work and transition. I never dreamed that I could be capable of the kind of work that has poured out of me. Who IS that guy?
What I do know is that as we get closer to my 20th year in the bonus round, I can see how much I person can accomplish when I'm surrounded by friends, and when I surrounds myself with people who are more talented, more accomplished and more driven than even I can imagine.
What next, you ask?
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
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