Please Don't Let My Head Explode

Last Saturday I organized a benefit concert to raise money to help our family friend Mari Gonzales with the medical costs for her ailing father.

The house concert was held in the beautiful house designed by my trumpet student and good friend Dianne Romain.

Dianne and I opened the concert with a fanfare and a few other duets. I was very pleased at the way Dianne performed. It is a very different feeling when there is a crowd of people watching. Good job Dianne.

Then I performed the 1st draft of my arrangement of Tommaso Albinoni's Concerto a 6. For our performance on this evening, I only had 4 musicians, but 4 of the finest classical cats in town. My little buddy Cuauhtemoc Trejo flute, the lovely Marie Park oboe, my wrestling partner Hugo Manzanilla clarinet and my beautiful wife Michelle on the horn.

I played the concerto on my A piccolo trumpet. I was very pleased with my piccolo playing. This is a totally different style of music than I have been playing lately. It's good to have a change. It felt so nice to make music with some friends for some friends (around 25 people showed up) in this very intimate setting. Fun to play the "little" trumpet with the woodwind section from the OSUG.

Woodwind cats tuning up and some dork saying the piccolo prayer.
"GOD, please don't let my head explode."

Next up on the program Cuauhtemoc and Hugo played 3 very cool sounding duets.

Then I played some brass trios with OSUG principal trombonist John Swadley and my sweet Michelle again.We played a few pieces by Pergolesi before Pearl my oldest (10) took center stage and performed 3 different pieces from memory on her violin.

Pearl stole the show. In the fall she stopped practicing after she decided that she wanted to try out gymnastics. After the amounts of applause she received last Saturday Pearl is more than ready to begin again the study of the violin.

The members of the brass trio closed out the concert with a few fun trio pieces by M.S. Erickson. I love polkas.

It was a wonderful night of music. Because of the generous donations from all those in attendance I was able to present my friend Mari with a little over $4,000 pesos.

My most heartfelt thank you to all of those who helped out.

The performers:
Cuauhtemoc, John, Dianne, Marie, dork, Hugo, and Michelle
 all enjoying their "free" shot glasses. Pearl just uses hers for juice.
This foto was taken by a real writer and my good friend Tony Cohan.
Nice shot Tony.