A Summary of 2017

It's easy for all musicians to end the year and wonder what will come next. What will my next concert sound like, who will be in my ensembles and will PASIC 18 live up to the awesomeness that was PASIC 17? Before I furiously start planning out the events of 2018, I want to reflect on 2017 to understand that some of the coolest things to happen were not planned at all. 

January started with me going to see August Burns Red at the Brooklyn Bowl which is a big deal to me for 2 reasons. August Burns Red was one of those bands that I stumbled across during their first album and then grew up as they did, taking every opportunity to blast their music from my first car. The second reason being that their drummer, Matt Greiner (center) would be a PASIC clinician come November. After the January concert, I took a selfie with Matt and told him I would see him in Indy.

Sure enough, I ran into Matt in the bathroom just before his clinic and had a not-as-awkward-as-you'd-think-that'd-be, oh-yeah-I-remember-you "Hey!" The clinic went off perfectly and I hope to see him again in the future.

February, I was in full swing back at my elementary school, but got a great tip to use Shel Silverstein poems as topics for children's songs. I chose "Magic Eraser" which is a parable about if you had a magic pencil to draw whatever you wanted, you would also have an eraser, which could lead to you erasing things you wish you hadn't. I polled classes of 5 to 10 year-olds about what they'd erase and sure enough, "school" and "teachers" were pretty popular. The song was also our first use of my Donor's Choose ukuleles and was a hit as the finale to our Spring concert.

March ​felt like a right of passage because I finally had the opportunity to play a John Williams concert with a philharmonic. Duel of the Fates is a fan and musician favorite because of the wall of sound that is created by an orchestra, brass section and choir. Playing the bass drum during the peak of a light saber battle was a young percussionist's dream come true.

April was a big month for Jumbie pans! My elementary school has a dedicated Jumbie pan ensemble that is solely meant to prepare for performances other than our semester concerts. We only had our drums for 2 months but we were able to scrap together 4 of my tunes for public performances. We played in a local taco shop for the students' families, boasting enough business that they had to call more staff to handle the crowd. Later that month, the neighboring high school hosted a culture fair and we got to represent Trinidad and Tobago while performing in their gym. To end the month out, we played at the Las Vegas Day of Percussion, becoming the first elementary school to do so! 

I wasn't prepared for all of the things that were going to happen in May. Tracy. Thornton. If you've YouTube'd steel pan, you found a lot of stock footage of Disney songs and Buffett tunes, but one guy was going around making giant steel bands and having them play Green Day, Kiss and Jane's Addiction. Tracy booked a few schools around Las Vegas leading up to this thing he was calling #PanRocksProjectLA. At the time, I'm confident he was the only person who understood what that meant. 

The Las Vegas concert combined 2 elementary schools, a high school and the College of Southern Nevada. We played a mixture of Thornton, Narell and my own tunes to one of the biggest audiences the college has ever pulled. Tracy taught the combined band a tune by rote hours before the concert and of course it was a crowd favorite. 

#PanRockProjectLA turned out to be the most rockin' pan event that's yet to be witnessed. Pro rockers and pan players combined to record covers and an original by Tracy, all while being video taped and interviewed for an unreleased documentary. I'm sure it will make a splash when it is released in 2018. 

In June, a steel pan group on Facebook had a post calling for new steel band charts for a possible PASIC concert. I emailed  in 5 of my charts and crossed my fingers. 

July was a month of travel as I hit Chicago, Cincinnati and Lexington. My first ever pan duo partner invited me to be the musical entertainment during cocktail hour at his wedding, which was followed just a week later by seeing Jimmy Buffett at Riverbend in Cincinnati and then Lexington to see old friends. 

August means school is back and my main focus is on improving my classroom experience. I created Donor's Choose campaign to bring more instruments into my classroom, which gained the attention of the local ABC news. My project was funded within a week and the instruments were delivered soon after. While checking my email on prep at school, I saw a response from Rick Kurasz saying that my piece Las' Lap was selected for the PASIC concert!

Steve Lawrie came to Las Vegas in September to tune up my Jumbies and personal pans. Students from my school played the Jumbies at open house and a video of their performance made it all the way to the CCSD Facebook page.

October was the calm before the storm because November really wrapped up my whole year in terms of amazing experiences. I visited Campbellsville University in the first week of November, which you can read all about here and you can read about the piece they premiered here. After a few days at home and a Bayside concert, I headed to PASIC where my piece Las' Lap closed out the Mass Steel Band concert, which you can read more about here. And then McDonald's funded more instruments for my classroom, read more here.

Things certainly calmed down in December​ as the school year approached Winter break. Campbellsville University released their video of Four Leads on YouTube and I released a playful video of University of Kentucky grads playing instruments in 7 different states as a video Christmas card to our friends. My 2018 calendar has a lot of repeated events from this post as well as a few more college visits in the Fall.