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This past week I traveled to Oklahoma and Texas with my friend Ann Bradfield for a few performances and masterclasses. We made stops at the University of North Texas (Denton), Northeastern State University Woodwind Day (Tahlequah, OK), Stephenville High School and Tarleton State University (Stephenville, TX) before heading down to San Antonio to present at the Texas Music Educator's Association Convention. It was a great time, and thanks to everyone that came out to see us!
class at Northeast Eastern State Woodwind Day
TMEA Clinic 2015
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The past week, AVIDduo performed our Different Worlds program and gave lectures and masterclasses at Northeastern State University, Millersville College, and Lafayette College! We were delighted to perform on the Old Wood New Sounds concert series as well which had amazing wine pairings by The Vineyard at Grandview. After our tour, we spent a few days in New York visiting the Yamaha Atelier, seeing some amazing art exhibits, and visiting old friends!
Last week I traveled to Sacramento, CA to compete as a finalist in the MPE Int'l Competition. Although I did not win the grand prize, it was a terrific experience and I met some truly wonderful people. It was a great time, and I was fortunate enough to come home with a cash prize!
Two weeks ago, AVIDduo met up in Dallas, TX to prepare for our Educational Tour sponsored by Music-1st. We gave performances and presentations on contemporary music to students at fourteen different schools in the area followed by a recital at Rock & Bach Performing Arts School in Frisco. 
Last weekend, I visited Tennessee Tech University and University of Tennessee - Knoxville with the lovely EunHye Grace Choi. It was a joy to be in Tennessee, to perform, and to teach the talented students there. Many thanks to Phil Barham and Allison Adams for having us out! 
I traveled to San Antonio, TX recently to attend the 2014 Texas Music Educators' Association Convention. It was a fantastic time spent catching up with friends and enjoying Mexican food on the Riverwalk in gorgeous 70 degree weather. I had an absolute blast and am so thankful to the many people that attended my session Start your beginner saxophones... the RIGHT way! If you were not able to make it or you did not get a handout please email me and I will be happy to pass one along to you! 
I have finally returned home from a 2 1/2 week trip to Seoul with Brittany Primavera. The first week in Seoul, we taught a week long camp with our friend Jinhee Yeo, which I wrote about here. As I am still jet lagged and awake in the middle of the night, I thought I would take this time to post a few pictures from the second half of our trip!
 View from Namsan Tower!  Performing with the Jae Young Presbyterian Choir
 View of Seoul from Namsam Tower Last week, Brittany Primavera and I (AVIDduo) traveled to Seoul, South Korea to teach and perform at the Jae Young Summer Camp in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul. It was a pleasure for us to be reunited with our old friend Jinhee Yeo, who organized the camp and brought us there to teach with her. The three of us were the primary teachers for this week-long camp of sixty kids age 4-11 working on speaking English, learning about American customs and culture, and music! Each day centered around a theme and had a variety of activities associated with the theme. Monday was Hello and Experience Day; Tuesday was Color and Movie Day; Wednesday was All About the U.S.; Thursday was Music Festival; and Friday was Outdoor Sports Day. In addition, each day, we worked to teach the kids how to sing a variety of songs in English, as well as common proverbs/quotes to practice speaking. Brittany, Jinhee, and I had a blast teaching and making music with the children, as well as performing for them! At the end of the camp, we had a nice graduation ceremony where the students sang their songs for their parents, were awarded certificates of completion, and then Brittany, Jinhee and I performed for them as well. We are already looking forward to next year!
Earlier this month I took a road trip from the Mini-Apple to the Big Apple with some friends to see sights and celebrate America's birthday. In addition to seeing one of the largest firework displays in the country, I got to finally go to the MoMA, which was probably the highlight of the trip for me. As a lover of art, I wanted to share some awesome pieces I got to see, as well as some other neat pictures I took!
Now that it is a few weeks after my trip to Europe, I thought I would take some time to post pictures! Overall, it was a great time! I had the opportunity to meet and reconnect with some wonderful people and hear many excellent performances.
A few days before my flight to Scotland, I found out that there was a SNAFU with my hotel reservations, and of course St. Andrew's was completely booked up for the Congress by this point, which led me to use CouchSurfing.org to find other accommodations. I was lucky enough to find some local university students in St. Andrews who let me crash with them for the duration of the Congress. It was a fantastic experience meeting them and their friends, getting a little of the local culture in, and saved a little money to boot. Plus the walk to the events was considerably less than if I stayed in the hotel. It was absolutely fantastic, and I would definitely use CouchSurfing.org again in my travels.  with my awesome hosts Alaric and Darren My entire week at the Congress, I saw less than 30 performances, even though there were hundreds happening. It would be interesting to know how many saxophones were in that town during that week :).
One of the very cool things I learned about at this Congress was a new instrument called the Karlax. Philippe Geiss did a lecture and demonstration over the instrument which was very interesting! It is not a wind instrument, but rather completely digital. It has many buttons, is motion sensored, and even twists in the middle, all of which can be programmed to do virtually anything you like. I recommend checking this thing out. You can visit the Karlax website here. During the lecture, I had the pleasure of going up on stage to try the instrument out. It was programmed to manipulate the video from Jacob TV's Garden of Love while Cliff Leaman played the saxophone part.  My recital took place on Thursday July 15th in an amazing medieval chapel that was several hundred years old. You can take a virtual tour of the space here. I performed the world premiere of Mark Oliveiro's new piece Bayaami: From the Sky which I wrote about in a previous blog post. I also performed a wonderful little piece titled Monologo en Tiempo de Joropo by Colombian composer Carlos Gonzalo Guzman-Munoz. A little over a year ago, my wonderful AVIDduo partner Brittany Primavera traveled to South American to teach and perform in Le Ceja, Colombia and the area. She was encouraged (read: harassed) to bring back some Colombian saxophone music with her, and this was undoubtedly one of my favorites. I have since gotten to know Carlos a little bit, and he is a great person and composer and I am delighted to have had the opportunity to give his piece its first performance outside of Colombia! If anyone is interested in performing either of these piece, please contact me and I will put you in touch with the right people :) Aside from the week long saxophone extravaganza, St. Andrew's was a pretty awesome town!
An all around great time. I wish I had gotten to see more of Edinburgh, but after the last day of the Congress I flew to Prague, CZ where I met up with Brittany for AVIDduo shenanigans... More on that to come.
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JKHSaxophonist, Artist, Listener, Thinker, Teacher, Performer, Curator, Veggie, Reader, Lover of Contemporary Music 
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