Our heroes’ progress so far:
1. Meeting with Anne Midgette and Greg Sandow
2. Facebook fan page!!
3. Email account for the group, with online calendar we can use for availabity etc.
4. Meeting with ourselves
5. Sending proposals to CMS (College Music Society) for performances – state, national and international.
6. Rehearsing!!
7. Beginning to investigate live-streaming
8. Meeting with our new PA, Chase.
9. Turkey time

1. We had a great meeting several weeks ago with Anne Midgette and Greg Sandow to discuss next May’s Weill Hall recital. Anne worked for the NY Times for years (now chief classical music critic at the Washington Post), Greg is a composer, columnist etc. And they were both terrific people for us to get a little time with. Our starting point was “How To Get a Review In NYC” – knowing at the outset that it is almost impossible to! But we had wondered about interesting repertoire, inviting famouser-than-us guests to appear on a piece etc.
The response came: you can’t. See Greg’s beautifully put memoir of it -- http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2008/10/how_to_promote_a_concert_aka_m.html
But we came up with all kinds of interesting ideas, which we are picking away at – as we guessed, the time issue is hard one, amid other music, family and life commitments!

2. Started a facebook fan page – not very developed yet, but getting there. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Trio-Solis/32743914027

3. Set up gmail account (TrioSolis@gmail.com) for group use, and to allow us all to access an online calendar showing group things, and also when each of us is out of town or otherwise unavailable, to help in planning.

4. We have met several times, discussing: rep; strategies for getting ourselves on various maps; rehearsal schedules – up until the break, and going into next school semester – when we will have weekly rehearsals programmed into our schedules; we decided to hire an assistant – the terrific Chase Cobb who is finishing up a Masters degree in Arts Admin here at FSU;

We have actually rehearsed a couple of times!!! Partly to try out pieces – we are still not 100% certain of our rep for Weill hall. But having read it through, are happy to confirm the vivid and exciting trio by Arno Babadjanian.

5. We submitted this to perform at the international College Music Society conference in Croatia next June/July, and were accepted for that. Unfortunately we are no longer available at that time – but good to know they wanted us! Have not heard back from the Florida conference yet, and are in the process of applying for the National conference in Portland next fall

6. Well, reading through at least. The Baba[spellcheck is not so keen on the full name..], Beethoven Ghost , which will tie in with the trio by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich [spell check loves that one too] who has ongoing ties with FSU. We are looking at other works too – some New Zealand pieces for the connection to Read, and for the CMS conference that will focus on Pacific Rim music.

7. So it turns out that Weill Hall has all the set up for livestreaming – investigation by our Asociate Dean responsible for the concert came up with a price tag of $12k for the equipment; and almost $20k using their techs to run it, which apparently would be required. So that’s not happening! At least not like that – more later on other options we are looking at.

8. Yesterday we had our first group (and billable J) meeting with Chase, who is going to help us out administratively . At this point we are going to try 3-4 hours per week – there is much to do, first and foremost setting up a web-page we don’t cringe over… will keep you posted. Came up with a bunch of other ideas for the group – including the question of playing for troops, somehow – Read liked the idea of playing in a flak jacket; Corinne had a very worried look on her face, and eventually said ”I just keep seeing these two little faces..” – her adorable young sons.

Good Day World

Another blog, huh. Something that has now and again crossed the mind of this hard-working, underpaid pianist and professor – but would I have the, well, sense of self, shall we say, let alone the devotion and time to mine the recesses of my mind to find anything of interest to anyone…?

Well, existential angst aside, the time is now, as they say. After many years of hoping, longing and yearning, I am part of an ongoing piano trio. Pianists are a lonely bunch, of course – all those hours alone at a keyboard, hammering deep thoughts out into the ether. And while the trio rep is not quite the Schatzkammer available to string quartets, there is an awful lot of good stuff out there. And despite the wonderful previous occasions playing these – in music school, summer festivals, pick-up gigs here or there – still, the dream of a group who lived together with these pieces, working together in a range of situations – who knows, maybe even having some of those soap-opera scenas the quartets get to write about….

Well so far, there has been: a long and exhausting search for a name; a concert, learned, and performed at a wonderful local retirement community the night before one of us left for foreign parts; and a benefit concert for the local NPR classical music station (WFSQ) scheduled 2 nights after one of our members returned from foreign parts…in the end we were given a boon from on-high when the threat of a tropical storm (this is Florida, after all) caused said benefit to be delayed by a couple of weeks. We got to rehearse!!

But coming up, we have several concerts in several states, a Weill Hall concert in May (and who doesn’t love that Big Apple), a Beethoven Triple in the Gewandhaus no less – and who knows what else. The days are early.

So here it is – the inauguration of The Trio blog. The life and times of mid-life musicians embarking on a new and exciting project. The Three Musicteers. Or just a really good time for us and our friends. Time, as they say, will tell. In the meantime, wish us well