Violin Amazingness

Jules Massenet, "Meditation from 'Thaïs'"I like to promote things. I'm a producer — a promoter — a big-picture kinda guy. And so when I become friends with an incredible artist, like Buddy Zapata or Lauralee Farrer, I can't help but want to promote their art in any way I can. And I have skillz. I can take press photographs (see my post on T-Lou). I can shoot video (see the stuff I did of Buddy Zapata). I'm now producing (check out Not That Funny on Facebook). And now I can record live concerts. Laurie Niles is a fellow parent at McKinley School, where my kids go. Laurie is a violinist, a music teacher and educator, and a friend. She runs the crazy-cool website violinist.com, and this past Spring, she agreed to do a concert of violin music in the school auditorium. It was simply amazing. And I got to record it.I think the live recording sounds pretty good, no, it sounds great. But live was even better. I wish you all could have been there. If you ever get the chance to see her in concert, it's a treat. And every piece of music was unexpected — none of the “standard” classical fare. Here's the trio that started the concert (the audio on this video is simply from the Flip camera — sometime I'll marry up my audio with their video, but it's not a priority right now):

And it was all that good. The "Meditation from 'Thaïs'" that you heard at the top of this post was her encore, and it was a beautiful, peaceful way to end a magnificent evening of violin music.I feel so privileged to be around such awesome talent. It's fun. It's challenging to me as an artist. And these people become great friends too, friends that I hope to be promoting and hanging out with and enjoying each others’ company 20 years from now.So enjoy the music, and enjoy life, and enjoy the friends and family that you get to experience life with.