Oboe professor at Michigan State University College of Music Jan Eberle stopped by to put some finishing touches on Spectral Trio CD that should be ready for press sometime next week. The sound and the playing on this recording is so beautiful. Makes me very sad that pianist Kim Schmidt will never see this CD... He passed away in August... Hearing his charming playing on this recording makes

This was a live concert recording at Music Auditorium of Michigan State University College of Music. The very difficult and demanding program included 4 sonatas - by Mozart, Brahms, Debussy and Mendellsohn. Great show from these masters! I forgot my camera (well... as long as I had all my microphones and cabels...) so I took these pictures during pre-concert rehearsal on my phone. They look bad

The Potter House hosted another fundraiser. This time for Boarshead Theater in honor of Paula Prentiss, who is currently starring in their production. I would say about 150 people attended the event.

Quentin flew in from New York City to record a CD of romantic music by Liszt, Saint-Saens, Weber, and some of his own compositions. He is getting a Doctorate degree at Juilliard studying with Claude Frank and Jerome Lowenthal. Quentin has degrees from Peabody, Yale and Juilliard. I honestly lost track of his degrees quite a few years ago.

He is an excellent pianist and just a super nice

Ricardo Lorenz is professor of composition at Michigan State University. We recorded his piece for solo cello earlier this summer with Miguel Rojas, cellist who now lives in Philadelphia. It is a great piece, combining a lot of different techniques and articulations, and moving gracefully between cute and profound, characteristic Latin rhythms and long melodies. I look forward to hearing this work

I'm almost done with setting up the schedule for the Fine Arts Concert Series. The line up of artists is incredible. Last year we had 11 concerts, and I thought that was way too many. Most series have 4-6, maybe 8 concerts. This year we have 15! Organ, classical guitar, three choral groups, three theater performances, piano, violin, oboe, voice, jazz - we got it all.

Vocalist Shahida Nurullah and guitarist Spencer Barefield were doing the concert on the campus of the Cranbrook Educational Comunity in Detroit area. This concert was supposed to take place outside in the gardens, but due to the weather was moved to a new location under the roof but with open sides overlooking beautiful series of fountains. Recording these concerts is usully a puzzle that needs

Beautiful sounds of saxophone filled The Ballroom. David Stambler is assistant professor of saxophone at Penn State University and he and Jun Okada are working on the CD of music by Weiser, Prokofiev, John Anthony Lennon and other composers.

Neumann mics sound awesome on saxophone, capturing the mellow sound with great detail, and Schoeps mics on my Steinway are always reliable.

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That was a lot of fun! Albertine and Ralph Votapek recorded the whole CD of two piano music. We decided to call it "From Mozart to Piazzolla", because that's what it is (there is Schubert and Debussy in between).

This last month of August was filled with some of the most exciting and interesting recording projects I had to do. I felt that I should have some kind of a diary to write all the things down so I don't forget. Of course an idea of a blog came to mind. So here it is!