Upcoming Gigs

This is an incredible month or so of gigs for me. Just thought I'd get it all in one place:

Feb 23: Mirabai Ensemble Radio Broadcast at 11pm on KPFA 94.1FM. I just joined these guys and this radio broadcast will be my maiden voyage. Not nervous. much. ok. maybe a little.

Feb 25: Clockwork in the Bay Area Harmony Sweepstakes. This will be our 3rd time around! Yikes I guess we've been around for a while, then! Last time ('04) we won and went to the finals. Wish us luck.

March 3 & 4: Clockwork at the Columbia Jazz Festival. This is a super fun weekend where we get to work with high school groups and perform with a huge allstar band that includes Phil Mattson and Don Shelton.

March 5: Mirabai Ensemble at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay. The big gig with the Mirabai. 7 singers, 8 players, big music!

March 31: Clockwork at the Santa Cruz Jazz Festival. Never done this one before. If it's anything like Columbia I can't wait!

April 1 & 2: Pacific Mozart Ensemble 25 Anniversary Concert. Big big big. Mozart C Minor Mass with Dave Brubeck, Meredith Monk and David Lang providing the missing pieces. Cool cool cool.

April 8 or 9: The Virgin Killers (Scorpions Tribute Band) somewhere. For a quick tutorial on Tribute Bands check out "The Reason" (You'll need the latest Flash). Sadly the VKs are not featured, but 3 of my band mates are featured as part of the Rocket Queens.

June 3, 9 & 10: Pacific Mozart Ensemble Spring Jazz and Pops Concert
Always a good time.

2008: Vienna perhaps?

-E

Yet Another Magic Weekend

Seems like every time Alyson and I go to Tahoe it's about 10° outside. Makes for some pretty landscapes and some new landspeed records getting from the car to the house! Ok, so it wasn't 10° the whole time, but it never cracked freezing. And it snowed every day. So freaking cool. We spent the weekend at Sorensen's playing in the snow. Man that place rocks. It's on Hwy 88 so there's way less people than in Tahoe proper, but it's close enough that we could get into South Tahoe when we needed to. (fyi Starbuck wi-fi is a wiffing rip-off!)

We went Snowshoeing and Alyson liked it! This is an excellent development. Look forward to many snow-shoe reports in the future! We were pretty much the only poeple out there. Every track that we could see in the snow was our own. Achingly beautiful landscapes all covered in snow. What could be better?

For now you can enjoys some pics from the weekend. Here's my favorite
-E

Final Grammy Wrap-up

You may recall me announcing about 400 times that the Bernstein Mass got nominated for a grammy. Ok, so we didn't win. Whatever. The group was so jazzed about the whole thing. We sent a huge entourage down to the ceremonies. Lynne and Dick returned to regale us with stories of the evening. Gene put together a slide show of the evening. All good fun!

Gene was our man on the scene, using his camera phone to take some pics that he then im'd to me on my phone so I could then email them to the group. It was all good fun:
"doot doot doot ... doot doot doot...
Dateline Burbank. Our intrepid reporter Dr Gene is on the scene for the 2006 Grammys Award Show! No cameras allowed inside but that doesn't stop this resourceful fellow! In an early morning communique we see a bleary-eyed Hern tanking up for a hard day's work of partying and basking. How will we get those images without a camera? Why he's got one of those new-fangled contraptions on his phone! Welcome to the aughts dear reader. As the info and images pour in we'll keep this conduit open for all the latest breaking news! Good morning and Good Luck!"

Ok, so I got a little dorky on the day, but dude it's the Grammys! I remember once when I was at Cal (you know, back in the dusty old 80s). The Cal Chamber Chorus was nominated for a grammy. I don't remember if they won but boy was I jealous! I was singing in the totally fun, but pretty fringe Perfect Fifth. I say fringe 'cause it was not an official Music Dept group, just a bunch of people who liked singing. Our director Tony Pasqua is one of the most influential people in my musical life. He probably doesn't even remember me, but I learned a ton singing for him in that group. He didn't know it at the time, but he was basically teaching me how to run a rehearsal. I took that training and put it to use in a ton of a cappella groups over the years. I heard recently that Tony's still banging around the bay area directing choirs. I hope we cross paths again.

Wow what a digression! Did I mention I met Gene at a P5 Audition? That's a great story for another time. Back to the freaking Grammys! There's more good stuff! For example, here's one of Gene's dipatches. Don't they look pretty? Ok that's a totally rhetorical question. Yes. Yes they do look pretty. Hell if I saw them coming down the street I'd invent some kind of award just so's I could give it to them!

A big bonus was some free publicity on local TV. The week before the show. KPIX filmed a rehearsal and followed a few Peemers around for a new piece. The piece aired the night of the grammys and is hopefully still on-line here. You have to wait about 5min but then there we are in all our glory. Super cool. You even get a brief shot of yours truly singing in our fabled pre-Berlin concert. (If I've related this story to you, you'll know that concert was full of false hubris that was summarily dispatched upon arrival in the German capitol.)

Ok I think that's it for this round of PME glorification. I hope there is round after round after round! Here's the rest of the pics. (be aware, there's none too many and they're mostly camera pics)

-E