Wait...you said NO babies!?

By now I'd imagine that word has gotten around to most that Lisa and I having a baby. If not, sorry to inform you by the sterile (unlike yours truly;) medium of the internet blog. The due date is May 2. I know the Lesters are having a baby as well. Congrats to Andy and Kelley. I hear you guys are due about when we are so there's only one things to do. I hereby challenge you to a baby race. The couple who births their progeny first wins. Ready. Set. Go! Here;s an ultrasound picture.

It's hard to tell what's what, but the head is on the left and you can see limbs coming off of the torso on the right. If it just looks like unidentifiable fuzz to you, don't worry, you're just an idiot.

School is going real well. Lessons are great. Excerpts are my big project this semester. I'm learning a ton. Classes are few and practice time is plentiful. All is good. I'm going to audition for the sub list for the Minnesota Opera and do a solo competition with an orchestra in the cities. Busy, busy, busy.

Here's a trombone thought for all of my fellow knights. Lately I've been reinventing (or having reinvented I should say) my conception of lip slurs. Skip the rest of this paragraph if those first two sentences offended you in any way. Two totally independent events started this. In a lesson, Tom and I were working on the excerpt from the organ symphony, which, of course, I can't play. I was bumping the slurs like crazy and Tom had me singing them, then buzzing them with a slow gliss connecting the pitches, then with a fast gliss, then on the horn. Doing that fast gliss on the horn makes those tricky slurs respond more often. Tom said that day that behind every good lip slur is a gliss (or something like that). Interesting, no (or maybe everyone knows this but me)? The second event happened yesterday before a concert with a community orchestra I play in. While warming-up beforehand, I was talking to the bass bone player (a good player) and he was telling me about taking lessons with Vernon and Doug Wright. He was talking about lip slurs and said that Wright (I think) told him to move the lips more slowly when slurring between F and G in the staff (I'm not getting this exactly correct...don't quote me on this). I tried this and it felt like Tom's idea of a gliss. I've been working on it. It seems to help especially in soft playing. What do you think?

Finally, I want to end by giving my best to Branden and Andrea and Branden's folks and Kate and whomever else. I have to guiltily admit that if not for reading everyone's blogs today I would have missed this sad anniversary. It's astonishing that a year has passed since the accident. Doesn't seem like that long ago really. You will all be in my thoughts this week.