After only three short years here in Austin, AEJ and I are picking up and moving once again.  AEJ is going to grad school for philosophy in the northeast, and she starts this fall.  We’re sad to be leaving Austin — we have great friends here, and I can’t say enough about how warmly Texas (and Texas bands) have embraced us.  I’ll be back a lot, of course.  I’m the featured composer at TBA (Texas Bandmasters Association) in July, and I don’t plan to ever miss a TMEA convention, so I’ll be around for both of those.  I’m also planning to spend a few weeks in Texas every March, doing an extended stay in either Dallas or Houston and working during that time with high school groups who are preparing my music for UIL.  In other words, we’re moving, but I’m not exactly leaving.

This means that we have to sell our house — the house we’ve been renovating non-stop for the past three years. A lot of this will read like an ad, so you might just want to look at the pictures. (A lot of these photos were shot by Allison Cartwright. Some are mine, but the best ones, honestly, are not.)

When we bought the place, it was in good shape, but it was all pretty much still in its original 1968 condition. We’ve changed just about everything — even the house numbers.

Here’s the house at night — or actually, blue hour.

Every light is new.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted pictures of the guest bedroom. This light — the crazy spider light — is one of my favorites that AEJ found.

Here’s the hallway into the guest bath, featuring a portrait of Loki.  (That portrait does not stay with the house!)

Here’s that guest bath, with European vanity, shiny fixtures, and a Kohler full-skirted dual-flush WaterSense toilet. The floor tile is large 12×24 linen finish.

For selling, we staged one of the bedrooms as a nursery. If you know me, you’ll know how ironic this is. (It’s also funny because as our realtor said, “yours is not a… ‘family’ home.” I guess all of the white rugs and sofas gave it away…)

Speaking of those white rugs… Here’s our living room, through to the dining room.  Note the bar cart in the corner – an essential accessory for any formal living room.

The dining room, with AEJ’s custom-designed butterfly wall art. (Those are all real butterflies.)  The wallpaper is Kelly Wearstler’s Imperial Trellis.  The dining table is a Saarinen 78″ oval in Arabescato marble.  We’ve sat 10 at this table.  (The dining room is a bit larger than it appears here.)  The crystal chandelier was our addition.  (The old thing was nasty.)

Turning the corner, here’s the dining room heading into the kitchen.

The highlight of the house is the kitchen.  The range is a GE Monogram (as seen on Top Chef!) dual-fuel 6-burner and convection oven with matching hood with shelf and infrared warming light.

It’s all very shiny.

And it has a friggin’ built-in espresso/coffee/cappuccino machine!

It’s tough to photograph the backsplash, a hand-built custom mosaic from MUM New York.

Looking from the kitchen through to the family room. (We removed the wall that used to separate the two rooms.)

Did I mention the built-in espresso machine?!

Another angle from the kitchen and breakfast area through to the family room.  (This table is a Saarinen table with a custom mirrored top.  Disco, baby.)

Looking from the family room back towards the kitchen.

From the foyer looking into the family room.

We reframed the old limestone fireplace and clad it instead in Equator Marmara striped marble (yes, marble) and a handmade black rippled glass mosaic. We also installed lighting (controlled by remote control) that lights the firebox, giving those logs the impression that they’re glowing. It’s very Fortress of Solitude. You can barely see them, but Paradigm surround speakers have been installed in the ceiling. There’s also in-wall wiring going to a rear subwoofer.

All speaker and A/V (HDMI, Ethernet, power, etc.) wires are hidden in the walls, and the components are hidden away in a closet, controlled by RF remote (which also controls all of the lighting in the room, so that if you press “watch movie” on the remote, all lights go off, except the sconces which dim to 5%, along with the subwoofer’s backlight).

Here’s that foyer I mentioned, with an AEJ-designed 48″ door.

Here’s the front door, from the other side (obviously).

The laundry room used to look like this. Seriously.

It was completely gutted, and now has marble flooring and a top-of-the-line Electrolux washer and dryer.

Here’s my studio.

Moving on to the master bedroom… AEJ designed and made that light fixture.

Another angle.

Here’s the master bath with the same fixtures as the guest bath (including a ridiculously nice toilet).

Another angle, looking back through the master bedroom, into the family room.

The back yard isn’t too much to look at, because it’s March. By May, though, this’ll be green(er).

That’s the house. Three years of AEJ’s heart and soul, and more band booster dollars than I care to discuss. We wish we could bring it all with us — like a terrifying episode of “Haulin’ House” — but that’s not possible. We hope our house makes somebody else happy, too!

Inspired by Steve Bryant’s (and when am I not inspired by Steve Bryant?) recent travel itinerary blog entry, and also wanting to figure out for myself where the hell I’m going this spring, I just sat down with the calendar…

In about three hours (I knew about this one without consulting the calendar), I head down to San Antonio for the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) annual convention, a gathering of 20,000 music educators, students, and their families.  Both 5A All-State bands are performing my music on Saturday (the 5A Symphonic Band is playing “Hymn to a Blue Hour” with Gary Green conducting, and the 5A Concert Band is playing “Asphalt Cocktail” with Kevin Sedatole conducting), and I’m excited for the performances, but even more so for the rehearsals.  The All-State bands in Texas are the best in the country (and TMEA always supports the participation of the composers whose music is performed by the bands), and the rehearsal process — watching a great collegiate-level conductor work with the best young musicians in the state to put together a challenging program in only two days — is exciting and terrifying and inspiring.  I’ll be at TMEA until Sunday morning.  When I’m not at rehearsals or roaming the exhibit floor, I’ll be at the Grand Hyatt bar.  I’ll be the short loud guy with the pointy boots.

I’ll be home for two days before leaving on Wednesday, February 16, for the University of Florida, where Joseph Alessi is performing “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” with the wind ensemble, conducted by David Waybright.  That concert is on Thursday the 17th.  They’re also making a studio recording of the piece. (Alessi’s original recording, for those who missed it, is now on iTunes.)

The next morning after the concerto performance, I fly to the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, for their honor band weekend, including a performance of “Hymn to a Blue Hour” (conducted by Kevin Geraldi) on February 18, and the first studio recording of the piece on Sunday, February 20.  I fly home the next morning, February 21.

February 25, I drive up to Dallas for a clinic on “Undertow” at Garland ISD.  My first UIL-related clinic of the season!

February 28, it’s off to Oklahoma for two days at Piedmont High School, where they’re preparing for their premiere of my new “grade 3” piece, “Foundry.”  I can’t wait to finally hear that piece in person — and to see what instrument they’re using for the “clang.”

From there, I go directly to the American Bandmasters Association convention in Norfolk, Virginia, where UNCG is performing “Hymn to a Blue Hour” once more, and Ithaca College is performing “Aurora Awakes” for the Ostwald ceremony.  I’ll be home from Virginia on March 4.

March 8 is a quick trip over to Houston for a clinic at Willow Wood Junior High School, another consortium member for “Foundry.”  I’ll be home that same night, and then I don’t travel again until March 23-27, when I attend the CBDNA national convention in Seattle.  (Ko-ichiro Yamamoto, principal trombonist for the Seattle Symphony, will perform “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” on Saturday afternoon at the conference.  I’m awfully excited about that.)

The next week has two more high school clinics — Cedar Park High School here in Austin, then Spring Woods High School in Houston, plus a performance of “Hymn to a Blue Hour” with the UT Austin Wind Ensemble.

The next week, I’ll be at UT Arlington for three days (Doug Stotter is conducting “Hymn to a Blue Hour,” “Asphalt Cocktail,” and “Kingfishers Catch Fire” – whew!), then it’s off to Sam Houston State for the next three days (as part of the regional NASA conference — that’s saxophones, not space travel – but are they really so different?).

The next week, on April 13, I fly out to Michigan State, where Joe Lulloff is performing my Soprano Sax Concerto.  I’ll be at MSU until the morning of April 18, when I fly directly to Dallas to hear Joseph Alessi perform “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” with the Baylor Wind Ensemble at the Eisemann Center.  That is going to be a hell of a performance, I’m sure — and based on the crowd Alessi drew here in Austin in September, I’m sure the much-smaller Eisemann Center will be SRO.

And then the travel is done!  Not another thing until late June.  That means I will finally be able to write this again-delayed Percussion Concertino that is next on the docket.

See y’all this spring!

Here’s a fun follow-up to yesterday’s post about self-publishing your own recordings, or my earlier blog post about self-publishing the music itself…

I was doing a paperwork purge in the garage this afternoon, and I found a lot of interesting things — old concert programs, letters, contracts, stuff like that.

The best thing I found, though, was my Juilliard transcript.

The lowest grade I received during my two years of graduate school?  A single B-.  Ouch.  Not very impressive.  That’s basically a C — at a school where you kind of have to make an effort to get less than an A in just about anything.

The class?

“The Business of Music.”