Let the Countdown Begin!!

Hello all!! I want to thank you for visiting my site and exploring. I hope you enjoyed your time and were able to find something that you enjoyed! My goal is that my music will inspire you or, at least, will be something that you will want to listen to again. 

I wanted to write today to inform everyone of a few developments. I only have 6 days now before I leave for the Nadia Boulanger Institute and I am so excited! I cannot wait to learn from these great professors and teachers, to be in the beautiful city of Paris for an entire month, to eat the amazing food, to meet my roommate (it has been almost a decade since I have had a roommate that wasn't a spouse), and to hear some amazing music! My roommate will be a young man from NYU and I have spoken with a few of the other composers going. They all seem very young, but excited about this opportunity. I am sure I will learn a lot from them all! I try to never pigeon hole myself as the oldest or the youngest or many other factors because you can always learn something from other people if you just have the right mindset. 

I held a concert on the 11th at Trinity Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that was also a fundraiser type of event. There wasn't a charge of admission but any donation was greatly accepted. Unfortunately, the stormy weather that we had that day kept most of the people away, but the few that did brave the storm were wonderfully receptive to all the music and very encouraging! It was a concert filled with music that was either inspired by France, composed by a French composer, or we could imagine being inspired by France. 99% of the composers on the concert with French, including Ravel, Satie, Debussy, Chopin, and Saint-Saens. It also included some Sibelius, and Villa-Lobos. I was so incredibly thankful to be joined on the stage by my dear friend Luciano Correa. He is an amazing cellist and a wonderful composer himself. While he was the featured melodic instrument for the concert, I did perform Chopin's 15th Prelude, "The Rain Drop", while the rain fell down outside. It was a beautiful few minutes. We also performed one of my newest pieces, Lamentation for Cello and Piano, and it was warmly received by the audience. 

I am currently in Houston preparing to fly out on Tuesday. My in-laws have welcomed us to their place and, to be honest, we feared the Tropical Storm Cindy might intensify while we were still in Baton Rouge, thus making it hard or impossible to make it to Houston for my flights. But this gives us about 6 days together as a family and time to enjoy the less-humid heat of Houston. 

I have also started a blog where I will talk about my trip to Paris and the events of the day, week, or whatever might have happened. If you are interested in reading up on my trip to Paris and the Nadia Boulanger Institute, please follow the link (at the bottom of this post) to my blog and press the follow button. (I am also thinking of making it a blog just for musical happenings in my life but I have not decided.)

Well, thank you all for coming here! I will be posting a list of all the donor for Paris in the next few days, so a special thank you to those wonderful and amazing people!  

 - Bill

A Oui Bit of Paris