6-month update

To sum it up: Life is good since I’ve moved to Boston in September and lived with Randy in the beautiful cozy North End of Boston.  It has been a crazy 6 months of schedule juggling between my freelance work and part-time work at NEC.  Some of the freelance stuff I do includes mostly orchestra playing (the Orchestra of Indian Hill, New Bedford, Nashua and New Hampshire, Gordon College) and some chamber music (performing in Harvard Baroque Chamber Ensemble and NEC student recitals).  I’ve attempted to stay involved with teaching, but so much performance opportunities have popped up that I tend to make playing a priority over teaching… for now.  Although, I am on the faculty of the Bradford School of Music (North Andover, MA), which is good because it’s a completely new facility with excellent technology system to promote a better learning environment.  I’m not sure exactly how using the computer will better my teaching, but I’m excited to experiment and find out. 

So far it’s been pretty manageable in terms of finding productive things to do.  Besides playing, I work as a Research Associate at the Center for Music-in-Education at NEC, where Randy and I along with a few others, form the Research Team, as we help schools in the MIE National Consortium in designing their music integrated academic curriculum.  It’s hard and tedious work in collecting and analyzing data, but I’m sure it will pay off in the near future with ending the budget cuts to arts/music programs and opening up new job positions for music teachers and researchers like us. 

Waitiki is doing well, although I haven’t performed with them once yet.  But thanks to Tim, I’ve started doing studio recording for Cape Verdean Pop music.  For now, it’s just a side project, but who knows.  Maybe it’ll grow into something huge?