Holy Jeezus!... hard to believe that it's been damned near a year since I've written anything here. But who cares? Nobody's reading it anyway. 2013 ended up being a year in which I was LEAST involved with music since my head-long involvement began 10 years prior... least involved, that is, as measured by the number of public engagements of a musical nature in which I was a planned participant. This is undoubtedly a result of me becoming more of a "home-body" and therefore not getting out much... which in turn resulted from: 1. Our two cats causing us to morph to their schedule (meaning EARLY to rise), 2. Me taking on yet more responsibilities in my non-musical (professional) life. Having written all of this, I HAVE been music-ing, however. Though I am painfully out of vocal shape at the time of this writing because I have a horrible cold, I think I can hear that my ideas in improvising over standard fare have improved slightly... more economical, slightly better groove, possibly better use of space. Now I just have to hit the shed again once my voice gets better. A few gigs stand out in my mind: The trio with Smith Dobson V and Kim Cass at Lungomare was SUPER fun (to hear a clip of that, head to the music section of this site under "stuff with Kim Cass"); my relatively recent hit with Sheldon Brown's Distant Intervals was a blast... looking forward to learning more densely chromatic melodies for our upcoming SF Jazz Center hit. And I'm proud to say that I am featured on the upcoming album from Beep!... my contribution to this definitely falls squarely into the "levity" category. And more levity may transpire as well, if my voice heals as expected. Anyway, I'm looking forward to my few upcoming gigs as well, which include another duo with Sam Ospovat in NYC, and a Holly Martins live recording at the Jazzschool over 2 consecutive nights in June. Later...