December 20, 2006 at 7:39 PM

Merry Christmas to all v.com friends. Concerts/parties/social engagements/work events are winding down for me and I am ready for our holiday break. Both of my concerts went very well and I really enjoyed playing the music with the community orchestra. We were joined by 2 excellent high school choirs and a professional ballet corp danced 2 pieces from the Nutcracker. It was my first time to play any of the Tchaikovsky and I hadn’t played Sleigh Ride since high school band days. The concert was well attended -we nearly filled the 2,000 seat Performing Arts Center.

The highlight of my December was the Special Education holiday play put on yearly by our school system’s Music Therapy department. They are a great group of creative people and have written and produced the most amazing plays for the past 31 years. This year’s play was “A Wild Chase through Mother Goose Land”. Stan the gingerbread man makes a run for it during Mrs. Claus’ holiday tea party with Mother Goose(played by yours truly). His frantic search for his family throughout Mother Goose Land provided the perfect opportunity for our intellectually disabled students to perform hip-hop musical nursery rhymes. The cast included nearly 150 students and regular education peers assisted with pushing wheelchairs, behavior management or just hand holding to make sure the choreography went as planned. The costumes, sets and assistive technology used were off the wow meter-this could have been a Broadway production. We performed 3 mornings and one evening to a full house and I was honored to be a part of this heart warming performance. It is a wonderful collaboration of regular and special education services. Happy Holidays and Happy Fiddling to all!