The holiday season is here, and for me that means 35 performances of Tjaikovskij’s classic The Nutcracker with the Houston Ballet. I’ve played it several times before, but only for about a week at a time. From Thanksgiving up until the New Year is a different story! Our Principal trumpet Jim Vassallo figured he has played it over a thousand times over the years!
Still, it’s a great piece of music, and lots of fun to play. And compared to Lohengrin, the Wagner opera we just finished, it clocks in at half the time, two hours instead of four!
I won’t spend all my time in the pit, though. This coming Saturday, December the 5th, I’ll be playing with Ambient Brass and the Houston Choral Society for their Christmas show. I’m also playing Christmas concerts at the Grace Presbyterian Church and St Luke’s United Methodist Church.
If you want to check out some cool jazz, come to River Oaks Baptist Church on December 13 at 6 pm, where we’ll play with Matt Lemmler’s sextet. Also, on December 19 we’ll have an in-store concert at Cactus Records at noon 
with my own group promoting Slide Side, my new CD. Hope to see you there!
I am a huge Nut Cracker ballet fan and found Mom Culture’s interview with Kaitlyn Gilliland–the Sugar Plum Fairy from the New York Ballet–fascinating and informative. I especially liked her perspective on to watch ballet….and her perspective on the reality dance shows. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. You can link to it at http://www.momcultureonline.com