The Summerglen Files

Greetings, Summerglen Friends!
I apologize for not writing for, er, a month… It looks like I’ve taken my 17-day retreat thing to a whole new level. It’s long after the 17 day mark, but I’m still making sure to relax and enjoy the little details of life (unfortunately, though, at the expense of my [...]

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Perhaps one of the best ways to relax is to get out of town and take a nice vacation. Although it can be tempting to make excuses like, “Oh, it’s too expensive” or “I really have a lot to do,” vacation is important, even vital, to our sanity and creativity.
Last weekend was [...]

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It can be all to easy to get locked into schedules and habits. We get used to doing certain things in certain ways at certain times, and life becomes a comfortable routine. But sometimes it’s the very comfort of a routine that holds us back from being energetic and innovative and spontaneous. [...]

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2009 has been a wild and crazy year for us Summergleners…we’ve been writing books, setting up ways to market those books, getting a salsa band up and running, working with students, playing heaps of shows, and planning creativity workshops, summer ensembles, and various kinds of school bands. It feels like we’ve been working nonstop, [...]

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Even when you do something you enjoy for a living, you can get burned out if you don’t take breaks. So, this past weekend we took a break…and drove to the Outer Banks!
It was a 4-1/2 hour drive each way, but we made the trip last even longer by stopping to check out this [...]

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Often, people comment on how fun my line of work must be. After all, I get to “play” for a living! While it’s true that being a musician is a super-cool job, it’s definitely not all fun and games. Like my grandmother said, “The work must be done in order to play.”
As [...]

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This week has been pretty hectic, one of those weeks where you have an endless list of things to get done, and the more you do, the more you still need to finish. Each day I played music all day, and arranged, and went to networking meetings, and researched for workshops, and came home [...]

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