Hi Everyone,
It’s been several months since I updated this ‘blog’.
Recently, I was elected to my second term as the President of the Theatre Musicians Association (for U.S. and Canada) on August 21st at the 17th Annual Theatre Musicians Association Conference, which was held this year in Oak Brook, IL August 20-21. In the past year, among TMA’s many accomplishments, was being on the AFM Pamphlet B Negotiations for all AFM union touring musicians and getting rid of the Alternate Touring Agreement and replacing it the new Short Engagement Touring Agreement (SETA). Upon it’s ratification, hopefully in October, this contract will improve the salary, healthcare and working conditions for touring musicians.
On August 4th, I was fortunate enough to play a concert sponsored by Broadway in Chicago, which had music and representatives from most of their shows in the upcoming season and a Centennial salute to the Nederlander Theatres. This free concert held at Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park had over 20,000 folks in attendance. Among the shows represented were: Peter Pan, I Love Lucy, Catch Me If You Can, Les Miserables, Sister Act, War Horse and Kinky Boots. The show ended with Cyndi Lauper singing a song from her new musical Kinky Boots, which will be having it’s pre-Broadway Run in Chicago starting in late September.
I’ve been fortunate also to play on several recordings in the past months including Chicago actress, Iris Lieberman’s new cd.
As you can tell, not much theatre for me since 4/1, but the fall is going to get busy (starting with Kinky Boots).
I did manage to take several trips in the last 4 months including to:
• Berlin to visit my son, Ashley. We also did a side trip to Prague, Czech Republic. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
• Philippines to scuba dive off of the island of Cebu. This included a day of diving with several whale sharks. It was a shore dive (walk in the water) from a small town on the Northeast side of Cebu named Oslob. All of the diving was spectacular. I also spent four days in Bangkok, Thailand before going home. Great trip.
• Puerto Aventuras Mexico – we went the day before Hurricane Ernesto hit Belize (about 400 miles south). Lots of rain for a couple of days and then beautiful weather. We did two ocean dives, but the viz was still bad because of the weather. For the rest of the dive trip, we dove several of the Cenotes (underground rivers, i.e. caves) including Chac Mool and Taj Mahal. This was outstanding! Check out my Facebook pix for this and the Philippines dives.
• Minneapolis – to attend the Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA) conference and give a report for TMA. This went very well as did
• Chicago – attending the International Congress of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM) and gave a report for TMA. (8-22-24).
So I have managed to keep busy and am readily welcoming the coming fall. Hope you’re having a great summer!