Not much time to dash off blog entries right now, what with coming home to find we urgently need a new hot water heating tank and so on, but did want to give you the heads up on two concerts not to be missed this weekend at the USC School of Music Recital Hall. Friday the 18th at 7:30 PM, the incandescent Marina Lomazov will be giving a recital, and if you want a seat, you had better get there early, and I mean at least by 7 PM. This woman sells out Koger Center when she plays with SC Philharmonic, and the Recital Hall only seats about 200 and change. If you are in Columbia and love music and don't know about Marina, well, it's just not possible. Her playing is virtuosic, mesmerizing, charismatic, and thrilling. Don't know what the program is, but it doesn't matter. Worth a drive if you're reading this elsewhere in the state. Of all the reasons to like living in Columbia, the chance to hear her several times a year has to rank up there in importance. Have I done enough to convince you?

One of the other good reasons to live in our town is on display the very next evening, this Saturday the 19th. The Southern Exposure concert series, curated by USC composer John Fitz Rogers, has its first concert of the season at 7:30 on that evening, also at the Recital Hall. Sitar virtuoso Kardik Seshardri accompanied by Arup Chattopadhyay on tabla will be featured. One of the things I do miss from New York days are the World Music Institute concerts I used to attend regularly, and I hope that more world music concerts will take place in this city. This Saturday night concert is an unusual opportunity to hear a kind of music that you rarely have the chance to hear live in this area, so I strongly encourage you to avail yourself of this chance.

I opened the paper this morning, shocked to read this item, which clearly belongs in a category with other such jolting headlines as "Pope is Catholic" and "Bear Shits in Woods." Don't know about you, but my whole worldview has been turned upside down.

Steve Spurrier is not the only newcomer to USC who's energized a program at the school. Last year Opera at USC brought on board the very dynamic and gifted Ellen Douglas Schlaefer as the new Director of Opera Studies at the School of Music. In her brief time at the school the opera program has mounted some very ambitious and successful productions. This weekend you have two opportunities to see their fall presentation, Rossini's 1813 opera, "The Italian Girl in Algiers.". Shows are Friday Nov. 11 at 7:30, and Sunday Nov. 13 at 3 PM, both at Keenan High School.

Expect lots of laughs and hijinks in this show. You'll hear some outstanding singing and really fine young talent, as well. The students have been working very hard on this opera throughout the fall, under the guidance of this marvelous team (full disclosure policy dictates that I point out my wife Lynn is the vocal/opera coach at USC, so I REALLY know how much sweat has gone into this, from students and faculty). Sadly, I have to miss this opera since I'm in New York this weekend (see below), but if you're reading this in the Midlands area, don't miss these performances! The training these young people get in all aspects of opera (acting, vocal technique, musical and stylistic issues, language) is extraordinary.

Hello from the Big Apple. It's always good to be here, where I've spent more of my life than anywhere else, exactly 17 years (I moved to New York in August 1983 at age 22 to start my professional life as a musician and left to take a faculty position at the University of Michigan in August 2000). Of course I still spend a lot of time in New York (and remain a member of Local 802) and I enjoy my relationship now with the city more than ever. Usually I am here for no more than a week at a time, as is the case on this visit. I still feel very much at home here and know my way around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (never really did know the Bronx and certainly not Staten Island)...and just about the time the stress of dealing with the city starts to grind me down a bit, it's time to go home to South Carolina. So basically I feel that I'm getting the best of what New York has to offer in limited doses, which is a good policy to follow. But it helps to have lived here so long so that you really know how to get the most out of your time and how to avoid as many hassles as possible.

Oh yes, I almost forgot...there is a reason for my being here. This Friday evening, Nov. 11, at 7:30 PM, I'll be playing a solo recital at St. Peter's Church at 346 W. 20th St., in the Chelsea neighborhood. The program is one I have done a few times in the last year or so, in Columbia, Ann Arbor, and Milwaukee; it features Maurice Ravel's lusciously beautiful piano suite, Miroirs, composed one hundred years ago. Rather than playing the five movements of the piece together as is traditionally done, in this program I pair each of the Ravel movements with a short modern piano work written in the last twenty-five years, in each case something that to me evokes an association with its "mirror" Ravel piece. If you'd like to read a better description of what I'm talking about, here is a review of this program from my performance of it last June in Milwaukee.

The concert is only $10 at the door and it's a short program. I'll open with an early Mozart sonata, K. 282, and then the "Ravel-Plus" will follow, with no intermission. All told, you'll be out of there by 8:45 and can have a nice dinner in one of Chelsea's many marvelous restaurants. So if you are reading this in New York, or planning to be in the city Friday night, please come on by.

What a lovely afternoon it was yesterday! My wife Lynn and I spent it picnicking with wonderful friends at Sesquicentennial State Park, and a more delightful and relaxing way to spend a warm fall day I cannot imagine. To my friends from other parts of the country who wonder how I'm enjoying life "down south," I have a simple phrase with which to answer: "November 6th...82 degrees."

"Sesqui" is one of the jewels of Columbia. At least one of our friends had never been there in spite of living in town for several years, and another had only been once a long time ago, so we were happy to be able to turn them on to one of our favorite places in the area. We love the hiking trail around the lake, and yesterday for the first time we rented canoes and puttered about the lake, under a big sky. Recently Sesqui opened a dog park on the grounds (with membership fee) which I understand is becoming very popular with dog owners in the burgeoning northeast part of the city.

For our picnic, I had reserved one of the picnic shelters using the online reservation system that has recently been implemented. You can reserve campsites, the fancier state park cabins, or even picnic shelters and day use facilities using the system, and I thought the system worked very well.