Your faithful blogger (well, not so faithful recently, I know these entries have been few and far between) received news of a wonderful honor last week...I've been awarded the Artist Fellowship in Music Performance by the South Carolina Arts Commission for 2008-2009. It always feels good to get a kind of confirmation in the work one is doing, and I'm very grateful and appreciative of this special recognition. I'm also particularly proud to receive it from the Arts Commission of my recently adopted (as of 2004) home state, a state my wife and I love dearly.

An extra bit of happy news accompanied this event: my friend John Fitz Rogers received the Arts Commission's Fellowship for Music Composition. His CD is coming out soon, I've been working on the liner notes, immersing myself in his music for a few weeks, and the impact of his work just keeps growing on you the more times you listen to any particular work of his. What higher praise can you give a composer?