The Lilly Fellowship School Year is Coming to a Close

This summer will be quite different from the summer of 2010. An obvious change will be that I will spend much more time here in No. Indiana.  I confess to having developed an "itch" for travel.  Now that my grant funds have been spent scratching that itch is much more difficult.   For all intents and purposes my Lilly project has concluded.  The changes I've gone through, the people I've met, the challenges I've faced, the places I've visited, and the time I've devoted in the pursuit of becoming a better fingerstyle guitarist have easily culminated into one of the most rewarding years of my life.  The wonderful thing about all of this is that I will be forever positively changed for the experiences.

Now I face the summer of 2011 with a definite increase in my skill level as a guitarist, a bit more courage as a performer and the desire to build on the phenomenal foundation that my grant activities facilitated.  I've come to the conclusion that I must take the time to really plan out my practice time.  I have so many pieces of music that I want to learn but there is not enough time to absorb them all.  Quality is intrinsically more important than quantity.  So a fair share of my time will be spent improving and internalizing the pieces I have memorized and then add some other pieces.  I do not want to trade off tunes in my repertoire.  I want to strengthen and build my repertoire.  I want to play a core set of pieces without fear of stumbling through them and instill expression into my performance as well. Perhaps this summer will bring with it a spark for musical composition.