I am feeling very lucky this afternoon. I have made up music most of my life, but haven’t pursued a conventional career in it. I guess I haven’t been too conventional about much. But today is a very satisfying day when I spent several hours working with and performing some of my own compositions.

Yesterday I got up and instead of doing Greek, I sat down at the computer to work on an arrangement of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” for my piano trio. I worked for about an hour and was very unsatisfied. I was talking to Eileen and said I had struggled with the composition. She was surprised. She said i thought you were pretty much done with this piece.

I then recalled that I had thought that all of the work I had done prior in the week on it seemed at one point to have enough material for a final arrangement. So in the afternoon, I backed it up a little and followed my original game plan. By martini time I was printing off final copies of it and the other arrangement I did recently of “What Child is This.”

Today at piano trio rehearsal we read through them. It was a pleasant surprise that they worked as well as I thought.  Dawn and Amy were very complimentary.

After that rehearsal, I stopped by the house and picked up Eileen. We drove to Zeeland to sit in on a rehearsal  of my trumpet/organ piece by Rhonda Edgington and Brian Reichenbach. I invited my friend, Jordan, to come by as well.

It was very satisfying to hear them working on this piece. it sounds even better than I had hoped. Also, I enjoyed the back and forth we had regarding it. Very cool.

This Friday at 7 PM, Rhonda and Brian will be streaming a concert. I’m not sure if they are going to play my piece then or not. They didn’t mention that today. But here is a link to their YouTube Channel where presumably they will stream tomorrow night.

I am grateful that at the age of 69, I continue to have opportunities to compose music for people to perform. Even though I didn’t make a conventional career of it, I feel like it’s sort of a theme in my life.