I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Spring semester started for me last week and it has been crazy! The first week of school is always crazy with new things I have planned for the semester. There are definitely tons of exciting things coming up that I’m really looking forward to!

This week, I have been super busy, getting ready for the next Satellite Salon series. Alison, the harpist, arrived from LA a few days ago and we have been rehearsing every single day. This series is going to be really cool, with all the music, dancing and artwork. If you are in Utah, please check out this event!

Last year, I did a recording project with composer Chinary Ung. His album, called The Music of Chinary Ung Vol. 3, has finally been released! I recorded percussion as well as voice. I had a pretty massive percussion set up! It was a really fun recording project. Check out the album on Bridge Records.

Check out my huge set up!

Having dinner with Chinary Ung himself, and everyone else involed with the album!

Anyway, I just wanted to write quick blog. I gotta get back to rehearsing! Check back for my next blog!

Always, Lynn

Did you know that I love to cook? I’m a big foodie! I love to cook and I love to eat! Today’s blog is going to be about food and the holidays! So you might be asking yourself, what does a marimbist do for the holidays?

Growing up, my family always had special places that they like to visit regularly for holidays.  My mom’s side of the family always went to Santa Cruz, where us kids lived on the beach and boardwalk for a few weeks each summer.  With my Dad, we used to go to the California central coast, to a very special small town called Cambria.  Some people know of this place because it is very near San Simeon, which is where Hearst Castle is. We wouldn’t go to Hearst Castle or anything, but we would relax and watch the ocean from the deck and go to dinner at fancy restaurants.

So, now as an adult, I have really enjoyed taking road trips while I was living in California, many of which have gone through that charming Cambria.  Each time I make one of these trips, I make a pilgrimage of sorts to this one restaurant that has had a few names, but I know of as Ian’s.  They make this famous, yummy, thick, luscious, rich, incredible salmon bisque there that every time I went I tried to catch different flavors and re-create the recipe once I got home.  I would write down ideas for what the flavors were on napkins and adjust my home-pirated version each time.  Well, as fate would have it, on the last road trip I took there, I landed at Ian’s once again, and they had a book called “Soup’s On” which is all famous restaurant soups including Ian’s Salmon Bisque!  So, now I can make it to my heart’s content, and every time I do, there are rave reviews.  I think its the rich creamy-ness with lots of leeks and chunky pieces of salmon that make it so good…or it could just be the stick of butter!  Haha!

Try it – if you like salmon, you will love it!

Ian’s Salmon Bisque
As seen in “Soups on” by Hobbs & Carter

1 stick butter
2 cups sliced leeks
1/2 pound sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon crushed garlic
46 ounces clam juice
4 cups crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 teaspoons dill weed
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
4 cups salmon (bones removed) cut into 1/2 inch cubes
4 cups cream
1/2 cup flour
fresh dill sprigs for garnish.

Melt butter in a large pot. Add leeks, mushrooms and garlic. Sautee for approx 5 min.  Add clam juice, tomato, parsley, dill, salt and pepper. Heat broth to almost boiling and add salmon.  Cook salmon for approx 3 – 5 min. Stir in cream and whisk in flour. Reheat.  Garnish with dill to serve.

For Christmas this year, I spent about 5 – 6 days in Los Angeles visiting family and having some coveted relaxation time!  I always love visiting my family in LA because I get real Mexican cooking!  This year I enjoyed the following dishes – all home made of course!  I had Chicken Mole (very choclately and yummy), lengua in a tomatillo sauce (yes, that is tongue – it is do good!), chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, sopes, carne asada and of course tortillas! YUMMY!  I had several people’s tamales, and I love them all.  Many were pork with red sauce, which is very common, but also cheese and chiles, and the unusual sweet kind that combines the masa with little pineapple chunks!

My niece!

After LA, it was off to Fresno, but let me tell you I nearly had a meltdown going from LA to Fresno.

 Near Tehachapi, CA

Living in Utah, I am totally spoiled with no traffic, so any traffic bugs me,  But this was ridiculous!  Leaving LA on Dec 26th, well, it took 2 hours just to get from Pasadena to Castaic Lake…..something that normally would take like 30 minutes.  I was very grumpy, but happy that I was in my new car!  I just love the Honda Fit!  It is fantastic!  My sweet pups like it too and I can’t believe how much I can put in that little car.  It’s like Mary Poppins’ purse – an endless cavern!  In Fresno, its all about the Armenian food!  Sooberag is my favorite – which is like a cheese lasagna type thing that I love so much that I can eat it hot, cold, or any which way!  Its my absolute favorite.

 Sooberag!

Also in Fresno, my Mom has a very cool wet bar in her house that my sister keeps totally stocked, so we like to come up with fun holiday drinks together!  The hit for the moment is vanilla vodka with Peppermint Schnapps and seltzer water! Yum!  We also had a nice lunch with my aunt at Max’s which is a fun restaurant that is famous for their sweet potato fries!  Those who know me well know I can’t refuse fries!  haha!

 Lunch at Max’s in Fresno

I do like to listen to Christmas music during the holidays!  This Christmas some of my favorites were Al Di Mieola’s Winter Nights, and the Sara McLaughlin Christmas Album,  I also kinda like Low’s Christmas album, but everyone says its too mellow when I put it on.  I also really like all the “Very Special Christmas” samplers!  Oh, and I had a great afternoon watching the Rush Time Machine DVD – its was awesome and I love the look of that album and tour – kinda “steam punk!” I love that look!

To finish off my California vacation, I spent New Year’s Eve at my mom’s house some champagne and had munchies by the fire. Very cozy!

Today I’m heading back to Utah. I had a wonderful and relaxing time in California! I look forward to the excitement this year will bring!

A little late, but I hope you like my Christmas cards with my pups!

Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Always, Lynn

This semester went by so fast! There was so much going on with school and gigs, that finals week arrived in a flash! It has been a great fall semester for myself and especially my students.

First of all, we had an awesome percussion ensemble concert this Fall! The concert was so well attended which was so great for the performers – there is nothing like playing to a full house!  We had quite a varied program, with everything from the feisty duo “Octabones” to a piece called “Quench” where the whole ensemble played and drank from wine bottles!  The audience members seemed to have many different favorites, which I think is a good thing. Some really liked Octabones, some preferred the marimba quartet Hook and many people loved the intense drumming quintet called “Red Earth.”  I was very proud of the students yet again for a great evening of music, played with elegance and professionalism! Yay!

After Thanksgiving, my students performed John Rutter’s Gloria. The Rutter Gloria is a famous piece for choir that has some brass and percussion.  It is a very well known and beloved piece, with spirited outer movements that are really fun to play and listen to!  The percussion parts can be done with 2 or 3 people. We did it with 3…a timpanist plus two others. The timpani part is particularly fun, with lost of dramatic moments and cool exposures.  There is also snare, xylophone and a bit of bells and cymbals.  I was really proud of my percussionists, since it was a “real-world” situation.  They got the music and then just a few days later had only a couple rehearsals and then the concert.  The three of them listened to a few different versions of it to check tempos and such (thank you Spotify) and then were ready to go for the rehearsals and performance! I don’t have a video or recording of SUU’s performance, but check out this video of the third movement of the piece so you can hear it!

A few weeks ago, I did a photo shoot to promote the next Satellite Salon series that I’ll be hosting next month. The photo shoot was really fun, especially working with a great dancer, Paul Ocampo. Here’s a sneak peak of Satellite Salon!

Finally, I am happy to announce that my student, Taylor Armstrong, won the Southern Utah Young Artist Competition! Taylor is a freshman at SUU this year from Kanab, Utah, and he is already a fantastic solo player!  He has been going to PASIC every year for many years, and really is up on all things in the percussion world.  He has been a great addition to our studio, with all of his knowledge and skills of course, but also his crazy side as well.  We tease him that he has a little bit of a devilish grin and is always ready with a funny quip of some kind.  He keeps us laughing for sure! He is playing the Ewazen Marimba Concerto right now, which is a piece that is particularly well-suited for him, both musically and his body type!  At over 6 feet tall, he can reach all over that 5 octave marimba!  He submitted a recording of the 3rd movement for the Orchestra of Southern Utah’s Young Artist Competition and won!  He will be performing with the orchestra in April!  I am so proud of him!  He is also submitting this piece to some other competitions so we will see how things develop for Taylor! Congratulations Taylor!

What a great semester! I’m really looking forward to next Spring and the musical adventures waiting for me. Stay tuned!

Upcoming Events:

- I’m hosting Satellite Salon in January, featuring LA harpist, Alison Bjorkedal

- The SUU Percussion Ensemble will be performing for the Utah Music Educator’s Association in February

Two weeks ago, I was at PASIC and had a great time! I spent my week at the Marimba One booth and had a chance to meet new people as well as old friends!

Our booth was great!  We had three brand new marimbas that were in the booth for the convention and then given to their owners at the end of the show. It is always so much fun to unite the new instruments with their owners!  Also we had the new mallet display which was so cool – one of each of the mallets is displayed so its easy for people to see the different lines.  We also had our new mallet bags which totally sold out by the second day! We had a great team in the booth, including Ron Samuels, Nicole, Chad, Sabrina, myself and my student Joe Howe talking to people about our great instruments and mallets!

Many students came to the booth, and many old friends and new colleagues!  I was so excited to see some of the students that I had made mallet recommendations for last year!  Many people had new pieces that they were working on and looking for mallets to match with.  Remember you can always email me or find me at one of the shows and get mallet advice for pieces!

I was so happy to get a chance to hang out with Marimba One artists Matthew Coley and his duo partner Ronni Wenzell, Tim Palmer from England, Rachel Zhang and Eriko Daimo.  I feel so honored to be an artist among such amazing other artists with Marimba One!  I also had some wonderful conversations with Nancy Zeltsman, David Johnson, Fernando Meza and William Moersch!  What inspirational people!

I saw some great performances!  I was particularly impressed with Morris Palter’s performance of Toucher by Vinko GLobokar.  That piece is one that I love and have played many times, and I thought his performance of it was fantastic!  He had some particularly good ideas for the interludes that I thought were really unique! I also thought Steve Schick was fantastic, as always.  He is one of the greatest performers of percussion music I have ever seen, and his performances always inspire me!  I was also really interested in what Pius Cheung had to say in his clinic about technique and musicianship.  I loved his quote from other great musicians and I particularly liked his concepts of how music can change your perspective.  I liked his new piece, Nocturne in F Major, and may try to get my hands on it for a future performance.

My whole studio from Southern Utah University attended PASIC and we continued our tradition of Dr Vartan treating them to dessert one night to talk about all they have seen.  As we sat in the fancy back room at Shula’s Steakhouse in the Westin and feasted on key lime pie, cheesecake and seven layer chocolate cake, I got to hear all about what they thought of all the clinics and workshops they saw.  Its a special tradition for us, and I hope to continue it every year to come!

Thanks for reading! Check back to see what is next in my musical adventures!

Lynn

This Fall has kept me very busy! I was in Los Angeles at the end of October and beginning of November, performing and recording with Southwest Chamber Music. In October, we spent three days rehearsing and three nights performing at the RedCat. The music was called Ten Freedom Summers, composed by trumpeter, Wadada Leo Smith. We performed over 20 pieces that described the Civil Rights Movement with Wadada himself and the Golden Quartet. There was a lot of percussion involved!

Ten Freedom Summers had great reviews from the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Metal Jazz and more! The LA Times called me an ace percussionist!

I returned to LA in November to wrap up Ten Freedom Summers, and recorded over 6 hours of music in two days at Colburn School.

It was a really long weekend! But it was fun being back in LA and spending time with all the musicians of Southwest and the Golden Quartet.

I also gave lessons and master classes to the students and had a lot of fun there!While on my downtime I got to see the beautiful Niagara Falls!

Afterwards I came to L.A. and performed the music of John Cage in Los Angeles with the Southwest Chamber and got a great review! That concert included rare performances of Cage’s 16 Dances and Four4. It was a real pleasure to play with my good friends Ken McGrath, Dave Gerhart, and David Johnson. 

I gave a lecture for an Honors curse at SUU this past Thursday based on the TED talk that Evelyn Glennie did in 2003.  For my lecture, we studied sound and the senses, exploring how we hear sound, how we feel sound, and how we see sound.  I played a little Temazcal for them (maracas and electronics) and my student Joe Howe played a bit of To the Gods of Rhythm as well to explore how we can observe different aspects of the sound world and other unusual sounds.  We also talked about the so-called boundaries of music, with examples from John Cage including some wonderful quotes from him and him speaking about music and sound in a great video I have.  Finally we talked about how we can use our visual, auditory and kinestetic approaches to the world in developing better communication, teaching and rapport with people.  If we are more sensitive to people – and all the different ways we can “listen” to them, then we can all communicate better!

Then, Friday and Saturday was our Honor Band festival at the Heritage Center (our large performing hall in Cedar City)!  I was so excited to work with such great students from all over Utah!  They were all skilled musicians with an open attitude that allowed me to work with them freely and make a great concert together!  I hope to see them all again!  I also heard two GREAT auditions from prospective students and I am EXTREMELY excited about these two students coming to SUU! I would love to make them part of our SUU percussion family!

Finally, one again I was so grateful for the work ethic of my SUU percussionists.  They were there all the time, and ready to do whatever was needed to make the event more successful.  They never complain (at least that I can hear! ) and are always willing to put in that extra effort for the greater good.  They continue to be inspiring to me and make working at SUU fantastic!  They performed for the honor band students Saturday afternoon and I was so happy with their energy and musicality!  I am so excited about the things was can do together and their musical and personal growth!   Here is just the beginning of the set up for the Honor Band on Friday!  Wow!