Laurel Black Music

Have a Project for You Amid everything else going on professionally, academically, and personally, have a passion project that is for you.  It's a project that you can pour your interest, creativity, and energy into when that uneasy feeling strikes.  You know the feeling - the one that says "you're doing a lot of things, and you're active, but we both know that it's not feeding  you." When that voice appears, it's time to dig in to your passion project. It could be performance related, maybe a new piece you want to pursue.   It could be a composition you've been drafting.   It could be reading about a composer you've discovered and want to know more about.   It could be your love of photography, videography, visual art...anything.   Chances are, you already have an idea and just haven't started.   Start. Have a YOU Practice There are certain fields that take an extraordinary amount of dedication to find success, and mu

Premiering Reef , by Jason Haney, at the Contemporary Music Festival This fall has been a completely new adventure.  Not necessarily the events within it, but managing them while going through the 2nd and 3rd trimesters of pregnancy.  In most cases, it posed no extra challenges, but in others...phew!...more on that in a different post!  L+M Duo In addition to my teaching at JMU, L+M Duo had an active start to its second season, featuring a premiere at JMU's Contemporary Music Festival (CMF), a new program at Virginia Tech University, and a residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where we workshopped and recorded 8 student compositions.   I also performed Christos Hatzis' Fertility Rites  at CMF, a piece I booked long before having any inclination I'd be almost 8 months pregnant during the performance.  At this time I could still maneuver behind a marimba pretty well! I also presented a masterclass at Virginia Tech for the entire S