Laurel Black Music

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...

 Woohoo, y'all!! On behalf of the Percussive Arts Society, I am pleased to invite you to participate in the 42 annual Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC® 2017) in Indianapolis, Indiana. This year, PASIC® will take place Wednesday, November 8 through Saturday, November 11 at the Indiana Convention Center. Your Professional Development proposal, “ PercussionMind: The Mental Performance Habits of Today's Top Percussionists...and Where You Fit In ,” has been accepted to be presented at PASIC17! I am beyond excited that a current passion project, PercussionMind, will be revealed this year at PASIC.  If you want a quick summary of what it is, and learn about my collaborator, Mike Cerreto, check out the tab in the menu bar above. :) PercussionMind is inspired by that long thought-journey taken as a young adult as you wonder what, exactly, suits you best in the professional music realm.  Here's a jaunt through my personal story: In early undergrad, ...