And a partridge in a pear tree...

Here is my Christmas list from this year. In some ways it was the best Christmas I ever had - flying solo in NYC.
1 adorable Christmas tree decorated with the myriad of cards I received
1 chicken that I lovingly referred to as a "petite turkey" and then roasted and ate
2 tickets to the Tallis Scholars concert with the amazing T.H.
2 tickets to the Handel's Messiah Sing In at Avery Fisher (also with the amazing T.H)
2 tickets to Alvin Ailey with the lovely S.L.
0 private students (!!!!)
4 Church services, one which featured the wonderful talents of my NYSMF girls, Jenny Kim and Kathryn Rudolph, both of whom were shocked by my organ prowess.
4 novels, including Incident Report by Martha Baille (thanks Theo!), Beautiful Boy (heartwrenching), He's Just Not That Into You (I died laughing) and Girl, Interrupted (I love mental hospitals!)
4 batches of cookies and a pecan pie
1 amazing construction project that involved drilling into a solid brick wall (see picture above)

1 wonderful afternoon helping my gorgeous friend Cynthia pack in the "Trifle packing method"
250 GB of hard drive installed into my macbook
1 fingerprinting appointment, which gets me a little closer to my Green Card
4 4" binders, which now contain the scrapbook for my entire career, which took me 14 hours to compile
2 huge bags of clothes to the Goodwill
1 new filing cabinet
10 hours of sleep every night
0 dark circles under my eyes

Amy Cervini's Love Fool CD Release

It was a great night on Tuesday at the Jazz Standard, where my friend Amy Cervini released her new CD Lovefool on Anzic records. A fellow Canadian ex-pat, Amy moved from Toronto to Boston to attend New England Conservatory and has been in the US ever since.

Amy's band consists of some of my buddies from Manhattan School of Music, Aussie bassist Mark Lau, her brother-drummer, Ernesto Cervini (who was in my combo at MSM) and wonderful pianist Mike Cabe (my duo partner at MSM). These guys have played together a lot over the years and you can really hear it in their interactions on the bandstand. They were tight as a unit, but there was a real feeling of relaxation from each member, and they were each confident in their role in the group.

Amy has all of the goods of a great singer - a beautifully blended voice, brilliant intonation and improvising chops, in addition to a stage presence that is very "her". This CD and her previous one draw from the songbook of our generation - Weezer, Green Day in addition to a lot of material borrowed from Blossom Dearie's set. Amy puts her own arranging touch on each song, which always puts the emphasis on the lyric and interpretation of the emotion of each piece. Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" was a highlight of the set. Another big highlight - when Ernesto cranked out his high school clarinet. Perhaps I will be inspired to do the same? (Except that Ernesto actually played the crap out of it, when I would just sound like crap...)

Major kudos to Amy for a great show. She is becoming a good friend and is also the newest member of my Sacred Voices project - one Hell of an alto! Check her out online: www.amycervini.com