Off to San Francisco

Well, in a few hours i'll be getting on a plane to San Francisco for a week of rehearsals, workshops and a concert with Aswat, a Bay-Area-based Arabic choir and orchestra--at which I'll be one of several guest artists, including a wonderful vocalist from Tunisia, Noureddine Kallel.  For any of you in the Bay Area, the concert will be this coming Saturday, Dec. 1st in San Mateo.  details can be found at Aswat's website, www.zawaya.org

I'll be giving a few maqam masterclasses on thursday evening and sunday afternoon, details at www.maqamlessons.com

I'm very much looking forward to seeing a lot of friends and students from Lark camp--I have to say, I really like the world music scene out there in northern california.  Unlike here in New York, it seems like a lot of musicians from a lot of different traditions know each other; they get together and explore each other's music quite a bit.  Here in New York, I know almost all of the Arab musicians & musicians who play for Middle Eastern Dance; but I know only a few Indian Musicians, and almost no musicians from other traditions... But I know they're out there!  (I'LL FIND YOU!!!)

But of course I'll miss my wife for a week.  We just had a lovely little vacation together in the Hudson Valley, at a place called Greenwood Lake, near Warwick, NY.  (we stayed at a wonderful inn called Anton's on the Lake www.antonsonthelake.com that I highly recommend).  We visited a spa, a winery, and a lovely art and craft town called Sugar Loaf, NY.  It was a nice little vacation; we went there last year, too, for some apple picking (you can see a sickeningly cute picture of us posing our faces in a cut-out painting of a lamb and a pig in front of an apple tree--from our trip last year--in my gallery).

So I'm off!