Monday Summary, December 20, 2010

Welcome to a special Monday edition of the Saturday Summary, which, since today isn't Saturday, I couldn't call a Saturday Summary.  I've been on a hiatus for the past week, trying to weather the storm that was my life, and now that the last gales are past, I can sit back, breathe a little easier, and contribute to our little online community again. 

Before I start back with regular posts, however (those will start again Wednesday), I wanted to give a brief update on what my life has been this past week so that my hiatus will, hopefully, make sense. 

Music -- This would be why I've been away.  Not writing music, however, but playing it.  A lot of it.  Yesterday alone I played or conducted on something like 25 songs, and that doesn't include the rest of the past week.  Since I went on Hiatus last Sunday, I've done a Sunday morning church service on the 12th, attended a handbell gathering that afternoon, accompanied my elementary school's Christmas program on the 14th (both the 2:00 performance for the school and the 7:00 performance for parents), taught a large number of piano lessons (three and a half hours' worth on Wednesday alone), run a two-hour dress rehearsal for our church's Christmas concert, had six hours of rehearsals Saturday for said concert, and ended with a church service yesterday morning and our concert in the afternoon.  The feeling of relief I felt yesterday when I played that last C chord was indescribable, because I now have a bit of a break where I'm not playing music non-stop, or gearing up for more music.  I have two Christmas Eve services coming up, but compared to this past week, those will be a breeze, especially since we've done much of the music already, and what we haven't done is no more than hymns, most of which I've played numerous times. 

The size of that paragraph there should give you some idea about the cause for the hiatus.  It should also be telling that when I wrote the opening paragraph of the blog post, I said I'd been on hiatus for a week and a half ... and then I looked at the date of my post announcing my hiatus, and it was just a week ago yesterday.  So yeah, it's been a crazy time.  I just thank all of my loyal readers for staying around and giving me the week to get myself sorted back around.

Writing -- Are you kidding?  Please see the above section...

Publishing -- A couple of good things here.  I received proofs for three of my newest from Beckenhorst: Sarabande, The Boar's Head Carol, and On This Day Earth Shall Ring.  Of course I haven't had time to look over the proofs, but that should change this week.  Those three pieces should be coming out in May 2011.

Also, Jeffers has released the audio files for my two new releases from Ringing Word publications: In Faith the Triumph and Requiem and Remembrance.  I'm going to put the audio up on jasonwkrug.com soon, but I want to edit out the talking at the front of the tracks, mainly because I like to let the music speak for itself, but also because they mispronounced my name on both of them.  (For those of you who don't know, it's pronounced Kroog -- the vowel sound is the same as the kids make at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas where they have their lips pursed and their heads tilted back like human Pez dispensers.)  The recordings themselves are nice -- I'm pretty sure the Raleigh Ringers did them -- so that's always a plus. 


That's all I've got for now.  I hope to actually start writing some music again this week, starting off with some four-in-hand Christmas trios and some Christmas piano arrangements, mainly because I'd like to use some of both in the next couple of weeks.  After that, who knows?  I'll be sure to keep you updated.

Until then, thank you all for giving me the week off and for not jumping ship.  Have a great Christmas week, and we'll see you back here on Wednesday.