At 5:15pm this evening I shall meet a new collaborator. Pianist Mei Rui and I are rehearsing for a recital which takes place on June 12, 2011 in Austin, Texas. Mei came highly recommended by a friend from graduate school...
...but that is not why I write. At the moment I'm sitting on the Peter Pan express coach to New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal - we're on our way. My mind has immediately gone to July 2006 when, after making my debut at the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas, I took a Greyhound bus back to Baltimore (although I was living in San Antonio). THEN, I needed to rest: the Arts and Ideas recital took place just nine months after the hurricane and although I HAD been practicing, I was not as clear about much of the "other stuff" of life as I hope I am now.
That trip was nevertheless a great one: it was wonderful to play at that festival and to finally work with my friend Peter Webster, and I had the great fortune of meeting a group of artists who are members of a social justice organization called Alternate ROOTS. After the festival I spent two weeks in New York City with Gilbert Stafford, whom I met in Miami in 1999.
Much has changed since that summer: one difference that immediately comes to mind is Gilbert's absence (he left this life in January 2010). Baltimore, once a place to which I ran for less than optimum reasons, is now my home, and in a few weeks Alternate ROOTS will be celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary in West Baltimore in conjunction with a huge multidisciplinary arts festival and the National Learning Exchange (and I'll actually BE HOME for once - HOORAY!).
Of course, to many this may seem to be just the stuff of life - why is all of this so significant right now? Well, I bought a music stand on Tuesday afternoon....
....and while leaving Ted's Music with the new music stand it came to me that the last time that I visited Ted's was March 2006 - a little over six months after leaving New Orleans - and at that time I barely had enough money to buy a metronome...
...and here we are...
More soon,
Samuel Thompson
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