Well.... certainly not blogging.

It was a remarkably fast-moving summer. I always approach the summer with grandiose plans to accomplish great things while the Harrisburg Symphony is off-season, only to find myself at summer’s end having accomplished little. This summer I took the opposite approach, and planned on accomplishing very little. Much to my delight, I was thoroughly successful.

This is not to say that nothing got done. I was actually busily occupied most of the time. Musically, I got through the HSO holiday pops concerts very well. In fact, I thought they were some of our best. I also played three concerts for Market Square Concerts Summermusic, with my good friends in the Fry Street Quartet. I always enjoy this week, but in the past I only played on one concert. The extra load was certainly exhausting, but a great pleasure.

The Market Square week was somewhat bittersweet this year. For many years now, the guest artists and the rehearsals have been hosted by Linda and Jason Litton. They have become very dear friends. Sadly, this past summer was to be our last with Jason. He had been diagnosed several months earlier with a brain tumor, and we knew that he was in his last months. He died this week, and I am very sad to have lost a friend whose company I always enjoyed. He was a gentle man (and a gentleman), smart, curious, and a true music lover - even though he really knew very little about music. He was a great wine lover as well - and he knew a lot about wine, and served me some of the best wine I’ve ever tasted. I feel so fortunate to have had a few opportunities to spend some quality time with him this past summer. He will be sorely missed.



The other musical activity that occupied my time this summer was arranging and orchestrating some tunes for the holiday concerts I will be conducting in Naples, Florida in December. I did some very good work on those.

But most of my summer was spent being a dad. I’m very fortunate to have two great kids, and further fortunate to have had the time to really enjoy their company this summer. They were involved in several different camps, and because my wife, Marty, has been working full time, I did a bunch of shuttling them around, as well as doing lots of dad-like activities.



Back in June, my parents celebrated their 50th Anniversary. To celebrate, we got our whole family together in the Poconos for a wonderful vacation at Skytop resort. We all had a blast. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen my parents happier.



We also got to spend two lovely weeks on Cape Cod with my parents. Their house sits overlooking a wildlife sanctuary marsh, as well as Cape Cod Bay. The view is incredible, and changes, like a series of Monet paintings, as the light of day shifts. We swam a lot, ate great fresh fish, and enjoyed nice family time.



Now, the new season has crashed down upon us. The kids are back at school, Marty’s begun teaching, and I have taken on a new project for the next four months. I am conducting and teaching conducting at Penn State for the first semester. The regular conducting professor, Gerardo Edelstein, is on sabbatical, so I have agreed to fill in for him. I go up Tuesdays and Thursdays, conduct the orchestra, and teach three graduate students. So far, it’s been very tiring, but very enjoyable.

So there you have it - my essay, as it were, on “How I spent my summer vacation.”