Center on Halsted Benefit on Sunday

Right, so the whole "blogging" thing was on hold for a while there. A little down the page, I'll catch you all up, but first an obligatory plug: I'll be playing a benefit show at Center on Halsted on Sunday at 7pm. The show's $25 for general admission, $35 if you want some champagne and dessert afterward.

The Center (Chicago's LGBT community center) has been the literal center of much of my goings-on since my last blog post. The Bailiwick Theater company was in residence at the Center's theater over the summer, and I wound up accompanying a number of shows for them in early August. The Center is also sponsoring a new LGBT Youth Choir that a number of my comrades in the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus are helping to organize and direct -- the aforementioned benefit on Sunday is raising funds to kick-start the choir. EDGE Chicago posted a piece about the youth choir today, which you should read, as it will more eloquently describe how awesome it is that the kids at the Center will have a queer-specific performing group to perform with. And believe it or not, it was relatively unrelated that I started a database/fundraising job at the Center this month, which brings me down there on what feels like a daily basis now.

I think this is proof that I am actually super-gay, as opposed to your garden-variety, I like to dance and sing and not play sports and listen to Tori Amos gay.

What else has been happening?

I noticed that I left off a good two weeks of Rock Camp blogging. (Was I rocking too hard? Yes. Yes I was.) It seems like months ago now because I'm not spending all day with the SoR kids anymore, but there are still some interesting things happening at the School. Our oldest keyboard student just left for college, and there's another one not too far behind him, and the staff is realizing that as a school overall, we need to start training the younger keyboardists now to maintain our current, incredibly high level of musicianship in our performing groups. So I'm in the process of designing a keyboard workshop for the non-keyboardist, to lure them into the world of resonance cut-offs and pitch bend wheels. This will be some of the more unique teaching I get to do at School of Rock because it overlaps a lot with the loop pedal/synth work I've been incorporating into my live set lately.

Lastly, Canasta's final show with our drummer and fellow Obie, Josh Lava, was on Sunday, and we couldn't have had a better month full of shows to send him off to Portland with. We played at the venerable Old Town School of Folk Music, took a field trip to an awesome micro-brewery venue in Michigan, and played the shit out of Simon's in Andersonville. A full news blurb sums it all up for you on Canasta's website.

In the meantime, we're in the midst of auditioning new drummers, several of whom we're very excited about, but we are certainly open to ideas and suggestions. If you know anyone in Chicago who (a) plays drums, (b) likes orchestral-pop, and (c) will put up with me demanding Arby's and Elizabeth playing crossword puzzles in the car, send them to me, please.