I hope you are well. We’ve had both our shots and are starting to interact with people in person again in a limited way.
I have had a couple of Zoom meetings with an opera singer named Paula Newberry who is starting a new opera company in Memphis, Tennessee. We have been getting acquainted to where we know the names of each other’s dogs, etc. and everything is progressing well. I have sent her materials that she can use in requesting grants for the Qualchan and Whistalks Opera production including sample proposal materials, pitch letters, budgets and etc. Yesterday, I gave her some advice on setting up her organization as a non-profit as I have had experience in the past setting up non-profit and for-profit corporations. I have started to arrange the music for the opera pit orchestra and the band will include a native flute part and a native drum part. I have completed the arrangement for the first song called 01 Before The Anglos.
I invited Paula and her husband Ray to come to our house in July and attend my production of a show featuring Coeur d’Alene Tribal Member Cece Curtis singing songs made famous by Mildred Bailey at an outdoor concert at Riverstone Park in Coeur d’Alene on July 8th from 6 pm to 8 pm. I put together a great four piece band for this show.
Eastern Washington University School of Music’s Big Band conducted by Professor Steven Friel is still set to perform concert of music from our music CD called Wataino that I co-write with Orlando Sanchez. The concert will be this fall but the exact date has not been selected yet.
I am writing a new music CD tentatively called Spanglish featuring Cuban American Ivana Cespedes singing bi-lingual Spanish/English songs that I have written over the years. We have the first song called Steppin’ Out completed and are close to getting a vocal recording of the second song The Gypsy Tango Rock recorded and hopefully will get this mixed and ready to go this month of April, 2021.
Have a happy musical month.
Gary Edwards
gedward@roadrunner.com
www.EdwardsMusicSite.com