What a month!

Coming off of the Holidays, which were rich with time with family, friends, and Glenda, the New Year has charged out of the gate at a remarkable pace.

ACGS is growing again.  With growth has come interesting challenges, particularly in the areas of staffing, process and communication.  last week web traffic related to our curriculum, GuitarCurriculum.com, roughly quintupled (!) including inquiries from all around the English-speaking world.  More donations and ticket sales are fueling a higher level of service than we’ve ever produced before and the main theme of 2012 has been to figure out how to scale up sustainably.

The first week of the New Year I found myself at dinner at Fonda San Miguel with Maestro Peter Bay, Texas Performing Arts Director Kathy Panoff, composer Graham Reynolds, Conspirare’s Ann Hume Wilson, Texas Music Office’s Casey Monahan and several others – talking about big problems and possible solutions in the arts.  What an honor!

The next night was dinner at our place with Joe Williams and Quentin Lucas… joe wrote the amazing piece we premiered at Austin Pictures.

Another early highlight (January 8th) was our Alamo Drafthouse afternoon showing of the KLRU TV Special about Austin Pictures.  Many of the major contributors convened to watch the show on the big screen and answer trivia questions like: “What did Matt Hinsley begin when he was 6? A) Guitar, B) Vegetarianism, C) Tennis, or, D) Tae Kwon Do”?  (answer below!).

Speaking of the Alamo, we’re cooking up something big for Friday June 22nd!  Think food, wine, outdoor film, live musical performance and armless knife-throwing… and you’re on the right track.  More later!

The week following began with a marvelous lunch with the new president of Austin Community College.  We talked about art and community, of course, and did a little dreaming too.  That week a wrote an article for Austin start-up magazine: Popular Hispanics, about guitar in Austin.  Should come out around South By Southwest.

My cousin Laura came in later that week and we went with Glenda to see the “Austin Grand Prix” swim meet at UT.  It was my first major swim meet.  I left inspired!  Plus we got to see heavy hitters like Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Missy Franklin.

The third week Glenda and I went to… Harry Potter World in Orlando!  It’s amazing I’ve written about anything else, really.  We had a blast.  Saw my Mom and step Dad, my brother and his family, my sister and her family, my Austin Marcia and… my 98 year old Grandfather and his wife Marilyn.  Grandpa is doing unbelievably well, and it was a simply marvelous visit.

This past week was nonstop.  Tuesday night I talked and played for the Point Venture Lion’s Club, Wednesday I pitched on the air live at KMFA for their 45th birthday, Thursday I was on live with John Aielli on KUT’s Eklektikos and our Swedish guest artist Johannes Moller, and Friday we were on Fox 7 Morning News.  Johannes is an amazing young man.

Dreaming big dreams these days.  And searching for the time to put plans into action.  Deeply thankful for each and every day, each opportunity, and each person I’m fortunate enough to meet and work with along the way.

Things begin to get really crazy now.  I’m traveling almost every two weeks for the entire spring.  Immediate items of interest are our gala at One World Theater with Eliot Fisk on February 11th and, before that, I’ll play live at the Cactus Cafe on February 6th for their Views and Brews.  Before THAT I’ll go to Oklahoma City (this Wednesday) to conduct about 70 kids in a city-wide guitar festival!

And before all of that, I’m going to have a cup of tea, and then go present Johannes Moller in concert on our International Concert Series.  What fun!

Oh, the answer to the trivia question is: “B, Vegetarianism”!

The big November highlight was Thanksgiving.  A glorious set of days with Glenda and our friends Mike and Linda making delicious food, watching my football for the year, and enjoying a chance to step back from it all for a little while.

Professional highlights were our presentation of Isaac Bustos on our International Concert Series, our Classical Cactus featuring flamenco player Juanito Pascual and Jay Kacherski, our Austin Guitar Salon featuring Alejandro Montiel at the glorious home of Frances and Robin Thompson, my talk for Austin District Music teachers Association, my trip to perform, teach and lecture at Texas State University, and my talk – two days later – at UT about community arts advocacy.

November is always a time of reflection for me.  I think a lot about what I’m thankful for, of course, I think about where I’ve been and where I’m going.  I have a tremendous amount to be thankful for in general, personally, professionally, in 2011, and beyond.  For sure one of the things I’m most profoundly grateful for is the continued opportunity I have been given to work in the arts world.  I’m so thankful for the amazing team I have at ACGS, my incredible board, and our wonderful supportive community.

I should also mention that we’re in the middle of a very successful fund drive.  Mike and Tobin Levy and the Meyer Levy Foundation offered $10K in matching funds to help with our end of year $40K matching drive.  We’re over $30K of the way there!  This amidst news of 3 separate grants of $50K, $25K and $10K that all were awarded in November – none of which we knew we would be receiving!  With this support, I am optimistic we will achieve our ambitious goals of the coming year.

So much has happened.  I wish I could chronicle the amazing people I’ve had the incredible fortune to meet these last six weeks – and the conversations that have been had.  But I’ll suffice with sharing this email sent to me by my director of Education, Travis Marcum, following a concert he led for the kids in our program at the Travis County Juvenile Justice System – a program, by the way, that will be the subject of a KUT radio story in the near future!

October flew by.  It seems like just yesterday that I was down at ACL Live prepping for Austin Pictures – and it was a month ago now!  Austin Pictures was an amazing experience.  I’m still getting incredible feedback from people who were there.  One thing I love is how different everyone’s perspective is.  The show was a dream, Im thrilled we did it, and I’m thrilled it’s behind us!

The pace has not slowed.  The week of October 3rd I had a Finance meeting where we determined we needed to move aggressively into fundraising mode (something we have since done with some success, thankfully).  I also had a marvelous lunch at Fino with Travis County Clerk Amalia Rodriguez Mendoza who introduced me to Lori Moreno of Texas Gas Service and the ONEOK Foundation.  We had a blast and I think there’s some synergy there!  I gave a lecture and performance for about 300 at the Thompson Conference Center that Thursday for UT Lamp, and had lunch Friday with my good friend, and director of Texas Choral Consort, Brent Baldwin.  The week after I had a wonderful lunch with Austin Asset Management Company’s founder John Henry McDonald.  John Henry is on my board, and was a presenting sponsor of Austin Pictures – we met basically to catch up and start thinking about the future.  We also finalized details that week with Mike Levy for the 5-year, $50,000 grant he is generously giving to ACGS through the Meyer-Levy Foundation!  We announce that this week.  It will be $10,000 per year offered as a matching opportunity to our patrons.  Mike is the founder, and was long-time publisher, of Texas Monthly Magazine.  Other highlights from that week were a meeting with my friend Kim Perlak at Concordia University with the Dean of their business school – I’ll be executive in residence for a day this coming spring to talk about nonprofs in the arts to their students!  I had a fantastic chat with Denis Azabagic about a Balkan-Indian music project he’s engaged in that might end up in Austin (!).  And I had a wonderful dinner meeting with a potential new board member.  The week of the 17th began with my Education Director, Travis Marcum, and I giving a talk as part of a panel at UT on arts and the Juvenile Justice System.  A nice review came out in the Daily Texan that begins by focusing on Travis’ presentation!  We had a wrap up meeting with Julie Stoakley who volunteered to be our event planner primarily for the dinner we held at Austin Pictures, and I had a marvelous lunch with my friend Steve Golab – owner of FG Squared, a web development firm here in town.  Other fun things that week were a coffee with Emily Marks – who has run the dynamic Girls Rock Camp in Austin for five years – and then lunch at Marc and Carolyn Seriff’s gorgeous 30th floor condo in the Austonian with a board member and the director of education for Zach Scott Theatre (Nat Miller).  Carolyn wanted to get me and Nat together to talk about education programming.  It was marvelous.  Carolyn is on Zach’s board, and she and Marc just gave an unbelievably generous gift of $500,000 to Zach Scott.  They are also great supporters of ACGS.  Marc was one of the founders or AOL.  We are very lucky to have such generous and artistically-minded people in Austin.  We produced two shows that week, too.  Classical Cactus was Thursday – over-sold, with 150 or so in the audience and a line out the door!  The Saturday we did an Austin Guitar Salon concert at the unbelievable home of prominent arts philanthropist Jane Sibley.  And that brings us to this past week!  Whew!  Highlights this week were a lunch with KUT’s Hawk Mendenhall and Rebecca McEnroy to talk about future plans (always good stuff).  We met at Vivo’s for lunch on Tuesday.  Thursday night I was a “celebrity judge” for something called, I think, the “Wildfire Start Up Slam”.  This is something where entrepreneurs have a few minutes to pitch their ideas before judges and an audience, we ask questions, and then determine a score – which we hold up over our heads ala Dancing with the Stars.  It was fun, and very interesting to hear about new ideas, and see the people behind them.  The event was downtown at the Tap Room.

As always, so much more is going on.  But those are, at least, some of the highlights from the past month!

November is an interesting shift for me. I’ll be playing a few concerts, and giving quite a few talks.  Our final major event of the year is Saturday the 5th at 8PM.  Then we don’t have another until January 28th!  (little events, but no really big ones).  We will mainly turn our presentation sites toward Guitars Under the Stars on February 11th with Eliot Fisk.  That’ll be our next major effort.

We’ve had an amazing time putting Austin Pictures together, from selecting the incredible artists, and watching them complete their brilliant paintings, to seeing the many ensemble members learning Joseph Williams’ new Austin-inspired piece, to working with Caballero, Maestro Bay, and the Miró Quartet, to putting the extensive AV together with the Alamo Drafthouse!

The show is this Saturday, and here’s our top-twelve favorite things online so far.

#12          The article in the Oklahoman about the kids from OKC coming down.

#11           Our talk with composer Joseph Williams II about his new piece.

#10           A clip of Caballero… doing the amazing thing he does!

#9            Our talk with the Miró String Quartet.

#8            The wonderful community pictures shared via Facebook.

#7            A conversation with the Alamo’s Tim League.

#6            The great Austin Pictures Article at CultureMap.

#5            This great TV video story about the students from Brownsville.

#4            Our talk with Peter Bay.

#3            The Austin Chronicle Article about Austin Pictures.

#2            The incredible video piece by KUT about the artists!

…and…

#1            The 11 commissioned paintings: see them online here!

Here’s the latest on Austin Pictures!

I’m heading over to YNN this morning… got a new haircut and everything!

Media: Austin Pictures will be featured live on YNN today at 11am.  A full-hour radio story will air at 7PM tonight on Classical Austin on KMFA, 89.5 FM.  Friday morning at 8:50am Jorge Caballero will perform live on the Fox 7 Morning News program.  A funny and inspiring video story on the artists just came out online on KUT’s Storyboard (whole story here)!  And a great event overview article is here at CultureMap.

Also yesterday this great TV Story came out about the students in Brownsville who are busily preparing to come here to be part of the show!  It’s a great companion piece to the article in the Oklahoman a few weeks back about the high school students in Oklahoma City who are also preparing like crazy.

Tickets: Are available at (877) 435-9849 or online.  Save 15-20% by purchasing ACGS Season Tickets online or at 512-300-2247 (includes Austin Pictures).  ACGS Season tickets will be sold only through 5PM tomorrow (Thursday).  ACGS Season Tickets will be unavailable Friday or at the door Saturday, though single tickets for Austin Pictures will be available as long as supplies last.

Parking: The best guide for parking at ACL Live is online here. You’ll see 7 nearby options on a map with details below it!

Austin Pictures Insight Videos: Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League, ASO’s Maestro Peter Bay, Composer Joseph Williams, Miró String Quartet.

Most popular AP blog posts: Artwork has arrived, The Program for Saturday Night, Austin Pictures Top 10, Jorge Caballero.