Glenda and I went to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby last weekend. The Derby was on Saturday, but we came in to visit with our friend Steve Mattingly on Wednesday - he took us to Churchill Downs, and treated us to some box seats! - on Thursday. That's when this shot was taken.

The reason we were there? My mom had a big birthday last year and my brother and sister (and their respective families) and Glenda and I arranged a little surprise birthday party where we all showed up - somewhat unannounced - at her house. As part of the celebration, we presented her with a group trip to the Derby, something she's always wanted to do. Here she is in Derby attire.

Glenda and I went to the Kentucky Oaks on Friday with Mom, Bob and my cousin Laura. Mint Juleps!

And here are the ladies from the grandstand on Derby Day!

My sister, Sarina, and her husband David came too. This is not Sarina. This is, however, her daughter Penelope - one of two marvelous children (the other is Garrett, whose first name, I like to think, is modeled after my own middle name, Gerritt, though they didn't quite nail the spelling!).

Getting as close as possible to the action!

(sorry for blurry - it was an exciting and dynamic moment!) Ok, so I know what everyone wants to know: "did you win?" I'm going to go with "yes!" We won lots and lost lots. I think, as a family, we about broke even. Glenda and I had a particularly big win on race 10 of Derby day (the race before the big one). We bet on "Little Mike" "$2 across the board" which means $2 to win, $2 to place, and $2 to show... $6 total. But we misspoke and said "$6 across the board" resulting in a total of $18 bet! We were depressed, because "Little Mike" was a long shot, and we were only betting on him because his name reminded us of our friend Mike Light! We were depressed, that is, until Little Mike won and we made $144! We (G&I) picked zero winners on the Derby itself, but Cousin Laura bet on "I'll Have Another" to win and, lo and behold, against the odds, IHA won the big race! So that netted Laura a tidy sum indeed! In this shot mom has won $.60! But you get your bet back as well, so she's holding $6.60 here. An important symbolic win, though, since this was the very last race of Derby Day, race 13 (there were 2 more after the "big one").

I'm not gonna lie, though. The Derby is not all hats and mints juleps in fancy silver cups. It's a wild, wild scene. Here is just the smallest of tastes!

Glenda met a guy on the plane over, chatted him up (as only Glenda can), and by the end of the conversation he told her that if we wanted to do a Bourbon tour, we should go to Heaven Hill on Sunday, where his wife would take good care of us. He said he'd tell her we might come...

...well we came, and he had told her! We were there near the end of the day, and waiting in line to pay for a spot in a tasting, when a lady bearing a name tag with the guy-from-the-plane's wife came up to the kiosk next to the check-in lady. Glenda, of course, made the connection and then... wow, what followed was seriously fabulous! The lady took us out of line, gave us a 15 minute personal intro, and then instructed us to wait until the scheduled tasting was over. Then she took us into the private bar herself and we got to taste some unbelievable, rare and precious Bourbons while hearing amazing stories well past closing time. Very special indeed.

Berta was stunning.  Berta Rojas played on Saturday (March 3rd) for our International Series.  We had close to 500 adoring fans!  Digging back deeper – into February – Eliot Fisk gave a phenomenal performance for our February 9th gala too.  We had around 280 out at One World Theatre and raised close to $100K for our education program.

Education.  Wow.  The pace really kept up through February.  GuitarCurriculum.com is going bananas, and we’re on our toes to keep up with the demand.  ACGS brought a part-time educator to full time two weeks ago, and added a part-time event manager to help with our ever-rising level of activity.  We’re also doubling our office size next month.  Whew!

Austin has gotten gorgeous.  When is it not?  But lately I’ve been teaching with the windows open, or sitting out back drinking coffee and enjoying the blue sky and the singing birds.  It’s been incredibly peaceful.

One of my biggest Feb highlights was a 3-day trip to Oklahoma City where I conducted all-city guitar festival with about 80 kids.  It was a total blast! I just love doing this!  The kids worked so hard, and the performance went really well.  Working with groups of kids like that is one of the most uplifting things I get to do.

I had a blast doing Views and Brews at the Cactus Cafe with Lyriko (Steve Kostelnik and Tom Echols) on February 6th.  Other February highlights were a series of calls with classes and trainees in Ohio and Pennsylvania (I know, it doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it is!) for GuitarCurriculum.com, and a concert and talk on Valentine’s Day for 300 at UT Quest.

Glenda and I took a weekend (no Saturday teaching and no ACGS events) in February and went to the Ballet Friday and Austin Shakespeare’s Arcadia on Saturday.  Both were incredible.  Arcadia, in particular, really blew my mind.  I hope to find more time to get out and see things that I’m not producing!

Getting very excited about future plans.  We’re in the thick of planning our June 22nd collab with Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow to commission and premiere a new original live film score  for a 1929 Lon Chaney Sr. silent film called “The Unknown”.  We’ll show it at Laguna Gloria with 500 seats, and we’re working on creating a circus atmosphere with food and wine on the grounds, to go along with the film’s subject matter.  The composer/guitarists are Randy Avers and Benoit Albert, and the fabulous Sandy Yamamoto will play violin as well!

So, gearing up for my talk tomorrow.  Next week I head to DC where I’ll play a brief concert and conduct the Loudoun County all-county guitar middle-school festival.  I’ll get a day to hang out with my mom too!  Yeah!

Then it’s back in Austin, we’ll have a duo in town from the east coast the week of the 19th – they’ll do 10 school shows and then a Classical Cactus appearance on the 22nd.  On the 24th, Steve Mattingly will be here on our House Concert series: Austin Guitar Salon.  And I’m playing a concert myself on the 25th (private).  Then off to Brownsville to judge and teach for Mike Quantz’s festival.  In fact, it looks like I’m traveling every other week until May 12th… so this spring will keep me on my toes indeed.  Can’t wait!

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”!

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!

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.

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!

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.

It’s all here: Austin Pictures

This is easily the most ambitious single presentation I’ve ever attempted with ACGS.  And it’s coming up this Saturday night, October 1st, at 8PM at  ACL Live at the Moody Theater!

I was inspired last year when one of my favorite artists, guitarist Jorge Caballero, told me he was programming the impossibly difficult, and incredibly beautiful and evocative, “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky for solo guitar.  That combined with our friendship with KLRU and the spectacular new ACL venue opening led to Austin Pictures.  It’s a multimedia, highly collaborative show, all swirling around the Pictures at an exhibition, with visual art, music and film, some of the greatest musicians I know along side of student artists, musicians and filmmakers.

We’re gonna have a very good time!

Plus we auctioned off a doubles tennis match against Jorge and me for the morning after the concert – so the pressure is really on!

Tons of info is at my newest AP blog: “Austin Pictures Top 10” where I give 9 links to videos and online stories about the project.  Check it out!

Austin Pictures is rapidly approaching.  This project is huge!  Right now the kids are furiously finishing their paintings, the composer has written all but one movement of the guitar orchestra piece, and we’ve distributed the parts far and wide, the student filmmakers have engaged in their projects as well.  The office is buzzing like crazy – I’ve filmed five video features we’re about to start releasing including a monologue from me about the production overall, and interviews with the composer, with the Alamo Drafthouse’s Founder and CEO Tim League, Austin Symphony Orchestra’s Maestro Peter Bay, and the Miro Quartet (that one was filmed this morning!).  We’re in daily production meetings with ACL Live, the Alamo, KMFA, the various film folks, our event planner, Silicon Labs, and more.

The energy is incredible.

And then there’s our education program.  I shared this story with my board yesterday in an email:

###

Dear ACGS Board of Directors,

Yesterday we had a meeting at the Juvenile Justice System with the Director of Fine Arts for AISD, our case worker at Gardner Betts, Travis and myself.  The conference room we normally meet in was booked, so we ended up in another room.  The case worker informed us that the room divides two parts of the facility and so kids might be escorted through during our meeting.

Sure enough, about 15 minutes into a terrific meeting, a guard knocked on one of the doors and the case worker waved him in.  He and another guard were escorting about 10 high school boys in a line.  When students walk at Gardner Betts, they have to keep their hands behind their backs – and the group shuffled in looking primarily at the floor.

Then they saw us, and, particularly, Travis.  It turned out that three of the boys have been in guitar class there.  They simply lit up!  It was a remarkable transformation.  A boy near the front wanted very much to stop and talk to Travis, and asked permission to do so – which was granted.  He told Travis that today would be his last day at Gardner Betts.  he had received his GED and would be moving to Houston and… could he please have a guitar to take with him? We have been giving instruments to the kids that successfully complete the program there.  He was proud, he was excited, and he really wanted to have that guitar.  He will, of course, be leaving Gardner Betts today with a guitar.  The other two boys in the back of the line are still there and are still in guitar class.  One told Travis excitedly about the new music he just learned, and said he just couldn’t wait to show Travis in class later on.

Our program will continue at Gardner Betts this fall as the only for-credit arts course ever at the facility.  I know now more than ever – firsthand – that the class is changing these young peoples’ lives. The UT School of Social Work is also compiling a study from this past summer – the data is compelling and should be available soon.

###

Our program doubled this year.  Guitar programs opened in 26 schools for us last week including the Juvenile Justice System and also a new program at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.  It’s now a daily occurrence that we receive requests for new curriculum subscriptions or some kind of guidance from someplace around the world.  We recently launched a redesigned curriculum site – check it out!

It seems like the next several weeks will be owned by Austin Pictures.  I hope it’s a wild success and that folks have a terrific time.  We have tremendous amounts of work to do between now and then, but it’s about the ride, not the destination, no?