This is what it takes...

In order for the masses to be involved with the arts, you must get them at the most base level. Get someone who is brilliant at one thing and get them to do something out of the ordinary and out of their comfort zone. That is what art is all about isnt it?

Read all about it on the Huffington Post.

Explaining an Arts NonProfit

Funny because it's true. I must have this conversation every week.

American Splendor

Harvey Pekar has died at the age of 70. His lifes work on the graphic novels, American Splendor inspired the movie of the same name. If you haven't seen the movie - see it. It details Pekar's fascinating life of depression, illness, alienation and a few brushes with greatness.

Read more about him here or here and here.

The LO's Dancing with the Stars

I was fortunate enough to sit in on a few rehearsals for The Louisville Orchestra's Dancing With The Stars event which is coming up this Friday.

The Stars this year are having so much fun, I had to share some footage of the rehearsals.

Remember these are just rehearsals. The stars are a retired pro basketball player, a realtor, and a lawyer. While they are paired with pros, they have only been dancing for a short time.

I am by no means a professional videographer with equally unprofessional equipment. I edited on Microsoft Movie Maker, again, not the most sophisticated technology. With that in mind, check out my latest film.



If you want to have FUN, FUN FUN and have a few Laughs, laughs laughs...
I think there are a few seats still available. Check out the webpage FMI.
http://www.louisvilleorchestra.org/?page_id=1855

Jack Griffin on WUOL

Photo by O'Neil Arnold

Jack Griffin, principal viola for the Louisville Orchestra, chats with Dan Gilliam on WUOL. Jack tells the story of his beginnings with music and how he got his first violin. Listen to the interview HERE.

Jack's disarming demeanor really shines through in this interview. He says "I'm the luckiest person on the world to be able to wake up everyday and play music."

That kind of passion shows, and you will see it when he performs "Herold in Italy" with the Louisville Orchestra on Thursday, March 25 at the Treyton Oak Towers Coffee Concert at 10:30am and Friday, March 26 for the Hilliard Lyons Classics concert at 8pm at Kentucky Center. Click here for tickets or call 502.584.7777.

He has a bit of a surprise for the audience, but you won't hear it if you don't come!

It's been a long time since I have been here. Seems like I was all full steam ahead for so long and then just dropped it like chocolate during lent.

I suppose I have been focusing my attention on the Opera blog, which does take the majority of my attention during the season. Now that the season is over, I'm back.

Luck would have it, tomorrow I will be seeing a play. I haven't seen a straight play in a while. No, I take that back. I have seen Cara in two plays and they were both fun and interesting. I am looking forward to seeing Laurie's daughter in the Crucible tomorrow.
Perhaps I will even let the blog know what I thought.

Next month, K and I will hit the Big Apple in a big way. We are going to two operas and a fancy dinner. I am so looking forward to that. The museums are still being scheduled, and we may not hit them all. It would be wonderful to see Hector & Leigh and go to the Modern. I will have to make it happen.

Now time for bed. Sleep didn't come last night so I am hopful I will go down easily.

SO...

SO, I have been handed this wonderfully small yet powerful video camera to "capture the moment" so to speak. It is extremely simple to use, about the size of a blackberry and takes pretty good video with sound (even though the mic is on the wrong side, so far my largest complaint).


So my sytem at work is from circa 1776, and can not read videos of any format.

SO I start working from home on it.

So, when I download the video editing software that comes along with the camera, I find its not so good, in my non experienced opinion.

So, I have a PC and on it is Microsoft Movie Maker. But the new technology only makes MOV files, which MMM doesn't read.

SO I find that QuickTime can read MOV files so I download QuickTime, but only the QT Pro will let you edit, change formats or anything like that.

SO I do a little searching and find a great freeware program that seems simple enough yet sophisticated to do what I want. YEA!!! So far still pretty pleased with this software, its called Pinnacle VideoSpin.

So, I cut the hour long video into 5.5 minutes added lovely fades, slides, music and end credits. Looking forward to adding it to the blog, but alas, once I got it ready, turned it into an AVI file, it was a gig and a half and too big.

So, back to the original program that came with the camera, there is an option to load directly to FaceBook or YouTube, the only thing, it doesn't condence the video to fit into these formats...

SO I have formated the AVI file into a MOV file and it is much smaller and hopfully uploading now...