Wow, I haven't updated this thing in a long time. So much stuff has happened that every time I thought about writing a blog update it seemed more daunting, because there was so much to cover. So I won't even try to get into any of the details, but just give a very quick summary:

I had some big plans for the summer, which included getting married and moving to Toronto. But while we were looking at apartments in Toronto, I got a job offer from California State University East Bay in Hayward, CA (just south of Oakland in the SF Bay Area) to take over their very good and long-established jazz program as Director of Jazz Studies, which I gladly accepted (it didn't hurt that Keith got a great job opportunity in San Francisco, too, with his main yoga studio in NYC starting a second studio in SF).

So then in August we got married in British Columbia near my parents' place, which was beautiful. It was a medium-sized affair of about 40 people, about half family and half friends. Since most of our guests came from far away (NYC, Germany, Alabama, Chicago, Toronto), we wanted to make sure that we could spend real time with everybody who came, and pretty much succeeded at that. I figure after eight years together, it was about time to make an honest man of Keith!

After two weeks in B.C., we flew back to NYC, had the movers come and get all of our belongings, and drove ourselves and our cat and dog for five days across I-80 from NYC to California. We had come out here before to look at houses and had found a cute little Spanish bungalow-style house in the foothills of Oakland. Now that we're in it, the area seems awfully quiet, certainly when compared to Manhattan's East Village, so we're toying with the idea of moving to San Francisco next year, but that's a ways off right now.

School started at the end of September (we're on a quarter system), and things seem off to a good start. Everybody has made me feel very welcome, particularly my colleagues! The department has gone through a lot of personnel changes over the last couple of years, so everybody was a bit nervous about how all the new people, me included, would work out, but the department picked some really quality people, and everybody is bringing in a really good energy. The students have also been very nice and seem really willing to give me a fair shot, which is great since I am trying to fill some big shoes.

With all the personal changes happening in the last couple of months, I haven't been gigging much, but that will change soon. My new album is coming out in a couple of weeks, and I'm really excited about it. It's definitely my best work to date: all new music that I wrote for my New York band and recorded over the last year. The album is called "Minor Prophets" and I will post a lot more about over the next few weeks. If you're impatient, you can pre-order it from Amazon right now!