I just finished up my first semester at UNC, had a nice break back home in the midwest, and now find myself back in Colorado ready to start my second semester.  I tried to catch up with as many friends and family as possible when I was back home, but for those of you who I didn't get a chance to get caught up with or visit with I figured I would post an update incase you were curious.  
    I had a really good semester at UNC.  The faculty has been great and the classes I've had already have been awesome.  They are all super practical, and about stuff I'm genuinely interested in and want to work hard for.  Which coincidentally resulted in me having the best semester grade-wise that I've EVER had.  I've also learned a lot about myself and about my musicianship, and the experience has been very humbling.  Mary and I have also made some good friends while we've been out here, which we're also thankful for!
    Mary also had a great experience student teaching, which we are both really thankful for.  She has officially graduated and will get her Colorado license and go from there, probably focus on subbing in the area, but she's made a lot of good connections already and I know whatever she does, it will be awesome.
    Though we've both been really busy we did manage to make some time to get out and enjoy the beautiful scenery around us before we got really bogged down with school.  That's definitely one of my favorite parts about the area.  It's sunny most days of the year, the weather is pretty mild usually and there's a lot of cool things to see that aren't very far away.  
   That's it for now, please feel free to give me a call anytime to say hello and check in!  

Well May is beginning to come to a close and a lot has happened recently.  Mary and I moved out of our apartment in Eau Claire and today was my last day teaching as a long term substitute music teacher at Crestview Academy (though I still have one day to take care of some grading etc).  It was pretty awesome working in that school and with those students.  Though many days were very challenging it was a great experience overall.  I just learned a ton and had a really great time. Yesterday my last day teaching at Chippewa Falls HIgh School and back in April we wrapped up a very successful Menomonie Winter Drum Line season.  It's been really weird saying good bye to these students and these programs that I've poured so much time into.  I've been working at Menomonie for nearly five years and Chippewa for four years.  I've also been slowly saying good bye to private students that I've been working with for just as long!  I've been so blessed to have developed so many good relationships and to have been able to share music with so many incredible people.  

Another exciting update is that back in April I found out that I was accepted to all of the graduate programs that I applied to (University of Southern California, University of North Texas, University of Miami, University of Northern Colorado, and McGill University).  I would have been honored to just be accepted into any of them, but am truly thankful that I got accepted into all of them!  Through many conversations with Mary and lots of thinking we decided to attend The University of Northern Colorado.  I am super excited for this great opportunity.  I was also fortunate to get an assistantship there as well so I will be doing some teaching out there and will receive some tuition assistance which Mary and I are both very excited about!  We still have a lot to do before we get out to Greeley Colorado, but we are faithful and confident that everything will work out as it always seems to, and if it doesn't we'll still be O.K. ha.  

I've also been doing a lot of playing still along with the usual teaching load.  I just recorded a big band album with my friend and Eau Claire alum Keith Karns and performed a gig before-hand at the Grand Little Theatre in Eau Claire.  The band was pretty awesome, and the tunes were also very cool and challenging but still really fun!  I'll put up a video on the listen/watch page.  I've also still been playing with Josh Gallagher and Aaron Hedenstrom every week at Obsession Chocolates.  It's been great playing with the same people every week!  I've also had a few Shanghi Bistro gigs recently and a few more in the future which is always great too.  I've dropped the ball on updating the gig Calendar, I'll try to fix that this summer.   

Besides that I got asked to play with UW-Eau Claire's first jazz ensemble again to accompany guest artist Bobby Sanabria on some latin percussion instruments.  It was really fun playing with him!  Dr. Crowell my former percussion professor at UWEC also played, so that was cool too!  But the whole thing was definitely a learning experience.  I was teaching at Crestview, had my usual load of private students and had to judge at the festival, so it was a pretty intense week with the knock downs, performances, and no sleep, etc.  But Bobby is absolutely awesome and showed me a lot of things that I didn't know.  Check him out if you're not familiar with him.   

A few weeks ago Mr. Baca (UWEC's Jazz 1 director) brought Bobby back to record on their new CD.  So Mary and I got to record with him which was really fun, and again a great learning experience.  We showed up at 9 P.M. and didn't leave until 6:30 the next morning.  It was actually pretty awesome and you'll get to hear a recording of Mary singing one of the tracks!!  I don't think any of us expected that!!  It's not every day that you get to record with Bobby Sanabria, let alone sing on a track of his!  ha.  So props to my awesome wife! 

It's really been crazy coming to grips that we're leaving Eau Claire, but exciting at the same time.  Mary is already in Burnsville where we'll be this summer and I'm staying in my former house in Aaron's (Hedenstrom) room.  It's been awesome catching up with him and hanging out.  He's getting married this summer and going to grad school at UNT next fall!  He's such a great friend and it's always great hanging out with him.  

I'm just hoping to practice, listen to music, catch up with friends, and play a little before we leave so if you're going to be around the area please don't hesitate to look us up to hang out. 

More to come! 

 


        

Hello everybody!  I hope you had a good February, I can't believe it's already March next week!  I just finished up my grad school audition tour and am feeling really good to be done with it!  It's crazy because I've been preparing for it for over two years, and now don't have to worry about it anymore!  I did auditions at McGill in Montreal, UNT in Denton Texas, UNC in Greely Colorado, U of M in Miami Florida, and sent in a video to USC in Los Angeles CA.  

I just got back from New York City and Montreal after auditioning at McGill University in Montreal Quebec.  The whole trip was a lot of fun!  I got to see and catch up with a few of my friends while I was out in New York and meet some new people and I had a really good time!  

Hey everybody!  I just put up a video from the Aaron Hedenstrom Orchestra Concert at O'Gara's on Tuesday.  Check it out here on my listen/watch page or on youtube.  http://www.brianclaxton.com/listenwatch.html

So unless you don't live in the midwest you've no doubt been affected by our recent snow storm!  It's been pretty wild just walking around town seeing people attempting to dig themselves out of literally tons of snow.  


Also, seeing people helping random strangers push their cars along and helping dig people out.  Not to mention how easy it becomes to strike up a conversation with anybody.  "Crazy huh?"  "Yeah!!!"  Immediately followed by their horror stories from the blizzard, which I personally always enjoy.  "Yeah, it took me 5 hours to drive what normally takes 25 minutes!!"  "So I spent 4 hours digging myself out of my parking lot, and finally got the car out, but realized soon after that the plows put up a 4 foot road block in front of the main street, so I just stayed home, played X-Box, and drank some beer!!" "Over by my house a bus got stuck for 3 hours!" 


For me it's reassuring to see that some people have some compassion, but more than anything can really just take a step back and appreciate this day.  They can take an unfortunate situation like this and make it into something sort of enjoyable, in some cases even a lot of fun!  


An update on my life:  I've been busy wrapping up the writing for the 2010-2011 Menomonie High School Winter Drum Line show.  It should be fully completed in a couple days!  I'm really excited for the show this year, the music is all original this year and I think it's turning out pretty good!!  The kids have been doing an absolutely great job as well and I'm just super proud of them and what they've done already and I have really high expectations for what they're going to be able to achieve this season!!


Playing wise: I have a couple recording sessions and a concert coming up for the Eau Claire Masters Singers which should be pretty fun!!  (I'm playing some mean snare drum and triangle!)


I also have a gig in St. Paul at O' Gara's with the Aaron Hedenstrom Orchestra!!  Aaron is one of my best friends and just an amazingly talented dude!  We've been through a lot together and it's always a pleasure playing with him and playing his music!  He's also donating all of the proceeds to the invisible children organization!  How cool is that?  Seriously!!  Check out a nice write up in the jazz police below and please make sure you get a copy of his CD.  


http://www.jazzpolice.com/content/view/9197/115/


We're also in the process of recording a new album with the Michael Rambo Project.  I'm not sure what the time line looks like for release but we'll be getting together in early-mid January to lay down some tracks.  


Then my grad school auditions begin and other crazy stuff!!


Keep a lookout on my gig calendar for other random gigs!

I sincerely hope that everyone stays safe in this crazy amount of snow and has an enjoyable holiday season!   




     


   

Hello everybody!