Greetings oh beloved sensitive artistes, lovers of the arts, and other such subtle things.  This “newsletter” is simply an experiment to see how the system works on my website; not really that I have anything much in particular to say or report: …yet then again, each day is a strange unfolding process of creation/administration/ prevarication… (and that is only in relation to “the Heart of the Matter” project) -the list could go on.

Anyway, I have just returned a couple of hours ago (2.15 pm, 8th April 2010) from a wonderful ‘escape’ from my crowded life in Sydney, with a week spent at my very deep and close friends Linsey and Jess’ place in the country at Kin Kin (Queensland). Yes, I did relax a little, and went for walks and runs, as well as dancing and participating in Linsey’s Marimba ensemble in the Kin Kin Community Hall of the Arts: yet, much of the days (and some evenings) was spent at my laptop, revising and reorganising the percussion parts, so as to make the performance of the work that much ….easier? (no, it is not going to be that easy)… coherent?…yes, that is it, and it will allow the percussionists (all four of them) to ‘get into’ the music more (to use a deeply professional ‘insider’ sort of term).

What else can I say, other than funding is still an issue, (for the recording side of the project) but I am ever hopeful (well, not really always ‘ever’ hopeful; if I think about it, quite often rather despairing in fact, -but best not get into that…always present a positive face in public, they say).

….a little while later and I realise how much there is to be positive about as well: the website is starting to work (after many, many hours of work by William Delaforce), and we are now not only in a position to start selling tickets to the concert itself, but, in what came as an almost unexpected shock sold some CD’s using the system William had only just recently installed!!  (Many thanks and congratulations to Erik Heyninck from Belgium for being the very first person to not only buy some of my CD’s from the website, but, given my withdrawal from the performing world into composition and the formal study of anthropology,  probably the only person in the last 5 years or so to have bought any my CD’s whatsoever: I have to confess to having given up on that level (getting “out there”) for a long time!)  What else to say…? the compositional side of things is almost done; I have only this morning solved the key transition in one of the pieces (Totems) song….the end to this process is now in sight…oh joy, oh rapture!

A very complex ‘thing’ this creating process; composing music and text, editing, completing, while organising, recording, publicising and performing in public… best get back to it.

Regards to you all,

Romano