Lin is a member of the University of Michigan Photo Services staff. “Soul Mates” is a personal project of hers, in which she is exploring the relationships between musicians and their instruments through photography.

I thought the project was a great idea, and I liked what I saw of Lin’s work online, so I happily agreed to be photographed. After getting to know each other a little bit through emails and a brief meeting, we held our photo session in the alleyway behind the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor.

Part of the agreement for me to be in the project was that I was to receive a copy of the photos taken, with permission to use them on my website (and elsewhere). I must say I’m absolutely thrilled with the results!!

I don’t know when she expects to finish the project. I’ll post at my site when I hear more.
In the meantime, you can check out Lin’s work yourself at her personal website, or at UofM Photo Services.

This book would be a great gift idea for any young student of the trumpet. Geared toward the middle to high school age trumpeter, and published by Note-A-Day Publishing, the book is presented beautifully in a calendar format. So, each day of the year the student gets a “lesson” (really a “tip”) and some additonal guidance. Also daily entertaining “trumpet trivia.”

I’ve had a lot of students ask how to do this over the years, and this is a response to that need. Please take a look and let me know if you have any unanswered questions!

Over the past year or so I have been increasingly disappointed with PHPWebsite as the “back end” of my site. While it is a very powerful package, the documentation was so heavily geared towards programmers and hard-core site developers, I felt it would take too much time to implement any new features to the site. I also was concerned that it would be too difficult to upgrade to a new version of the software, which was a concern since my version was quite out of date, and was vulnerable to several possible security problems.

So, I went searching for a new system. I considered many options, including MS Front Page, Mambo, Drupal, and others, but have finally settled on WordPress. While it’s not as hugely full-featured as some of the other systems, WordPress seems to be much more suited to the “casual” website developer. It can be set up and operated with little or no programming involved, and there is a large base of documentation and community support available if and when problems arise. It is also heavily expandable through it’s “plugin” architecture.

For the last few weeks I’ve been working on the overall look and feel of the site, plus porting most of the content from the old site over to the new system. I’ve managed to do this almost entirely in 15 minute chunks of time while taking breaks from practicing the trumpet, so as not to disrupt my already busy schedule too much.

So, take a look around the site and see what’s here. Please check back regularly, as I plan to add content on a more regular basis now that I have tools in place to do so easily.

-Mark