Chicago-The Midwest Clinic

So, day two of The Midwest Clinic out in lovely Chicago, Illinois. Since I've found a quick moment (waiting in The Pavillion at the Hilton for my lunch to arrive) I find myself actually missing writing on my blog. I've, in all honest, never really looked forward to it all all, it was all a Marian University Marketing Communications department indea. I didn't even know what a blog was...tells you how behind the times I must be. Anyways, I wanted to get back in the habit of updating my blog, and not do it every two months.

The Midwest Clinic is a nice event, the wonderful people at Yamaha and Paige's Music have very generous to provide me with registration and a hotel for the conference. The whole trip started out leaving quite early from my home in Fishers to drive up to Chicago Heights, IL to make a visit to Marian Catholic High School. As most of you already know, Greg Bimm (band director) has a phenomenal program with very hard working students. I headed up to Greg's program to do a few auditions. I believe I did 6 or 7, not to bad for a days work. The best part of that trip was the actual audition, each student did a great job, some with INCREDIBLE potential to be very solid professional musicians-but get this-almost all of the students that auditioned for me all want to major in something outside of music, many of them seeking careers in medicine. How awesome is that! Greg, you're the man.

Ok, back to Midwest, after leaving MCHS, now with 2 of my current students who are former MCHS students (they met me for breakfast at Egg and I-great food for an even better price) in my car, we headed to find my hotel at the Hilton on the Magnificent Mile in downtown Chicago. My two students were so great to help me carry my luggage and tons of music to my room. So, after checking into my room I headed out to the McCormick Place (can't remember if it's north or south, but it's the new one) and sat on a nice charter bus for 15 minutes to get there from the hotel. Arrived at the beautiful convention center (although I think Indianapolis could do it soooo much better!) and walked around for about 45 minutes. Lots of vendors trying to speak to potential customers over the constant crescendo of screaming trumpets and cymbal crashes-quite the site...a little irritating after awhile, but then you can just walk to another side of the room. I feel a bit bad for the vendors who have to sit through that for entire days...yikes.

So, headed by to my hotel room to meet with my grandfather, who lives only about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, for dinner. That was nice-we talked for a long time and I was able to see a deeper and more intimate side of a man I greatly admire. Afterwards I found myself quite exhaused from the day and finally fell asleep with the tv on. No worries, I definitely awoke at 2am to a very warm and stuffy room so I could lower the temperature and turn off the television. Unfortunately, I was now awake. I think I finally fell asleep about an hour later.

I'll write about day 2 a little later, my panini and fries are getting cold.


A presto!