Greetings Spirited Folks of the Muse, great news coming to you from the halls of SpragueLand! We had an inspired night of music playing the Doc Einstein string piece at the Athenaeum Art Studio in San Diego.

For openers, it was a sold out house and for any performer this brings automatic happiness. Those fleeting thoughts of throwing a big party and no one shows up can thankfully leak out of the already cluttered minds of 7 musos facing a wall of notes.

Next up, killer sound thanks to the high ceilings and just the right blend of wall defusers at the performance space plus impeccable sound mixing by Eric.

And then the music came out and all those rainy day rehearsals with the band paid off. The group navigated the hairpin twists and turns of the new piece as if they’ve performed it a bunch of times before. It was the ultimate “E” ticket for this composer to hear the concepts and ideas generated in my studio zap out into the evening air, into the ears and hearts of a consortium of enthusiastic friends and fans. It was an ultra memorable moment and thanks to all of you that made it to the show.

The whole hoopla of the grant and the concert generated some cool ink around town. Check out George Varga’s piece in the SD Union, Robert Bush’s piece in the SD Reader and Bart Mendoza’s piece in the SD News.Com by clicking here. Robert Bush had me laughing when he wrote,

“The second movement, Rainbows, began as a pensive ballad that reminded me a lot of the Leonard Bernstein piece made popular by Bill Evans, "Some Other Time." Led by the cello, the harmonic and melodic landscape Sprague created was as lush as the rainforest and perhaps the most beautiful theme he has ever written. There were parts of Rainbows that had me understand on a visceral level, the wonder of life, the power of beauty and the intrinsic pull of love. I'm not kidding you, it was so deep, I almost proposed to the woman sitting next to me. Ok, it didn't hurt that she was gorgeous.”