Well, so much for getting back to consistent updates.  My friend/colleague Dr. Meg Gray (Wichita State University) and I performed some one piano four-hand works for the Mu Phi Epsilon International Convention in Grapevine, Texas a year ago (July, 2023), and then performed a two-piano program at Wichita State University in September of 2023.  Our performance included Four Piece Suite, Divertimento for Two Pianos, by Richard Rodney Bennett; Ma Mere L'Oye,by Marice Ravel and transcribed for two pianos by Gaston Choisnel; and Peer Gynt Suite, Op. 46, No.1 for one piano four hands (although we performed it on two pianos) by Edvard Grieg.  I ran into less issues with these works than those we performed on our program in 2022, and I felt that maybe, just maybe, I was figuring out how to succeed with learning two piano repertoire despite my dyslexic interference.  In December of 2023, my husband Joe and I performed for our local music teachers group.  We played the Four Piece Suite by Bennett, and Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens, the latter which I had mostly memorized from performances in years past.  Again, things went well, and I felt excited about future 2-piano projects.

Then our world fell apart.

On Christmas Eve, our son was killed in a car crash in the Greeley area on his way to work.  Another car crossed three lanes of traffic and hit him head-on in what witnesses described as an explosive collision.  He was declared dead at the scene.  He left behind a wife, a four-year-old son, a sister, and two parents.  To say we all have been devastated is the understatement of the century.

We have pulled together as a family and extended family to help each other, watch over our grandson, and try to slug through the resulting surrealness that life has now become.  In an effort to grasp threads of sanity, I signed Joe and myself up to play a 2-piano performance in the Colorado Springs area in April of 2025.  Dyslexia is still an issue, of course, but no longer important.  My husband's and my goals are to distract ourselves enough from our loss to pull off the program.  Fortunately, we will be playing familiar works: Scarmouche, by Milhaud; Ma Mere L'Oye, by Ravel; Danse Macabre, by Saint-Saens; and Four Piece Suite, Divertimento for Two Pianos, by Bennett.

I don't know whether future blogs will return to dyslexia-related issues.  For now, I may use blogs as a way to work through a broken heart.