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This is my solo vibraphone arrangement of a beautiful Christmas Carol. The harmony is from the English composer Harold Darke's 1911 setting. It presents a few technical challenges with slide and double stop dampening. I am still working on it myself as I stay out of the bleak midwinter in Minnesota. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

Old rehearsal of "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)!" Just Vibe and Vox and spur of the moment, but still rather nice.

Ed posts a lot on vibes workshop. Maybe this is already there, but since i'm thinking about technique and music, I thought this was pretty amazing.

It kind of floors me to watch this. Just think about all the upkeep that has to go on in Ed's head! Dampen this, pedal, dampen with my hand, staccato here, play this chord, dampen this melody. I laugh sometimes watching Ed play. It's amazing and funny how Ed is controlling the instrument.

Merry Christmas and Good Vibes from McMurdo Station, Antarctica:

Yesterday (Christmas Eve in Antarctica), I had the great honor of participating in one of the coolest events I’ve ever done. I performed my arrangement of The First Noel, which I call “Noel Antarctica” for various U.S. Field Research Camps around Antarctica including the South Pole, Shackleton Outpost and Wais (West Antarctic Ice Shelf).

I just watched this John Piper video as well as Ed Saindon performing All the things you are (part of his Vic Firth Series). It's fascinating watching these guys play. They have spent countless hours developing their technical skills and they bring out really great sounds on the instrument.

Working on a few things the other day on this special song. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

"Miss Otis Regrets" - composed by Cole Porter in 1934 for the revue Hi Diddle Diddle that opened at London's Savoy Theatre. I was made aware of the song by Keith Jarrett who played a gorgeous version for an encore at his Carnegie Hall concert. So many great versions of this song sung by vocalists but one of my favorites is from Ethel Waters.

Happy Holidays!

This was videotaped last week at the Vic Firth headquarters. We had a little time before we went live for the Facebook Live Stream so I ran through two of my favorite Xmas songs from the Charlie Brown Christmas recording by the great Vince Guaraldi Trio. Merry Christmas to everyone and Best Wishes for 2018!

A session in Palermo, Sicily from 1980 with Ray Brown, Monty Alexander and Grady Tate. Milt at his prime digs into a an old time classic - Poor Butterfly - with his usual brilliance. There are a few quotes from various other tunes throughout; how many can you identify?

These are one of my go-to sets of mallets when I'm using the pickup system on my vibes, but I recently tried them on marimba and I LOVED the sound I was getting.