It’s a fact. You just won’t get much done in your practice session unless you know what you are going to practice before you sit down at the piano.

Life can be busy and practice time can be precious. I know that if I sit down at the piano without a plan I’ll start noodling around and next thing I know half of my practice session is gone! For that reason I’ve always been a list-maker. There’s almost always a list of some sort on or near my piano.

When I was in school and at my most productive I was super organized about it. I was on a mission to learn to play. I was specific because my time was limited. I kept a practice schedule on a piece of paper that listed all the projects I was working on in rows down the left side of the paper, and the days of the week in columns across the top. So if I did something on Monday I checked it off under the Monday column, when I sat down on Tuesday I knew immediately to start with something else. No time wasted. I updated the schedule every week with what I wanted to accomplish and looked honestly at what I got done the week before.

Here are a few of the things I included on that schedule every week.

One of the perks of being a working jazz musician is the travel. Many would complain this is one of the worst parts, which is technically also true because being away from family, dealing with airlines and dragging suitcases and equipment in and out of hotels can be tedious to say the least. But if you manage to focus on the beauty of seeing new sites and new cultures, the experience can be rewarding. Plus you get to play music, and there really isn’t anything better than that.

Every once in a while you hit on a special moment or a special place. That happened to me last weekend when I got to play in Moscow, Russia for the first time. Sandwiched in the middle of a 2 1/2 week tour of the UK, we had a single gig at the “International House of Music” (I’m sure there’s a better translation, but this one makes me smile). The gig itself was fantastic. I was performing with Curtis Stigers and the venue was a concert hall where we played for about 1200 Russians. Not bad, eh?

The moment and place I’m writing about came the evening before.

This is my 3rd CD of original music with the collaborative trio, TRI-FI (hence the creative title). I’m really excited about the music and the recording quality on this one. I hope you’ll check it out!

We recorded at a great studio in NYC, and this new album is made up of entirely original compositions. It’s recorded with obsessive attention to sound quality and we all think it’s our best outing to date – and we hope you enjoy it! Give it a listen.