Hello, Newgrounds, how are you? I was happy to see a new Salad Fingers here a few days ago. @Doki is every bit as good as always, and Salad Fingers feels like an exploration of mental illness/delusion as much as a darkly humorous work of art.

This is just a quick video message to check in like I usually do near the start of the month. I talk about what it's like to be a piano accompanist and the creative things I've been up to lately.

UIL

In February I spent most of my time working as a piano accompanist for UIL events.

The UIL (University Interscholastic League) is an Austin-based organization that administers competitions among public Texas primary and secondary schools. For my purposes, it's a series of music competitions.

At UIL competitions, individual students and student ensembles perform music and judges rate them one through five on their performances (with one being the best). My job is to accompany these students on the piano and help them sound good.

TRINITY AND FIRST U.U.

I performed for the Trinity Church of Austin and the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, both of whom I'd worked with before.

Trinity had remote services, so they hired me to record pieces for their pre-edited Sunday services. Each week, I sat down and recorded music to the music director's specifications. This was really fun for me. It let me indulge in my perfectionist side. If a recording doesn't sound right the first time, one can always do another take. And another, and another...

Anyway, I'm really proud of these recordings for Trinity, especially my improvisations on "O, Waly, Waly" and "Wade In The Water".

Hear the Trinity recordings: www.bentibbetts.net/trinity

For the First Unitarian Universalist, I performed live at their beautiful facility. Those services provided me with opportunities to learn, explore, and promote repertoire I hadn't performed before. I tried a couple new pieces and had a great time playing for their services.

Watch the U.U. performances: www.bentibbetts.net/uu

LIVE RECITALS

I helped organize two unrelated recitals in February at the Armstrong Community Music School. These passion projects took a lot of time, but I was happy to do it.

The first performance was a program of premiers by local composers, including three pieces by myself. The concert was called "Bitter Valentine's". It featured arias centered around the themes of love, rejection, and betrayal. There was a lot of variety on the program. (I even performed a weird skit / live version of my Newgrounds track Prototype.)

Watch the Bitter Valentine's show: www.bentibbetts.net/valentines

The other show was a clarinet and voice recital with clarinetist Mary Schani and mezzo soprano Liz Cass. We performed music by Schumann (3 Romances), Schubert (Shepherd on the Rock), Mozart (a selection from his last opera, The Clemency of Titus), and Brahms (Clarinet Sonata #2).

Watch the clarinet and voice recital: www.bentibbetts.net/clarinet

NEW CONTENT FOR SUBSCRIBERS

Because of all the performances, I didn't do as much composing as usual last month, which was a bummer. But I did put out some new material for subscribers to my website, including some audio recordings from one of my Ballet Austin classes. As some of you know, I accompany for dance teachers at Ballet Austin, which gives me a chance to improvise in public.

This selection is about forty minutes of music. It's intended to be background music, but I think it's still nice to listen to on its own. I'm proud of the piano playing I do at that organization. It brings me a lot of satisfaction.

Hear samples: www.bentibbetts.net/balletaustin

CONCLUSION

Before I end this message, I want to thank Armstrong Community Music School for being so supportive of me lately. The Valentine's concert and the clarinet recital both took place at the school. They also sponsored two other events I performed in last week, the ACMS Rhapsody events. Among other things, these two concerts celebrated the work of pianist Karen White, who is one of my colleagues at ACMS. I performed with flutist and vocalist Monica Salas, violinist Phil Davidson, and vocalists Julia Taylor and Liz Cass.

As always, if you'd like to support my activities you can subscribe to my website at www.bentibbetts.net. For a couple of dollars every month you get access to subscriber-only content including more musical audio, sheet music, and whatever else I'm working on.

Subscribe: www.bentibbetts.net/subscribe

Thanks very much!

Ben