Hey there, Newgrounds! I notice you're reviving the Treasure Hunt--I think that's an amazing idea. It creates an incentive to discover new and under-seen work. And it supports exactly those creators who will most appreciate and benefit from the attention. Awesome!

It made me wonder if platforms could build in a "Treasure Hunt" mode someday, like a tab that only showed content with small view counts. Maybe we could systematically boost talented creators who are just starting out.

And here's my usual update on the things I've been creating. The edited transcript is below the video, in case you don't feel like hearing me talk for five minutes. I hope you enjoy it!

Keys To Giving & Charitable Giving

In my last update, I mentioned a concert with a bunch of friends and colleagues called "Keys to Giving" which was a benefit concert for the local charity Thriftish. It's online now so if you want to watch and listen to that, it's at bentibbetts.net/keystogiving.

In my last update, I also mentioned I wanted to do more charity giving in general. That was kind of a goal of mine, and I think what I've settled on doing for myself is to give a very small percentage of each lesson that I teach to an organization called GiveWell. GiveWell ranks charities and finds the most effective charities in the world to ensure that the money you give does the most good possible. So if you want to join me on this journey, go to givewell.org and check out some of their top-rated charities or give to their fund.

Student Recitals & Lesson Materials

I just want to quickly announce a couple of dates for my students.

The Timbral Spring Recital will be on April 16th at 2 PM at Blackerby Violin Shop in Austin. This will be a recital for mostly young learners. I'm still working on something for my adult students. I'll be sharing that recital with the students of Graham Yates, Keith Allegretti, and Tiffany Cadenhead, my colleagues at Timbral Music Studios in Round Rock.

For my students at Premier Music Academy, there is an open mic night every month. The open mic night always happens on the last Friday of the month, and the next one will be February 24th at 6:30 PM.

And for my students at the Armstrong Community Music School, there will be student recitals at the school on a sign-up first come, first served basis on February 26, April 16th, May 7th, May 20th, and May 21st. So if you'd like to participate in one of those, please come see me and we'll sign you up.

I'm posting the materials that I bring to my piano lessons on my website; visit bentibbetts.net/students.

Happy Birthday Piano

On January 15th, we took some time out of our weekend to celebrate the 100th birthday of the piano in our office. We pampered it for the day. We got it tuned, we had the wood finished, we got a cake, we had balloons. It was a lot of fun.

A hundred years...Among the events taking place when this piano was built was the flight of the first helicopter, the retirement of Vladimir Lenin from the Soviet Union, and the founding of the Walt Disney Company.

Brass Quintet Arrangements

I've been working on brass quintet arrangements with my dad, Dwight Tibbetts. What we've decided to do is having me do the piano sketches and him fleshing out the piano sketches into music for his ensembles. He runs two brass quintets. We've put out a couple of pieces together and this past month, I finished a new piano sketch for Dad to chew on for a while. We're working on an arrangement of "Home on the Range" and it's pretty epic. This piano sketch lasted about seven or eight minutes and took a lot of work. So this was a long time coming. You can see Dwight's arrangements on Brass Music Online.

Live Performance Recordings

I'm still figuring out sharing my live performances. The trick is recording live performances in a way that feels high quality and captures the spirit of the event. For now, I have two new recordings available for subscribers to my website. The first one is my cover of Elliott Smith's "Waltz #1" and another is my performance of a Scarlatti Sonata in G major. If you're interested in either of those, you can go to bentibbetts.net/subscribe where you'll find information about getting a lot more content from me for a couple of bucks a month. And if you're already a subscriber, thanks for supporting me. I really appreciate it.

And that just about does it! Thanks for reading. Feel free to reply if you'd like; how was your month?