There is no April fools day joke in today’s diary, but there is a lot of craziness going on at Hilltop, at least. First of all, it’s income tax day, and that is always enough to stress me a bit, and that’s just organizing the documents to take to the accountant who is actually doing the return. This year, Crystal and I had all sorts of different schedules and forms — lots of confusing paperwork for a musician. Let someone else make sense of it.

We have been getting started on gardening – assembling raised garden bed boxes and planting veg for the first time in our near-eleven-year marriage. However, the temperature has decided to fluctuate wildly from sunny and near 80F down to freezing from one day to the next, so we had to bring all the plants into the garage and park one of the cars outside. Hoping the frosty weather will pass soon!

My radio show is now airing and on its fourth weekly episode this week. Yesterday, I completed episode five, on Grieg. You can find out all about it and even listen to the previous shows that have finished airing (each one three times a week) at the show’s web page on this site: https://michaelkurek.com/adventures/

My articles in The Epoch Times are somehow also making it to press, two a month, and it’s a great publication for getting all sorts of news on culture, health, and the arts, if you want to try a free trial of the web version or even the old-fashioned paper version.

Since I last wrote, my show Dear Miss Barrett, has been gearing up for its June 17-27 performance run in the Nashville area. More info as the time grows near. But we now have almost the full cast assembled, and they have their scripts and songs to begin learning. I met with our fine director yesterday at the theater, and we worked out all sorts of logistic and musical details. You can keep in touch with our progress by clicking on the “Dear Miss Barrett Show” link on this site, above (among the links at the top of each page on the site).

In sadder news, for me, the recording of my Symphony No. 2 for Parma Recordings has been delayed again, due to virus distancing, etc., till March of 2022!  What can be done? Only what one can do. It’s in God’s hands.

Yesterday, there was a lovely performance at a kind of virtual music festival from Brazil of my solo harp piece Moon Canticle by Soledad Yaya, the wonderful harpist who recorded the piece on The Sea Knows album. Here is the link. It begins at 11:30 on the video, but with comments just before (in Portuguese).