January 26, 2021

Snow in the forecast, and just as it arrives, so do 3 big boxes of my new book! I drag them indoors, open one, and pull out the finished product. Picture me with a huge grin on my face, to finally see this capstone project at fruition. It represents a twining of the two major strands of my professional life– as a concert mandolinist searching for original music, transcribing works I think will sound good, learning their secrets, how to play them in a way that communicates their beauty; and as a professor of music history, figuring out how to draw students into my love of discovering how formal structure, available resources, and historical restraints mesh to create works of genius. Against the background of the pandemic I have worked on, despite fears that I or the publisher would somehow collapse before the finish line. But now, despite delays, moving from one step to the next, my book has arrived. And it is all I could hope for.