January 15-22: Marietta, GA. It's show time! I spent this week playing the reed one book for the musical Assassins by Stephen Sondheim. All four reed books (twenty-one instruments between the four of us!) were played by wind players--a rarity for smaller theaters where at least two of these books end up being "faked" by a second keyboardist. It sounded soooo cool! The strangest thing in my book was a harmonica part (who plays piccolo, flute, clarinet, soprano sax, and...harmonica?). After a few discussions with the music director, I got the go ahead to play the part on melodica. Yay! Here are some highlights from the dress rehearsal, beginning with one of my harmonica/melodica solos. Here's a nifty thing I did for this show: I made a peg extension for my piccolo to bring its height up even with the other instruments. It makes it much easier to pick up and put down without having to look down in the dark. It's just a fifteen inch piece of PVC with some bolts i...