Last night we played in Lakewood, Colorado (a suburb of Denver) at the Lakewood Cultural Center. There's the Denver skyline on the left.

After the concert we caught up with some old friends, Sarah and Randy Levine. Sarah (or Dr. Levine, as we called her then) was the head of Emily's and my grade school, Belmont Day School before she relocated to beautiful Colorado. Our trio has gone back to perform at BDS and we will be artists-in-residence there next year!


Colorado is one of my favorite places in the world. When I was growing up, my family took cross-country road trips to many of the national parks out west (Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon etc...) so I've always loved the mountains. Our good friends, Sherry and Dave Farny, owned two amazing ranches in Telluride and Grand Junction, Colorado, where I spent many of my happiest days riding horses as a kid. So I was glad to spend a couple of days surrounded by mountains again.
















But I was also happy when our plane from Denver touched down back home in NYC today!!! When we left home a week ago, we weren't so lucky. Our flight from New York to Michigan for a concert at Michigan State University was canceled due to the huge snow and ice storm that hit the Northeast. Unable to rebook on a flight that would get us there in time for the concert, we had to rent a car and drive to Michigan (an 11 hour trip!)

Adventures in New Mexico

Performing in New Mexico was something of a homecoming for us Claremontians...New Mexico is where the three of us first got to know each other (at the Taos School of Music) in 1999. Seems like ancient history now! But I was thrilled to go back to such a beautiful state.

As we waited to board our flight to NM, one of the presenters called to say they were expecting a snow storm and that we should rent a 4-wheel drive car and take special care on the roads. Coming from the northeast, we've all driven in snow before and imagined that these people were just a bit cautious. Nonetheless, we rented a Ford Explorer and felt like kings of the road (and a little silly when our first day there there was only an inch of snow).

As we drove to our first concert in Corrales, NM (a suburb of Albuquerque) we were greeted by this unusual publicity!

























But things got more interesting (and spectacular) when we drove up in the mountains to Los Alamos, NM, site of the national laboratories where the atomic bomb was developed and first tested.
























The concert went well, and we were sitting down to dinner with some fascinating people (Los Alamos is filled with extremely talented scientists) when it began to snow in earnest. In an uncharacteristic move, we left before dessert ;-( to try to get down the mountain before the roads became impassable.


(Note - all these pics are from the drive up the mountain - we didn't start down until after dark...and at that point we were in no mood for photo ops!)

We were shocked at how quickly the snow had accumulated and how it was drifting all over the roads. After 10 minutes of inching along, we decided it was unwise to continue and turned around. Luckily our Los Alamos angels, Judy and Don Machen, came to the rescue, leading us down the "back route" which was less treacherous. All's well that ends well, and we made it home safely. But boy were we glad to have that 4-wheel drive!!!