| Dear friends, family, and
supporters, We hope this message finds you happy and well. And as 2009 winds down, we hope you might consider making a tax-deductible contribution* to Fantastic Merlins by joining the "League of Really Helpful People." This is a way for all our friends, family and fans to participate and make an investment in the work we do to bring our music to the world. You can even buy multiple League memberships as gifts for your friends and family. We started 2009 with a brand new CD that was almost ready. And thanks to the generous contributions of the League of Really Helpful People we were able to come up with the remaining funds needed to manufacture and release "A Handful of Earth". We're proud of how it turned out and we really hope you enjoy it. (If you need additional copies, CD baby will get them to you fast. http://cdbaby.com/fantasticmerlins3 ) In February we were honored to play a series of concerts in the Twin Cities with renowned cellist, Didier Petit. At the end of March we loaded up the 1992 Toyota Previa, and headed to Albuquerque,NM with stops in Burlington, Iowa; St. Louis and Kansas City, MO; Lawrence and Wichita, KS. We met lots of great people on the way, and made some really great music. In April we bid farewell to cellist Jacqueline Ultan as she moved on to devote time to other projects. We spent the rest of the year working and playing as a trio, focusing on exciting new compositional activity and a very cool collaboration with J-Walt, a virtual reality artist. If you don't know his work, please check out his website, www.spontaneousfantasia.com, and you can also see some video of our first show together on youtube. (www.youtube.com/fantasticmerlins). Since this summer we've continued our nearly two year residency at the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul, MN (Fridays, 8-11), and played at theTwin Cities Jazz Festival, the History Theater in St. Paul, the Concrete and Grass Festival, the Midwest Arts Conference, and two in-studio performances on KFAI. We also got three stars in Jazzman Magazine (the review is on our website), and both "A Handful of Earth" and "Bellfounding", the duo CD released by Brian and Nathan, were featured on www.destination-out.com (we think this site is among the best things on the internet). Oh, and we had a great party at the Black Dog wherein we celebrated the release of "A Handful of Earth". We were joined by our friends Tim O'Keefe, Desdamona and Carnage. It was a blast! You can see for yourself at www.youtube.com/fantasticmerlins. And we made another CD! This time, we concentrated on the music and poetry of Leonard Cohen. The idea came from a dream our friend Jean Rochard had in which Fantastic Merlins made a CD of Leonard Cohen songs. The CD, entitled "How the Light Gets In", produced by Jean Rochard, will be released on disques nato on March 1, 2010 (but will be available at our performance Feb. 5 in Paris at the Sons d'Hiver Festival--please come join us!) It's a collection of 8 Cohen songs, reimagined by Fantastic Merlins, and three Fantastic Merlins originals, inspired by Leonard Cohen. We were delighted to be joined by cellist Matt Turner, and vocalist/guitarist Kid Dakota (Darren Jackson). We finished the mixing last week--a profound recording, if we do say so ourselves. 2010 is shaping up nicely, too. January's issue of Chamber Music Magazine will feature a profile of Fantastic Merlins--good timing as Nathan will attend Chamber Music America's annual meeting in NYC, Jan 14-17. February includes a trip to France for the premiere of Fantastic Merlins with Kid Dakota. We'll play in Paris at Sons d'Hiver and then head to Brittany for another concert. Another exciting year is in the works. None of this would have been possible without your gracious support and generous contributions. We are truly grateful.
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League of Really Helpful People! Make your tax-deductible contribution of any amount through the Make A Donation button above or through our website or if you prefer you can send us a check email us for details info (at) fantasticmerlins (dot) com *Contributions made to Fantastic Merlins are tax-deductible through our relationship with the St. Paul, MN based 501(c)3 non-profit arts resource organization Springboard for the Arts. |
