News

Cris' Asia Concert tour has finally come to a close. She returned stateside on Wednesday and has been recovering from jet lag and eagerly awaiting starting her new job at Nintendo.  She had an amazing time in Taiwan and Japan and was met with unrivaled hospitality.  She had 3 concerts in Taiwan, 2 of which were charity concerts to benefit the indigenous people of Taiwan, and one was at a graduation for a middle school.  All were great successes and a lot of fun for her.  Her two Tokyo concerts were sold out shows.  Her host in Japan, Night Ocarina, promoted the concerts really well and made Cris feel very at home.

Cris is still settling in, but is planning on writing a blog post about her adventures.  In the mean time, here are her photos from Taiwan and Japan.

This year is flying by!  Since my last update things are progressing nicely.  My harpist and I have decided on "Muses Merry" for our name and are now distributing promotional materials. I'll be adding a page to the website.  Also a friend of mine and I performing together later this week at his company's Celtic festival.  We call ourselves "The Tea Whistlers".  Rehearsals have been a blast and I hope we have more opportunities to play together in the future.

Some visitors may have noticed a new menu category "Hire Princess Zelda".  I've been performing Zelda music for years, but I only just recently made a Princess Zelda costume.  Being an ocarinist, it only makes sense that I'd offer the chance for people to hear real Zelda music from someone dressed as Princess Zelda.  I think I'm the only ocarinist in the world that offers this service, so I'm very hopeful!  I'm planning to approach some children's hospitals / hospice very soon.  I read about this cool guy that dresses as batman and visits kids.  I think I'd like to try to do that too.

In other news, because I'm going to try to add all of these projects to my website, I might have to move some things around.  I'm still trying to figure it out, but I hope to do it soon :)

Thanks for reading

-Cris

I've recently added a few new calendar entries for upcoming performances.  I'll try to be better about posting them as I learn about them.  I am planning a trip to Asia, so a few TBAs are listed.  I'm hoping that as dates are released that I'll be able to add more performances.  Everything is still being figured out, but I'm EXTREMELY excited to go back to Asia. My visit to South Korea for the International Ocarina Festival was amazing and I've been wanting to return ever since.

In other news, my Aria SG has been released and has gotten some great praise and wonderful feedback.  Both it and the Aria SG were successful over the holiday season and sold out a few times.   I'm still designing a few models, so there's hope for even more releases.

Lately, I have been rehearsing with a harpist and we're building a very nice repertoire.  With regular weekly rehearsals, I'm super-happy with how things are progressing.

Overall, it's been an exciting few months and this year is shaping up to be fun and exciting as well.

The Aria tenor is officially a success!  Customer feedback has been extremely positive and because it is selling well STL has decided to add another ocarina to the Aria line of ocarinas.   The typical trend is to have a tenor and soprano c, but the Aria isn't following that trend.  The next Aria will be tuned in G and will be a soprano (STL calls them altos).  Instead of black with a green stripe, the G will have a red stripe.

It releases Thanksgiving Day 2012.