It has been a wild ride and I have been overjoyed to experience the incredible push by the world to help me get there!

Thank you so much to those who utilized personal networks to put me in touch with school teachers or had me out to play for your students. The work that I’ve done so far would not have been possible without the generosity of so many of you. 

On April 22nd, I played my 33rd show in this journey to 50! I am so excited to have made it this far. I’ve reached students here in Hawaiʻi, but also in Virginia, California, states in between, and Canada! The feedback has been overwhelming and the support has been incredible. 
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I think 50 is a great number to shoot for, and I want to do my absolute best to get there by the end of the school year. Can you help me? If you are a teacher, or know any teachers who might like to have a performance of Brian KM Live!, please send them my contact information

I have opened up my mornings for the next few weeks for anyone who wants to have me come out their classroom. Click the button to head over to my Calendly and get on my schedule- no account is required!

I just had a conversation with a good friend of mine, who is a cofounder of an excellent group called “Diversify the Stand”. I meet with her twice a month to talk about where my career is going and to get an additional set of eyes on what I’m doing. Career moves made by a horn and electronics soloist/photographer can be somewhat lonely. I don’t have a duet partner! (Besides Stan, of course)


The topic of this week was pretty simple. I’m stuck in the mud. I haven’t felt like my music is as easy to write as it has been, I don’t feel like my photography truly meshes in with my business, and I don’t have real clarity on what I’m doing. I told her that I wanted to hang up the camera, focus on more traditional horn playing, and put this whole thing behind me. This is scary to admit! I’ve relied on Carrie for years to help me articulate my problems and work out how to deal with them. What was the sage advice from the doctorate from Colorado?

​What? Carrie? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? Write a blog? A BLOG? What a useless idea. Get out of here, Carrie. Not helpful, swing and a miss, bye Felicia.
 
So here I am, writing a blog trying to figure out how to write a blog about not doing well, and I’m realizing that my big mistake for the past few months is dissociation. I’ve looked at my photography, music, personal life, and other avenues of my life in a vacuum, and I’ve failed to remember that I’m just one artist living a single life. What I’ve forgotten is that it’s all connected.

​Yes, I can demand of myself that I play at a level where my horn playing can stand on its own. I can demand of my photography that it can exist without music (in fact, it does!) Moving forward, I realizing again that I am a multi-faceted artist. Who am I? I’m a horn and electronics performer/composer and photographer. When I’m playing horn, I’m still a photographer, and when I’m taking pictures, I’m still a musician. 

So here’s to 2021, a year when I make this promise to myself. No more worrying how things “fit” or “work”. I do what I do, and that’s good.

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A few nights ago I drove out to Makapuʻu Beach to see if I could make pictures of the Makapu‘u Lighthouse during the blue hour, after the sun had set. The Makapu‘u Lighthouse is one of the most frequently photographed subjects in Hawaiʻi, but I had not seen very many photographs of the lighthouse in the dark! 


The clouds didn’t quite cooperate. I was able to set up a composition that I was pretty pleased with and made a photograph of the lighthouse, the darkening purple sky, and some still water with the help of some long exposure photography.

For a photographer, it can be disappointing to skip out on the sunset (only a 10 minute drive away) in hopes of creating an image that would be outside the norm, especially if the end result isn’t exactly what you had in mind. It’s a nice image, but not the one I had in mind when I planned the shoot. The real magic of photography and other art forms is that the artist is so much smaller than the form itself, and small things can be quite surprising! 


Just as I was about to pack in the tripod, some fishermen arrived about 20 feet away from where I was shooting. All three members of the party had headlamps! In the same spot, I turned the camera to the left and shot some more long exposures while they did some natural light painting. What I got was so much more than I could have created by just showing up to the blue hour alone. 

I spoke to the fishermen after I was done and got an email address to share the photos with them after I was done processing. It was a great way to meet some strangers, share a love of art making, and leave a comfort zone! Lesson learned? After the sun is set and the shot seems missed, keep your eyes and mind open for an opportunity. You never know what fish (or fishermen) may bite.



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