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on University. Recorded on iPhone - apologies for the bad angle. Program: 1. Charles Mingus Wednesday Night Prayer Service Self Portrait in Three Colors Goodbye Pork Pie Hat Nostalgia for Time Square 2. Wayne Shorter Mysterious Traveler Ju Ju Footprints (with a nod to the French School - and Ravel) 3. Chick Corea Sea Journey Spain 4. Vince di Mura Excerpts from "A Poet in Harlem" Promises, Promises Making of a Harlem Love Poem Brother Lo Excerpts from "Meditations on the Sacred Heart" Shiva Kranti 5. Britney Spears - Hit Me Baby One More Time 6. Michael Brecker - African Skies Notes: Careers are developed better when the artists allow the art to dictate the future and never the assumptions of any convention. Picasso said, "I go where art takes me." Looking back from my position on this day in May, I know that there were hands that guided me from one expression to another and ultimately, to the place where I was granted the maximum of artistic success. To have a career in music and solely in music as a composer, performer, director and arranger is rare air indeed. To land at a major arts center at an Ivy League University and your sole job is to be a creative asset, is a dream. We all wanted to be concert performers, and for me that meant the amazing music written in Europe during the 19th century after the piano was perfected. I had the joy of working on that music and playing it for others. And then I had the joy of divorcing myself from it when one of the great teachers in our musical world, a wonderful man named Harvey Wedeen asked me a simple question after I ripped through a concert of late Brahms; "Vince, what do you want to say?" Ah.... Nothing. I had nothing to add to this discussion and that very day I ended my relationship with music that my soul and musical mind did not marry. I became what I am today and from that day in 1989, as long as I followed the art that lived in me, I was increasing and became a very successful artist; an arranger whose music was played every day by someone, in the theaters all over this nation and beyond. That is a serious claim. That a night did not go by for over 10 years, without some performance of my music being heard, some place, all over the world. You see all the practice in the world could not make me a great musician. Yes, I worked hard but I was gifted in a different way and it all began when one teacher, and another teacher, and another and another and another shaped me. Mark Silverman, Constance Keene (who I absolutely adored and feared at the same time, and trusted with my life,) and Harvey Wedeen who saved and gave me a career with just one simple question. And none of it could have happened had I not walked into the French School of Music as an 11 year old novice with no understanding of what it took to be excellent. That was given to me by Mlle. Combe and Mr. Waters. I have had great mentors. Poets, dancers, directors and amazing musicians, but none of that happens without the first lesson I took with Mlle. Yvonne Combe. She did the hard work of making me a pianist from a piano player. And lord it was not easy, and she was not patient, but she was committed and I was given a great gift because of her and in time, Mr. Waters as well who gave me the great love for Bach that stays with me to this day. But there is another reason I am here today to benefit this school. I miss my fellow students who had that shared experience with me. I see their faces as I think about playing here and remember their names. The friendships. I won't start naming names because there are so many. We knew something. We knew the secret. Only we can share it with each other because we had the experience. For me, that is the deepest meaning. So I dedicate this concert to them. Every student who walked these halls and took those endless lessons from 1971 - 1979. I wish you were all here. Love, Vince.