If any­one out there is still read­ing this blog, you may have noticed that it’s been pretty dor­mant lately. Life has been busy, and just haven’t had time for the sort of recre­ational writ­ing that I’ve been able to do in the past. But, I’ve just launched a new pro­fes­sional site for myself at davidawells.com, and I’ll be mov­ing all of my music-related blog­ging activ­i­ties over there. I’ve already got a few posts up, go check ‘em out! I’ll prob­a­bly res­ur­rect this blog at some point as a place for my pho­tographs and book reviews, but I have no idea when that’ll be.

One of the projects that’s keep­ing me busy these days is the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Com­pe­ti­tion. The com­pe­ti­tion, founded in 2004, is for young women bas­soon play­ers who are either from or in school any­where in the Amer­i­cas. The reper­toire changes for every com­pe­ti­tion, but always includes a Vivaldi con­certo, an unac­com­pa­nied work, and a new piece by a liv­ing woman com­poser. The com­pe­ti­tion hap­pens every two years, and since the 2010 com­pe­ti­tion, has been accom­pa­nied by the MQVC Bas­soon Sym­po­sium — three days of mas­ter­classes, recitals, and other activ­i­ties open to all bassoonists.

The 2012 Com­pe­ti­tion and Sym­po­sium are hap­pen­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of the Pacific, where Veron­ica is now the music librar­ian. Nico­lasa Kuster is the bas­soon prof. at Pacific, and also the co-founder of MQVC (along with UT-Austin’s Kristin Wolfe Jensen). She invited me to join the orga­ni­za­tion as Oper­a­tions Coor­di­na­tor, and I will also serve as co-host for the 2012 Com­pe­ti­tion and Symposium.

I cre­ated a brand new web site for MQVC, which launched today. Check it out at mqvc.org. The launch marks the announce­ment of the reper­toire, guide­lines, and dates for the 2012 Com­pe­ti­tion. This year’s new piece is Sor­ti­lege by Margi Griebling-Haigh, which Bar­rick Stees will pre­miere at this summer’s Inter­na­tional Dou­ble Reed Soci­ety Con­fer­ence. Besides the web site, I’m also man­ag­ing MQVC’s mail­ing list, Face­book page and Twit­ter account (@MQVCBassoon).

As Jan­u­ary 2012 approaches, I’ll prob­a­bly post more here about orga­niz­ing the event, who will be serv­ing as judges, etc. But, all that infor­ma­tion will def­i­nitely show up at mqvc.org first.