Here’s the video from Vanessa’s concert with Aron Zelkowicz and Sally Koo at the Trinity Church on Wall Street:
http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/flash/video.swf?id=669
The show was great, the church was beautiful, and the staff was really welcoming and helpful. If you have some time, you should go to one of their Concerts at One.

And come by the Third Street Music School Settlement in Manhattan on January 28; Vanessa and Aron are playing a concert at 7:30 PM. Since they don’t get paid for this, bring a hat and pass it for them.

For those of you who don’t know, “Vanessa” is Vanessa Fadial. She’s my wife. And an amazing pianist as well. Just ask our neighbors. All six floors of them.

Usually toy instruments are useless, but Hearth Song’s Melody Lap Harp is the real deal. What I particularly like about it was that you can tune it with an accompanying tuning hammer; so many children’s musical toys either clang horribly upon arrival or go out of tune quickly. You don’t need much skill to start: it comes with tablature sheets that sit just underneath the strings. My daughter’s really into it.

Our Christmas-Eve visit to church left my son a little rattled; he took solace the next day in They Might Be Giants’s Here Comes Science. 

The group’s Here Come the 123’s was a pre-Christmas gift for our daughter. The songs are catchy, groovy, and even at times poignant:

On his blog, Andrew Sullivan has a conversation going about childrearing. Katie Roiphe from Slate pines for the “benign neglect of the 1970s and ’80s,” and Mark Oppenheimer worries that helicopter parenting destroys individuality.

I grew up in a rural area–big back yard; acres of open field to run through; cows–and it was relatively low-risk for my Mom to open the door and kick me outside. I loved it. I could run around, make believe, just sit and watch the clouds go by. I’m glad that today I live in an area where my wife and I can give our children at least a modicum of that freedom.

I also grew up in that era of benign neglect Roiphe is nostalgic for, and almost died three times before I was twelve: once by drowning, once when I was run over by a truck (long story), and once by a fall from a bridge (also, long story).

If parents today coddle, it may be because we remember those death-defying moments a little more vividly than the fun stuff.

This post doesn’t have much to do with music, so listen to this. Happy birthday, Caitlin, you irrepressible, irresistible force of nature:

The kids got a little punchy by the time we hit Matisse.

We just got back from a two-day, one-night trip with Mom and Dad to Prince Edward Island: bridge over, ferry back. We had the perfect beach weather for our stay at Cavendish.

Alex and Caitlin met a sprightly young fella who’s living in Memphis by way of Cleveland. When I asked him if he was Canadian, he replied, “I don’t know what that is, but I’m not.”

More videos on my YouTube channel. 

We stayed a the Stanley Bridge Country Resort, which gets a bad rap by some reviewers on Tripadvisor.ca for being a little ragged. It’s true that it could use better TVs–and covers on the duvets–but it was clean, the staff was helpful, and the restaurant served good food efficiently. All six of us were content.

Today, we made our way to Charlottetown. We toured Province House, where the PEI legislature holds its sessions in a room that can charitably described as intimate. Province House, a national historic site, also hosted a conference in 1864 where the so-called Fathers of Confederation set in motion the creation of the Dominion of Canada.

Vanessa and I now have Charlottetown on our list of places we would like to live. There are well-stocked used bookstores, good restaurants, and a couple of colleges; it’s also very easy to get around on foot. It’s just a fun place to be.

My son made his debut at the Upper West Side’s Bloomingdale School a couple of weeks ago, with his mother on piano. Here’s the proof.