Hello hello, happy December, and welcome to the part of the year when my brain is the least functional because there is so much to do. Two-ish weeks ago I thought about hustling to get a newsletter post out, and then my inbox was swamped with an absolute deluge of Black Friday/Cyber Monday emails, and I thought, why add to all that?

So consider my email silence an act of thoughtfulness. You're welcome.

I have one last recording to share with all of you this year: Maria Szymanowska's Nocturne in B-flat Major. You can listen to it on your streaming platform of choice or buy it on iTunes.

Consider this a sweet little reprieve from all the holiday music we're being bombarded with right now. For those of you that saw me in SF/the Bay Area this summer, this was one of the pieces on my program, and it's always a crowd favorite.

It's also quite a deceptive little piece; it sounds so serene and calm and if you don't listen too carefully, you'll completely miss that there are some truly insane leaps.

(It's even more insane when you realize the leaps are supposed to be played quietly.)

Have a listen and enjoy! And fun fact, I recorded this in the same session as the Florence Price Fantasie Nègre No. 2—both were done in one go on the same day.

A sincere thank you, as always, to the paid supporters of this newsletter who make this and all my recordings possible.

My new hobby: Hugoposting

I am currently reading Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (unabridged). I did not think a month ago that I would be reading Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (unabridged), but this is one of those situations where life comes at you fast.

Here's how it happened. I went to London and saw Les Misérables, the musical, for the second time. During intermission I told my husband about the time I attempted to read Hugo's brick of a novel in high school and gave up about 40 pages into Book 1 because of the sheer density of irrelevant backstory.

To prove my point I went to the Wikipedia page for the book to rattle off the numbers (one of the longest novels ever written, comprising 365 chapters in 48 volumes with a total of 655,478 words in the original French). I posted about Victor Hugo definitely having ADHD over on Bluesky which prompted a lot of people I know to volunteer that they'd read Les Misérables in its entirety (and not even for school! My people!) which made me go, "Wait, then why can't I do it?"

Then I thought about it some more and realized that, at 365 chapters, if I read a chapter a day then I could theoretically finish all of Les Misérables in a year, which actually seems pretty darn reasonable.

So after inquiring about translation recommendations, I committed to the bit.

To 1) hold myself accountable and 2) amuse myself, I'm keeping a blog where I write one post a day about the chapter I've just read. It is unexpectedly fun and amazingly good for my mental health, largely because in order to have the time to read and write my daily chapter, I more or less have to give up doomscrolling on social media.

It's also remarkable how so many societal and political issues—and different factions' opinions about them—are the same in 1800s France as in 2020s America, only it's a lot better for me to read about them analyzed intelligently in a literary masterpiece rather than through the mouths of whatever media-hungry dipshits are currently jockeying for their share of the attention economy.

I've also found, two weeks into Hugoposting, that it's a fantastic writing exercise. My newsletter has been getting harder and harder to write, not because I have nothing to say (quite the opposite), but because writing is more of a torturous process for me these days; I feel like I have a lot to live up to, between all the praise and thoughtful feedback I get and the knowledge that this newsletter now lands in the inboxes of some of my personal heroes. I end up pondering and editing and deleting and overworking some of my posts so hard that I'm convinced I've lost the ability to write completely.

With Hugoposting, though, I don't have the luxury of overworking. I gotta get my one post out a day, I don't have hours to devote to it, all I can do is shoot from the hip and hit "Publish." Getting my quick-reaction post out once a day is getting the hamster wheel in my brain moving again. Best new hobby, 10/10 would recommend.

While you would get the most out of my posts if you've read Les Mis or are reading along, you can totally follow along without having read the book; in each chapter I summarize what's going on and talk about it like the most deranged person in your book club, aka the entertainment value is pretty high imho.

Here are the posts I've written so far (was it the dumbest idea for me to start a daily project like this right before the holiday crush? Yes, yes it was):

Book 1

• Chapter 1, “Gossip and Deep Lore”
• Chapter 2, “It’s Fangirl Time”
• Chapter 3, “In Defense of Donkeys”
• Chapter 4, “The bishop has read Utopia!”
• Chapter 5, “The Real MVP”
• Chapter 6, “The Silverware Appears”
• Chapter 7, “Gangs Need God Too”
• Chapter 8, “Debate Me, Bro”
• Chapter 9, “Ma’am, Are You Okay”
• Chapter 10, “A Real G”
• Chapter 11, “What Does ‘Not Political’ Even Mean”
• Chapter 12, “Hugo Gets Petty”
• Chapter 13, “Do either of you know anything about snail CPR?”
• Chapter 14, “He’s Just Bishop”

Book 2

• Chapter 1, “What Is Wrong With This Town”
• Chapter 2, “Nextdoor Is Running Wild”
• Chapter 3, "Now We're Cooking"

Bye 2025, and an end-of-year thank you

What a year, huh? I cannot even fathom that the events of January were a scant 11 months ago.

At the end of every year I’m a little astounded that I’m still making music—the longer I’m in this sphere, the more conscious I become of the fact that it is statistically improbable for first-generation musicians to have careers in music, and that as the years tick on, the probability that you’ve hung on in music this long drops pretty sharply.

In 2025 I released more music than I ever have in a single year, which felt pretty big; behind the scenes it meant a lot of learning and adapting to new workflows inside and outside the studio. Including this week’s new track, this year’s music includes four releases:

And a music video!

All of you who get this newsletter (especially those of you who opened this and read all the way to the end) are why I’m still here in music, and why these recordings now exist in the world. Having an audience—a lovely receptive supportive one, no less—means I have the great privilege of knowing there’s always someone reading and listening who cares, which keeps me going.

And in a time when it’s rare for an independent classical artist to make any money back from recording (studio time + editing is expensive and streaming pays pennies), I’m incredibly lucky to have my balances covered up front by those of you who pay for this newsletter. Thank you, thank you, wonderful people, for making the music possible.

I appreciate every single one of you for all your support. Thank you for being here, for subscribing and reading and writing back and listening and coming to concerts and sharing my work.

I hope you all have the absolute loveliest of holiday seasons. See you in 2026! 🎹