UPDATE 28 February 2023: Dr. Flegg’s Structured Practice Method has long since been renamed to the “Structured Practice Journal.” I’ve updated the links below accordingly, but am leaving the name since this article is from a long time ago… Announcing: Dr. Flegg’s Structured Practice Method! Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a post to this website. I’m happy to report that I continue to get close to 2,000 visitors every month in spite of this.

If you’ve visited my website in the past, then you can see for yourself that some things have changed around here! I’ve switched to a new hosting provider (the company that provides the physical computer and internet connection that house my website) and done some re-design of the website itself at the same time. There are two main reasons for the changes: My previous hosting company, iPage, wasn’t working out as well as I had hoped.

For our first concert of 2009, the Flint Symphony Orchestra will be performing Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. As a trumpeter, performing any Mahler symphony is always a treat, and I’ve been fortunate to perform nearly all of his symphonic works during my time with the FSO.The fifth holds a special place as one of the most important orchestral trumpet parts in the repertoire. I’ve wanted to perform it since the very early days of my musical career, so I’m very excited about this performance.

Over this past summer I was contacted by photographer Lin Jones to see if I would be willing to participate in her current project, “Soul Mates.” Lin is a member of the University of Michigan Photo Services staff. “Soul Mates” is a personal project of hers, in which she is exploring the relationships between musicians and their instruments through photography. I thought the project was a great idea, and I liked what I saw of Lin’s work online, so I happily agreed to be photographed.

I’ve just added a new article to the Instruction area of the website, titled “How to Clean your Trumpet.” I’ve had a lot of students ask how to do this over the years, and this is a response to that need. Please take a look and let me know if you have any unanswered questions!

After many weeks of work, I’ve done a complete redesign of my website. Over the past year or so I have been increasingly disappointed with PHPWebsite as the “back end” of my site. While it is a very powerful package, the documentation was so heavily geared towards programmers and hard-core site developers, I felt it would take too much time to implement any new features to the site. I also was concerned that it would be too difficult to upgrade to a new version of the software, which was a concern since my version was quite out of date, and was vulnerable to several possible security problems.