My first musical directing gig of 2013 was 'S Wonderful, a Gershwin retrospective with musical arrangements by my friend Rick Hip-Flores from New York. It was a challenging piano part. Whew! It was a lot of notes to play! In the summer, I was again at Artpark music directing and conducting The Sound of Music. It was great to hear this classic show with a 23-piece orchestra. Weirdly, we weren't able to do our final performance as there was a power outage in the entire Niagara region. A strange way to end the run of a show! Next up was La Cage aux Folles, a show with an important message of acceptance of self and others. After that, I was MDing the rock musical Bat Boy at Niagara University. I was really proud of this show and of the work the students put into it. My pit band rocked. I ended the year doing an original Christmas musical I co-conceived and wrote the music and lyrics for called The Wizard of Claus (with life-size puppets designed by Adam Kreutinger). We were lucky to get such a great cast that included some of the best musical theater performers in Buffalo. To hear my songs come to life by these singers was so fulfilling. Our next step is to submit the show to regional theaters.