NEWS - Well, I can't avoid my birthday this year. I am playing with the Cloud Drops at the Reverie Ballroom and it is billed on their website as my birthday party. I really don't know what that means. I do know my family will be there. And the band is going to do the full big band Count Basie arrangements of Jumping at the Woodside and One O'Clock Jump without using any written music. We have started to experiment with a non-written big band sound. There is an excitement in that. In December the Cloud Drops will also return to The Russian Cultural Center and play for the Stormy Weather festival New Year's Eve.