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It’s January, and studying at Columbia in the Music Composition for the Screen MFA program (or any other program here) has one awesome perk: January classes. And by classes, I mean, no classes. We’ve been out of school since Christmas break, and the spring semester won’t start up again until January 29.

Of course, if you want to take some classes, that certainly is a possibility. There are orchestration and theory classes that may be of benefit to you. For me this year, the greatest benefit has come from working on some projects I haven’t had any time to complete. Here’s a small list of what I’ve been up to:

• Finished a piano composition for a client

• Arranged a Christmas piece for my wife and her sister to play on their violins with piano accompaniment

• Update of personal website (no, really check it out!)

• A submission to the Manifest video soundtrack competition (Cooper Rich won the one last year [you can play it down below], and the other two previous winners are Jose Ricaurte [here] and Carlos Martinez [here]. You’ll remember I wrote blog posts recently on Cooper Rich and his internship in LA and Jose Ricaurte’s internship with Heitor Pereira!)

• An assignment over the break to write a piece of music for a small ensemble—it will be played the first week back

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JDcvhMonjY[/youtube]

Not to mention all the rest I’ve been able to get as I prep my entire being for next semester. It’s gonna be a crazy one, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m mostly looking forward to seeing the others from my cohort that I haven’t seen in a while. You become family while you’re here. The rest is great, but it will be great to get back into the swing of things. So grateful for January classes!