"Musicians of The Evening Muse" is ready

2008 has been a very full year for me. It's been one of those years where good things dominated and whenever bad things happened it seemed that there was a silver lining peering through.

I'm very happy to announce that my new coffee table photo book covering the Musicians of The Evening Muse is now complete. The book contains 300+ photographs of performers in 57 shows at The Evening Muse during 2008. I'm blessed to have been able to witness these musicians put themselves "out there" for us and I'm proud of the images I captured.

Musicians of T...

A 2008 Sampling

By Monty Chandler

Book Preview

Hope you enjoy it..

Cheers,

Monty

Musicians of The Evening Muse - 2008

With the Holidays rapidly approaching and everyone running out of time to do the things they want to do, I thought I better take the time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays - whichever is appropriate for you!! I truly hope 2008 has been as great a year for you as it has been for us.

I have a surprise announcement for ya:

I have the rest of this week to wrap up a project I have been working on during the year. I had wanted to be finished before leaving on vacation for Christmas week - and with one final picture which I will take on Wednesday night - it looks like I'll meet the goal. What project you ask?? :-)

I have been working on a coffee table photo book - which did not start out as exclusively Evening Muse - but has ended up as just that. After photographing 57 shows at the Muse during 2008, I have produced a 160 page photo book with the images of The Evening Muse musicians along with some of my thoughts throughout the year. With luck, I'll upload the 8GB of data to the publisher Thursday night with book previews and orders being available beginning Friday.

It's been a lot of fun putting it together - I hope all of you enjoy it as well..

I'll post another entry Thursday night with the links, etc. assuming I finish!

Cheers & Best wishes for a wonderful New Year!!

Monty

Matt Hattfield - Cement Stars

NoDa's December Gallery Crawl is special for me as I and a few other Charlotte photographers provided the gallery artwork at The Evening Muse. I hope you get the opportunity to drop by The Muse this month and look at the photographs on display - An eclectic collection from five different photographers.

A favorite local singer/songwriter of mine - Matt Hatfield - who had been a member of the Full Grown Band for several years took the stage first. It was good to catch up with Matt and a special treat for us was the arrival of his Full Grown collaborator - Angie Rikard. Matt did convince Angie to join him for a couple of tunes. (photos from Matt's show)

Following Matt were a couple of local Charlotte brothers who perform as "Cement Stars". They have a unique, electronically enhanced sound. As a band who are new to me, I found them intriguing as they brought their drums and bass in a box. They also brought a couple of guitars and a metal box looking thing that produced a sound like keyboards when played. I liked their resultant sound - you can check them out on their MySpace page too. (photos from the Cement Stars set)

Hope ya'll have a great week and enjoy getting ready for Christmas!!

Cheers,

Monty