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Hey Family!

Wow, I am truly excited about my small break from working I’ve called it my “FaceBookcation”. Being a single mom with very busy children, my professional careers in education and music gets pretty overwhelming. Sometimes I forget to take time just for me. I miss everyone and I’m back with great news, events and I look forward to sharing my life, experiences and I’m even sharing tips for the ladies in cosmetics. Yes, I’m launching a new online program with personal and up close conversations and “how to’s” with me on creating a winning look that will take you from “Day to Date Night!”. Please sign up for my newsletter at www.theresagrayson.com to receive exclusive details on the program and other news. Heads up, the tutorials are live and in color and you don’t want to miss it! Also, on my agenda is special occasion serenades on site or a personal video tribute. Once you sign up for my newsletter you can indicate your interest and I will respond to you personally! If you have interest in other areas like saxophone lessons for you or a family member, tips or instructions please indicate that as well. There will be incentives, bonuses and perks for signing up for my programs that I’m offering and you’ll be spending time with me! I look forward sharing great things with you.

Please sign up for the newsletter on my website at www.theresagrayson.com!

Hey Family!

I am so honored to be featured in JAZZ IN MEE magazine again for the January 2016 issue. You can subscribe online for your digital copy or order your hard copy. I love JAZZ IN MEE magazine and I sincerely adore Melody for supporting talented up and coming jazz artists!

Hey there!

Wow, this year is starting off with a bang. I sincerely appreciate the support and love for the past years and for the years to come! Last year was amazing and I look forward to greater opportunities this year. NAMM 2016 was absolutely amazing! I had the opportunity to hang out with great artists such at Gerald Albright, Mindi Abair, Michael Lighton, Elan Trotman, Najee, Althea Renee, the Sax Dakota family and my awesome friends from Houston!
Performing at Sax Dakota booth this year was a total thrill and a wonderful experience. I visited my CE Winds family and of course a new baby was added to my CE Winds “Diamond Series” saxophone family. I can’t wait to show you my new baby!
Sharing my musical gift at Sugas Restaurant, one of my favorite restaurants, was really nice and refreshing with couples in love dining and being entertained by my cool jazz. I hope to see you this year at the Red Cat Jazz Festival Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas on Mother’s Day weekend. I will be performing along with many other great artist Saturday, May 7th! Be sure to reserve your tickets at www.redcatjazz.com.
Stay tuned for upcoming videos, posts and giveaway opportunities on my Facebook page and website. You may also sign up for my newsletters on my website and refer your friends as well! World Blue and Live2Love albums are doing great and I simply love sharing my gift of music.

See you soon,
Theresa

Friday night at Sugas was a blast. Each time I perform and get joy from providing great entertainment and fun music that everyone enjoys. I am grateful for the owners, Dr. Hiner and Mrs. Hiner for allowing me to share my gift with their customers! I really love it when my fans are celebrating marriage, birthdays and even class reunions it just makes the night even brighter. I know we may sometimes get overloaded with work, families and responsibilities, but let’s slow down this holiday just to appreciate what we have, period. We have life, freedom and unconditional love if you choose.  Embrace every moment you have with family, parents if they are still living, children and most importantly be grateful for a job that has provided a way to survive and keep things going!  I am grateful for a wonderful management team, producers, musicians and other artists that have worked with me and supported me over the years. I sincerely thank the radio stations, program managers, marketing directors, publicist, endorsement companies and magazine owners and editors for supporting me as an independent artist this year!   This has truly been an amazing year with recognition, consideration for the GRAMMYS 2016, Teacher of the Year and other music related nominations. Thank you to every promoter, venue owner and sponsor for hiring or booking me for your events and venues! Every time I touch the stage I consider that’s a gift from God to have the opportunity to express my deep appreciation and love for music. So when you see me close my eyes while I’m performing, it’s just because I become so spiritually connected and allow every note to shower happiness, joy, peace, and serenity to the world! I appreciate you for staying with me. The best is yet to come!!
Live2Love

Just a little higher!  Well, sometimes it seems like so hard, exhausting and overwhelming with all of the many things we are faced with in our lives. Stay encouraged! Just when I’m about to throw in the towel or I don’t have enough, need more or just simply pooped amazingly God shows that He is God! I mean every single time. This applies to absolutely everything we encounter.  Remember God created everything, really He did.  I’ve grown to embrace a deeper meaning of who God is and who He is not. For some they may feel that we are being punished but that’s not the truth. The truth is we are faced with results or consequences for our free will of choices.  So even when I’m down, I now look at how I could made a better choice or even could I have thought things through before making a decision.  As we travel our individual journey in this amazing life cycle let’s just remember God desires the best for each of us even in the mist of hard times. Push a little harder, stay a little longer and move up just a little higher! Say that it is so, believe it, claim it and receive everything your heart desires! Amen!

Theresa

Lately, I been challenging myself to overcome my fears and stop thinking about what others think including family.

This seems to hold us back, keep us in a box and most importantly keep us in fear.

So, I’m sharing my fears and my accomplishments. Recently I learned how to ride a motorcycle. Some may think well, “that’s dangerous”, “that’s crazy”, or “I know how, so what’s new”. That’s all cool, but when you’ve feared bikes and know the dangers of it I ran away from it. I started by riding on the back of one, then my son earned his license and bought his first bike. Well, it seemed that if I’m going to do it, then do it ride and learn and know all of the do’s and don’ts. I did! I had my son to give me simple lessons then I took the class and passed! The very same day I completed my course I went straight to DPS to get my license. Now, I’m riding, owning and enjoying my very first bike and I love it! It was so cool to share my first ride with my son on my new bike.

So, I do have other accomplishments and some on the table to achieve. The thing is, I will accomplish my goals and step on all my fears!!!!

Go for it, let no one, and I mean no ONE tell you there’s no other way, you can’t do that, that’s impossible, you’re crazy or even stupid. Because in reality they are only expressing their own fears on you!!!!!

Share your story with me.

Love,

Theresa

So this morning I’m off to the post office to mail off my singles to the radio stations and it was raining out side so some of the envelopes got wet. I approach the counter to proceed with my transaction and little Asian clerk notices the rain dropped covered envelopes.  She began to lecture to me about placing clear tape to cover the labels to secure them when it rains so that they stay on.  Of course, I smiled and in my mind I began to make justifications as to why I didn’t tape the labels down myself. Okay, so here’s my thought on this, please just walk with me on this, thinking about your earlier years of life, your siblings as you were growing up and maybe your own children.

I’m standing at the counter thinking about the gazillion of times that I’ve looked for tape, my tape dispenser, scotch roll of tape, duck tape, printed duck tape, color tape, clear box tape, sticky two sided tape or just any tape.  I can’t seem to ever find tape when I need it because….. it’s on my daughter’s wall as trimmings, they’ve taped their pens, pencils, posters, awards, pictures, desk, binders, backpacks, books, glasses, purses, string lights, student I.Ds and God knows what else. Check this out, my daughter even taped her shoe boxes to the wall!!! What in the world????????  To this day figure I can’t figure out why do children need and use so much tape. What is the deal with tape and why is it so fascinating to see how much and where they can use tape.  Now, I’m very happy to report that I’ve never had a situation in which they’ve taped each other, but I’m pretty sure there are tons of stories out there.  The thing now is that tape is so colorful and animated so it’s fun for kids and cringing to parents because of all of the crazy things I’ve seen taped up, repaired or some what, decorated and personalized with all kinds of tape.

Woohhhh sahhhhhh!

All of this was crossing my mind while the clerk was lecturing. So you know as being a mom with many wonderful stories my response to the clerk was ” I can never find any tape, my tape dispenser is always missing and I just didn’t have any kind of tape. Once I finished my short justification, I simply thanked her because I had another issue, I needed $2.74 worth of stamps on 25 envelopes that already had $2.36 worth of stamps on them.  So she had the fun time of figuring that one out!!

I remember being a little girl and always playing with my dolls and creating this imaginary perfect world of make believe.  My first dollhouse was only one story because at that time the family of dolls l loved the most were the Sunshine Family (Caucasian) and the Happy Family (African American). They had big round eyes and pug noses and were just smiling all the time. It’s funny because even when I created a problem for the family, the dolls continued to smile. Well, I guess I could never change that. The family had a four room home and a cute what I call a “car-truck”.  It was a truck that had no top with a car look. Man, it  was just so much fun to play with. Of course I had Barbie, Ken, Dusty and others.  But my favorite were those families because they both had little babies and big round eyes and pug noses, too.  I created a perfect family because much of my life my family was perfect even when I saw the dark sides. I love to reminisce because it allows me to appreciate my early years, my parents and my family. Everything around me was creative, out of the box and bold. These are some values that helped shaped me to who I am and what I am to this day. As a child it was no color, no separation, life was good and perfect, I was allowed to create and express my creation. I’m so glad my parents allow that and never shut me down, or told me to stop dreaming. I remember being free, free to be me. Now, I am still here, still allow to be free, never told to stop dreaming and creating! I am grateful for my wonderful parents, teachers, mentors and friends that accepted me in my many creations, ways and uniqueness. So what were your “Early Days” like?

Anticipation!!!! Well, I’m on my spring break this week and I vowed that I would get some much needed rest. Of course that only meant a break from my wonderful energetic students. This is a very unique break because I’m actually getting ready to release my 4th album, “World Blue” in a couple of months. What that means for me is working, working and more work! Okay, let me break it down. Before the full album is released we are going to release a single which was chosen last week by the best Jazz radio promoters known in the industry. I am so thrilled to be working with the Gorov’s on the release of my single and full album. Then, we’re getting the singles ready to mail out to all of the jazz stations across the country with the hopes of them not only liking my music but giving great spins so that it can rise to the top of the charts.  It’s a process for the promoters who are working daily to encourage the stations to keep playing the single. Before all this happens both the radio promoters and my team are promoting the anticipation of the release of the single which that means constant visibility in social media. Yes, I need you. That’s where your part of this awesome journey comes in and there are some cool benefits such as entering contests for free autographed CDs, brand new “Pure Sax” t-shirts, gift cards, concert tickets and other cool stuff. Be sure to share with your friends and family. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention my recent endorsement with Sax Dakota and getting ready for promotions for that, so I had photo shoots and videos with my new straight tenor. Yes, a straight tenor!!!! It’s really cool and fun. Look for the pics of it on my Facebook page.
Literally everyday I have been busy working on the “behind the scenes” tasks to prepare for all of the great things God has blessed me with. I am thrilled to have a great team and an extremely supportive manager! So as Kevin Hart stated, “everybody wanna be rich but nobody wanna do the work!” Trust me, there is so much work involved, so much work. There’s no time for excuses and wimps in this business.
Your turn, share your journey with me and your thoughts and experiences! I look forward to hearing from you.
So, I just wanted to come out the dungeon to share more of my journey with you. Thank you for taking the time to hang out with me!
Live life to the fullest!!
It’s funny how life and the challenges we go through are simply amazing. As soon as we think there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, then boom! I’m saying this because all of my life I knew what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, visit and accomplish. Well, of course you know that we tend to get off track and make decisions and turns that were not in that dream, but we fall and get back up. We all go through trials and circumstances and it’s very important that we understand we are not being punished, just that we must go through our situations to make us better.
This is our moment. Don’t take it personal, be impeccable with your word, do your best and forgive. Wow, that’s huge. So how do we accomplish this? Make an agreement with yourself and take one day at a time. I’m so blessed and I desire to bless you with my words and my music. A healthy mind and heart will endure and last for a long time. So we must control our emotions and how we react to our surroundings. Know this, that everyone does have a purpose in your life and we learn from what they bring be it good or not so good. We have enough negativity so let’s be open to change the way we think so that we are living life to the fullest, being happy, being free and really live life as there was no tomorrow. Be completely happy with you. You are wonderfully made.
I have really grown mentally and it’s because I was introduced to great books and philosophies that are positive to my growth and the way I live my life, make choices and how I react to different things. So now I see things so differently because I have freed myself of the misery and unhappiness that I made apart of my life. Some of us understand things better a little faster than others, but the important point is that your eyes are opened and your mind and heart are free from poison!
Happy Life, Live2Love!