Today I played at a fundraiser for my son's school, The Aspen School for Exceptional Children. It is a school for autistic and down's children run by therapists. During the inattentive times, I played whatever came to mind, including:
Walk Away Renee
Dust in the Wind
Time After Time
Mother Goose
I Can See Clearly Now
Blues improvisations
Scalar improvisations
Old Man
Mad World

At other times my wife and I led:
The Goldfish song
We are the Dinosaurs
ABC song
Twinkle Twinkle
London Bridge (not Fergie)

We also ran kidd-e-oke, just for the cuteness factor. It's neat to see a child first realize the power of vocal amplification.

My favorite moment was surprising my son and doing a duet with him on one of his favorite songs: The Theme to Punky Brewster. Maybe when he is as old as Axel, Olivier will have some competition. That is at least 12 years off, though.

My saddest moment was seeing a child want to explore the Stick and meet me, but his parents were over-controlling him and then removed him from the event.

Special shout-outs to Dave Brosky for tirelessly working with me on my skills and confidence and being an all-around friend, and to Greg Howard for the Time After Time arrangement. My wife now hears the lyrics for Time After Time as symbolic of raising a special needs child, so this was very touching for her.

Daniel,
Wow! I am so proud of you and for doing a wonderful positive performance for your school.

It is an honor to help you achieve your dreams and more importantly bring the pure joy of music to these children and some moments of peace to their parents and caretakers. Even to the boy who was prematurely taken away, the look in his eyes at the Stick made an impact on him and inspired a greater love of music!

Looking at your set list, brought a big smile to my face, as to the choice of songs. Your arrangments on these were so superb and your performance was true and did justice to the songs.

This was a great charitable gesture, and you touched lives with your gift of YOUR music which I am sure they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Cpongrats and Kudos for getting out there and more importantly sharing your talent to bring joy into everyone's lives. It was great that Lara was there to support you and to lend her talents to the program too!
So Proud,
Dave Brosky "DBro"

Lessons by SKYPE, Google + and "with a slow clap from the back of the room"!

Bravo Daniel!

Great event Daniel. Thanks for passing it on to us and for sharing your music with these children.

Once I was a guest at the home of a Stick player with a son with autism. He told me his son really liked my song "Cross Country" and asked me to play it for him. I did this, and he was fairly unresponsive, but when the bridge came he burst into song filling the house with his voice. It was very moving, something I'll never forget.

Music is amazing. Don't ever forget it!

That sounds like an exceedingly good use of time, well done!

However, your saddest moment made my heart drop like a stone. That is a special sort of sad.

About your saddest moment...You did your best...congratulations.

Thanks for all of your comments. They are much appreciated.