16 July

A rainy day, spent mostly practicing pandeiro - one instrument I really love dearly and want to learn to play properly since a long time. Yesterday Mimo showed me some good exercises and I was practicing for hours, also using the DVD of Marcos Suzano. 
In the early evening Diego Dos Santos and his friend Gustavo, who had his birthday, picked me up and we went to a great churrascaria on Avenida Ipiranga, one of the principal streets of the city. The quality and quantity of the meat was truly amazing. Also amazing was the fact that these guys - later two more joined us - who have a quartet of free improvised music, happen to be real fans.

Diego brought 7 (!) of my CD's to sign, wow! He works in the bank, but his heart is in the music, especially hard core improvised stuff. His knowledge is very impressive. We talked about whole lot of subjects, both musical and not, closing up the restaurant 6 hours later.I will jam with their quartet here a bit later and we might record it too.

In the taxi on the way home, the decision was made to stop by at the Van Gough bar in the Cidade Baixa. It's a wonderful place, which apparently fills up at around 4 in the morning, serving as a meeting point for all kinds of the night worshipers.
I got back to the Goethe Institut around 6 am, still full of meats, cerveja and many musical themes we talked about for 10 hours...