August 1

Workshop 1

the last 2 days were spend mostly in bed, nursing a nasty flu or cold or whatever. This morning I was seriously contemplating on not doing the workshop, let alone the one scheduled to go on for 6 hours (with a break for the almoço, of course). At 9 am I went to the closest drug store, determined to buy over the counter some powerful antibiotics - after all, Brazil always has been one of the countries where one didn't have any problems with that - only to find out that, so my luck, a new law has been passed, forbidding this abuse of medicaments.
So, having suffered a loss on that front, at 10 o'clock sharp I was downstairs, in the concert hall, and so were ca. 12-14 participants.
The first part followed the original plans and intensions - to look at some tunes of Tim Berne, Andy Laster, Herbie Nichols and mine - and proved to be the more difficult one. The actively participating young musicians were all very nice, friendly and eager, but, for one reason or another, had very little or none experience in this field, and were somewhat overwhelmed by the material, even though it was obtainable well in advance. On the other hand, I was very grateful to the efforts of Anna Paola Freire and Adair Gass who managed to get those chaps in auditorium.
After the lunch break I've been answering the questions and demonstrating some aspects of my approach to interpretation of any given material.
That part went much easier and smoothly - as all the performance pressure was lifted off the shoulders of the participants…
The proceedings ended in playing some Brazilian tunes, me bravely grabbing at some point the pandeiro, only to be yanked back by one of the "passive" participants, who immideately showed, who was the pandeiro pandit among us two…
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the proceedings.

After that, I had ample time to cool off at the bar, chatting with the barman and listening to more Atahualpa Yupanqui and other masters of Argentinian folkloric music.

Here are two of the nicest guys on the stuff here - the night guard Paulo Sergio Oliveira Da Silva (left) and one of the two guys working the bar Flávio Jorge Duarte.

The evening rehearsal with Mimo had two sides to it - the negative, because neither Rafael nor Feijão showed up, and the positive, because Mimo and I had another rather inspired session down at the auditorium. Still filled with impressions of the afternoon with Dunia, I plunged into my takes of Milonga, Chamamè, Baião e Forró. It was fun! Less fun to discover that some notes of the Steinway B are getting stuck sometimes - the humidity we are having here now is a bit ridiculous.

I am wondering what happened to Rafael and how we gonna do on Friday… Well, it's time to fall in bed, and sail away… Boa noite, ya`all!!

But, before I really say good night, here is a link of the wonderful clip by Renato Borghetti Quartet - the group I heard a few days back



good night