Montag, 15. August 2011

August 14

The last full day of my residence in Porto Alegre. The trivial notion of the time flying by is more than appropriate in this case. My head and heart full of impressions, experiences and emotions, I spent the morning packing up and writing bunch of emails.

At 3 pm the director of the Goethe-Institut Reinhard Sauer picked me up with a taxi and we went on to the great restaurant "Na Brasa", where Nils Wogram and I already had a great meal last year. This time it was just as good, maybe a bit more crowded - it was the Father's Day here in Brazil, which is very much a family affair here, meaning that the children give presents to their dads and have together an opulent meal, usually at lunch time.

Reinhard and I had a very good conversation, moving from general topics to more specific ones, concerning the residence, it's goals, results and the possible ramifications thereof. It was a new experience for the institute too, having a "jazz" musician here for an extended period of time, building creative and personal connections with the local scene and exchanging views and practices with them. We talked about things which could be done better or differently next time they have one of the colleagues over.

The weather, having turned bad again a day before, was showing itself from the worst side.
In spite of it, I was not about to sit it out in the four walls of my apartment on the last day here.

Instead, i grabbed a cab and went to the very center of the city, to the Santander Cultural. It is situated on Praça de Alfándego, which has a park in the middle and bunch of old buildings surrounding it, practically each of them housing a museum. This one is an old bank building, turned into a cultural center with a concert space, spaces for exhibitions, cinema and a cafe (in the former treasure vault).

The old facade does not prepare one for the very modern design of the concert space inside.



The attraction of the evening was a concert of the trio Nó De Pinho, with Paulo Gaiger, Thiago Colombo and Leandro Maia. They compose and play modern musica gaucha, playing a vast variety of instruments. Very fine band, great tunes.


Thiago is a great guitarist and a son of Claudio, the boss of the beloved bar Parangolé, where everything started for me here in Porto Alegre last year.
Claudio is another wonderful warm person I had the fortune to meet here. He not only gave me Thiago's splendid new CD, but also provided me with a ticket.

Diego Dos Santos came by too, and so did Dunia Elias.


After the concert Diego and I said our goodbyes. I am quite thankful to him for helping me to find the books, giving me many names of Brazilian musicians I never heard of, and making me the company in a number of bars along the way…

Dunia and I went to a bar to have a nice talk and a few drinks. She brought me back to the Institute, where I packed my stuff, wrote more emails to my new friends here and listened to some music I discovered in the last 6 weeks in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Many thanks to all my friends here, for the friendship and music!

Special thanks to everyone at Goethe-Institut, here in Porto Alegre and in Munich!!!

So, that's it folks, thanks for reading my little blog!

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