Travel – Page 16 – Keith Robertson

Week in Review – May 27, 2018

My Birthday Week started with a quick trip to New York on Monday and Tuesday – being sure to be back in time for the big day on Wednesday. Diana has often commented on how heavy my suitcase is when I travel with an extra pair of shoes and keep the shoe trees in them. She attempted to remedy that with my first gift on Sunday night – lightweight shoe trees and a start of the week card.

When I opened my work bag on the plane on Monday morning I found that an interloper had snuck another card and gift inside. A perfect snack was nicely wrapped – caramel filled M&Ms.

On the flight I watched the movie “Breathe” and really enjoyed it. The story is of Robin Cavendish (played by Andrew Garfield) and his wife Diana (played by Claire Foy of “The Queen” fame) and their refusal to give up in the face of Robin being stricken with polio at the age of 28. Robin is confined to a wheel chair and given months to live and not permitted to leave the hospital ward. With the help of an inventor friend they develop a wheelchair with a portable breathing apparatus and spend many happy years traveling abroad, raising their child, and helping other patients.

The work dinner that I had arranged for Monday evening was canceled and so I made a trip up to the Jazz Standard where the Mingus Orchestra was playing. As I was walking from the subway stop to the club, I noticed that I was close to the Flatiron building. This is a well known New York landmark that I hadn’t seen yet – so a quick detour seemed in order.

Upon completion in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings in the city at 20 floors high. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street. The name “Flatiron” comes from its resemblance to a cast-iron clothes iron.

The Mingus Big Band has won several Grammy awards for their live recordings at the Standard and so I had high hopes for the sister orchestra. Unfortunately, the show was very disappointing. The sound was great as usual but the musicians appeared to have come together minutes before the show and seemed to be sight reading music for the first time. There were clearly several very talented musicians in the orchestra – particularly the guitar player and French horn player – but the overall effect was very underwhelming. Oh well, it passed the time on a Monday evening just fine.

I was staying at a new hotel this time called the Downtown Association. This is an old private club in the Wall Street area that recently added 20 guest rooms. The bar/clubhouse is like walking into an old style, private club and I enjoyed it very much. I was entertained to find a picture of the Flatiron building on the wall just outside my hotel room.

Tuesday was a full work day – breakfast meeting, long sessions, and a late flight that got me home just in time to celebrate my birthday and find some nice treats waiting beside the bed.

I had work meetings most of my birthday but did hear a lot of early morning activity in the kitchen and then caught sight of the start of a pavlova in the oven.

After work finished, I was relaxing on the couch and listening to music when some surprise guests showed up for dinner – Patty and Brent. They brought one of their typically humorous cards.

McD, with an assist from Brent, put together a delicious birthday dinner – steak, scallops, mushroom medley (featuring an array of very interesting varieties), and Wahba risotto. All followed by the delicious pavlova birthday cake.

The observant amongst you may have noticed the “Keith’s Spirit Concoctions” barrel lurking in a few of these pictures – that was one of my excellent gifts from Diana. It was accompanied by a book of recipes for barrel aging cocktails. I’m priming the barrel now before experimenting with my first recipe – thinking that’ll be barrel aged negroni.

On Thursday I finished watching a movie on Netflix that had caught my attention. “The King of New Orleans” follows a taxi driver, Larry Shirt, whose passengers are the city’s tourists, socialites, musicians, housekeepers, bizarre characters and reporters. One of those passengers is Bobby Cohn, a Harvard student home from school and in the midst of a personal crisis. Larry and Bobby develop a bond that ultimately survives Hurricane Katrina and is strongly based on a love for the city that they both call home. This was one of those quiet and unassuming movies with a big heart that I enjoy.

The other big news this week arrived on Thursday. Diana is most likely going back to work – the details are all being finalized.

McD had a great idea on Friday afternoon – why don’t we go up to Adriatica and try out the happy hour at Gregory’s restaurant (there are only a few more Fridays before she’ll be back to work)? Who could argue with that suggestion? Gregory was relaxing when we arrived and we quickly put him to work cooking up some of his excellent mussels and a side of lobster risotto. Joe (our waiter at Gregory’s for years) took great care of us and we learned that Lydia (Gregory’s wife) shares the same birthday as I do.

I loaded my birthday CDs (an excellent annual tradition by McD) into Penelope for the drive to our workout on Saturday morning. Diana did a fabulous job of selecting songs to remind us of the concerts we enjoyed in the last year. Check out the retro vinyl record looking CD.

Apparently my 54 year old brain hasn’t deteriorated too much yet as I was able to set a new crossword record at our coffee break after our workouts – much to Diana’s frustration.

I transitioned birthday week privileges over to Alicia on Friday evening. She’s 18 this Sunday! Diana took us to dinner at Perry’s steak house on Saturday evening to celebrate since there are plans to attend the local McKinney Memorial Day concert on Sunday night. Alicia enjoyed being pampered with a candle and rose petals, tuna tartare, a special steak and desert trio.

Poor Diana has been very busy this week trying to accommodate all the birthday plans and as usual she rose beautifully to the challenge.

Here’s a Ray Charles instrumental that I found this week when looking for Humble Pie’s “Black Coffee” and enjoyed:

And here’s some excellent John Coltrane to round out the birthday week post:

Week in Review – May 13, 2018

This week started in Nashville and finished up with Campbell’s graduation in San Diego – a very busy and proud week indeed.

From Monday through Thursday our global work team met in Nashville for a series of meetings. The days and nights were fully occupied.

On Monday, I took some colleagues to a couple of my favourite places in East Nashville (a rapidly gentrifying but still unique area). We started with drinks at Rosemary (a speakeasy with a great patio in a regular house) and everyone seemed to enjoy the different setting and the great outside weather.

For dinner I chose Butcher and Bee which is a great Mediterranean restaurant. We had a lot of vegetarian dishes (a theme for this week) and my boss loved his grilled eggplant. The whipped feta and chickpea humus are stand outs on the menu. As dinner was winding up, one of my colleagues let me know that he had been able to make plans for a couple of us to visit a well known recording studio.

The studio was in a fancy gated community where a number of the country stars live and was located in the basement of a mansion owned by the producer Keith Thomas. A song writers’ workshop was finishing up when we arrived and it was very interesting to listen in. Then we got to experiment with the studio equipment and I was able to play an amazing sounding grand piano.

Keith was a gracious host and showed us a large collection of gold records that were presented to him for producing. He’s done a number of Amy Grant albums and one of D’s favourites, “Tapestry Revisited”. Diana noticed that Curtis Stigers (the singer we enjoyed so much at Birdland in NY a few weeks ago) sang one of the Carole King tributes on the album.

The group activity on Tuesday night was a pool tournament in a hall just off the main Broadway strip. My partner and I won our first two games and were in good position for the playoffs but quickly lost to some real hustlers.

Wednesday evening took us to Pinewood Social, a retro style bar and bowling alley in downtown Nashville. We divided up into groups and kept score for awards. My team won trophies for the best team score – none of us was great but we were all consistently non-horrible bowlers.

After bowling we had a wander down Broadway (the main downtown strip of music clubs which is similar to 6th street in Austin) with our first stop the Acme Feed and Seed Store beside the river. The building was first opened in 1890 and ran as a feed business, unloading supplies from the river for many years.

There was a good band playing and we listened for 30 minutes or so. I found a couple of signs in the store that appealed to me.

After Acme we stopped into Bootleggers where there was a great band playing. They treated me to one of my favourite songs:

We planned poorly for our Uber ride back to the hotel as the Justin Timberlake concert was letting out just as we tried to call up transportation. We went for a snack and got back a little later than anticipated.

Nashville is a great city – compact, walk-able, safe, and with a huge appreciation for all things musical. Even the room numbers at the hotel had guitar chord tabs and I enjoyed the reading material in the lounge.

I arrived home late on Thursday with just enough time to unpack, pack again for San Diego and get a little sleep.

We landed in San Diego in the early afternoon, checked into the hotel, freshened up and headed out for dinner. I chose a place called the Wine Vault and Bistro on India St from some online research and we were both very happy with the choice. The restaurant is only open Thursday through Sunday and has a very inexpensively priced three course dinner and wine pairings on Thursdays. I started with a sausage and black lentil appetizer, then a roasted cauliflower dish (keeping the vegetarian theme going), and finished with a mille-feuille dessert. Each of the nine choices had a separate wine pairing and so we selected based as much on the wine as the dishes. We learned that most of the regular customers were on a wine tour of Italy and so signed up for the tour mailing list.

We added a side of the most delicious brussel sprouts I’ve tasted – heavily charred on the outside and very tender on the inside.

After dinner we stopped by a party that Molly was having with her family and friends to celebrate her graduation to pick up our graduation tickets. We were lucky enough to meet her Mum, Dad and identical twin sister. Then we called it an early night since festivities started at 8am on Saturday morning.

Graduation was in the 12,000 seat Viejas arena where the San Diego State University Aztecs basketball team plays and the place was close to full as around 3,000 kids from the Fowler business school graduated. Here’s a video clip of Alexa (Campbell’s neighbour and business school classmate), Eric (Campbell’s roommate and friend since the age of 4) and Campbell walking across the stage:

We arranged to meet at Campbell’s house after graduation for pictures and were fortunate to run into him walking in the same direction as we traversed the campus. He was about to lose his tassels and drapes on his walk but Diana got him all fixed up. Some great pictures were taken and we got to say hello to Campbell’s roommates (including Grady and Grady’s dog). I’m so proud of Campbell for graduating in 4 years (not easy to do these days) and already having a job lined up.

Campbell, Eric and their Mums had organized a celebration lunch at the La Jolla Shores hotel. We sat on a patio looking out on the beach and had a lovely lunch. Finn, Will and Christine joined us at our table and we had a nice visit. I gave a speech about some memories of Campbell’s life so far that seemed to be well received. It was all fine until the end when I was trying to say that I hoped he continued to live his life with the same kindness and grace that he had shown so far and got a bit emotional.

After all that excitement we relaxed at the hotel for a while and then had a light, late dinner at the Starlite lounge. We found out later that Campbell and Molly had been there for Valentine’s day.

Starlite had great cocktails and food in a beautifully designed retro atmosphere. I enjoyed a buratta and ratatouille dish to keep the veggie theme going.

On Sunday morning we had a workout and then headed over to the Pacific Beach area for brunch. We had tried to go to World Famous for brunch on a previous trip but they had a power outage. All was good this time and we thoroughly enjoyed a lobster benedict.

After brunch we had a pleasant walk along the beach boardwalk which affords great people watching and envious inspection of the fancy beach houses. We then spent a little over an hour doing the New York Times Sunday crossword together at the Amplified Ale House.

Campbell and Molly met us for dinner at Craft and Commerce in Little Italy – just across the street from Harbor where we had met them for brunch on our previous visit with Kris and Cat. We sat outside and were warmed up by a small fire pit in the center of the table which seemed like a bit of a liability. Again the food and cocktails were very good. I had a mushroom and buratta tart to finish out my vegetarian weekend. My Dad would not have appreciated the very crispy carrots and other vegetables.

What a lovely weekend! I’m so proud of the young man that Campbell has become.

This poignant song from Peter Gabriel was on my mind a couple of times during the weekend as I watched Campbell enjoying his success. I particularly like the addition of the brass band:

Week in Review – May 6th, 2018

Back to New York this week to participate in the heatwave. This picture of a sunbather on the front page of the New York Times reminded me of the headlines in Scotland when we were there during 80 degree temperatures a few years ago warning the public to stay well hydrated and avoid the midday sun. It was hot but a pleasant change from the snow and wind a few visits ago.

On Wednesday night I tried out a new jazz club that I heard about from a gentleman at the table next to me at Dizzy’s a few weeks ago for the Christian McBride Big Band show. The Jazz Standard is located at 28th and Park Avenue and an easy subway ride from the Wall Street area. It’s in the basement beneath the Blue Smoke barbeque restaurant and is structured as a supper club similar to Birdland. They had a number of my favourite whiskey drinks on the menu and I paired that with a yummy shrimp etoufee.

Here are some pictures of the club both facing the stage and from the stage looking back towards the bar. I’d guess the capacity is around 150 guests and the seating is comfortable and not too packed.

I enjoyed browsing the pictures on the stairs down to the club. Here are Louis Armstrong and Ben Webster (my current favourite tenor saxophone sound). I just watched a documentary about Ben Webster titled “Brute and Beautiful” – apparently a tough man who made a beautiful emotional sound.

I enjoyed the drink coasters and agree with the message. There’s also a nice mural by the entrance.

The entertainment was by the Kenny Barron quintet. Barron has appeared on hundreds of recordings and is considered one of the most influential pianists since the bebop era. He taught piano and keyboard harmony at Rutgers University for over 25 years and now teaches at Juilliard. Some of his best albums were recorded with Stan Getz in the late 1980s and I highly recommend “Bossas and Ballads – The Lost Sessions”. I was very fortunate to have decided to investigate the Jazz Standard on the week when Barron was playing. Here’s a Brazilian themed song he played – I really wasn’t in that bad a seat but recording is highly discouraged and I needed to be stealthy with my phone resting on the table.

I loved the drumming by Jonathan Blake – some of the most innovative, creative, and musical since I heard Joey Baron for the first time. It was interesting that his cymbals were much lower than you normally see – almost at the same height as the snare and tom toms.

I chuckled at this billboard outside an Italian restaurant right next to the jazz club – Italian bubbles and $1 oysters – right up McD alley.

I had a pleasant post concert walk down Park Avenue to the 14th street subway station. The good weather had a lot of folks out eating later and I made a particular note of a restaurant named Barbounia for my next visit with Diana. A very fun looking Mediterranean place on Park and 20th in the Gramercy area.

After a long and successful work day on Thursday, I headed up to the Chelsea Market to search out something that Anne wanted but didn’t buy on her trip there with us. This was a funny experience – after two complete tours around the store and asking artists manning booths about the stand Anne had been at and getting no help at all I caught sight of one of the items in a display case with a name on it. Consulting the website told me that the stall had been a one week only “pop-up” store. I was able to order online – what a lot of detective work for what I thought would be a simple purchase.

I had dinner at a French Bistro in the market, a nice pate de campagne, and then headed back to the 14th street subway station. On the way I passed the Village Vanguard jazz club and couldn’t help but stop in right as the 8:30pm show was starting. I got one of the last seats at the bar in the back of the club – actually one of the more comfortable seats in there and one that always reminds me of Diana sharing her champagne with Joshua Redman on another impromptu visit we made.

The band was the Eric Reed quintet and I enjoyed them very much. The music was quite similar to Kenny Barron the night before but with more slower, lyrical and emotional content. I really enjoyed one of Reed’s compositions named “Wish” that he wrote after the death of his father about all the things he wished he could still discuss with him.

Here’s a more up tempo composition:

I narrowly avoided a trip to Brooklyn on the subway – apparently the number 2 train runs on the number 1 line later at night and I noticed the Rector Street stop just in time to hop off before the train headed under the East river to Brooklyn. On the different than usual walk back to the hotel I took this picture of the New York Stock Exchange with colorful illumination.

On Friday morning I headed out for a leisurely breakfast (trying to follow the Jazz Standard coaster advice) and was amazed at the backwardness of the trash bags stacked up on the sidewalks – apparently Friday is trash day in the Wall Street area. It’s also interesting that it’s acceptable to dispose of small appliances with regular trash.

The first weekend of my birthday month got off to a great start as D and I headed down to Deep Ellum for brunch at IdleRye. This was a new place I found online after finding that the Lebanese place I was hoping to visit for brunch wasn’t open for Saturday lunch. We sat at the bar and enjoyed amazing tater tots and eggs benedict with pork belly along with some nicely mixed brunch cocktails. We both look forward to visiting again soon.

Our post brunch crossword stop was a short walk down Elm Street to our favorite Deep Ellum spot – the Twilite Lounge. As usual the patio was a perfect oasis and the jukebox was playing great New Orleans music – “Exactly Like You” by the Rebirth Brass Band.

Now we were ready for a coffee and found a new place, Drugstore Cowboy, just around the corner that had good coffee, a full bar, and a stage that hosts performances and movies in the evenings. There was a mariachi band playing just outside the stage for Cinco de Mayo.

After coffee we made the quick drive to Oak Cliff for a visit to the Wild Detectives bookstore. All of the books that we picked up seemed either a bit too out there or too depressing. The only one I found that sounded appealing was one that Diana reminded me we had bought on our last visit and I haven’t read yet. We moseyed across the street to Boulevardier and watched the Kentucky Derby (neither of our picks won) and enjoyed their amazing tartare (complete with quail egg).

Sunday was a lazy day of workout, crossword, and pool time. I put a new tablet stand that Amazon had just delivered to good use in watching the New Orleans Pelicans versus Golden State Warriors basketball playoff game by the pool.

The busy week didn’t afford me too much time for reading but I did make some progress through John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. One section describing the two main characters participation in a church Nativity play had me laughing. It reminded me a lot of my experience at St Columbas church in Stewarton and the classic tale of my wise man outfit completed by socks with holes in the toes to horrify my Mum.

St Columbas church in Stewarton, Scotland

When I was doing some research on Eric Reed, I found a few albums that he recorded with the trombone player Wycliffe Gordon that sound great. Gordon has recorded a number of albums of New Orleans style brass music that sound excellent. Gordon plays trombone, trumpet, tuba an didgeridoo (a good spelling bee word).

I also heard a new release from the Scottish electronic band Mogwai. I first heard of this band in the acknowledgments section of an Ian Rankin novel and decided to give them a listen. It’s great background music when I’m trying to focus on something.

Week in Review – April 29, 2018

Oopsy, it happened again. Another year when we were definitely taking a break from the New Orleans Jazzfest only to be unable to resist at the last minute. We had so much fun with Denny and Anne in New York that we booked flights to New Orleans sitting at the airport for our flight home on Sunday afternoon.

The visit started on Wednesday afternoon with the girls making their regular happy hour visit to Pascal’s Manale for oysters and bubbly. This restaurant has been open for over 100 years and is the originator of barbecue shrimp. I heard the comedian Amy Shumer interviewed recently and when asked about her favorite place to eat she said that if she ever had a couple of days free she flew to New Orleans and had barbecue shrimp and bread pudding at Pascal’s.

Meanwhile, the boys dropped off kids for soccer practice and then visited a new place for me, Vessel NOLA. This is an old church converted into a beautiful restaurant and cocktail bar. A very nicely done place with great drinks afforded me the perfect opportunity to catch up with Denny, Thom and Alex.

After our respective Happy Hours we met up at Marjie’s for dinner. We had tried to visit once before on a strong recommendation from the New York Times food critic and Denny but hadn’t made it. Thom and Alex joined the foursome and we sat on the patio to share wonderful smoked meat dishes. Marjie’s combines smoked meats with Southeast Asian flavors for great results. We enjoyed cornmeal crusted yardbird and charred pork shoulder steak among other treats.

The evening concluded with some good story telling at Dos Jefes cigar bar on Tchoupitoulas Street (I double checked to make sure I spelled that correctly).

Thursday began with a visit to the new car wash that Denny and Anne are opening in Algiers. It’s the prettiest of the empire so far and we enjoyed exploring and taking pictures while Denny conducted some business.

After the car wash excitement we picked up Denny’s Mum, Diane, and had a lovely lunch at the Red Maple in Gretna. This was an old school New Orleans restaurant with delicious pecan crusted catfish. It was a treat to catch up with Diane whose social calendar has been too packed to squeeze us in on the last couple of visits.

Effervescence, a new “bubble and bites” restaurant on Rampart Street was our destination for Happy Hour. Denny and Diana both ordered tasting flights of bubbles from the menu of over 40 choices by the glass and we sampled some superb small plates. Anne joined us in time to enjoy a glass of the champagne that Denny had selected for her from his samples. We sat in the courtyard and agreed that this was McD heaven.

It was a pleasant saunter through the French Quarter on Ursuline Street from Effervescence to our dinner destination, Trinity on Decatur Street. This was another new place for us that Denny and Anne had really enjoyed on a recent visit. The food, decor, open kitchen and service were all outstanding. I can’t wait to return.

octopus carpaccio and oyster deviled eggs appetizers

Can you tell we all loved our meals?

From Trinity Denny led us to Gasa Gasa music club on Freret Street to listen to the Rayo Brothers band. I really enjoyed this club – great sound and space. The band was a cross between the Avett Brothers and the Band of Heathens and we all enjoyed them very much. They play at Jazzfest next weekend.

Some very creative art on the Gasa Gasa patio wall:

Friday was Jazzfest day and we got a nice early start to get set up at the Gentilly stage for the day. The stage has a new logo on top since this is Fats Domino year. After an opening set from The Deslondes, a local Americana band, we enjoyed a strong set from Eric Lindell. The initial 30 minutes were a bit sleepy but picked up with a cover of Cinnamon Girl and several more strong songs.

The musical highlight of the day came next – Jon Cleary with a great set of New Orleans piano and funk. He really irritated me by playing some great guitar in addition to his normal outstanding piano – some people are just too multi-talented. Here he is with a great Meters cover (Just Kissed My Baby). At some point around here Alex and Thom and Libby showed up to join the party.

After Jon Cleary, Diana and I went for a wander around the festival grounds. We got our usual frozen cafe au laits and sauntered through the art and jewelry tents. The most interesting to me were custom made turntables with beautiful wood bases:

The Rythmporium where they sell LPs and CDs had a great sign celebrating New Orleans’ 300th anniversary and an interesting stage.

I heard some great music coming from a small tent that I hadn’t been in before and went to investigate – turned out it was the kids tent where the next generation was doing a great job:

As we continued round the racetrack we came across great performances from the New Orleans Nightcrawlers on the Jazz and Heritage stage and an emotional dirge for Charles Neville by the Dixie Dozen Brass Band on the Congo Square stage. Neville died the day before the festival started. He was the saxophone player with the Neville Brothers and well loved throughout the New Orleans and world music communities.

We returned to Gentilly to see Lukas Nelson (Willie’s son) and the Promise of the Real band. I was anticipating this to be a highlight of the day but was underwhelmed – the music was fine but just didn’t interest me as much as I’d hoped. My spirits were lifted when Denny returned with a meat pie for me.

The day finished out with Sturgill Simpson who entertained the crowd with a set that spanned many musical genres – straight ahead country, Americana, blues and some jam band influence. He won everybody over by having the 610 stompers (a local group of men who do silly dances in the Mardi Gras and other parades) take the stage to start the show.

We had hoped for a full brass section similar to the one that joined him for his Saturday Night Live performances but had to settle for a much smaller one – great show nonetheless.

We waited for the crowd to clear out and watched the sun set on another amazing Jazzfest day.

Denny had to drive the boys to a soccer tournament on Saturday early. The rest of us got to sleep in and then enjoy a great brunch at the Canal Street Bistro. The lobster crepe and particularly the sauce was delicious.

From there we Ubered down to the French Quarter for an afternoon ramble that started on Frenchman Street with a visit to the Louisiana Music Factory to check out the latest music releases.

From there we wandered down Royal Street with a stop at Amelie which has a beautiful courtyard and at the Michalopoulos (checked the spelling on that one too) gallery to see if there were any new paintings that D had to have. We finished up at a new place named Curio which had delicious small bar snacks. Now it was time to head back to Webster Street to relax before heading to the airport for our flight back home. I got this picture of the sun setting over the Mississippi which seemed like an appropriate closing picture for another amazing New Orleans visit.

Sunday was spent relaxing and assembling a new patio rocking chair. While we were enjoying New Orleans Will was with his friends in Bali. I haven’t heard much of an update but did get some interesting photos.

Diana just alerted me to a new Marcia Ball album and I’ve been listening while writing this update. Here’s a great new song.

I’m closing with this tribute to Charles Neville which features some of his signature sax work.

Week in Review – April 22, 2018

Spring has officially sprung in New York – finally. It’s been a long and harsh winter for New Yorkers. Work had me back in New York on Tuesday for all day meetings on Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully Diana was able to join me on Thursday evening and then Denny and Anne joined us both on Friday.

On Tuesday evening I undertook some scouting for the weekend visitors. My first stop was at a speakeasy style bar and restaurant, Employees Only, in the West Village area. The craft cocktail movement first started here in the early 2000s, with bar-tending care not seen since the roaring ’20s. The bar, and more particularly the highly skilled bartenders, feature in the documentary “Hey, Bartender” that details the rebirth of craft cocktails. The name comes from the owner’s desire to create a place that was welcoming and catered to folks working in the bar-tending and restaurant business.

I arrived a few minutes before the 6pm opening and there was already a short line – on a Tuesday night? Very popular and small place. I was fortunate to get a seat at the bar and enjoyed steak tartare (custom mixed for me) and a wonderful Manhattan. The verdict – put it high on the list for the visitors – I think they’ll really like it.

After the enjoyable stop at EO I was ready for a coffee before heading to a jazz show at the Village Vanguard. Fortunately, New York has a locally owned coffee shop on every corner – something I really miss in the Dallas area – that and being able to walk to so many great spots.

The show at the Vanguard was by Linda Oh and her quintet. Oh was raised by Chinese immigrants in Australia and was taught classical piano from the age of four. When she was 11, she started to play the clarinet and at the age of 13 bassoon. As a bass guitarist she started in a high school band; and in 2002 she attended the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, where she picked up the upright bass. Her thesis was on the classical Indian music rhythms in Dave Holland’s solos. She moved to New York in 2008 and released her debut album “Entry” with her own compositions and a cover version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers “Oztrax”.

I enjoyed the show which had a pretty modern edge but was strongly rooted in classical jazz styles. The saxophone of Ben Wendel was a highlight. My favorite pieces were “Lucid Lullaby”, “Fire Dancer”, and “Speech Impediment”(the most modern/avant garde of the group) and Linda’s descriptions of the inspiration behind each (in a strong Australian accent) really increased the enjoyment.

After a full day of meetings with 200 of my IT friends on Wednesday, I took my boss and buddy Mike to Bobo in Greenwich Village to try some more of the menu before the trio arrived for the weekend. We did a good job of sampling the dinner menu and I chose scallops on a bed of pureed celery root as my entree – there’s something very delicious about that combination. I was able to make a Saturday brunch reservation and a plan was coming together.

I texted a picture of the dessert menu to McD to see if she could pick what I would like – she didn’t have to think about it – rhubarb or bread pudding in the description and I’m sold.

After dinner, we caught about 30 minutes of the show at Mezzrow basement jazz club across the street. Uri Caine was on the piano and Mark Helios on upright bass. We sat right next to Uri which offered a great view of what he was up playing. Mike studied a year of classical piano at Texas Tech and so really enjoyed the view. The music was very improvisational and we were amazed when the two would join each other in perfect unison out of what seemed to be a completely free form improvisational journey. Caine is a classically trained pianist and has released 16 relatively well known classical recordings. I would not have guessed this from the free form abandon he brought to his jazz playing.

Another day with my 200 IT friends culminated with a nice team building activity – we assembled bikes for foster children. A representative from the organization “Together We Rise” gave a quick talk on the challenges of foster care before we began building. The statistics he quoted were pretty staggering – only 3% of foster children attend college and it gets more disturbing from there. The usual amazing view from our office is being encroached upon by the continuing explosion in new construction. Speaking of construction – I was impressed by the quality of the graphics as I tracked Diana’s arrival at La Guardia airport which is severely under construction just now and for the next 3 years.

I changed hotels and met up with Diana to attend a performance by Curtis Stigers at Birdland (conveniently directly across the street from our hotel). Stigers is an American jazz vocalist, saxophonist, guitarist, and songwriter. He achieved a number of hits in the early 1990s, most notably international 1991 hit, “I Wonder Why”, which reached No. 5 in the UK and No. 9 in the US. Diana and I both commented that this was probably the best show that we’ve seen this year. The first song he played was Randy Newman’s “I’ll be Home” and he had us hooked in the first few bars.

Later was another fantastic Newman song, “I think it’s going to rain today”.

We enjoyed the show so much that we opted to stay for the late show which featured quite a different selection of music and finished up with the song that captured us at the start, “I’ll be Home”. Diana had a good chat with Curtis after the show.

Denny and Anne arrived in time for lunch on Friday after an early start in New Orleans. Oops – I forgot to mention earlier that this trip was another part of Denny’s extended milestone birthday experience. We had lunch at BXL – the Belgian mussel restaurant that I discovered a few weeks ago. $20 got us an appetizer, 1lb of mussels with choice from 10 sauces, and a drink – amazing value for New York.

Anne “Stinger” posing next to her namesake bar

After lunch we rented bikes and made the circle through Central Park. The weather was perfect for riding and the course not too challenging – just one extended uphill section. The spring blooms and blossoms on the trees provided a great backdrop.

Blurry picture of Denny and D with Robert Burns

After all the exercise we stopped at Tavern on the Green for refreshment. Then it was back to the hotel to freshen up for a light dinner before our evening shows.

Dinner was at Bar Centrale, another speakeasy style establishment hidden in a brownstone with no sign or indication it’s not a residence.

We saw the musical “Waitress” while Denny and Anne went to the Highline Ballroom to see a funk music show by “The Mummies”. Waitress was very well done in a classic Broadway musical style. The music is by Sara Bareilles who initially played the lead role (the Kerri Russel part in the movie). Kathryn McPhee of American Idol fame is now the lead and did a great job. The comedy acting was excellent and I did laugh out loud on several occasions.

“Denny where are we on the map?” at Bobo

Saturday began with brunch at Bobo in the West Village. My scouting wasn’t off target as we ordered a second helping of the steak tartare and all enjoyed our brunches.

After brunch we began what ended up being an extended walking tour of the area. We walked a short part of the Highline path and then had a brief stop at “Fig and Olive” which served delicious spring cocktails. It also has a crostini and martini special on Wednesday nights that I’ll need to try on a future visit.

From Fig and Olive we walked to the Chelsea Market where the ladies did some quick shopping while we enjoyed coffees. Then more walking through the village – down Bleeker Street, through Washington Square park and ultimately back over to Employees Only for dinner (with a brief stop in a sports bar to see how the New Orleans Pelicans were doing in the NBA playoffs). Along the way we snapped a picture of the birthday boy at Cafe Wha? where Bob Dylan played his first concert and tried to recreate the classic Bob Dylan album cover – we needed some vintage cars to finish it off correctly.

Dinner at Employees Only was a highlight of the trip for me. The cocktails and everything we ate were delicious. The chicken liver mousse on the charcuterie plate was an early favorite, then the octopus with squid ink risotto and then the absolute highlight – Butterscotch & Mascarpone Cheesecake with Sea Salt & Nut Brittle. I’ll be back just to have a cocktail and that yummy dessert.

In my excitement about that dessert I forgot to mention the bone-marrow pastry dish that reminded me of vol-au-vents that my Mum makes – a very unique dish.

Another quick freshen up at the hotel and then up to Jazz at Lincoln Center to finish out the trip (we thought) with the Christian McBride Big Band at

Anne compliments Melissa Walker on her shoes

Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. Christian Lee McBride is an American jazz bassist and record producer. He is considered a virtuoso, and is one of the most recorded musicians of his generation; he has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman. He studied at the Philadelphia High School for the Performing Arts and then Julliard. His wife is the singer Melissa Walker and she performed a couple of songs with the Big Band – thankfully Denny didn’t leave at that point (he’s not a fan of jazz singing in general). We all enjoyed the show and the gorgeous venue with the view out to Columbus Circle. I enjoyed the upright bass solos very much.

On the walk back to the hotel (subway wait was too long) we experienced a classic Denny and Anne occurrence – Denny looks into the window of an establishment and they both agree they have to go in. In this case it was a Cuban restaurant, Guantanamera NYC, with live music. The music was excellent and we had a good late night snack while the ladies danced. Nicely done Denny! I first heard this song on the excellent “Buena Vista Social Club” recording by Ry Cooder – highly recommended listening.

A quick stop at the Rum House to say hello to Vincente and Jay at the door and the trip was winding down. Thankfully our flights weren’t too early on Sunday.

Whew – what a very busy few days – I’m worn out just writing about it.

Week in Review – April 8, 2018

Here’s a clue from the Saturday USA Today crossword puzzle for you to noodle on: “Beethoven’s homage to Napoleon”. I’ll give you a few minutes to ponder this one and then we’ll come back to it.

Some good news on the Nils Lofgren front. I wrote last week that his guitars had been stolen prior to the show that we saw at the Kessler. Fortunately Dallas Police were able to make an arrest and return the 4 stolen guitars to Nils:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/police-recover-nils-lofgrens-stolen-guitars-worth-over-2410k/ar-AAvnZrM

Tuesday took me back to cold, windy and rainy New York. The main reason for the trip was a visit to the Microsoft office at Times Square and so I stayed in the Sanctuary hotel on 47th street that I enjoyed on my last visit to the area. For Tuesday dinner I tried a small Belgian restaurant that my boss had recommended – BXL just off Times Square on 43rd street. They specialize in moules frites with 12 different sauces. I stuck with the classic mariniere sauce and could only finish about half of the 2lb serving.

After dinner I went for a walk down 6th Avenue to 34th street. Misty rain was falling which provided me this eerie looking view of the Empire State building just visible above Bryant Park and another clearer view from just across the street.

On the walk back to the hotel I saw some potential piano upgrades (kidding – that would be a huge waste of money) and a store that made me chuckle. One of the great features of New York is how easy it is to walk around and find interesting sights.

Geffen Hall on the right and the Metropolitan Opera straight ahead

After work at the Microsoft office, I walked up to 62nd street to Lincoln Center to see the New York Philharmonic performing at David Geffen Hall. The ballet, opera, and orchestra all have their own custom buildings on 3 sides of the plaza at Lincoln Center.

I had dinner in the “Kitchen” at Geffen Hall – a delicious scallop dish with roasted cauliflower, raisins, and nuts and then took my seat for the performance.

The first piece on the program was a world premiere of “Metacosmos” by Anna Thorvaldsdottir from Iceland. The conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, did a brief interview with Anna about the commissioned piece which she described as “finding the beauty in chaos”. In the 12 minutes I heard about 11 minutes of chaos and 1 minute of beauty.

Next was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 performed by the 25 year old English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor who first performed in a fish and chip shop by the seaside and won the BBC Young Musician competition at age 11. I loved the precision of the string section in this piece – absolute unison from lead violin through double bass in the very quiet pizzicato sections. Grosvenor shone brightest in the cadenza at the end of the first movement which I found very creative. Here’s Glen Gould performing the same piece:

The final piece of the evening was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Back to that crossword clue – did you figure it out? The answer is “Eroica”, the name Beethoven ultimately gave to the symphony. I take umbrage with the clue as the Playbill for the concert says that Beethoven says of Napoleon after he declared himself Emperor, “Is even he nothing but an ordinary man! Now he will also trample upon human rights and become a slave to his own ambition; now he will set himself above all other men and become a tyrant”. He went to the table, grabbed the top of the title page of the score and tore it in half. The first page was rewritten and the symphony was given the name Sinfonia eroica. The symphony was very familiar to me as I heard my Mum play it in our home many times growing up.

Thursday night was jazz night. I took the subway down to the West Village and caught the early set at Small’s jazz club. This is an aptly named tiny cellar club where the first few rows of seats are right on stage with the band. The first show was a sextet with tenor and alto saxes, piano, guitar, drums and bass and fully occupied the small stage. I appreciated the mirrors angled above the piano and drums that let you see exactly what the musicians were up to.

The menu at Bobo restaurant next to Small’s looked good and so I stopped in for dinner. The food more than lived up to the promise of the menu and I enjoyed an absolutely delicious steak tartare with shoestring fries and a mushroom tart that was perfectly executed.

The admission ticket to Small’s also provides entry to the Mezzrow cellar jazz club across the street and so I decided to stop in for a short visit after dinner. Monte Croft was performing on the vibraphone and is a real master. The sound in Mezzrow is really great from such a small venue. Here’s a short video of the vibraphone mastery:

Friday was another cold, windy and rainy day as I made my way to the airport to travel home. The 80 degree temperature on arrival at DFW was a pleasant change. Diana and I went to Keeper seafood restaurant for an early dinner as storms were forecast later in the evening and enjoyed their excellent calamari and lobster mac ‘n cheese. We thought we left time to get home before the storm but were mistaken. I navigated Penelope south from McKinney to avoid the tornado sirens, thunderstorms and potential hail. We stopped for coffee and thought it was safe to head home. Wrong – we drove right into a hail storm and had to make a quick U-turn to make sure Penelope didn’t get dented up – she took cover under an awning in front of a building and made it home unscathed.

After our workout and crossword on Saturday, we stopped into Starbucks to visit Alicia. It’s good to see how pleasant she is to everyone (even Mom) when working the register.

Dinner on Saturday night was at the Wahbas. We got to meet Patty’s sister and her family, enjoy amazing Brent smoked meats, and enjoy a variety of live performances in Brent’s music room – so much talent in the house that night.

My main book this week was “The Names” by Don DeLillo. This was recommended by Suzy Hansen in her book that I finished last week as a good tour of expat life in Greece. I read DeLillo’s most famous novel,”White Noise”, a few years ago and was disappointed but decided to give him another try with “The Names”. Portions of the book were compelling and enjoyable but the deep discussion on the origins of alphabets and language were too involved for my taste.

Here’s the Wikipedia summary: “The work, set mostly in Greece, is primarily a series of character studies, interwoven with a plot about a mysterious “language cult” that is behind a number of unexplained murders. Among the many themes explored throughout the work is the intersection of language and culture, the perception of American culture from both within and outside its borders, and the impact that narration has on the facts of a story.”

I picked up “Every Note Played” by Lisa Genova (a Harvard PhD neuroscientist) during my walk around New York on Tuesday night and it proved to have some unexpected links to my week. Genova is best known for writing “Still Alice” that became the basis for a popular movie about a lady suffering with Alzheimer’s. “Every Note Played” is about a concert pianist who is stricken with ALS and quickly loses control of his arms. In one early section the pianist talks about how much he enjoys the cadenza in Beethoven’s third piano concerto (the one I heard on Wednesday night) and in another section his ex-wife talks about regretting having given up her career as a jazz pianist and particularly playing at Small’s (the club I visited on Thursday night). Strange coincidences.

I heard a song by The Gaddabouts on Spotify Discover Weekly and enjoyed it very much. Turns out the Gaddabouts is Edie Brickell (of the New Bohemians and seen at the Oak Cliff Music Festival), Steve Gadd (superstar session drummer seen with James Taylor recently), Pino Palladino (one of my favourite jazzy bass players), and Andy Fairweather Low (seen with Eric Clapton at New Orleans jazzfest and a relative of my Mum). I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the album this week.

Week in Review – March 25, 2018

The week started out with a very unique experience and not one that I would have ever planned. Any guesses?

Don’t think you would ever guess correctly. After an all day work meeting, Mc D and I were invited to attend WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) Monday Night Raw. I remember my Grampa watching wrestling on TV on the weekends and have briefly watched some WWE on TV but never imagined being one of the rowdy nuts that watches it in an arena. It honestly seemed even more fake live and there were long periods of downtime between bouts for the adverts on the live TV broadcast. That being said, it was good, silly Monday night entertainment. The highlight was John Cena making a speech about how disappointed he was that the Undertaker hadn’t answered his challenge for a fight at WrestleMania.

On Tuesday it was time to get packed up for another trip to New York. This time some extra packing was needed (hat, gloves, boots) as 12 to 18 inches of snow was forecast for Tuesday night into Wednesday. Diana thought I was nuts for taking a flight when Nor’easter Toby was forecast.

Turns out I caught the last flight from DFW on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm. All remaining flights for the next couple of days were canceled. LaGuardia airport was like a ghost town on arrival since most departing flights had been canceled too. All of this made for a quick ride to the hotel.

Snow came down heavily all day on Wednesday but temperatures stayed above freezing and the snow was extremely wet and so there was minimal accumulation.

View from work office as the snow storm started

In front of the office about an hour after the storm started

My boss and I decided to be adventurous on Wednesday night and brave the snow for a show at the Blue Note jazz club. The subway was a great way to avoid too much snow and we made an initial navigation error, heading to Brooklyn instead of Greenwich village. A quick trip under the East river and back and we were on track. The show was Eric Krasno and friends with the special guest of the evening being the pedal steel guitar wizard, Robert Randolph. I’ve seen Randolph a few times before with Eric Clapton and Anders Osborne and so was looking forward to the show.

Eric Krasno is a guitar player best known for founding the bands Lettuce and Soulive. You might remember that I went to see Lettuce with Alicia and her friend last year. He has also won a couple of Grammy awards as a producer for the Tedeschi Trucks band (one of my very favourites). The show was very good with highlights being a cover of Blind Faith’s “In the Presence of the Lord” and the Grateful Dead’s “Sugaree”.

I felt sorry for the folks queuing up for the late show in the cold and snow outside the Blue Note. We hadn’t quite had enough music for the night and so headed around the corner to Bleeker Street and the Red Lion pub which has had good live music each time I’ve visited. There was a duo of guitar/singer and drummer playing classic rock songs very well that we enjoyed for a while. Things picked up when one of the bar tenders joined to cover a couple of Janis Joplin songs.

Flying home on Friday afforded me a 40 degree temperature change by leaving New York at 40 degrees and arriving to 80 degree plus in Dallas. You can see by this picture from the plane leaving New York that most of the snow had melted and it was a nice sunny day.

Saturday was another nice day and after workouts we sat out by the pool for most of the afternoon and got some extended reading time in.

I finished Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan and would give it a B+ rating. The first 100 or so pages were a solid A but I started to lose interest a bit in the middle. The beginning was enough to convince me to try another Egan book, “A Visit from the Goon Squad”. This held my attention much more effectively and I read the full book out by the pool on Saturday. The book is centered around the music business and the change in the economic and distribution methods over the last decade. I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in music – the story telling is innovative, interesting and creative.

On Saturday night we watched “Lady Bird”, a movie that was nominated for several Oscars. The film is good and stars Saoirse Ronan as a high school senior in Sacramento trying to decide where to attend college. The interactions between her and her mother had me laughing because they reminded me so much of the conversations that I hear in my home.

If you’re a vinyl lover like me, you might enjoy “Why Vinyl Matters” by Jennifer Bickerdike. This is a coffee table style book that I received as a Christmas gift from Diana and has chapters from musicians and people involved in the music business relating why they love and appreciate vinyl records. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Nick Hornby who wrote “High Fidelity” that was the basis for the John Cusack film.

Speaking of vinyl, I revisited an album that I haven’t listened to in close to 20 years this week – “Toward the Within” by Dead Can Dance. This music gets very mixed reviews from people that I’ve shared it with – some really enjoy the unique Middle Eastern style instrumentation while others (most) can only stand a few minutes – which camp do you fall into?

Here’s something a bit less controversial from Professor Longhair – one of my favourites from his New Orleans style piano tunes. I’ve been practicing my scales and receiving commentary about how far I have to go to get back to reasonable speed and accuracy. It was interesting to discover that, similar to most measurements, there is a difference between the terms used to describe the length of musical notes between the United States and United Kingdom. What I know as a crotchet is a quarter note, a quaver an eighth note, a semi-quaver a sixteenth note and so on. This is all well and good but quickly falls apart when one moves away from 4/4 time and a crotchet is really a third note in a waltz etc.

Week in Review – March 11, 2018

Have you heard of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico?

We hadn’t either until Denny pushed hard for this to be the destination for his 50th birthday trip. We flew down on Thursday and were happy to find it took a short 2 hour flight and 1.5 hour drive to reach the lovely house that Denny had arranged for us.

San Miguel de Allende is situated at 6,200 feet and has a population of around 70,000. The mountainside location leads to plenty of uphill and downhill walking. Our house was about a 10 minute walk uphill from the main square and so our calves did get a reasonable workout. The weather was very pleasant during our stay with highs in the 80s and lows in the 50s.

We arrived around 3pm and Sean and Sheri weren’t due until later in the evening, so we set out to explore the center of town. The main square is dominated by La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, the current parish church of San Miguel, which is unique in Mexico and the emblem of the town. It has a Neo-gothic façade with two tall towers that can be seen from most parts of town. It is one of the most photographed churches in Mexico. The church was built in the 17th century with a traditional Mexican façade. The current Gothic façade was constructed in 1880 by Zeferino Gutierrez, who was an indigenous bricklayer and self-taught architect. It is said Gutierrez’s inspiration came from postcards and lithographs of Gothic churches in Europe, particularly the one in Cologne; however, the interpretation is his own and is more a work of imagination than a faithful reconstruction.

There is a plethora of rooftop restaurants to choose from and we chose Quince beside the church as our first stop. The food and views were excellent – we think it might be the best grilled octopus that we’ve tasted.

As we stopped at a wine shop to stock up for the weekend, a very interesting Mexican wedding celebration passed by. A procession through town led by a donkey carrying flowers and tequila, followed by very large human puppets of the bride and groom, a Mariachi band, and the wedding party. As the weekend progressed we realized that this is a very common occurrence with many weddings taking place on Saturday.

Sean and Sheri arrived safely on Thursday evening and we headed to another rooftop, SMA restaurant, just up the street from the house. We had a delicious dinner and several of the group sampled Casa Dragones Joven tequila (apparently a favourite of Oprah and Martha Stewart).

Friday began with a walking food tour. This took us to 6 restaurants around town and our tour guide, Pascal, provided a lot of cultural and historical information along the way. The town, so the story goes, owes its founding to a few over-heated dogs. These hounds were loved by a Franciscan friar, Juan de San Miguel, who started a mission in 1542 near an often-dry river 5km from the present town. One day the dogs wandered off from the mission; they were found reclining at the spring called El Chorro. The mission was moved to this superior site.

San Miguel’s favorite son, Ignacio Allende, was born here in 1779. He became a fervent believer in the need for Mexican independence and was a leader of a conspiracy that set December 8, 1810, as the date for an armed uprising. After initial successes Allende, Hidalgo and other rebel leaders were captured in 1811. Allende was executed, but on independence in 1821 he was recognized as a martyr and in 1826 the town was renamed San Miguel de Allende.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the town was in danger of becoming a ghost town after an influenza pandemic. Gradually, its Baroque/Neoclassical colonial structures were “discovered” by foreign artists who moved in and began art and cultural institutes. This gave the town a reputation, attracting artists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros, who taught painting.

This attracted foreign art students, especially former U.S. soldiers studying on the G.I. Bill after the Second World War. Since then, the town has attracted a significant number of foreign retirees, artists, writers and tourists, which has shifted the area’s economy from agriculture and industry to commerce catering to outside visitors and residents.

Now back to the food. Our first stop was La Parada, a Peruvian restaurant, where we enjoyed ceviche with leche de tigre (tiger’s milk) and excellent pisco sours. We liked this one so much that we returned for lunch later in the visit.

Next was Casa del Diezmo, a Yucatan Mexican restaurant where we enjoyed Pork Pibil Panuchos. This place was typical in that you wouldn’t know it existed from the street and on entry found a gorgeous courtyard with beautiful plants and flowers.

One of my favourite dishes from the tour, mole enchiladas, was next at La Cocina, Café del Viajero. There are many different recipes for mole sauce, typically including chocolate, chiles, sweet and sour ingredients, thickeners and spices. The sauce at our stop was absolutely delicious.

Although the portions at each stop were relatively small, we were starting to feel pretty full at this point. The last stop before desert was Don Taco Tequila, a vegan restaurant where we enjoyed mushroom tacos.

The tour finished with ice cream from a street cart and delicious churros with caramel sauce. This was a wonderful way to explore downtown, the food variety, and to learn some history – thanks Anne for organizing.

After the food tour, can you guess what we did? Yes – another rooftop at Pueblo Viejo and then dinner downstairs. In between, Diana, Denny and I relaxed at the bar at a fancy boutique hotel called Beelia.

On the walk home we enjoyed several Mariachi bands with the Amistad band being a highlight. They were certainly the loudest with lots of brass and a sousaphone – sounded a lot like a New Orleans brass band.

Saturday started with a delicious traditional breakfast prepared by the housekeeper, Mar, who was lovely and welcoming and entertained us by trying to communicate in Spanish with no desire to slow down and help us understand.

Jimmy Ray “Anado” McLaughlin in front of Kismet

The day continued with one of the more unique activities of our visit – a trip to Jimmy Ray McLaughlin’s art compound a few miles outside of town. This is the kind of special surprise only experienced when traveling with Denny and taking advantage of his prodigious research. Jimmy Ray has lived throughout the US and around the world and likes to go by Anado, a name he was given in India. Anado uses bottles, tiles, and other recycled material to create very colorful and detailed mosaic artwork. We enjoyed the tour of his art compound with several galleries, a large mosaic wall called “Kismet”, his house and studio, but mostly his colorful commentary on his art and life.

Saturday dinner was our one “fancy” dinner of the trip at, you guessed it, a rooftop restaurant. Zumo offered fantastic views of the city and a spectacular tasting menu and wine pairings. Everybody loved their meal. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves and just say that the foie gras mousse and the short ribs were the stand outs for me.

wild mushroom potage with white truffle foam

Mezcal marinated foie gras mousse — mescal marinated foie gras mousse

Back at the house after dinner began game night. Several rounds of heads up started the hilarity and were followed by Kahoot where I learned that I know nothing about current popular culture but quite a lot about classic rock.

Sunday brunch was at another Denny deep research find, Nicasio Comedor Mexicano. This was a small, simple restaurant with an open kitchen where we watched traditional Mexican breakfast fare prepared with great flair and attention to detail – tweezers used to place garnish and tiny jalapenos. The pet duck wasn’t in its bed in the restaurant but rather in the pond since it was starting to get hot.

After brunch we visited Fabrica La Aurora, an art market on the outskirts of town that is a converted textile mill and houses many individual art galleries. Denny and Anne tried hard to find some art for their redone living room but came away empty handed. Sean found a very unique poker chip holder and we found a fun gift for Patty’s birthday.

The afternoon ramble through town started with tapas and drinks at the Luna restaurant on top of the Rosewood hotel (the fancy hotel in town). This had amazing views all around.

Next on the ramble was a stop at a tapas restaurant where Denny heard interesting music. The music stopped right as we entered but was quickly replaced by Los Miguels, Miguel and his friend Miguel, who sang and played guitar beautifully. Miguel #1 tried very hard to explain the meaning of each Spanish song to us in English before he performed – and he did an admirable job. His passion for his music and for communicating really came through.

We briefly checked out the tapas restaurant rooftop but weren’t huge fans of the electronic music – a hard transition from Los Miguels.

Anne had been mentioning a visit to “La Sirena Gorda” (the fat mermaid)for a couple of days and so we finally made a visit there on our way to an evening snack at Quince (finishing the trip as we began).

A late night game of liars dice finished out our last full day in San Miguel de Allende.

Sean and Sheri had a very early departure (5am – ouch) back to the airport and the rest of us left a few hours later. You can tell Denny had a good trip from his snooze on the drive.

On the drive to the Leon airport I emailed David to ask him about the rumor I heard from my Mum and Dad of a new cousin in the family. He quickly replied with pictures of Penelope’s new cousin – a gorgeous red Porsche Cayman. I’m looking forward to meeting her in Scotland in the summer.

For the musical lagniappe this week I offer two great songs that I heard for the first time this week. “Good to Me As I Am to You” by Aretha Franklin featuring Eric Clapton on guitar and “Tennessee Blues” by Bobby Charles, who also wrote “Walking to New Orleans”.

Week in Review – February 18th, 2018

Travel to Pacifica, CA was the main activity this week. Spring has sprung there already.

Diana flew out on Tuesday to help her Mum with cataract surgery on Wednesday. All went well and recovery seems to be on track. Although I was alone for Valentine’s day, I did get a nice sign and bowl of treats. Clorinda had “Pacifica Penguin” waiting as my Saint Valentine gift.

I joined McD in Pacifica on Friday afternoon and we had a very enjoyable dinner with Clorinda’s new neighbours (Andy and Jude) on Friday evening. They live about 50 yards up Gypsy Hill from D’s Mum and their house has been beautifully remodeled with huge windows and views of the ocean. The sunsets are amazing. Andy and Jude first moved to California from England in 1989 and opened a record store in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. They are a very interesting and kind couple and have been great neighbours for Clorinda in the short time they’ve been there.

We met Finn in Los Gatos for Saturday lunch at a relatively new restaurant called Bywater. It’s owned by David Kinch who has the 3 Michelin star restaurant, Manresa, in downtown Los Gatos. He loves New Orleans and wanted to open a small, casual restaurant serving the local food. Bywater is a gentrifying but still pretty funky neighborhood of New Orleans that does have some great restaurants. I caught up with Finn over a yummy brunch and D sat at the bar and caught up with her friend Aimee who also lives in Los Gatos. It was nice to see Finn free of back pain and feeling positive.

The interesting painting on the Bywater wall, “Society of St Anne Meeting Spot”, refers to a New Orleans marching krewe that parades each Mardi Gras. Known for the very elaborate costumes of its members, the group gathers in the Bywater each Mardi Gras morning, with the Storyville Stompers brass band providing the music. As they pass through the Faubourg Marigny and French Quarter, additional costumed marchers join the parade at various coffee shops and bars along the route. The marchers continue to Canal Street to watch the Rex Parade and then return into the French Quarter. Of course it made us think of our own favourite Anne from New Orleans.

After lunch we played bocce ball at Campo di Bocce across the street (a very Italian spot). This was a lot of fun. McD and Finn weren’t much of a match for Aimee and me and of course we were very gracious in victory.

The eating continued with a three course dinner at Kris and Cat’s home. As usual, Cat provided several very entertaining stories – one from his childhood with a flaming Christmas tree being thrown out into a busy street below and another involving driving his new race car to get smog tested. Dessert was advertised as pear flambee but the rum refused to catch fire – even when subjected to a welding torch. We always come away with some great memories from a visit to their home.

Will and Christine were our lunch companions on Sunday. We let Will pick the spot and he came up with NOLA in Palo Alto – unknowingly keeping the New Orleans theme going. Lunch was great and then we made a visit to see the new apartment fully decorated and looking very cozy. It’s great to see them so happy with a very nice place to call home and a much shorter commute for Will.

Not too much progress on my Turkish book this week and I did start a new book for light relief between Turkish lessons – “Uncommon People, The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars” by David Hepworth. Each chapter focuses on the rise or fall of a particular rock star in each year from 1955 to 1995. I very much enjoy Hepworth’s writing style and interesting stories. Here’s one about Ringo Starr joining the Beatles in 1962 – “The strongest influence on his upbringing was his grandmother, a woman of nineteenth-century superstitions. One was the belief that any child unfortunate enough to be born left-handed must be trained out of the habit. She set herself the job of making sure young Richard wrote right-handed. He subsequently played a right-handed drum kit with the inclinations of a left-hander. It’s Ringo’s grandmother we have to thank for the characteristic lacunae that made so many of the Beatles’ drum parts impossible for other drummers to play.” Diana’s Dad was similarly forced to write right-handed but performed surgery left-handed. David Hepworth was the host on the British music program “The Old Grey Whistle Test” which I enjoyed very much – check out some of the episodes on Youtube – some great performances.

Not too much time for new music discovery this week but I did hear this great song from my favourite Govt Mule album, Dose.

Week in Review – February 11, 2018

Back to New York again this week – maybe the last trip for a few weeks.

I flew up on Tuesday and met up with some old teammates for dinner and drinks – always fun to reminisce about what seemed to be funner times but I’m sure came with just as many challenges.

On Wednesday I made my first visit to Fraunces tavern in the Financial District. This is a Colonial tavern which has been operating since 1762 with over 200 whiskies and 130 beers. There is a museum attached with some fascinating stories. One of my favourites is that after British troops evacuated New York, the tavern hosted an elaborate “turtle feast” dinner for George Washington in the “Long Room” where he bade farewell to his officers of the Continental Army. We didn’t get to see the “Long Room” but I did have some great late night scotch eggs in “Lafayette’s Hideaway” bar.

As has become somewhat traditional, Thursday night was music night. This time jazz at Dizzy’s Club in the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex. My boss and I enjoyed dinner at Landmark in the Time Warner center at Columbus Circle and then headed next door to the jazz club. Dizzy’s is unique in that the musicians perform in front of large floor to ceiling windows that provide a view out onto Columbus Circle and Central Park. The sound is also the most pristine one can hear in any music club.

The music was by the Christian Sands trio who did a tribute to the music of Errol Garner. Sands is a 28 year old pianist who is viewed as one of the best of the younger generation. His technique and dynamics were both amazing. Garner is known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad “Misty”, has become a jazz standard and was featured in the Clint Eastwood movie, “Play Misty for Me”. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

A young singer, Michael Mayo, joined the band on a few songs – most notably Misty. I don’t typically enjoy jazz singers but Mayo’s voice was beautiful and his dynamic control excellent. The concert almost (not much at all really) made up for missing the Anderson East concert that Diana and I had looked forward to attending on Thursday in Dallas at the tiny club Trees.

We enjoyed watching the Winter Olympics opening ceremony on Friday and particularly the performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” with two doves becoming one. The drones on the mountain were pretty amazing as well.

Since McD and I were not going to be together on Saint Valentine’s day, we celebrated early with a movie and dinner on Saturday night. The movie was “The Darkest Hour” about Churchill’s challenges in May 1940 during Dunkirk. We both thoroughly enjoyed Gary Oldman’s Churchill and learned a lot about those few weeks in history. Many of the classic Churchill quotes were in the movie, along with my favourite, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”.

Options were limited since I had left it so late to make a dinner reservation and everywhere was busy with the pre-Valentine rush. I chose Perry’s Steakhouse and our first visit there was a big success. Great music from a lady singing and playing piano, steak tartare and escargot appetizers, tasty steaks, good wine, and lots of leftovers for Sunday. We look forward to returning to try the signature pork chop.

The Churchill movie brought to mind one of my favourite Supertramp songs about the Dunkirk evacuation, Fool’s Overture. This comes from an album with excellent cover art – wouldn’t it be fun to dust off the snow and play the piano with that view?

Here’s a couple of melancholy songs that have been on heavy rotation this week. “Summer’s End” – the first new song in many years from the outstanding song writer John Prine, and “I Think it’s Going to Rain Today” from Randy Newman’s first album many years ago with the lyric, “Human Kindness is Overflowing” and the immediately identifiable Newman orchestral arrangement. Why haven’t I heard this before?

My book this week was “Notes on a Foreign Country (An American Abroad in a Post American World)” by Suzy Hansen. This is by a New York Times journalist who moves to Istanbul and quickly comes to realize that her views and opinions on American policy are quite different when observed through the local Turkish lens. I’m enjoying the book quite a bit but think it’ll take several weeks to finish with some lighter material for breaks.

Here’s one final piece of music that I’ve been listened to several times this week – “Trust” by Roy Hargrove. I love the flugelhorn sound on this one. Hargrove was born in Waco, Texas and attended the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Dallas. It’s there that he was discovered by Wynton Marsalis on a visit to the school. One of his big influences was David “Fathead” Newman who was a core member of Ray Charles’ Band. Interestingly Newman was the second concert that I saw in the United States – at a small club called The Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth while I was working in the oil business. What was the first show I hear you asking – Delbert McClinton at the same excellent venue in downtown Fort Worth.