New York and the cold weather again?
On Monday I flew back to the freezing cold Big Apple. These pictures I took from the plane on descent show the frozen conditions. Those huge ice blocks broke up a little as they floated down the East river that we could see from our office conference rooms.
I chuckled at this
sign in front of the entrance to my office. Not sure what you’re supposed to do in response to the sign, look up? Temperatures rose each day that I was there and as usual I tried to make the best of being in New York in the evenings.
On Tuesday night I experienced the best jazz concert that I’ve seen so far. The Joshua Redman quartet at the Blue Note. Redman seems to completely inhabit the tenor saxophone and has a unique combination of total technical mastery and enormous musicality. The setlist was an excellent combination of gorgeous ballads, up tempo improvisations, and everything in between. Redman was joined by Aaron Goldberg on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums.
You can see from the picture above that I had a great view of Aaron Goldberg’s hands on the piano. What a treat that turned out to be. He shares the same combination of technical dexterity and musicality that Redman exudes. I’ve been listening to a few of his solo albums and enjoying them very much – a nice new discovery on a cold Tuesday evening.
Hutchinson’s drumming was a big part of my enjoyment of this show as well. He moved from subtle brush work on ballads to explosive fills in the more up tempo ballads – playing the drums like a lead instrument on several occasions.
I sat at a table with a very interesting mother and son duo. Sandy Evans is a
well known saxophone player from Australia. She and her son were spending some time in New York before heading to Cuba to perform in the international jazz festival. They were friends with both Aaron and Joshua and so I got to have a nice chat with them as a result. You might remember that I met Joshua once before at the Village Vanguard when McD shared her champagne with him.
Breakfast at the hotel is pretty expensive for the quality and so I stopped at Bailey’s for breakfast on Wednesday. This breakfast bull was quite intimidating.
Work involved many long meetings with vendors, and it was easy to drift off into enjoying this excellent view of the Brooklyn Bridge and East river from the conference room.
I chose The Od
eon in Tribeca for dinner on Wednesday night. We’d been there once before with Mary and Chuck and I remembered enjoying the French brasserie feel. A nice bracing mile walk helped me work up an appetite.
The restaurant is a typically loud and boisterous New York scene but the food is very good. I started with a sazerac to warm up and then enjoyed some excellent steak tartare and a side of baby brussel sprouts with bacon.
It was back to McKinney on Thursday night and a relaxing Friday evening cooking Gorgonzola lamb chops and catching up on the episode of “This is Us” that we missed on Tuesday night.
After workout and coffee and crossword on Saturday, Diana got sucked into the puzzle that my Mum and Dad sent for Christmas. We noticed that the title of this challenge is, “The puzzle that ruined Christmas”. It’s similar to the Frenchy (New Orleans artist) puzzles in that it doesn’t have any edge pieces and the pieces are cut in interesting shapes. The majority are Christmas trees and Diana had a small outburst saying that, “Ah geez, three pieces fit together to make another Christmas tree shape”.
We’re looking forward to dinner tonight with Patty and Brent at Meso Maya. This is an authentic Mexican restaurant as compared to the usual Tex-Mex fare that Dallas is well known for. I’ve been perusing the menu and having a hard time narrowing down my choices – which I think is a sign of a good menu.
“Never a Dull Moment, 1971 – the year that rock exploded” has kept me company on my travels this week. Each chapter recounts stories and record releases from a particular 1971 month. The writing by David Hepworth and the anecdotes are fantastic. Describing the early days of the Soul Train television show, Hepworth writes, “These dance moves, which took the generic frugs and twitches of pop dance and reclassified them into an entirely new terpsichorean taxonomy, swept the nation”. I’m amazed at the number of records released in 1971 that are still considered classics today.
“Encore”, the new album from Anderson East was released yesterday and is excellent. East is based in Nashville and is playing at the small Deep Ellum club Trees in a couple of weeks. He has what’s referred to as a “modern southern soul sound”. Here’s a song from the new album that he wrote with Chris Stapleton.