XRIJF Night 7

A Ramble

Carol had a certification course at LifeSpan that ran until 5 so we agreed to meet at Harro East keeping up the Cuban theme we have been following, she joined me at the usual table in plenty of time to hear Pablo Menendez & MEZCLA a Cuban group here on a Cultural Exchange.  Although they suffered from the Harro muddy sound we enjoyed the set and stayed for most of it. 

We rambled over to Xerox for the early set of Joyce.  Her singing was very nice, but how much Portuguese do I need/want to listen to, besides some interesting music was to be expected at the Lutheran Church.  So we strolled over there, with a stop at Java Joe’s for sandwiches to fortify us for the rest of the night, to find the hall filling, filled, no seats available downstairs and we decided not to give up our SRO spots to explore the balcony.  Rather than my writing at length about the pleasure of the session  with Palle Mikkelborg just read Jeff Spivak’s column in the Friday Democrat & Chronicle.  We stayed through the entire set and were slow to leave when it was done. 

But leave we did.  We wandered past  the festivities on Jazz Street bypassing the jam in front of Java Joe’s this time down the alley to get on over to Christ Church to hear Get The Blessing, yet another great show.  I must admit that the names they give their pieces left one thinking about more food.  They played pieces called, Sushi, Doughnut, Starfish, you get the point.  The music was better than the names.

At 9:30 it hardly seemed likely we would get seats for Joe Locke Group Featuring Vocalist Kenny Washington in Kilbourn, people had been in line since before 9 for the 10 PM show.  We were going to walk by anyhow so we walked in the door and ended up getting seated before the show began.  It was a great show and Kenny Washington sang up a storm while Joe Locke and the group played their hearts out.  It was a great finale to a wonderful evening of music.  Check out Spevak’s column linked above.

The count: last night we were at 28 shows, we appear to have attended five shows on Thursday bringing the total to 33.

No ideas for tonight, yet.