Jazz Festival 2012 – :)

It’s over!  We heard the last note at 11:15 last night at Max.

We started last night with a walk down East Ave as usual.  When we approached Alexander Street, the stage for Thunder Body and Trombone Shorty was up and as we walked past, Trombone Shorty was on stage doing his sound check.  That was all we heard of him.  By 4:15 we were in line to get into Hatch Hall, where we had heard our first performance of this festival.  This last night we waited for the 5:45 performance 90 minutes in line to hear JoAnne Brakeen solo on the piano.  It was worth the wait.  She played over an hour of straight piano jazz that left us breathless.  It is really good to be reminded that there is still great classic jazz being performed.

We left there and picked up dinner on the street.  Carol went to Ludwig’s for her usual salad and I ran to Java Joe in hopes that they hadn’t sold out yet.  They hadn’t and I had a great sandwich, this one was called “Dark Horse” and it had roast beef and their wonderful chipotle mayonnaise.  Don’t order the chipotle if you don’t like really hot.  After eating we walked over to Lutheran Church to hear Hakon Kornstad.  He plays Tenor Sax, Operatic Tenor, Flute, Flutenette and a great looping machine.  He is one of the few performers we heard who made great use of the electronics without letting it get in the way of the performance.  He laid down a couple of rhythm tracks and some background melodies, as many as a total of four or more, and then played over them.  He used the wind sound from the sax and the flapping of the keys to make rhythm.  He sang over the loop a couple of times.  His flutenette is actually a flute with the mouthpiece replaced with a Clarinet mouthpiece.  It was a wonderful performance and we were sad to hear it end, but it was time to get back in line. . .

We wanted to hear Chic Gamine at Max and it seemed clear from the 6:15 show that getting in would be restricted to those who were in line when they opened the door.  As we approached the line was already at Main St at 8:30 for the 10 PM show!  One last 90 minute wait.  This wait too paid off.  The four woman sing, play a variety of instruments and entertain along with their percussionist, the only male in the group.  Between his broken English, he is French Canadian, and there jokes it was difficult to stop laughing when they were singing.  Sing they can.  They did one acapella number, this was the source of a joke, as they said someone in the audience at another show had asked them to do an Acapulco number (type acapella into a document and run the spell checker).  They sang and played with much energy.  We would both love to go to another performance by them.


Sadly, we began our last walk home on East Avenue from the Jazz Festival.  This years festival is over and next year, all things going as planned, our walk will be from St Paul St and much shorter, only 1/2 a mile at most instead of 2 1/2 miles.  It was a great festival and the weather could not have been better.  I am not sure when I will post again.  We are not going out on the road this summer as we have a household to move and things to sell.  We are going to Tanzania from August 15 to 31.  I do not expect to be able to post from that trip as we will have limited electricity and doubtful internet availability in the Serengeti  and other places we will be going.  There will be a major posting of photos and maybe some stories when we home.