at 5:30 pm so we could gets seats with both leg room and great sightlines. There are a few.  People arriving later found themselves winding through the alley and back out to East Ave.  I am not sure all got in for the first number.  Read Carol’s review for my thoughts as well. This may well be the Festival topper for us. We moved on to Harro East to hear the Brubeck Brothers, two sons of Dave Brubeck and two sidemen who played with Dave as well.  They are enormously talented and this was a wonderful performance.  They focused on Dave’s pieces which was a joy.  When they started into Blue Rondo ala Turk tears came to my eyes and then they went overtime to play Take Five.  Charles Brubeck played the drums, he learned from Paul Desmond and it shows. By this time I could not contain myself.  The last time I heard these pieces performed live was during the Festival several years ago when Dave Brubeck took the Eastman stage and came back after an intermission and said he was working on a reprise of the Time Out album, would we mind if they played it for us!

By the time we got out it was too late to get into Abilene for Rachel Brooke so we started wandering with no real idea where we were headed.  In that mode we drifted into Christ Church for the first time this year to hear Euan Burtan and his Trio. This was good solid jazz and very enjoyable, but not enough to pin us to the benches, beside we had heard good things about Benedikt Jahnel at Max at Eastman Place so not wanting to miss it we trotted over a bit early only to find the doors open and the place half empty. We chatted with friends new and old until the group came out.  Great lounge music, nothing to pin us to the chairs and Cecile was singing across the street for her second show.  

Locked out! the doors were closed, it was 10:30 and the line was not moving. We headed over to Montage where Les Doigts de l’Homme were playing. We got in and were able to stand in the crush inside the music hall against the back wall.  We wormed our way forward so Carol could see and thrilled to the performance.  Three guitars, bass and accordion make up the group and they are in the line of Django Reinhardt. They played well past the 11 pm closing and finally at 11:15 the staff begged for mercy and they went off after a final number.  We went to the apartment satisfied that we had heard three great performances, one fine performance and one the was really good but could not hold us.  Five shows again.  The Festival count stands at 14 through Day 3.

Tonight could be as many as five or as few as three sets depending on our willingness to move on. We are starting at Kilbourn again. Vijay Iyer Trio will be performing and the advance reviews and listening to his group on YouTube convince us this is our first choice.  We will hotfoot it to Harro East for Catherine Russel who is a XRIJF regular with a great voice and wonderful performance and who we have heard several time before.  The other Green groups on our list are Karl Ikonen Trio at Lutheran Church and Matt Andersen at the Big Tent.  There are three Yellow groups and that is just because we don’t see a way to even get to the other venues, otherwise it would all be Yellow.