We got off to a great start.  We left the house walking at 3:40 and arrived at the front of Montage at 4:15 or so.  We were not the first to arrive, two other groups were represented by individuals holding place.  By 4:30 the line was filling and by 4:45 the line was beyond the area where it is probable that you would get into the hall.  Chuchito Valdes was the featured artist.  He is Cuban from a line of Cuban pianists and the anticipation was very high.  He played continuously with no break to talk to the audience other than to say THANK YOU at the very end.  We thanked him with two standing ovations and a lot of cheering.  It was great to hear such a different approach to the piano.  It was very high energy.

Onward to Lutheran Church and the Stefan Karlsson Trio.  They were very good, very smooth and well thought out.  After the energy of the prior show, it was a bit low key for me and we left after about 30 minutes to hurry on over to Xerox Auditorium to catch Dmitry Baevsky Quartet from Russia.  We needn’t have hurried, there was plenty of room.  Carol and I agreed that they were pretty good lounge group, have a drink sit around and talk with some smooth jazz in the background.  Thirty minutes of that and we had had enough.

Off to Max to hear Katie Thiroux Trio.  We were surprised to walk right in at 9:45 for the 10 O’clock show.  Sunday night and 5 venues competing for the crowd and she is a definite newcomer.  We split on our appraisal.  Carol, with her vocal training, felt that Katie has a ways to go.  I really liked her singing and the scat.  Yeah I know there were some intonation problems, but she is really cute 🙂

We don’t have a plan yet for tonight other than to get there early and to hear Viktoria Tolstoy at Lutheran and, if possible Robin McKelle at Xerox.   That looks like a conflict, but we will see what plays out.  Now I have to post this and preview the rest on tonight’s acts on YouTube to see what else we must hear.