Things have finally slowed down enough for me to be able to get this post together. A lot has happened in the last couple of months!
First stop:
GREECE! Getting ready to roll out for the Lefkada parade; photo by Vicky Annand
Well, my first trip to Greece was life-altering. I compare it to the first time I went to Brazil in 1998. The music, the people, the food, the landscape…they all blew me away on so many levels.
I went to Greece as a Guest Artist with TapMotif, a 10-day music & dance workshop on the island of Lefkada put together by Thanos Daskalopoulos. The participants came from all over the globe: Finland, Israel, Greece, Great Britain, Germany, Latvia, France, Austria, Canada, Switzerland, and the U.S. were all represented. We flew into Athens, met up in front of the Sofitel Hotel across the street from the airport, and piled onto a bus for the 6-hour ride to Lefkada in the western part of Greece. Thus the hanging began right away, and thus the genius of the TapMotif concept was immediately apparent: unlike any other educational environment I’ve been in, TapMotif offers its participants an unprecedented level of access to the artists. Right from the drop, the faculty and student participants were interacting in a friendly, very social and very nonacademic environment. We stayed in the same hotels together, ate all our meals together, rode the bus to and from classes and other events together. Basically it was a huge, neverending hang. As a teaching artist, I felt there were very few traditional student/teacher boundaries; participants and faculty alike were all ‘TapMotifians’, all part of a shared experience aimed at elevating everyone, with a deep sense of community. You might think that as a teacher one would need some time off, but at no time did I feel overwhelmed by the experience, or that I was unable respond to questions posed by the students. It was all very natural and the ‘classroom’ was anywhere we were, be it at the school where classes took place, at the breakfast table on the beautiful hotel veranda, at the beach, on the bus, or at the nightly jam sessions.
This level of student/teacher interaction and of music/dance integration is very rare, and I would recommend contacting Thanos at the TapMotif website if you are interested in participating next year. The faculty included Max Pollak, Heather Cornell, Petros Klampanis and Spyros Manesis, and master Greek percussionist Petros Kourtis.
The school where TapMotif classes were held in Lefkada
TapMotif finished with a flourish: a concert performance featuring two large music/dance projects put together by the participants as well as various smaller lineups of students and faculty performing individually and together. To promote the event in the town of Lefkada we staged an impromptu parade the day before the concert. Petros Kourtis held down the beat on the davouli (Greek bass drum) while yours truly played sax and flute in conjunction with Magda Giannikou, Petros Klampanis, and Spyros on percussion.
Petros Kourtis, Petros Klampanis, Magda, and Spyros
Here’s some video of the parade, filmed by TapMotifian Vicky Annand:
The concert itself, called Bridges in Time, was staged in a beautiful little open-air theater in the center of Lefkada town, and was an incredible summation of the TapMotif ethos. Many thanks Thanos!
Bridges in Time TapMotif Concert; photo by Anabel Felix
SLOVENIA
I knew my 10 days in Greece would be impossible to compare anything else to, so I looked forward to my trip to Slovenia with brand new eyes. Put together by my good friend and City College of New York classmate, drummer Gasper Bertoncelj, the Legendary Slovenian Tour of 2010 commenced soon after I flew from Athens into Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. The band included Slovenians Jure Pukl on alto saxophone and Nikola Matosic on bass, and American pianist Joe Kaplowitz, who lives in Croatia. Every one of these musicians can really play, and it was a pleasure performing with them. The day after I arrived we rehearsed in a Cold War-Era bomb shelter in Ljubljana now converted into a rehearsal space:
Tha Bomb Shelter
The next day we were off to the city of Koper on the Adriatic Sea, where we performed at the Baladoor Jazz Festival.
The show was a lot of fun, and we hung late that night; I indulged in a couple of great local beers, Union (Gasper’s favorite) and Laško. Slovenians are no slouches when it comes to hanging out, as you can see in this photo:
Jure and Nikola discuss the state of Slovenian jazz
The day after Koper we peeled ourselves off the motel room floor and drove back to Ljubljana for a pre-World Cup Final gig at Sax Pub, a unique venue run by a great patron of the arts, Ljubo.
Photo by Iztok Repovž
After a couple of days off we next performed at Club Gajo in Ljubljana, this time as an organ quartet with Joe, Jure, Gasper and myself. While in Ljubljana some of us stayed at the apartment of Nikola’s father. The place has hosted so many musicians over the years that the jazz community there calls it the ‘Jazz Hotel’. It was very comfortable. Thanks Nikola!!! We then drove up to Bled, a beautiful lake town in the southern Alps, to play at Festival Bled with the full quintet. This gig was in an incredible setting: a former villa of Tito, the long-term head of state of the former Yugoslavia. The villa overlooks the lake and Bled Island, which includes the beautiful Assumption of Mary Pilgrimage Church.
Special Thanks to Gasper for putting all of this together!
UPCOMING
There’s some good stuff coming up:
August 11th at 7PM: Rumbatap will be performing in Weehawken, NJ as part of the Hudson Riverfront Summer Concert Series.
Wednesday August 18th: Paul Carlon & Los Américas at Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia
We’ll be rolling into Philly for a quintet version of the group, w/Max Pollak. Sets at 8 & 9:45 PM.
Wednesday September 15th: Paul Carlon & Los Américas at Miles’ Cafe in New York City
Our first NYC show in a while; 7:30-10 pm
Oct. 4-11: The McCarron Brothers Way Down in Honolulu Tour
This is the first time I’ll be bringing a group to Hawaii; we are mega-psyched for this one!
Check my website for details on these and other upcoming events.
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