Been a while

Apologies for the delayed first post, it's taken a while to find my feet in NYC and get a decent internet signal.
It's been a busy few days, walking the one block from the subway to my hostel for the first time I did the trip, I walked right into the jazz at the lincoln centre foyer. Instantly I filled around 4 days with free jazz events and gigs that I now have coming up, the first of which is Gotham Jazz today at midday.

I have also been to a few late night gigs now. The two main ones were Adam Rogers with Aaron Parks and Anthonio Sanchez at the Village Vanguard and Ari Hoening with Jonathon Kriesberg at Smalls. At both gigs the hired musicians were reading, the MD was giving out instructions prior to each song and even though some of the best musicians in the world were playing, I did notice some mistakes now and again. I soon realized this was because the bands hadn't played together for a few years if at all which put the standard of the gig into context as it was very tight.

Smalls jazz club especially is an amazing place. I turned up at half 7 and paid my $20 which lasted until 3am and watched a duo warm up the crowed before Ari. Rather than the duo (Tenor Sax and Piano) playing background music, they were playing the latest standards they were working on and songs they had written that they wanted to try infront of a crowed for the first time. This setting proved to be the perfect environment for a musician to develope his skill whilst having room to make mistakes here and there.

I had best sign off as I'm heading to Harlem in soon, I will make sure try and post more often and try and make the posts a bit more structured, theres so much to talk about which makes it hard to be concise.

Brian Blade tommorow at the Vanguard so I'll post on how that went  in a couple of days, plus the midday events and jams.

Steve