Back in New York again and getting a bit road weary.
My stay was booked through Friday at the Gild Hall hotel but I was able to escape the madness on Wednesday. My last few days of Executive Platinum status on American Airlines was put to good use in getting me on a flight an hour earlier than planned. This sign that I saw in Heathrow airport was on my mind as I sat cramped in a seat at the back of the earlier flight.
As usual, I was able to escape work for a few hours and enjoy some of the excellent jazz music that seems to be happening somewhere every night in New York. The Tuesday night show at Birdland was titled “The Story of Jazz: 100 Years” and was presented by the Vincent Herring band.
Here’s the blurb from the playbill:
“A musical journey celebrating 100 years of America’s original art form begins with the African drumming and work songs that led to the birth of the blues – the basis of all jazz. The show moves through 1920’s Ragtime, to 1930’s Swing, to 1940’s Bebop, to 1950’s Cool. In the 1960’s jazz explodes with innovation: The Hard Bop of Miles Davis and Art Blakey, the Modal Jazz of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Soul Jazz, the Bossa Nova craze, Latin Jazz, and Free/Avant-Garde sounds of Ornette Coleman. The program concludes with 1970’s Fusion and the many Post-Bop iterations from the 1980’s to the present.”
I really enjoyed the medleys from the Dixieland era (featuring lots of Sydney Bechet style clarinet) and from the 1950s with “So What” by Miles Davis. I dragged my boss out of the office to join me and we were in the front row next to the band which allowed us to enjoy the interaction between the players. Here are a couple of videos. The first has the classic “Birdland” and the second features some very high register trumpet playing – it hurts my embouchure just listening to it.
The rest of the week has been quite relaxing and spent catching up with my long lost wife. All the little daily routines – workout, coffee and crossword, watching “This is Us” and “Madame Secretary” – that I really miss when on the road too long.
On Saturday we saw the movie “The Post” with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. I enjoyed learning about a historical incident that I didn’t know about. The backdrop of the IPO of the media organization and the legal ruling against the New York Times publishing the Pentagon papers really made the decision on whether or not to publish by Katharine Graham very compelling.
Here are a couple of musical langiappes: My favorite version of “Birdland” by the amazing Weather Report featuring the classic Jaco Pastorius bass lines and some great jazz rock from the 70s by the Lafayette Afro Rock Band.
I arrived in London on Monday morning for a few days of work. The Tower of London was right next to my hotel and so after a nice rejuvenating swim in the hotel pool I went for a wander around the neighborhood. Thai food was my choice for dinner and then off to try and sleep.
quite brisk and refreshing. It took me a few minutes to understand that I was headed to East Croydon and had to type that in to buy a ticket. The new and fully automated station didn’t have anyone to ask for help. The train journey was less than 15 minutes and the office was directly across the street from the East Croydon station – easy peasy. Meeting the EMEA team face to face for the first time was very nice – I even got to play some ping pong in the newly modernized office. The walk back to the hotel numbed 
my toes and my colleague informed me that those in the know wore thermal socks – not something I considered when packing for the trip. Some clients took me out for drinks and dinner when I got back into central London and scotch eggs on the menu was a pleasant surprise.
50th birthday. The flight landed just ahead of a snow storm and I was glad David had his Land Rover to collect me. The drive to Stewarton was uneventful. Here’s a map that shows the location of Stewarton on the West coast of Scotland.
We had a lovely, leisurely meal and the ladies finished up with some fancy sundaes. Many but not all of the abandoned cars had been retrieved by the time we made the drive back home.
The turbine housing at the top is the size of a large caravan and you really don’t appreciate the scale until up next to it. Walking in the snow and wind certainly blew out the cobwebs and I was glad to have Struan’s hiking boots.
I finished Tom Hanks’ new book, Uncommon Type: Short Stories, on the flight and highly recommend it. Each story starts with a picture of a typewriter from Hanks’ collection which features somehow in the story. The quality of the short stories and the everyday characters captured in them was surprising – what a talented man.
sign in front of the entrance to my office. Not sure what you’re supposed to do in response to the sign, look up? Temperatures rose each day that I was there and as usual I tried to make the best of being in New York in the evenings.
well known saxophone player from Australia. She and her son were spending some time in New York before heading to Cuba to perform in the international jazz festival. They were friends with both Aaron and Joshua and so I got to have a nice chat with them as a result. You might remember that I met Joshua once before at the Village Vanguard when McD shared her champagne with him.
Work involved many long meetings with vendors, and it was easy to drift off into enjoying this excellent view of the Brooklyn Bridge and East river from the conference room.
eon in Tribeca for dinner on Wednesday night. We’d been there once before with Mary and Chuck and I remembered enjoying the French brasserie feel. A nice bracing mile walk helped me work up an appetite.
After workout and coffee and crossword on Saturday, Diana got sucked into the puzzle that my Mum and Dad sent for Christmas. We noticed that the title of this challenge is, “The puzzle that ruined Christmas”. It’s similar to the Frenchy (New Orleans artist) puzzles in that it doesn’t have any edge pieces and the pieces are cut in interesting shapes. The majority are Christmas trees and Diana had a small outburst saying that, “Ah geez, three pieces fit together to make another Christmas tree shape”.
week. This story is appropriately set in New Orleans and follows three generations of an African American family from the 1940s until today. I enjoyed the read very much and gained a good insight into the class and racial struggles in the city through the years.