Day: May 20, 2018

Week in Review – May 20, 2018

This was a much needed quiet week at home after New York, New Orleans, back to New York, Nashville and San Diego.  Our only out of the normal routine activity was dinner with Patty and Brent on Friday night.  The food was amazing as usual with smoked pork and chicken and an excellent sauce for the pork.  They were celebrating their wedding anniversary on Saturday and so we picked up some funny gifts at the Groovy Coop in downtown McKinney after coffee on Friday.  Patty loves cats and so this towel seemed appropriate.

Brent has taken to calling McD “The Instigator” based on an evening a few months ago where he apparently caught her coming around the corner into the kitchen with 2 bottles of wine from the fridge and a huge smile on her face.  We prefer “The Facilitator”.  Here’s Brent’s reenactment of the incident.

Diana woke up quite a bit earlier than me on Saturday morning (3:30am) to watch the Royal Wedding.  We both enjoyed the ceremony with my highlights being the gospel choir doing “Stand By Me” and the cello soloist. The wonderful rendition of Ave Maria was performed by 19 year old Sheku Kanneh-Mason who had to break a previous engagement with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.  He won the BBC Young Musician award at the age of 17 and comes from a very musical family.  All of his brothers and sisters play classical music on various instruments with 2 others enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music.

I’ve put in my birthday order for the light blue convertible vintage E-type Jaguar that Harry drove to the evening reception.

The gospel choir singing “Stand by Me” reminded me of an article I’d read earlier in the week about an organization called Playing for Change.  It’s co-founder, Mark Johnson, says “Music is the connection to overcome all the divisions in our world”.  The organization records videos of musicians from all over the world collaborating on well known songs and uses the proceeds to fund musical education facilities in under served areas.  Here they are doing “Stand by Me”.

I highly recommend the other videos in the series and love the way the production builds up as new musicians are added into the mix.  What an excellent organization.

Here’s a video that I’ve been meaning to share for a while from a series that features musicians touring around the New Orleans French Quarter in a horse drawn buggy and playing music.  This one is Taj Mahal doing his great song “Queen Bee”.  A great one for a Sunday afternoon.

Now back to the gospel chorus arena again.  Here’s an excellent version of the incomparable Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.  There are way too many disappointing covers of this song but this one has the right blend of quiet delivery combined with the Apollo gospel choir from Chicago.

I’ll finish out this shorter than normal post with the song I’m listening to just now.  Soul eyes performed by Stan Getz on the tenor saxophone and Kenny Barron (two weeks ago at the Jazz Standard in New York) on piano.  Getz is one of a handful of saxophone players who has such a unique and beautiful sound that you can pick him out almost immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

Week in Review – May 13, 2018

This week started in Nashville and finished up with Campbell’s graduation in San Diego – a very busy and proud week indeed.

From Monday through Thursday our global work team met in Nashville for a series of meetings.  The days and nights were fully occupied.

On Monday, I took some colleagues to a couple of my favourite places in East Nashville (a rapidly gentrifying but still unique area).  We started with drinks at Rosemary (a speakeasy with a great patio in a regular house) and everyone seemed to enjoy the different setting and the great outside weather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For dinner I chose Butcher and Bee which is a great Mediterranean restaurant.  We had a lot of vegetarian dishes (a theme for this week) and my boss loved his grilled eggplant.  The whipped feta and chickpea humus are stand outs on the menu.  As dinner was winding up, one of my colleagues let me know that he had been able to make plans for a couple of us to visit a well known recording studio.

The studio was in a fancy gated community where a number of the country stars live and was located in the basement of a mansion owned by the producer Keith Thomas.  A song writers’ workshop was finishing up when we arrived and it was very interesting to listen in.  Then we got to experiment with the studio equipment and I was able to play an amazing sounding grand piano.

Keith was a gracious host and showed us a large collection of gold records that were presented to him for producing.  He’s done a number of Amy Grant albums and one of D’s favourites, “Tapestry Revisited”.  Diana noticed that Curtis Stigers (the singer we enjoyed so much at Birdland in NY a few weeks ago) sang one of the Carole King tributes on the album.

The group activity on Tuesday night was a pool tournament in a hall just off the main Broadway strip.  My partner and I won our first two games and were in good position for the playoffs but quickly lost to some real hustlers.

 

Wednesday evening took us to Pinewood Social, a retro style bar and bowling alley in downtown Nashville.  We divided up into groups and kept score for awards.  My team won trophies for the best team score – none of us was great but we were all consistently non-horrible bowlers.

After bowling we had a wander down Broadway (the main downtown strip of music clubs which is similar to 6th street in Austin) with our first stop the Acme Feed and Seed Store beside the river.  The building was first opened in 1890 and ran as a feed business, unloading supplies from the river for many years.

There was a good band playing and we listened for 30 minutes or so.  I found a couple of signs in the store that appealed to me.

 

 

 

After Acme we stopped into Bootleggers where there was a great band playing.  They treated me to one of my favourite songs:

We planned poorly for our Uber ride back to the hotel as the Justin Timberlake concert was letting out just as we tried to call up transportation.  We went for a snack and got back a little later than anticipated.

Nashville is a great city – compact, walk-able, safe, and with a huge appreciation for all things musical.  Even the room numbers at the hotel had guitar chord tabs and I enjoyed the reading material in the lounge.

I arrived home late on Thursday with just enough time to unpack, pack again for San Diego and get a little sleep.

We landed in San Diego in the early afternoon, checked into the hotel, freshened up and headed out for dinner.  I chose a place called the Wine Vault and Bistro on India St from some online research and we were both very happy with the choice.  The restaurant is only open Thursday through Sunday and has a very inexpensively priced three course dinner and wine pairings on Thursdays.  I started with a sausage and black lentil appetizer, then a roasted cauliflower dish (keeping the vegetarian theme going), and finished with a mille-feuille dessert.  Each of the nine choices had a separate wine pairing and so we selected based as much on the wine as the dishes.  We learned that most of the regular customers were on a wine tour of Italy and so signed up for the tour mailing list.

We added a side of the most delicious brussel sprouts I’ve tasted – heavily charred on the outside and very tender on the inside.

After dinner we stopped by a party that Molly was having with her family and friends to celebrate her graduation to pick up our graduation tickets.  We were lucky enough to meet her Mum, Dad and identical twin sister.  Then we called it an early night since festivities started at 8am on Saturday morning.

Can you find Campbell?

Graduation was in the 12,000 seat Viejas arena where the San Diego State University Aztecs basketball team plays and the place was close to full as around 3,000 kids from the Fowler business school graduated.  Here’s a video clip of Alexa (Campbell’s neighbour and business school classmate), Eric (Campbell’s roommate and friend since the age of 4) and Campbell walking across the stage:

We arranged to meet at Campbell’s house after graduation for pictures and were fortunate to run into him walking in the same direction as we traversed the campus.  He was about to lose his tassels and drapes on his walk but Diana got him all fixed up.  Some great pictures were taken and we got to say hello to Campbell’s roommates (including Grady and Grady’s dog).  I’m so proud of Campbell for graduating in 4 years (not easy to do these days) and already having a job lined up.

Campbell, Eric and their Mums had organized a celebration lunch at the La Jolla Shores hotel.  We sat on a patio looking out on the beach and had a lovely lunch.  Finn, Will and Christine joined us at our table and we had a nice visit.  I gave a speech about some memories of Campbell’s life so far that seemed to be well received.  It was all fine until the end when I was trying to say that I hoped he continued to live his life with the same kindness and grace that he had shown so far and got a bit emotional.

Future Christmas Card?

After all that excitement we relaxed at the hotel for a while and then had a light, late dinner at the Starlite lounge.  We found out later that Campbell and Molly had been there for Valentine’s day.

Starlite had great cocktails and food in a beautifully designed retro atmosphere.  I enjoyed a buratta and ratatouille dish to keep the veggie theme going.

On Sunday morning we had a workout and then headed over to the Pacific Beach area for brunch.  We had tried to go to World Famous for brunch on a previous trip but they had a power outage.  All was good this time and we thoroughly enjoyed a lobster benedict.

After brunch we had a pleasant walk along the beach boardwalk which affords great people watching and envious inspection of the fancy beach houses.  We then spent a little over an hour doing the New York Times Sunday crossword together at the Amplified Ale House.

Campbell and Molly met us for dinner at Craft and Commerce in Little Italy – just across the street from Harbor where we had met them for brunch on our previous visit with Kris and Cat.  We sat outside and were warmed up by  a small fire pit in the center of the table which seemed like a bit of a liability.  Again the food and cocktails were very good.  I had a mushroom and buratta tart to finish out my vegetarian weekend.  My Dad would not have appreciated the very crispy carrots and other vegetables.

What a lovely weekend!  I’m so proud of the young man that Campbell has become.

This poignant song from Peter Gabriel was on my mind a couple of times during the weekend as I watched Campbell enjoying his success.  I particularly like the addition of the brass band: