2 Weeks in Milwaukee

I've spent the past two weeks playing with the Milwaukee Symphony. The first week's program consisted of Brahms' Haydn Variations, the Chaconne from John Corigliano's score to the movie, "The Red Violin" and Dvorak's 7th Symphony. Joshua Weilerstein conducted and MSO concertmaster, Frank Almond performed the violin solo on the Corigliano.

In between weeks there I had a few days off, so I traveled to Illinois to visit my parents and celebrate my father's 83rd birthday. It was a restful and enjoyable couple of days. I went for two nice runs on the Jane Addams Trail.

Back in Milwaukee, our next week of concerts featured four colorful pieces:  Ravel Mother Goose Suite, Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain with Ingrid Fliter as piano soloist, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and Debussy's La Mer.

Section for La Mer: Rudi Heinrich, myself, Joshua Fleming and Beth Giacobassi

Our conductor for this week was the fine, but quirky Jun Märkl.

During the week, Beth invited me to give a class for her students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I enjoyed a couple of long runs on the Oak Leaf Trail and visited the Colectivo Coffee Bar in a re-purposed pump house right on Lake Michigan. My guest there was former MSO piccolo player and former Clevelander, Judy Ormond.

I also met Rudi for coffee at the Anodyne Coffee Bar located in the Bay View neighboorhood.

Milwaukee week

I am currently on a 6-month sabbatical from The Cleveland Orchestra. While still teaching my wonderful students at CIM, I will use some of my free time to play with the Milwaukee Symphony.

Milwaukee's Principal Bassoonist, Ted Soluri, recently won the Principal Bassoon position in the Dallas Symphony and has a leave of absence from the MSO. Thus, the need for a substitute.

Last week was my first week with the group and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  Milwaukee has a great orchestra with so many fine players. I was given a very friendly welcome and was impressed by their ensemble, great balance and intonation among other things. It was easy for me to fit in.

Rudi Heinrich and Beth Giacobassi, the two members of the bassoon section were very accommodating to me. Both are great players.

The program consisted of Elgar's "In the South", Dukas' "La Peri" (fanfare and symphonic poem), Sibelius Violin Concert (with Karen Gomyo) and the Firebird Suite.

Rudi played principal on the Elgar and Dukas. I played principal on the Sibelius and Firebird and second on the Elgar and Dukas. Beth played contra on the Elgar, second on the Sibelius and Firebird and third on the Dukas.

Milwaukee has three-person woodwind sections. Unlike our four-person sections in Cleveland, there is much more rotating from one part to another in the sections in a week's repertoire. I gather that the assistant principals play a good amount of second, along with some principal duties, while the players of auxiliary instruments (piccolo, English Horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon) play more on the main instrument (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon) than ours do.

Thus, with this week's program order, Beth needed to switch immediately from the Elgar's substantial contra part to the second bassoon part for the Sibelius (with its treacherous second movement) with very little time to even try a bassoon note in between. She managed this beautifully every time!

 Rudi took me out for coffee on Saturday morning. We found a good place at the Colectivo coffee bar in the Third Ward neighborhood. I enjoyed a really nice cortado and bought some of their roast -- the Java Blue Batavia, a really great light roast.

Running in Milwaukee is terrific!  They have done a wonderful job in preserving the lakefront -- shame on you, Cleveland!! The Oak Leaf Trail skirts Lake Michigan and also veers into town, following the river.

The area near the Marcus Center (home of Uihlein Hall) has some interesting sights. Among them is an ice skating rink across the street.

And this church:

Wonder what they serve for Communion?

Brussels -- Beer, chocolate and mussels

The Orchestra's first stop was in Brussels, where we played a concert in the Palais des Beaux Arts -- a beautiful Art Deco temple with rather poor acoustics.

I tried to find a good place for a long run, to continue to battle jet lag. I hit upon the canal that runs through the city, thinking it might be scenic. Perhaps the 45 degree weather and the drizzling rain influenced my impression, but I found the area along the canal to be drab and industrial.

You can't go wrong in Brussels if you like beer, chocolate or food in general, however, so my free time was not a total loss.

I also managed to find a great place for coffee. Aksum is run by two Ethiopians who roast, sell and brew single origin Ethiopian coffee exclusively. I had a really memorable espresso and a good macchiato there.

Travel Coffee

Making Good Coffee When You Travel

If you like good coffee, you know it can be hard to find when you're traveling. Everyone has their morning routines and making the coffee is one of them. 

When staying in a hotel in the US, you are usually left with one of two options for in-room coffee.

1. A dried out disc or packet of coffee of unknown age in a filter . Following the instructions for making usually results in the "Brown Crayon in Water" style of coffee popular with Americans in decades past.

2. If you double the packets to strengthen the coffee or if you venture down to the breakfast room you often end up with the über dark roast with a burned taste.

Going out to find the good stuff can be time-consuming and frustrating. I've got a routine that allows me to have pretty good coffee in the room.

This is my mini coffee grinder. It is a manual burr grinder with an adjustable grind. The coffee is poured into the top chamber and the grounds drop into the clear receptacle below. The capacity is small; you can make one or two cups of coffee at a time. The grind is pretty accurate considering the low cost of this cute little grinder.

The handle detaches for safe packing.

The grinder is made to be paired with the equipment needed for pour-over, single cup style coffee making. Along with a grinder like this, you'll need a ceramic cone for extraction. Plastic cones are fine, but a ceramic cone, if heated first, retains the heat necessary for better coffee brewing.

Some hotel rooms have a hot pot. Use this or, in lieu of one, use the hot water run through the coffee maker for pouring.

You can bring your own roasted coffee or buy some beans in a store in the town you're visiting. I pack mine in a Mason jar for freshness.

Hario, the maker of the ceramic cone, sells the filter paper that fits in this cone, but you can fold a Melitta filter (#4 or #2) to fit in the cone. They are easier to find.

Pouring the water at the rate necessary for a good extraction is difficult if you don't have a dripper, so I bring this along, too.

The spout is narrow and angled just right for aiming the stream and controlling the rate at which the water hits the grounds. There is a certain amount of technique involved in a good pour over, but just using this dripper will greatly improve your coffee!

Remember to keep everything hot! Boil extra water in the hot pot or pour some hot tap water from the hotel room bathroom tap into the dripper while you're setting everything up and grinding. Heat your cup with hot tap water as well as the cone.

Here's an instructional video for getting a great pour over:

Vienna -- Coffee

Coffee in Vienna

Vienna is famous for its cafes, and rightly so. I enjoyed going back to a few of my favorites: Cafe Schwarzenberg and Cafe Frauenhuber (where Beethoven debuted his Quintet for Piano and Winds).

However, on this trip I found a few more interesting places.  Since I roast my own coffee, I was curious to see if there were any small roasting companies in Vienna.  While I certainly didn't look around that much, I did find one.

It's called Gegenbauer. They have a roaster and a stall in the Naschmarkt. I happened upon it during a stroll through the Naschmarkt to find lunch.

The espresso was a darker roast than I do, but very nice.  They sell their roasted coffee there with the date of the roast on the bag. They also roast pumpkin, almond and other seeds and sell them.  Across the alley they sell their own selections of specialty olive oils and vinegars.

However, the best coffee I've had in Vienna came at the bar in the Julius Meinl store in the Graben section of the pedestrian area in the center of the city. Julius Meinl is a stunningly beautiful gourmet grocery store that has a front section selling prepared food and coffee and lighter fare. The Grosse Brauner I had was not burned tasting like a lot of espresso, but not dull and stale like some I had in other cafes. The foamed milk was beautifully done.  Comes with a little square of fudge-like confection.

Great Coffee in Cleveland!

I found a terrific coffee bar yesterday!  It's called Rising Star.  Located in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland, it occupies a former firehouse on the corner of West 29th Street and Church Street just south of Detroit Avenue.

While primarily a small batch roaster that supplies to local restaurants and individual customers, it has a storefront and bar in the firehouse building.  I visited the storefront yesterday and spent some time talking with the owner and employees.

These guys are devoted to finding the best quality sources for coffee, and using the best methods for roasting, grinding and extracting the brew.  Most roasters use coffee brokers to purchase their lots, but Rising Star goes directly to growers (the owner had just gotten back from Peru when we spoke yesterday) to sample the coffee in person. They also rely on samples sent from growers.

They buy only micro-lots of coffee.  All the employees I spoke with sample LOTS of coffees on a routine basis to keep current with what's out there.

They deliver or ship their coffee within one day of roasting to guarantee freshness. You can also pick up orders in the store.

The coffee is roasted in the firehouse behind the bar area.

You can watch the roasting while you drink.

The employees are very open about the business and really enjoyed talking about coffee with me.  They have a very unpretentious attitude about their craft and offered me some tips on how to improve my home roasting and my espresso making.

Although the store's offerings change regularly, yesterday they had two espressos available -- one single origin from Bali and another that was a blend.  There were three different coffees available brewed -- one from Peru, the Balinese and one from Guatemala.

There were also specialty iced coffees and sweets available for purchase.

Perhaps most interesting was that they offer three different ways of brewing the coffee :

Pour over:

Aeropress:

Vacuum pot:

Each order of coffee is made individually.  No one is in a hurry to process your order.  Shots are pulled carefully and with attention. No beans decaying in Lucite bins, no giant carafes with brewed coffee mouldering in them, no coffee blackening on burners.

The coffee has not been roasted off-site at some indeterminate date.  

I tried the Balinese espresso.  It was one of the best shots I've ever had.  A lighter roast with a great mixture of tartness and sweetness.  This was followed by an aeropress Peruvian and then they offered me a pour over Colombian that was extraordinary.

The storefront is very basic with just a few stools and a table for eating and drinking, so if you go, don't expect a lounge atmosphere with Wifi and outlets for laptops, a fireplace, groovy music, etc. This is a workplace that just happens to have a coffee bar that serves the best coffee I've had in Cleveland!

Blue Bottle Coffee Comes to New York!

The Blue Bottle Coffee company has come to New York.  This may not be news to New Yorkers, but to me it's exciting news.

Blue Bottle is named for the first coffee house in Europe, started shortly after the Turks left their coffee beans on the outskirts of Vienna in the 17th century, setting off a caffeinated revolution in the West.

Blue Bottle is a Bay area roaster that serves coffee that has been roasted no longer than 48 hours prior to serving.  Anyone who has had a cup of coffee brewed from beans that are that fresh knows that the kind of flavor derived from such freshness CAN'T be achieved at your local Starbucks or any other shop where the beans are stored in grinders or (worse yet) those plastic bins without attention to the roasting date. 

Because of the gas exchange due to roasting, coffee has a shelf life.  As a home roaster, I know that coffee from the same batch tastes very different depending upon how long ago you roasted it.  Employees in most coffee shops can't or won't tell you how recently the coffee in your cup has been roasted.

Vacuum packing and other storage methods can prolong freshness, but in the end it's best to roast just enough for use within 48 hours or so. This is perhaps why many home roasting machines have a small capacity.

Thus, Blue Bottle and others that keep track of this stand out.  Care in grinding and extracting the coffee is also essential, of course.

Blue Bottle uses a pour over method for their drip grind.  Coffee for each cup is ground and brewed individually.  Nearly boiling water is used to wet the paper filter and warm the ceramic filter underneath, then slowly poured into the filter while it sits on a rack just above the cup.  Ideally the water is poured at the same rate at which the coffee is being extracted below.  This process takes several minutes.

The baristas in the basement of the Rockefeller Center are well trained and excited about coffee.  I caught one at a low period of business and he offered me a couple of samples of their different coffees.

For me, the real test of a good coffee bar is its espresso.  No milk to hid bitter or under roasted coffee!  At the Blue Bottle shop, much care was taken.  The shot was weighed on a scale (not unusual in the business).  More unusual was that the barista threw out a couple of shots after trying.  I think my shot came from the third attempt. This would be considered wasteful most places!

He extracted a very complex Yergacheffe for me.  A single origin, organic coffee from Ethiopia.  Getting good espresso from a single bean is a real treasure.  Usually espresso is a carefully mixed blend of four or five very different coffees combined to give the shot complexity, warmth and good crema. This shot tasted so good I didn't want to add sugar.  I've only ever done this with my brother's espresso before.

In another nod to Vienna, the espresso is served with a small glass of water.  In this case, sparkling water.

The baristas at the shop were passionate about coffee but not snobbish.  They had no problem making a sweet milk coffee drink for the next lady in line.

Besides the location Rockefeller Center, there are shops in Chelsea and Tribeca.  The coffee is roasted in nearby Williamsburg.  That is how they guarantee freshness.

Salzburg

Next we took a train to Salzburg.  The Cleveland Orchestra was booked for two concerts at the Salzburg Festival. 

Salzburg is known as the town where Mozart was born and where he spent his early years when he wasn't on the road with his family playing for the crowned heads of Europe.  We played in the Grosses Festspielhaus, just a few streets away from his house.

Featured on the two concerts were movements from Smetana's Ma Vlast, Shostakovich Symphony #6 and Lutoslawksi's Concerto for Orchestra.

We had a surprise when Krystian Zimmerman, the piano soloist for the Lutoslawski Piano Concerto cancelled at the last minute.  After much frantic phone calling to find a replacement, the piece's performance was cancelled. 

In its place we scheduled a repeat of the piece we commissioned and premiered a few days ago in Lucerne, Matthias Pintscher's Chute d'Etoiles for Two Trumpets and Orchestra.  Mike Sachs and Jack Sutte, Principal Trumpet and Second Trumpet were called back into action for this performance.

The Salzburg Festival is one of the most exclusive music festivals in the world. It was started in between the World Wars by prominent German artists such as Max Rheinhardt and Richard Strauss.

Along with us, the lineup for this year's Festival included a production of Handel's "Julius Caesar" with an all-star cast.  An old friend of mine, Ed Deskur, was playing horn in the Handel orchestra. 

On one night we both had concerts (the Festival has several concert venues in the same complex).  However, Ed only played at the beginning and end of the opera.  Julius Caesar is a FIVE HOUR opera, so he had lots of free time in between.  He snuck backstage at our hall and met up with me during my intermission. He ended up staying to hear the rest of our concert and then went back to play the last few minutes of his!

The next day, we got together and hiked up to the castle on the mountain overlooking Salzburg.

During our stay in Salzburg, I also had a chance to see another friend, Stanley Hale.  Stan lives outside of Vienna and caught a train to come up and spend an afternoon with me. We hiked up the Kapuzinerberg and then had dinner.

The orchestra left the next morning for Linz.  Since it was a day off, I stayed an extra day and went for a long run on the path by the Salzach river that morning.

After the run I went to my favorite coffee bar for an espresso and some breakfast. 

The Salzburg Cafe Primadonna is not the fanciest coffee bar in Salzburg, but it is quick and the coffee is expertly made. The espresso is complex, rich, but not burned tasting like many places.  It doesn't adhere to the Starbucks trend of extreme dark roast.  Therefore, you don't need milk of any kind to cover the burned taste.

It is centrally located just off the Linzergasse just across the bridge from the western part of the Old City.

Later that evening I boarded a train for Linz, our next stop on the tour.

San Francisco coffee

 We're in San Francisco for three days, so I have only a little time to explore.  I've happened upon some good coffee, though!

Right across from our hotel in the massive Westfield Shopping Mall in the Union Square district you can find Caffe Central.  It's located in the basement Food Emporium below the shopping mall.

The coffee shop sits in the middle of this upscale food court and looks rather unprepossessing.  However, they serve Oakland's famous Blue Bottle Coffee.  The baristas are expert.  You can get individually brewed coffee in ceramic funnels as well as the usual espresso drinks.

My "acid" (ha-ha) test for a new coffee place is the espresso with no sweetener.  If they can do this well, it's usually a cinch that the other coffee drinks will be great.  There's no hiding a bad espresso in foamed milk or mocha shots!

My espresso at Caffe Central was really good.  Italian style ristretto with hints of coffee and lemon in the shot.

This morning I went for an 8 mile run with Hugh Michie, who is playing second bassoon with us for the tour.  We ran along the Embarcadero past all the wharves, through Fisherman's Wharf and up the hill to Fort Mason and nearly to the Presidio.  Beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the bay, Alcatraz, etc.

When we got back to the hotel Hugh took me to a Starbucks nearby that has a Clover machine.  I sampled a Kona brewed with the Clover.  If you're not familiar with this method, you might find this video interesting:

This store is at the corner of Cyril Magnin and O'Farrell.  I'll probably go back there tomorrow before we board the bus for the airport, since Caffe Central isn't open until 9:00am (!).

Before our last concert I made a stop at a Philz coffee in the 700 block of Van Ness Avenue.  I went in and asked for an espresso and got a funny look from the barista.  Philz specialty is individually brewed coffee, and, as such, they don't offer espresso drinks.  Instead they have a wide variety of coffees made individually.

I tried the "handmade" espresso.  Not really espresso as there was no pressurized water forced through a portafilter.    What the barista did was use an extremely finely ground coffee (like what is used for Turkish coffee) and put it through a special funnel with filter paper. 

The extraction took a couple of minutes -- not like the simple Melita style filter cone. 

The result was a very strong, complex and clean cup of coffee.  It had the taste of a French Roast done in a French press but without the sediment in the cup.

Coffee and Dining in Miami

We just got back from the first week of our 2012 Miami Residency.  Actually, we are now calling our time there "Cleveland Orchestra Miami", complete with Art Deco logo.

Although we were quite busy there, I did have some time to seek out more coffee places. My favorite remains Espressamente, the Illy espresso bar in the lobby of the Bayshore Marriott where the orchestra stays.

 

The bar has a sleek, modern design that highlights the coffee machines and accessories.

One night I had a tasty dinner at David's, a Cuban restaurant on Meridian Road just north of Lincoln Road in South Beach.  It is one of the few good, affordable restaurants in the area.  Below is a photo of my pollo asado, black beans and rice and fried plantains.

Afterwards I had a cup of Cuban coffee. It is made using an espresso machine, but there the similarity ends. The coffee usually has little or no crema on the top and is made very sweet.  Not sure if it's cane sugar, but there is a wonderful, syrupy sweetness that is balanced by the strong roast of the coffee. 

Later that week I found an interesting Italian coffee bar called Pinocchio.  It's on 8th St. in South Beach just off of Ocean Drive.  The bar is filled with things related to the story of Pinocchio.

The espresso there was just OK, but maybe I'll try again when it's not so busy. 

Another great place for coffee is the Nespresso store and coffee bar on Lincoln Road. It's on Lincoln just east of Alton Road.  The store is beautifully designed with the boxes of coffee pods and the pods themselves used in the design.  You can order coffee made from one of a dozen or so types, ogle the fancy machines and even buy one there if you want.  Nespresso has a mail order coffee service that's nice, too.

Here I am at the bar.

We also had a Bassoon Dinner in the middle of the week.  Jonathan Sherwin, John Clouser and Hugh Michie (who is subbing on second bassoon) joined me at Cafe Nuvo in the Spanish Village neighborhood for skirt steak.

Coffee in Vienna

Coffee is an art form in Vienna.  A whole culture built up around the bags of beans the Turks left outside of the city when they were defeated in 1683.  Soon coffee houses sprung up everywhere.

There are many ways coffee drinks are made in Vienna.  Originally, the coffee was named according to how it resembled the color of the robes of various monastic orders.  Thus, you can order a Franziskaner or a Cappuziner (our Cappuccino).  I think there are others as well, but not as common.  The ratio of coffee to milk accounts for subtle differences in the color. 

In Vienna, coffee is always served with a small glass of water, the spoon resting on top of the glass.  It arrives on a silver or pewter platter.

The milk drinks are served with Schlagobers on top and sometimes with cinnamon or chocolate shavings.

A Grosser (or Kleiner) Brauner is straight coffee served with a small pitcher of hot milk for you to add.

Coffee houses are institutions that attract tourists, artists, writers, intellectuals, etc.  You should not be in a hurry when you enter one.  Each has its own special atmosphere and decor.  I visited three while here this time; Cafe Museum, Cafe Sperl and Cafe Schwarzenberg.

Here is a photo of my Franziskaner at the Cafe Museum.

This is my Cappuccino at Cafe Schwarzenberg.

This is my breakfast at the Cafe Museum.  You can see the Grosser Brauner coffee in the middle.  The red hat is keeping my soft-boiled egg warm.

Myth buster #2 -- Talent can flourish in any environment

Here's another good one: Artists are freaks of nature -- they're born with their abilities intact, don't need to work hard at what they do to achieve astounding results, etc. Best of all, the belief that talent is sui generis, doesn't need a particular environment in which to flourish.

Mozart is often held up as the most famous example of this. The movie, "Amadeus", exploits this idea.

However, the evidence doesn't support this theory.  Yes, Mozart was born with talent, but his environment and upbringing had much more to do with it.  At age 3 his father started him on a rigorous regimen of musical training. After a few years of development he took the kids on tours of Europe, exposing them to music by other composers, among other things. For more on this, read Neil Zaslaw's essay, Mozart as Working Stiff

Indeed, environment is extremely important in the development of talent. Young musicians need to be in a place where others like them abound, where the exchange of ideas, performances, etc. is easy and frequent. Geoff Colvin writes in his book, "Talent Is Overrated" that most young artists quickly absorb what their first teachers have to give them and then move on to a "master teacher" and often move to a different location, usually an urban center or place where artists live in close proximity.

Mozart eventually ended up in Vienna, the musical capitol of the Western World. It was a rich environment with dozens of composers, concerts everywhere.  A great place to thrive for a musician at the time.

For a similar view on the musical development of J.S. Bach, read James R. Gaines'  "Evening in the Palace of Reason" By reading it, I discovered that Bach came from a family of musicians and composers dating back to a century before his birth. Making music for him was as commonplace as video gaming is today!

One more example and then I'll stop. From the world of jazz:

It's easy to imagine that jazz musicians, because they improvise for a living and cultivate a "hip", aloof image, don't put in the hard work or need the company of others to develop. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

You only need to read about Kansas City in the 30's or Harlem in the mid-20th century to find out that these places were hotbeds of activity. Musicians at one club would go across the street on their breaks to another club to listen to or sit with another group.  There were contests and all-star nights.

Minton's playhouse in Harlem is often cited as the place where Bebop was born. Read the wikipedia entry for Minton's, especially the sections on Monday Celebrity Nights, Cutting Sessions and Duels and Sitting in at Minton's to get an idea of the kind of crucible this environment was for the careers of many of the great jazz artists of the 1950's.

The Five Spot was another club in Manhattan in the East Village where jazz musicians, Beat poets, writers and abstract expressionist artists gathered. It's hard to believe that much of the music, poetry, art of the 1950s would have been produced without these places.

Below is a painting by Stan Landsaman  that was hung in the Five Spot and a photo of the club on a busy night.

Myth buster #1 - you've either got it or you don't

The main purpose of this blog is to pull back the curtain a bit and reveal some of the "secrets" of the life of a professional musician.

One of the most common myths regarding great artists is that they are somehow born with great talent and simply get to play around with it while others struggle mightily just to sing in tune or play a scale.  While it's true that each of us is unique and born with certain aptitudes and proclivities, research has shown that with creativity, it's mostly nurture and a little nature instead of the other way around.

In his book, "Talent Is Overrated", Geoff Colvin states what many other researchers have found: that composers and performers become successful through arduous practice and relentless self-evaluation.  He states that, for these artists, practice is "highly demanding mentally. . . continually seeking exactly those elements of performance that are unsatisfactory and then trying one's hardest to make them better places enormous strain on anyone's mental abilities."

He also notes that this kind of deliberate practice isn't much fun. "Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands."

The myth of "you've either got it or you don't" comes, I think, from what the public sees in a performance. Just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the tremendous amount of work needed to perform at a world-class level.

No one would find it entertaining or uplifting to listen to someone practice for hours, but, if done well, all that sweat and hard work results in a performance that is engaging. Paradoxically, with lots of deliberate practice, the performer strives for a sort of "planned spontaneity" in performance that gives the impression of freshness and life to an interpretation.  Never let them see you sweat!!

Jazz artists are especially prone to being given the "super talented" label.  What most people don't know is that they, too have put in long hours practicing scales and patterns, listening to and transcribing solos, improvising. Maybe it's the improvisatory aspect that gives people the impression they don't need to work at what they do!

I'm reading a great biography of jazz artist, Thelonious Monk right now.  I'm struck again and again by how hard he worked with his sidemen, teaching them his charts.

Here is a description of Monk's sessions with an orchestrator who was setting Monk's tunes for big band:

"The earliest meetings proved both productive and painstaking. Monk insisted that Overton transcribe his songs directly from the piano. They would sit together at the two instruments and Monk would patiently teach Overton each song, bar by bar, note by note. Monk had lead sheets, but he would not share them. . . on "Thelonious". . . they spent at least fifteen minutes on the first two bars alone, all the while explaining how the song should sound, what notes ought to be there and how the overtones are meant to suggest the key of Bb throughout the song. On "Monk's Mood". . . it took Overton -- an excellent pianist in his own right -- forty minutes to get through one chorus."

You get the picture. Now listen to this YouTube clip of Monk's group playing in Tokyo and don't tell me this hasn't been practiced and planned out to within an inch of it's life!!!

http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/836.html

Miami coffeeI

I've been searching for good coffee in Miami for a few years now.  There are several places to try, starting with Cafe Paul on Lincoln Road in South Beach and the predictable Starbucks. Espresso should never be served in a to-go cup, however.

There is also great Cuban style coffee everywhere if you like the thick sweet coffee they make.

However, I haven't found a place that makes really great espresso with love and care for each individual cup.

Yesterday, though, an Illy espresso bar opened in the lobby of the Bayshore Marriott, where we stay. Illy is about as prevalent in Europe as Starbucks is in the US, so it is a reliable brand. I went in and tried a double. It was pretty good. The place has potential. It may take them a while for the espresso to live up to the $4.25 price for a double but an auspicious start at any rate!

NYC coffee and music

I spent the morning going on an espresso bar pilgrimage.  After finding my favorite Midtown place, Zibetto, closed for renovation, I ventured downtown by train to Cafe Grumpy in Chelsea and Gimme Coffee in SoHo.

At Grumpy's I had their Guatemalan coffee made in the Clover.  It was heavenly!  The Clover gives a full flavor and a very clean taste.

At Gimme Coffee, I had the espresso.  The barista took a lot of care with my order, tossing at least two shots that he didn't feel up to standards.  He was tasting the shots all along and adjusting the grind.  The one he gave me was a little strong and bitter for my taste, though.

I made it to our morning rehearsal with time to spare.  I tried reeds on the Carnegie stage.  This is one of the most flattering halls in the world.  You can hear others AND yourself clearly.

In the rehearsal, Franz adjusted balances and colors in "Faune" and "Heldenleben"
and the orchestra responded with some magical textures.  The Orchestra has played here for years.  We know what to expect, so our adjustments were enhanced by the hall's legendary acoustics.

I'm really looking forward to our concert tonight.

Getting to NYC

Unexpected things can happen on tours and this one is no exception.

We flew from Miami right into the center of a nasty winter storm, arriving in Ann Arbor on Tuesday.  We played our concert in Hill Auditorium to a surprisingly large audience, given the severity of the weather.

During the concert, we learned that our concert the next evening in Chicago was canceled.  I was disappointed because of the many relatives I had who planned to attend, but it was definitely the right decision, under the circumstances.

This gave us a free day in Ann Arbor.  I spent it thusly; in the morning I went to a local coffee roaster, Mighty Good Coffee, and tried the espresso -- really great!

Lunch was Zingerman's deli-- one of the best around!  I went for an afternoon run in the snow and wind with Zach Lewis. There was some practicing in there somewhere.

Yesterday we got into New York.  I went for a quick run in Central Park and practiced for an hour.

I had a great dinner with Judy LeClair and Kim Laskowski of the New York Philharmonic bassoon section, along with Jonathan Sherwin and Rich King.