It’s April time here and you can discover New York in a cherry blossom costume. It is very interesting to see a million city in different clothes. Sunny – Rainy – Snowy. New York offers you plenty of wonderful happenings by everyday. In daytime I work on my symphony and in the night time I go often to concerts. I like very much the Bar 55. It is a small club where the energy rotate very fast in the room. I saw there incredible musicians already. I love the spirit of this city. New York is like huuuuge Switzerland. All countries are meeting in one city.
I saw Billy Joel. (Pianist and singer). He was playing at Madison Square Garden (like a stadion). I was growing up with his music. Great hits! And suddenly Itzhak Perlman was on stage an played with them. Phenomenal!
As I was for a few days in Germany for my dad’s 70 s birthday I forgot my music recording stick for my computer. I had to buy a new one in New York, so I went to Sam Ash store. I bought one there and I discovered in the same store a few very old saxophones there. Sam Ash music sells aswell saxophones. I asked if I may play some of them. I did. It was like saxophone heaven. The more often I came out of the box the guy behind the desk talked to me and asked me what I am doing so we started to talk more and more. At the end of my saxophone check session I ve got a gig. The band is called 12 houses and they play sundays at Nublu. Duke Ellingtons trombone player Art Baron was sitting beside me and he was just great. Matt Lavelle, the leader of 12 houses is a fantastic composer, musician and person. He offered me for my whole stay, to have sunday evenings always my family called 12 houses. Means, I can join them every sunday I am in New York. This is very kind and nice. A steady gig in New York. How crazy is that. Matt was 3 years Ornette Coleman’s student. All the stories he mentioned is just like gold for me. Ornette said to Matt that he shall have always men and women on stage. Equality!
Beside playing, I started to be interested in martial arts and I joined the self-defense workshop in lower east side New York. My goal is to compare music with martial arts and this path is very interesting. I will talk about that later in my newsletters.
Aswell, I am on the way to find out more about the meditative state of mind during playing music. That brought me to an african drumming group which I joined for once. Multiple rhythmical patterns are like natural music drug.
And one other thing which I am very close right now is clowning. My friend Lieselotte just did a one week workshop in clowning with Patch Adams in Guatemala and I was so inspired by her clown stories that I started t be interested in that field aswell. Let’s see where it will go!
Beside that I am highly interested in indian polyrhythm music. I found a great teacher called Samir Chatterjee. We just started with 5/8. He gave me one lesson, but this one has so many information inside that I can practise now for years.
Right now I am in Saint Louis Missouri and joining some concerts, masterclasses at Washington University and discover the city. For many years I know already the saxophone store Saxquest from its internet presence. Then I saw that this saxophone heaven with lots of oooold vintage saxophones is based in Saint Louis. I went there and I couldn’t go home anymore.
It was just like a golden river!