France

It's midnight. I sit in the beautiful lobby of Hotel St. Nicolas in the heart of La Rochelle. Next to me is a new friend, D'Arcy, a warmhearted and sharp-witted Canadian expatriate, who I met between sets at a May 6th concert. This trip has been a story of chance encounters, new friends. It has been characterized by adventures both exhilarating and exhausting but also by the warmth and tranquility of home-cooked meals.

I normally find it easy to write about recent experiences, but I find myself struggling to process the last two weeks, and to contextualize it in the wild adventure that has consumed the last three years of my life.

Having fun at Ray Noble's expense during soundcheck with Jérôme Nicolas. May 6th, 2010

Video coming soon. Wifi dans la maison is too slow to handle the transfer. In the meantime, here's a few moments from the tour from the perspective of mon ami l'ordinateur (Professor Macbook).

1 - Robert Mendoche et Alain Rattier
2 - Jérôme Nicolas and Philippe Guignier
3 - Backstage in La Rochelle waking up, wiped after two hours passed in a van.

Photo by Michael Lardeux

[excusez-moi! - the following post was written last night but could not be published for lack of wifi access]

Hello world! I wanted to blog sooner but my schedule has exploded. After arriving yesterday afternoon in La Rochelle, I settled for a moment in my host’s lovely home before running off to dinner at a restaurant with several fellow musicians. Today, after waking up at 9:00am, I quickly tore through a lovely breakfast before warming up and running to participate in a New Orleans style street performance. Immediately after, we departed for a sound check prior to a concert in La Rochelle’s suburbs. Though I write, I must wake up in four hours to begin a new day of learning tunes, making friends and performing.

René Bigot, the festival director, and my gracious host while in La Rochelle has a wonderful house, complete with a pool and beautiful garden. The welcome from the people of La Rochelle has been warm and I have made several friends along the way. Special shout outs (did I actually just write ‘shout outs’? – there has to be a better word but I can’t summon it) go to Robert Mendoche, a trumpeter and bassist with a sharp wit; Michael Lardeux, a web designer, graphic artist and photographer who has generously donated his time to create a beautiful website (http://larochelledixiejazz.fr); Aurélien Guyot, a violiniste skilled both in traditional and modern jazz; Phillppe Guignier, a guitarist in the mold of Django Reinhardt; Jérôme Nicolas, a clarinetist whose gorgeous sound makes me want to start playing clarinet again, and Didier Court, a talented guitarist, banjoist, bandleader and sometimes singer.

For now, maybe I can compensate for my lack of cogent writing with some video from the road. Enjoy the thoughtful commentary on American politics from a like-minded French woman with whom I road the train from Paris.

Some photo documentation of last night's quixotic quest to recover my saxophone.

1st photo - Martin, the man who volunteered his evening to save my horn.
2nd photo - Yan, the RATP worker who kept my horn safe until I got there.
3rd photo - 4am in the Latin Quarter, eating cheese and writing my story.
4th photo - Back home with my horn and good luck trinket

Opening thoughts: There exists about me a painful legend of undeniable veracity that exposes some bugs in my programming. Most versions of the tale start with me boarding a train with a saxophone and some baggage; they end with me exiting the train with … some baggage. A second thought: I normally despise proselytizing tales of ‘real-life miracles’, blasted through the Internet, in an effort to prove the validity of some system of belief. So take the following harrowing and uplifting tale of midnight madness however you choose.

I awoke this morning early by New Yorkers’ standards, late by Parisians’. I walked off the jetlagged malaise on a stroll through Montparnasse, feating on a salade du saumon and pounding an espresso before attending to some logistical matters, sauntering in and out of a few stores.

1, 2 - Volontaires Metro Station
3-6 - Châtelet, Latin Quarter

Hey folks. Got restless (jetlagged) so I went for a midnight romp through Paris.

Today was a great day in the storied history of yours truly moving places. Unlike some past trips marred by logistial SNAFUs - the cognitively impaired flat tire road trip to the Cleveland Clinic, the broken fuel gauge on the flight to San Francisco - Today's voyage rose from behind the smoldering ash plume of Eyjafjallajökull to deliver my most pleasant travel experience in memory.

My friends at the La Rochelle Sister City Initiative have wisely suggested that I use this website to blog the voyage to our jumelage.

While this site normally serves less as a diary and more as a platform for broadcasting original music and airing opinions on art, medicine and technology, this seems the right opportunity to embrace a less formal rapport with my legions of adoring cyberfans (ahem, Grandma Jean and my parents...).

If Ashton Kutcher can do it, so can I! I'll try to refrain from abbreviating words that are only three characters long to begin with, and will welcome a pie in the face if I stumble so far as to communicate emotions through emoticons.

Until Mid-May, farewell dear New Yorkers. Take care of my rainy, grimy and irritable, but always beautiful ancestral home.

Again, thanks to Peter Korn, Domenic Guastaferro, Sheila Sarkar, David Patterson and Brian Carter of he La Rochelle Sister City Initiative for organizing this trip and selecting me.

Time to watch Shrek V and whatever Ben Affleck bomb American Airlines scooped up in the bargain bin.

Michael Lardeux, webmaster of the La Rochelle Jazz Festival has created a great web site to promote the event.

Check it out here: http://www.larochelledixiejazz.fr/

Additionally, I'll be blogging the festival for the New Rochelle Sister City Initiative from this site. Stay tuned for photos, video and Pulitzer prize-worthy investigative journalism from the front lines.

Dear friends, googlers and robots,

I am happy to announce that I've been selected to perform in the French coastal city of La Rochelle as a cultural ambassador from New Rochelle, NY from late April through the first week of May. Special thanks to Domenic Guastaferro, Sheila Sarkar, Dave Patterson, Brian Carter, Peter Korn, and everyone else involved in the La Rochelle Sister City Initiative. More information to come!