Monday, June 8, 2009

Colonia, Uruguay - Beautiful


Colonia
The Uruguay Embassy Group (Robin Matthewman, Robert Zimmerman and wife,
Gloria & Sebastian, Tim , Jose', Christian, Nahir Lois, Blanketa & husband, Ro.



Yesterday we hit the road to Colonia. This is a little town, across the Rio de la Plata River. Buenos Aires is about 40 mins. of a boat ride, just across the river. Colonia is a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese lineage. They fought over this land and the 'ish' sound is prevalent in their double ' ll's'. The architecture is filled with Portuguese designs too. This is a lovely town and it was about a 2 hour drive from Montevideo. We started with a lovely lunch in the old town square and started calling the 'soundman' about 3 pm. mmmm Well...he did not arrive with sound equipment until about 5:30 pm. and the concert was to be at 7:00 pm. I waited in my room to receive the call for sound check? Zimmerman and I walked over about 6:30 pm. I knew something was up~! One soundman, an out of tune accoustic piano, a small electric piano, a left handed drum set for right handed Tim - m...am I leaving anything out! ...we had an opening act; Sebastian, Christian and Jose'. Sebastian is a Canadian who connected with Gloria from NYC. (a friend of Will Friedwall?) small world man. I could see the JazzIam was in for a challenge....the opening group sounded great for 20 mins. We hit 'without' a sound check and one lonley Pablo soundman, doing everything. I was ready; we hit...absolutely had a great concert! another "o" and an encore - bap! From the lemons came the sweet lemonade...ahhhh.