We had a great time in Chile. Thanks to Sandra Perroni and Michael Orlansky from the U.S. State Department (Jen and Carrie too) and Danielle Gilson from the Santiago Jazz Club, also Pepe the "Main Jazz Head" in Santiago (more on him later!) and of course Shana Bromberg and Billy Banks from Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Our gigs in Chile, the first was : Curico, we had a total blast in concert at the 50th Anniversary of the Binational Center.
Curico photo
This center is a meeting place for artists and talent and the walls were covered with incredible paintings. We had a two hour lunch and learned about the "Pisco" (a magical Chilean Brandy made in the fourth region). The audience was Great and we had a wonderful ovation and encore from a Very spirited crowd - Thank you!
Our next day work event was a workshop with the ProJazz School Big Band student musicians and four local singers, led by Danielle Gilson ( a fine singer and jazz support in Santiago). The workshops were great, instrumental and vocal. I am waiting for more photo's, but Armeniabar Ñuñoa took photo's of our concert at the Club - Thank you. Augustine, a great local sax player sat in with us. The regular soundman was gone, so our first set suffered bad sound for me and I sang "More Than You Know" without a microphone for my third song and actually got an amazing response from this sophisticated jazz audience. Jose' Hossiason was on the front row (Pepe). He is a world renown jazzhead, journalist, had a radio show, owns every jazz recording and book ever printed, besides the shows he bootlegged (he has photo's on his wall with Louis Armstrong, Basie, Ellington, Diz - on and on)...Wow..
Our second set found us with good sound and Billy Banks back on the PA. Thanks Billy!!
Bob and Joel met and played with many great musicians in Santiago. I hope they will post about them.
