Brazil, Brasil

We did it!! Murray Low and I made it to Brazil and had an amazing time both performing and learning more about the culture and the wonderful people of this incredibly diverse country. After 36 hours of traveling to get to la cidade de Rio Grande do Sul, we rested for the night and then commenced on an all day media tour starting with a television interview, then after lunch, a radio interview and then an interview with the local paper, Agora. Rio Grande is a somewhat small port town of 180,000 people. It is very quaint and mellow in comparison to Sao Paolo! We were able to do a little sight-seeing while there and get a sense of the city. It is a wonderful combination of old and new with horse-drawn carts riding alongside new cars. It reminded me a lot of Ovalle, where I lived in Chile.

That same evening we met and rehearsed for 4 hours with the musicians who would be performing with us. Murray had done a great job practicing his portuguese in order to communicate with the musicians. The rehearsal went well. We learned a lot about how to approach my music with musicians unfamiliar with the afro-cuban style. Under the circumstances of only rehearsing one time before the two concerts we were to give, they did a fantastic job. Marco Porfirio: flute and sax, Gilberto Oliveira: bass and Eduardo Escalier: drums/percussion all rose to the challenge of playing my difficult arrangements! They were all very easy to work with and fun to perform music with.



The next evening, after having experienced the famous Churrascaria (barbeque) and la Praia Cassino (the local beach on the Atlantic Ocean), we arrived to a beautiful old theater--el Teatro Municipal de Rio Grande. After doing a relatively easy soundcheck, the concert began with two instrumental songs and then I came onstage. The concert went very well. The music was very well received and we had a fantastic time performing in front of this very receptive audience. After the concert--and an encore of Murray and I performing a duo version of "Imagine", we went and signed many, many CDs. It was so nice to get to meet the people who had come to see us. Everyone was exuberant in their praises and my cheeks were cramped from smiling so much!! It was a very good feeling to know that my music is appreciated in other countries besides my own. I was definitely on cloud nine all evening and well into the next day as we drove to Porto Alegre to perform our next concert the next evening. I will report on that concert in the next blog. Until then, just know that we had a fantastic trip and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to have gone and performed in Brazil!