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!

Quiet Solitude

This week so far has been very calm and quiet. My older son went back to San Francisco after spending the week here helping to photograph the studio experience. And my younger son is living it up in New York City. I knew he would love it there. The energy of that city is infectious and for a twenty-two year old I'm sure it's completely irresistible. I'm so proud of how he has adapted himself to the environment so quickly. He's settled in well to his internship at vicetv.com and has also gotten an actual paying job at American Apparel. As he states, he's involved with all of the "hip" things going on right now! I would love to be able to go out and visit him and hope to do so--with a few gigs booked--soon.

I sent off three press kits to Porto Alegre, Brazil a couple of days ago and now I'm crossing my fingers, toes, legs, eyes and anything else that can be crossed in hopes that the gigs come through. What a thrill it would be to play in Brazil and get a sense of how my music is recieved in other parts of the world. Of course cost is always an issue but it's a problem I WANT to have.

Last night I attended an open house meeting for two grants that will be given out through both the San Francisco Arts Foundation and CCI. The SF grant, although I do not qualify for it due to the fact I don't actually live in SF, is a wonderful grant that attempts to blend community and social issues with the arts. It's what I most believe in when it comes to sharing the arts with children who need it the most. I'm going ot try and find someone in SF to partner with so I can develop a program that will take music and art out to the neighborhoods. It would be so awesome to get funding for this so I don't have to take the money out of my own pocket. I truly believe that the power of music could be an amazing healing tool in areas where family life is fragmented. We need to save our children and give them a sense of hope. Hope is what is diminishing so rapidly in our world. Without hope the world breeds terror, fear and violence. There's got to be a way to return to a world where we can look forward and not be frightened.