drei

so the next day, i woke up at some godawful hour. even now, as i write, the sky is lightening and the birds are freaking out. oh well. such is the artist's life in berlin. and at some point aaron and i went down to his practice space. his friend micky (not sure of the spelling--he's italian, so i think it's a shortening of michaelangelo) gave us a ride there. it was my first time in a car here. fun. micky plays trumpet. today aaron played drums and i guitar. we met up, at the practice space, with franco (sax) and toby (clarinet).

we played free a couple times and it was really nice. all the horn players had distinct personalities. franco is a young virtuoso type and did all these different things--i hear he's a klezmer dude, but he did a braxton thing and a efi thing and a eai thing. toby just kicked ass. lots of long tones and then weirdnesses. those guys blended well. micky, i guess, has only been playing a couple years and mingus is his bag. he seemed reticent at first. but his playing was concise and perfect for each situation. he would enter with some simple motive that just set everything in its place. and aaron, needless to say, was a motherfucker, as neil haverstick would say. i played alright. we have a recording, i think, of the second thing we did, and i'm curious to hear how it was.

then, we played this thai folk music that aaron is way into. franco brought a transcription of some of it and i (badly) read the chart. it was fun to play!

after that is when, as alluded to in the previous post, we went and recorded guitar parts at margareth's. it was fun. i am extremely self-critical, but aaron dug my playing, and i think it was apposite.

let me tell ya, for a sec, about this flat. it's very european. ya know in movies, like "frantic" by polanski starring harrison ford, where there's lots of action climbing stairs to flats with timed lights that go off after a minute and half? this was a lot like that. and the toilet was down the hall.

wow. it's very light out and i should go to bed. so we recorded some and then i walked home. en route, i bought some booze. aaron told me about the cheap beer, stirnburg. so, for variety's sake, i bought stirnburg diesel and some other kind. oops! diesel mean 'with cola' and the other kind was basically 'with sprite.' and neither had much alcohol. typical newbie mistake!

so. to bed. next time i'll talk about the amazing and quiet improv show i saw with axel dorner. he's great. guten nacht!