Mes Amis, Greetings from Indochine! Im in Saigon this morning but back to Japan this evening...midnight flight (nothing wrong with those, right?) to Tokyo and then down to Osaka. I had a direct flight here but couldnt get the return. A wonderful boat excursion up the Mekong Delta on Thursday with Tom Shellhammer (brewing prof at OSU) who was also here for the conference, Spent the last two nights at a jazz club in Saigon. Music starts with a quartet (alto/flute, piano, electric bass, drums) doing mostly standards...quite good...then out comes an American black woman to sing, Baby Doll, and they do a mixture of jazz and soul and blues and she is also quite good though she heads for a gig in Dubai next week. They also add a Frenchie guitar player who is not as good as the Vietnamese at jazz....and finally another sax player comes out. I had thought that the first sax player was the leader but it turns out that Tran Manh Tuan is the real leader and he rips through whatever hes got, originals, standards, vietnamese tunes on tenor, soprano, vietnamese bamboo flutes...quite a tour de force and then last night he brings his 10 year old daughter out on alto and they did Cold Duck Time together...shes gonna be good. Lotsa fun. When I was here 10 years ago I saw an alto player playing the lounge at the Hilton in Hanoi (not the one that hosted John McCain) and he sounded as though he had listened to everything Charlie Parker had ever recorded, fabulous! The band told me that he is still in Hanoi and plays in a club (possibly his, surname Minh I think) most every night...so next time, and there WILL BE a next time, its Hanoi and VietBird. A great trip but Ill be glad to get home though only for a week. Wednesday at the Gael where I debut The More I see You and then next week the commie country that does NOT allow Facebook...one other thing about Vietnam over China (out of many, cleanliness being another), the people look like they are enjoying their lives! Well I am as well. A bientot, Alain Boom Boom Kornoyer
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 06:34:24 +0000
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