16 May 2013

Sunday morning gave me another nap in the car, this time enroute to Novi Sad. During the day I understood the impact of Bernard Parmegiani’s music and John Cage’s “Freeman Etudes and “Sonatas and Interludes” into my solo work. There was another outstanding audience in Novi Sad, at least 60 on a Sunday in a rock-styled underground culture center (music, film, theater, readings, discussions), called, CK13 (though I had to wait an hour past start time for people to arrive! I’ve got to remember to ALWAYS bring a book to the club…). Their response was extraordinary- the most focused audience on the tour so far- silent and energized. The playing felt very free and open that night, really finding things as I went, on the horns and in the melodies, in the room. Played two 30 minutes sets and and encore (“Goodbye Tom B.”). I felt really relaxed, connected to the music and the audience. Perhaps getting a straight 6 hours of sleep the night before, for the first time in more than a week, helped!

The concert in Novi Sad was followed by a truly “old school” time at Serbian bar run by a woman in her 60s, where popular Yugoslavian music from just after WWII played on the stereo. Learned some more fascinating things about the former Yugoslavia- that Tito was a huge film fanatic (he watched a movie a day, from all over the world, and did much to build up the film industry of that country) and that Yugoslavia once had the most valuable passport in the world, before the fall of the Berlin wall- it was the only one that allowed you to go to the U.S. and Russia freely. The irony was that when the wall came down, and Yugoslavia came apart soon afterward, that passport was then worth almost nothing…