New York Reflections

Just back from an amazing trip to New York.During this time I managed to see Bill Frissell twice at The Vanguard as well as Fred Hersh. There really is no better venue for live music with a capacity of 125 attendees and superb acoustics. I was literally a few feet away from the artists. The Bill Frissell Trio with Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston is quite amazing. These are three artists at the very top of their game and as a band are quite unique. I also saw the superb Ronnie Earl at BB Kings. Ronnie is an exceptional artist and I have been a fan of his music for many years. The two gigs in Harlem went really well and it was a lot of fun to play at Shrine and Silvana. I also saw some amazing musicians on this visit and highly recommend The Red Dog on Monday night for their weekly blues jam. 

New York is an extraordinary city and I managed to catch the Bowie exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum. Bowie is a wonderful example of an artist full of creativity and the exhibition was a superb showcase of his work. I grew up with Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust as well as Station to Station. Low and Heroes. Each album was very different and quite brilliant. The event got rave reviews and it was a somewhat surreal experience to be literally immersed in Bowie for over two hours. Every attendee had the opportunity to wear a set of headphones which sychronised with the exhibition material. I was especially fascinated by Bowie’s writing process and looking as many of his handwritten transcripts of lyrics.

I also had the chance to work on “the big project” while there and there will be more news about that later this year. There are many moving parts to this and it will take the best part of a year to organise before the launch. I was massively impressed by the standard of musicianship of all the performers I met there, all of which had an obvious love for music.