Sept 12

Okay- a week has passed and there IS some new stuff. Hope you guys are all up date with us, but if not, you can check the earlier blogs on the right.

(Moe)

I went to a “canja” last week. A canja is basically a jam session, nothing too different or special. However, we played jazz, exclusively, which I thought was different. We did play one Bossa, but nothing uniquely Brazilian. The horn players did want to play Vale de Ribeira, but I think the rhythm section was all about jazz that night. I made some new friends, and enjoyed some great music. That was Monday. Friday I enjoyed a night out with some folks from a rival school, PUCC. I was re-assured that I no ill-will would befall me because of my educational status, turns out that the PUCC students merely detest Unicamp’s medical students; something about them being stuck about (imagine that). It was a grand night of merry-making filled with merry merriness. I lament to inform you all that we could not find a hamburger place open, which made me remember how much I miss White Castle, but, there were plenty of hot-dog places open. For those of you keeping score at home, I do not like hot dogs.

(Mike)

I started applying to grad schools this past weekend and also got to meet the trumpet teacher from Unicamp today. There’s still a delay for him being able to teach here at Unicamp, but they’re trying to figure it out. He said that it should be about 2 weeks, but he is excited that I am playing with the orchestra. My friend from the orchestra, Fernando, said that there might be opportunities to play in brass ensembles as well!

It’s a little hectic down here in the sense that, we sometimes have no idea what’s going on in terms of whether we’re going to rehearse during the week or not. It’s weird to us because at CCM, we have a schedule that literally doesn’t ever change- there’s always big band from 2-4 on MWF… I don’t know- just thought I’d mention. Everyone is also way too relaxed about it.

(Both)

We’d like to share the fact that we were famous for one night as well. Moe and I were featured artists in one of Campinas’ finest café/restaurants called the Almanaque Café. We kicked off a festival they’re holding all month for Miles Davis, himself. The whole first set we played was his “Kind Of Blue” album- the best selling jazz album of all time. After that, we broke loose a bit more and played standards Miles would play later in his career and we even broke some new ground in terms of our playing as well as with this group of guys we had the honor of playing with- Felipe Silveira on kets, Daniel “Pezim” on bass, and Juan (forgot last name, oops) on drums. It was a wonderful evening of music and we played for a packed house that included friends of ours from school as well as Shirley and Moisir, our landlords! They enjoyed it very much and took lots of pictures. When we were remembering this in our week for the blog, the way Moe brought it up was as such: “Our names were on the top of a billboard!” And they were; they really were. We felt like it the best we’ve played in a while and it felt good to be on and in the scene with some killer musicians again, reminding us yet again of Cincinnati and how it’s treated us.

Thanks for checking in! We'll keep posting!

M and M