New York Pt. 1

For those of you that didn't know, I took a trip to New York for 5 days last week.  While I'll go in depth as to the why's, who's, and how's in later posts, I wanted to quickly share one of my experiences that I had and won't forget.  Before going out, I contacted as many friends and colleagues as I could.  One of those is a great friend and guitarist with whom I did my undergrad.  One of the things that makes this so memorable for me is that it was fairly unexpected.  He called me up to say "Hey, some friends and I are going to see Bobby McFerrin in Central Park for FREE." Shwhat!?...  I replied, "Awesome, see you there," and got ready to meet him.  A little admission here: I have never liked Bobby McFerrin.  Gasp! I know, right.  How dare I?  A jazz musician NOT enjoy the work of another jazz musician?  A response to that question will be handled in a later post.  But, I figured it would be a great way to hang out and see some good music (I said I didn't like, not that he wasn't good). The event series is called the Summer Stage.  It presents free music on a first-come-first-serve basis in the middle of Central Park.  There's beer, wine, over-priced food, tourists, New York hipsters, what's not to love?  ONE catch: in order to get in, we got there about 2 and a half hours early, but we had our choice of seats and got to watch some Central Park LARPERS in the process.  Music started and I was really enjoying the concert, the company, and the overall hang.  Then, this happened:

This is a duet between Bobby and his daughter Madison titled "Mere Words", written by Bobby, and originally from his album Bang! Zoom (which I now own).  It was one of those moments in music where your brain just stops.  Everything stops.  All the people around me faded away, I forgot that my butt hurt so bad from sitting on metal bleachers; it was transcendent.

I have to say that I'm now a huge Bobby McFerrin fan and this will become a treasured memory of this trip.