the email about buenos aires
hola, queridos amigos,
The last couple of weeks since I last sent out an email have been so full of fun stuff that I couldn't wait to send out another update. Let's begin at the beginning ...
Two weeks ago, feeling in a bit of a rut in Santiago, I did something uncharacteristically impulsive: I bought a round-trip ticket for a weeklong vacation in Buenos Aires. I considered it a birthday present to myself, as my 21st birthday fell on the last full day of the trip. I had been planning to make a visit to Bs. As. ever since I met some really nice young (a few years older than me) trombonists based in the area. Santiago, one of those trombonists (confusing I know because the city I'm living in is also named Santiago) even offered to put me up in his apartment if I ever decided to come. So, I decided on a whim to take him up on the offer and go on an another adventure with my horn.
I left last Wednesday on a Boeing 777 (it was continuing on to France) and had a window seat to watch us fly over the Andes, which was really impressive. A huge line of clouds as far as I could see was interrupted by massive snow-covered mountaintops poking through. On the other side, the clouds were gone and everything was a big dry plain, kind of like a (much larger scale) version of Oregon and the Cascades. Just to have an idea of the scale of these mountains: the mountain pass (and famous ski resort nearby) are at an altitude hundreds of feet higher than the peak of Mt. Hood.
Anyway, I arrived in Buenos Aires and spent the next couple of days playing with Santiago, exchanging techniques, practicing, and going out in the evenings with some of his friends to listen to music. The first night, we went to see a jazz trio (friends of his) playing at a hotel. We were chatting after they finished, and it came up in the conversation that Wayne Shorter was playing that night at one of the big theaters (the Gran Rex) downtown. WAYNE SHORTER! So of course I went and was blown away. 30 bucks for a first-floor ticket at the last minute. To see Wayne Shorter. He played a great set, with his band of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, and Brian Blade. The crowd was absolutely electric, a level of excitement I've never seen from a jazz audience. The concert ended around 2 am after the band played two encores. At that point, I knew this was going to be an amazing trip.
That weekend, after a couple of days chilling with Santiago, his girlfriend Paula, and some of their friends, Santiago left for a tour with his ska band to Uruguay. So I got "passed" to another trombonist friend, Joaquin, who I had met at Trombonanza. Joaquin's house is a music school, where he and some of his friends give classes and play together. I was invited to sit in and play with the school's big band, made up of the "professors" like Joaquin (he's 24, so it feels kind of weird to call him a "professor") and some other young area musicians (young meaning 20-something, usually). They played a lot of Basie stuff, and we had a good time with it. I performed with them on Sunday night. So Joaquin and I played together a lot, ate a lot of amazing food (there's an amazing "parrilla" -- restaurant that serves mostly BEEF -- right by his place) and went to a jam session together on Friday night. I took out my plunger and played on a slow blues that the people seemed to appreciate after hours of twelve-minute solos over "footprints" and the like. And as any good jam session should, it didn't end until well past 4 am.
On Monday, after a night out with Joaquin and some friends, I woke up and walked downstairs in my Cat in the Hat pajamas and a sweatshirt, towel draped over my shoulder, hair sticking out in all directions (I haven't cut it since I got here, so it's starting to get a little shaggy again) to use the shower. In my sleepy haze, however, I had failed to remember that it was a Monday, and therefore people were giving classes when I got up at 1 pm. It was fairly embarassing to see the quizzical stare I received from a parent waiting to pick up her kid from class. Joaquin didn't let me hear the end of that one.
Santiago introduced me to another American the next day, James, a trumpet player who had been living there for a month and a half with a friend of Santiago's. So James and I played together a little, wandered around the city being gringos, and had a good time together. On Tuesday night, my birthday eve, I went to the apartment he was staying at for an asado that his friend was putting on. So it was between bites of Argentinian-style-barbecue chicken that I became "mayor de edad." in the middle of the conversation, everyone picked up their wine glasses all of a sudden and started singing the birthday song -- in Spanish of course. I liked getting the birthday song in Spanish -- I feel cool having now been bilingually birthday-sung. After the asado, James and I did what any self-respecting Americans would do to celebrate one's 21st birthday: go to a bar. We found a pretty hip spot in the Plaza Serrano and had a few Fernet-colas between us. Fernet is some kind of herbal alcoholic beverage that is a favorite in Argentina. Word on the street is that you don't get hung over from it, either. Anyway, it was good, I got home (did I just say home? I mean, to Santiago's house ... which I guess sort of felt like home. cool.) late and slept for a good chunk of my November 2nd. I woke up and went to check my email, expecting a message from my mom and dad maybe, and was really surprised to see all of the birthday emails and facebook messages and everything that people sent! I felt so ... remembered. It was extremely reassuring to know that even though I'm thousands of miles away, people I care about are still close to me. By the end of the day, I had birthday greetings from three continents, five countries, and five states within the US. Thanks everyone for helping make my birthday even better!
James, Santiago and I jammed for awhile in the evening with some aebersolds in Santiago's apartment, and then we went out with Paula, Joaquin, and Lucas (another trombonanza connection) to celebrate over dinner. There, I got another rousing rendition of "feliz cumpleanos" from a group of new friends. It felt great to feel that these people were my friends, celebrating with the same enthusiasm that my friends in Amherst shared with me last year. The achievement that I'm most proud of, after almost four months outside of the States, is that I have been able to make friends -- and I mean real, meaningful friendships -- in so many places. I feel so blessed to have the tools to do that: most importlantly, Spanish and Music. Sure, the Argentinos made fun of me for speaking Chilean with an American accent (although they were also very complimentary on my speaking), but having a good grasp of the language has opened up such a huge door for me here. And music has been the way that I've been able to take advantage of that: meeting these people, playing together, and becoming friends. Celebrating my birthday with five other fantastic musicians that evening (Paula is a great jazz singer) was really a treat.
I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 this morning to catch my plane back to Chile, and Santiago even got up to say bye. One of the first things he said after rolling out of bed was "this is really too early to make a musician get out of bed." The flight back was short and uneventful, and now I'm here, with a backlog of classwork from skipping a week of classes and an exciting weekend of playing to look forward to. On Saturday, I'm playing a gig with a quintet, the first *paying* engagement that I'll have done here. And on Sunday, I'm recording three songs with Los Andes Big Band, including a hard solo on an arrangement of "Gracias A La Vida." So with that, I'm going to get my horn out and get back to work.
Again, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes yesterday. And as always, I always look forward to hearing back from you about what's news in your world these days, what adventures everyone else is living. I'll finish with a quote that I just read from John Dewey's Democrac and Education:
"Growth is [falsely] regarded as having and end, rather than being an end."
I hope that everyone else is feeling as happy as I am about growing -- socially, musically, intellectually, and personally. That goes especially for those of you who will be celebrating birthdays represented by a number larger than my measly 21.
que se crezcan bien,
alex
PS Congratulations for making it through such a long email!
The last couple of weeks since I last sent out an email have been so full of fun stuff that I couldn't wait to send out another update. Let's begin at the beginning ...
Two weeks ago, feeling in a bit of a rut in Santiago, I did something uncharacteristically impulsive: I bought a round-trip ticket for a weeklong vacation in Buenos Aires. I considered it a birthday present to myself, as my 21st birthday fell on the last full day of the trip. I had been planning to make a visit to Bs. As. ever since I met some really nice young (a few years older than me) trombonists based in the area. Santiago, one of those trombonists (confusing I know because the city I'm living in is also named Santiago) even offered to put me up in his apartment if I ever decided to come. So, I decided on a whim to take him up on the offer and go on an another adventure with my horn.
I left last Wednesday on a Boeing 777 (it was continuing on to France) and had a window seat to watch us fly over the Andes, which was really impressive. A huge line of clouds as far as I could see was interrupted by massive snow-covered mountaintops poking through. On the other side, the clouds were gone and everything was a big dry plain, kind of like a (much larger scale) version of Oregon and the Cascades. Just to have an idea of the scale of these mountains: the mountain pass (and famous ski resort nearby) are at an altitude hundreds of feet higher than the peak of Mt. Hood.
Anyway, I arrived in Buenos Aires and spent the next couple of days playing with Santiago, exchanging techniques, practicing, and going out in the evenings with some of his friends to listen to music. The first night, we went to see a jazz trio (friends of his) playing at a hotel. We were chatting after they finished, and it came up in the conversation that Wayne Shorter was playing that night at one of the big theaters (the Gran Rex) downtown. WAYNE SHORTER! So of course I went and was blown away. 30 bucks for a first-floor ticket at the last minute. To see Wayne Shorter. He played a great set, with his band of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, and Brian Blade. The crowd was absolutely electric, a level of excitement I've never seen from a jazz audience. The concert ended around 2 am after the band played two encores. At that point, I knew this was going to be an amazing trip.
That weekend, after a couple of days chilling with Santiago, his girlfriend Paula, and some of their friends, Santiago left for a tour with his ska band to Uruguay. So I got "passed" to another trombonist friend, Joaquin, who I had met at Trombonanza. Joaquin's house is a music school, where he and some of his friends give classes and play together. I was invited to sit in and play with the school's big band, made up of the "professors" like Joaquin (he's 24, so it feels kind of weird to call him a "professor") and some other young area musicians (young meaning 20-something, usually). They played a lot of Basie stuff, and we had a good time with it. I performed with them on Sunday night. So Joaquin and I played together a lot, ate a lot of amazing food (there's an amazing "parrilla" -- restaurant that serves mostly BEEF -- right by his place) and went to a jam session together on Friday night. I took out my plunger and played on a slow blues that the people seemed to appreciate after hours of twelve-minute solos over "footprints" and the like. And as any good jam session should, it didn't end until well past 4 am.
On Monday, after a night out with Joaquin and some friends, I woke up and walked downstairs in my Cat in the Hat pajamas and a sweatshirt, towel draped over my shoulder, hair sticking out in all directions (I haven't cut it since I got here, so it's starting to get a little shaggy again) to use the shower. In my sleepy haze, however, I had failed to remember that it was a Monday, and therefore people were giving classes when I got up at 1 pm. It was fairly embarassing to see the quizzical stare I received from a parent waiting to pick up her kid from class. Joaquin didn't let me hear the end of that one.
Santiago introduced me to another American the next day, James, a trumpet player who had been living there for a month and a half with a friend of Santiago's. So James and I played together a little, wandered around the city being gringos, and had a good time together. On Tuesday night, my birthday eve, I went to the apartment he was staying at for an asado that his friend was putting on. So it was between bites of Argentinian-style-barbecue chicken that I became "mayor de edad." in the middle of the conversation, everyone picked up their wine glasses all of a sudden and started singing the birthday song -- in Spanish of course. I liked getting the birthday song in Spanish -- I feel cool having now been bilingually birthday-sung. After the asado, James and I did what any self-respecting Americans would do to celebrate one's 21st birthday: go to a bar. We found a pretty hip spot in the Plaza Serrano and had a few Fernet-colas between us. Fernet is some kind of herbal alcoholic beverage that is a favorite in Argentina. Word on the street is that you don't get hung over from it, either. Anyway, it was good, I got home (did I just say home? I mean, to Santiago's house ... which I guess sort of felt like home. cool.) late and slept for a good chunk of my November 2nd. I woke up and went to check my email, expecting a message from my mom and dad maybe, and was really surprised to see all of the birthday emails and facebook messages and everything that people sent! I felt so ... remembered. It was extremely reassuring to know that even though I'm thousands of miles away, people I care about are still close to me. By the end of the day, I had birthday greetings from three continents, five countries, and five states within the US. Thanks everyone for helping make my birthday even better!
James, Santiago and I jammed for awhile in the evening with some aebersolds in Santiago's apartment, and then we went out with Paula, Joaquin, and Lucas (another trombonanza connection) to celebrate over dinner. There, I got another rousing rendition of "feliz cumpleanos" from a group of new friends. It felt great to feel that these people were my friends, celebrating with the same enthusiasm that my friends in Amherst shared with me last year. The achievement that I'm most proud of, after almost four months outside of the States, is that I have been able to make friends -- and I mean real, meaningful friendships -- in so many places. I feel so blessed to have the tools to do that: most importlantly, Spanish and Music. Sure, the Argentinos made fun of me for speaking Chilean with an American accent (although they were also very complimentary on my speaking), but having a good grasp of the language has opened up such a huge door for me here. And music has been the way that I've been able to take advantage of that: meeting these people, playing together, and becoming friends. Celebrating my birthday with five other fantastic musicians that evening (Paula is a great jazz singer) was really a treat.
I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 this morning to catch my plane back to Chile, and Santiago even got up to say bye. One of the first things he said after rolling out of bed was "this is really too early to make a musician get out of bed." The flight back was short and uneventful, and now I'm here, with a backlog of classwork from skipping a week of classes and an exciting weekend of playing to look forward to. On Saturday, I'm playing a gig with a quintet, the first *paying* engagement that I'll have done here. And on Sunday, I'm recording three songs with Los Andes Big Band, including a hard solo on an arrangement of "Gracias A La Vida." So with that, I'm going to get my horn out and get back to work.
Again, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes yesterday. And as always, I always look forward to hearing back from you about what's news in your world these days, what adventures everyone else is living. I'll finish with a quote that I just read from John Dewey's Democrac and Education:
"Growth is [falsely] regarded as having and end, rather than being an end."
I hope that everyone else is feeling as happy as I am about growing -- socially, musically, intellectually, and personally. That goes especially for those of you who will be celebrating birthdays represented by a number larger than my measly 21.
que se crezcan bien,
alex
PS Congratulations for making it through such a long email!