2 Long shows

Hello,

This weekend was a doozy. Actually, it started of nice, I had friday off and got to go home early and relax. Saturday I played with Gratitude at an auction/fundraiser for a private high school in Orchard Lake, MI. I got there at 4pm and didn't leave till 1am. We played about 6 hours and the rest was devoted to the live auction. It was in a big ice arena and we were set up right on the rink. They put boards down to shield the ice, but it was still cold. It wasn't so bad once we got to playing, but my feet were ice cubes all night,(I play without shoes). I invited one of my students, Nick Joseph, to come along and play congas. I had no idea we would be playing so long and I felt bad around hour 5 when I saw Nick taping his hands. He was a trooper though and played the entire show with no complaints. The rest of the band liked him too, so perhaps he will be playing with us again soon.

Sunday was the ICMD grand concert at U of M. I played a piece with Amit Sawant, (vocalist), and the tabla ensemble made up of Aniket Joshi, Ashish Deshpande, Angat Singh, and myself. The concert was slated to be 2 hours long, but ended up being 4. It was a lot of music to sit through, which is fine for me, but judging from the thinning of the audience, it was a bit too much for most. The music was really great and everyone worked very hard to put it together. I wish we had more concerts spread out over the semester to ease the load a bit and give more opportunities to more musicians to play. The Indian music community is really incredible in Lower Michigan and Ann Arbor is a great place to play to a very diverse and accepting audience. I look forward to what the future has in store.

This week I play with Deep Blue at Cafe Felix and then I am off till December. Just two gigs and then it is time for INDIA. I can't wait....

Talk to you soon,

John