Rus Nerwich

How incredible, for a week in the summer, a small city, big town in the Basque country in Spain, becomes a haven for some of the greatest musicians on the planet, and in turn a large crowd of supporters. The festival started on monday, with parades in the streets, the most exciting was a 20 piece funk band, complete with tubas, 10 horns, and a bunch of drummers. They marched round the city collecting a troop of followers and ended in the city square, where they proceeded to groove hard n kick some serious ass. Ever seen 60 year olds boogie down? I have!

Today was another story, the festival bill had Charles Lloyd and his New quartet, featuring Jason Moran and Eric Harland, After that it was fast mission to another Venue (with a stop on the way to pick up some seriously good Shwarmas) to check out Wayne shorter, the music was absolutely mind blowing, Brian Blade on drums, Danillo Perez on Piano and Hohn Patatucci on Bass, they cooked for 2 hours.

Taking the audience to uncharted listening territory, it was free, it was grooving hard, it was challenging and it was very inspiring. As if that wasnt enough, the night was still young, 20 mins later Herbie Hancock got on stage with Chris Potter on horns, Vinny Caliuto on drums, Dave Holland on Bass n and 2 amazing singers, he perfomed music from both his new Joni Mitchell tribute album, River and his last album Possiblities, if i hadn’t gone to the jam session, which is hosted by Lewis Nash and stayed till 3,30, i would go into more detail, but its now 4 am n i goto get up for class in 5 hours, i forgot to mention the Julliard School that is hosted by the festival every year, anyways, Bennie Green is teaching improv and piano n there are a whole lot of other cats here too, ill hip you to more about that next time, for now its sleep time

rus