Just want to let you all know that I had a great time in Wisconsin the last few days. When I got there on Sunday-it was
about 78 degrees out. It felt like summer but looked like winter as the trees were all bare and there's still a lot of brown around. A few packs of rapidly melting snow. I stayed at the lovely Best Western-but not the one downtown near the school-the other one 6 miles away from school near a bunch of strip malls and the freeway. A 20 buck ride into school.
Oh well. I walked around the area when I had time and found a nice steakhouse/all you can eat complete with free frosties and a huge salad bar. There's a lot of food and beer consumed in Wisconsin. The students were just fantastic-I should have taken my camera and showed some pictures on here. I'll be sure to do that for my next trip to Oklahoma.
The concert was really fun-we had kind of a scary moment when our drummer-a student from U of Wis who hadn't even
know he was going to play with me until three days before the gig-got up in the middle of the first set and said "I've got
to take a break." He left the stage having a diabetic emergency. Combining the fact that we were playing really intense was that the heat and humidity onstage felt like Florida in the summer. There was no air conditioning being late March and basically still being winter in Wisconsin. So I just did a solo piece-moved the program around some and we were fine-our drummer got some orange juice and was OK. The bassoon professor at Wisconsin, Marc Vallon, was a great host and one of the most open-minded bassoon professors I've ever encountered at a university I've visited as a clinician/performer. He plays also the baroque bassoon and the french system bassoon-he is French and has taught at the Paris Conservatoire. It was a very successful visit! If I get some pictures or links I'll share them with you.
OH Yeah-about the album-I will be recording with Haroun this week-getting some of the guitar on there and some other
bassoon tidbits.