Zooming up the highway
to tonight's show at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Ting and I were treated
to a sunset in silver and gold...must have been the fog or something...really
quite different from the usual reds and purples.
The gig started off with an hour-long set from the Stefon Harris Quartet.
Stefon is the newly appointed 'jazz artist-in-residence' for San Francisco
Performances, meaning that he'll be doing plenty of shows here over the next
year or so. He's definitely an exciting young musician. He's got great chops,
and fits admirably in line with Lionel Hampton and Bobby Hutcherson as a
master of the vibraphone. The high point of the set for me was an introspective
rendition of Gershwin's 'Summertime.'
After a short break, the Regina Carter Quintet came on to close the show.
Her main thing this time around was a latin-tinged musical base, so I was
slightly disappointed that she didn't get around to performing 'Listen Here,'
an Eddie Harris tune covered on one of her earlier albums. Nonetheless, the
show was plenty exciting, all the more so when Stefon Harris came out for
the encore, a fifteen-minute long romp through Thelonius Monk's classic Mysterioso.
Philip Elwood wrote a review of the show for the San Francisco Chronicle:
Vibist Stefon
Harris hits stride at Herbst.
Following the show we retired to Max's Opera Cafe for a light meal. Ting
had a bowl of Chicken Matzo Ball Soup (her favorite). My food must not have
been very interesting...I'm sure I ordered something for dinner besides the
apple pie!
And finally homeward-bound, we ran right smack into a thick snarl of traffic
while trying to cross the Bay Bridge back to Oakland. It took us over thirty
minutes to touch down on the Oakland side, where we found the source of the
backup, a burning car. Didn't look like there had been any crash, but people
were definitely taking their time to check out the flames.
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