Report from Jazz Central in Times Square

I won't be able to write much, but I'm here in New York City basking in the culture and glory at the annual International Association of Jazz Educators conference with 8,000 jazz adherents.

Highlights from yesterday:

Singer Sheila Jordan to the packed audience just before singing "Look for the silver lining": "Don't give up now. Why stop now? If you stop now you'll never get it back. I don't care, if you're a woman, if you have to have 20 kids--just don't stop making music." Brought tears to my eyes. She also made a beautiful comment about being just a messenger for the music at this stage in her career (I don't want to guess her age but I'd say she's been around the sun 70 times or more).

Singer Rhiannon brought the house down and really made me cry. Her voice and soul are incredible. Makes me have tremendous hope that I still have many decades ahead of me, and they don't have to be ones filled with diminishing returns. Her power is greater than ever, and the communication with the band was seamless. That word is way inadequate but I don't have time to think of another. Her drummer was Greg Hutchinson, a young cat with cornrows and an intense gaze. Jon Benitez played bass and sang! I went up and met both of them afterwards.

Grammy-nominated Taylor Eigsti and his band--wow wow wow!!! Taylor is a young phenom and so were the other cats. He plays synth with his left hand and piano with his right on some tunes (he did a version of a song by Bjork from the movie Dancer in the Dark). He also played piano strings a bit. The drummer was Erik Harland. Never seen someone play with as many colors and as much balletic grace as he did. Bass was Reuben Rogers, smiling and emoting all the way, and guitar was Julian Lage, who did a tour de force middle eastern solo intro to Caravan. Sounded like he was playing an oud or something!

There was a session on producing Miles Davis, filled with hilarious stories from his producers I'll try to share another time. Guess you can never have enough recounting of Miles's eccentricities.

Then we went to see Wicked. This is the 5th Broadway show I've seen since I first came to New York in 1999 (Chicago, Rent, Swing, Spamalot)--oh, almost forgot I saw The Vagina Monologues a few years ago here too, with Hayley Mills and Joie Lee. I'm pretty proud I've made the splurge that many times!

Other than that I'm totally scrimping. McDonald's has breakfast for $2.27. Lunch is water and a sandwich. Last night's entree was $16 at a fancy restaurant with really crappy food (Azalea--don't go there). Thankfully I didn't drink anything. I only ate half of the bad food. Finally, I'm sharing a matchbox/room at the Milford Plaza, a fine establishment with elevators that have at least 50% guaranteed uptime. And we're adding a third roomy tonight!

Tonight we're going to see Manny Oquendo and Libre at SOB's--I'm thrilled to see a real NYC salsa club--can't wait to dance dance dance!