Jazz Festival, January 21-26, 2008

The Panama Jazz Festival is a week-long event, with the first several days being devoted to workshops and teaching. The public music events were on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We went to them all!

Thursday and Friday were in the convention center. We had great seats and the acoustics were good. However, Thursday was a real disappointment with mediocre music (Tia Fuller and Catherine Russell, both from the US). Neither bothered to speak one word of Spanish, and their music couldn't hold the audience. A big disappointment.

But Friday made up for it! We started with the Dave Samuels Caribbean Jazz Project; they had lots of energy. Then along came the Stanley Jordan Trio. Stanley Jordan, an American jazz guitarist, spoke entirely in Spanish but mostly played heavenly music and mostly without the other guys. And then he sat down at the piano and played a duet with himself: one hand playing the guitar and one hand playing the piano. Two sounds coming through one body was magical. Tommy was hoping for a one-man trio; why couldn't he play the sax as well?

Saturday was a free concert in the cathedral plaza in Casco Viejo (old town). The concert was two hours late starting but we enjoyed watching the audience assemble (everyone else seemed to realize that the concert would start late). We did stay for two hours of music but were tired and ready to call it a weekend, so we left mid-afternoon. We understand that the event went on til 11 at night, ending again with Stanley Jordan.

Next year we'd like to get a hotel in the Casco Viejo area for Saturday night. Casco Viejo is an area in transition; it is mostly terribly run down and very down market. In the rebuilt areas, it is beautiful and reminds us a lot of New Orleans. Anyway, to get to the cathedral grounds, you have to walk quite a few blocks through not nice areas (the taxis aren't allowed through). There are police everywhere so probably nothing bad will happen, but next year we'd like to stay til the end and only have a couple of blocks to walk.

Anyway, the jazz festival is really great and well worth going to. And yes Wilson, we did buy the t-shirt.