Yep, first snow is here. Or was here, it has almost melted away again. Joshua Redman trio at Porgy & Bess tonight. Seats 35 euro, stands 20. I choose the cheap option. And to finish this post off, the roof of the neighbours house when I went up this morning:

Will finally set up an Austrian bank account, I’m going to a meeting at the bank tomorrow. Julia doesn’t have time to come with me and I really hope I meet someone that speak some English, I’m really not up for doing bank-talk in german… Eeeh… Kann ich meine bankomatkarte haben bitte? But who knows, maybe that’s enough!

I’m playing at klubb Ost in the evening, with something that could be labeled a saxophone big band. We play a couple of big band songs, but arranged for saxophones and rhythm section only. So, tonight there will be hell of a lot of saxophone. I’m playing lead and there are some difficult passages, unfortunately I have a cold and haven’t had the strength to prepare as much as I should have, but maybe I will have some time to practice before I go there tomorrow. It usually turns out alright. Get well wishes to: myself.

I have a cold and am pretty tired, and obviously also pretty sensitive. I was close to tears when Zlatan shot his cannonball in Champions League tonight. You get so proud, what a guy he is! They say that girls like sensitive guys, I wonder if the reason to my sensitiveness also goes home?

Oh yes, my first gig in Vienna went well and was fun! I was guesting a band called Bluesky, and we played at club Cenario. We rehearsed on the soundcheck the same day, and it turned out to be a pretty fun band. Two singers, a guy and a girl, a mixture of jazz and pop and a lot of improvisation. I especially liked the singer Harald, he did some cool scat solos.

My role in this was pretty easy, I played solos. It was fun and it went well. The only minus was that it was hard to play when people smoked. I’m not used to that and in the beginning I got very dry in my throat, which resulted in less control over my horn, but then I started drinking extra much water, and after that it got better.

To conclude I’m uploading some ego-pics capturing some of the action. Suits pretty good, after all it’s my blog!

I was at a litle club in Vienna yesterday, called Blue Tomato. It seems to be a place offering lots of free improvised music. This evening a band called Sonore were playing, a trio with three reed-players: Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson. Those of you that know a thing or two about free improvised music, recognise this as quite a line-up!

It was really cool to see Peter Brötzman live, talk about lively 66-yearold! I probably would have been completely finished after playing one of their pieces, it’s amazing that he and the others actually make 2 whole sets. Crazy!

The music was really nice, they changed their group-sound in a lovely way by switching instruments, and, as I recognized it, roles between the numbers.

The highlight for me was in 2nd set, when Brötzmann played a fantasticly nice introduction on alto sax, that eventually lead to a kind of song accompanied by sweet sounds and rhytms from Vandermark and Gustavsson. If I would have heard that on record, I would never have thought that he played alto sax. I have never heard anyone getting a sound like that out of an alto, it sounded like eight altos at the same time or something.

All three of them are truely fantastic improvisers and sound artists, and I advice everyone having the chance to hear this group or one of these musicians to take it. It’s an experience!