Sitting in bed in Rochester NY.  I’m trying to get a little bit of a breather last night was crazy.  And AMAZING.  Rochester, you ROCK!  We drove in Tuesday afternoon, did along interview for one of Rochester’s jazz radio stations.  We got into Rochester and found this amazing BBQ place, Dinosaur BBQ.  It was so tasty. Nothing like some BBQ chicken, beans after a long road trip.  We were happy to arrive in time to catch Herbie Hancock’s set.  It was pretty amazing, we were placed in the second row as well ;-) not too shabby.  

Wednesday I woke up at 6:30 AM to go on TV (Rochester Morning news.)  I did a little interview along with some playing.  From there we drove to the hotel and quickly tried to stuff some breakfast in, right after we drove over to Rochester’s 90.1 Radio station. I got to play "DJ” for an hour and play my favorite music from their HUGE jazz selection.  I wanted to stay in that room full of CDs for days! 

After that I came back to hotel to try to get a few hours of sleep.  Our first set at the club (Montage) was at 6 PM.  We started sound checking at 4 and by 4:30 the guys at the club let me know that the line was wrapped around the street.  There were at least 500 people waiting by 5 and our set was at 6.  The club only fit tops 200 something. When we started it was PACKED.  People were squeezed in every corner, standing for our whole set. The energy was absolutely amazing. The 10 o’clock set was exactly the same. The line was out the door, down the corner and that set was also packed to the max. 

The people here are just hungry for jazz, and if you look at the festival line up you would know why. It’s absolutely amazing. Thank you all for an amazing time, your energy came through to us and the band was having a ball on stage. By the time the set was over I was completely drained, but believe me, it was worth it.  The night was over and I headed back to the hotel but somehow got persuaded to play a tune at the jam session.  My Asian eyes were about to get even "squintier” (is that a word?) They could barely stay open!!  But I couldn’t resist, so we played a beautiful ballad and I ran off to my bed!