Last Sunday February 8, my quartet with Geof Bradfield, Lorin Cohen and Kobie Watkins embarked on our second Rhythm Road Tour sponsored by Jazz At Lincoln Center and The U.S. Dept. Of State. Eastern Europe, baby. I'm on a plane right now to Cheylabinsk and as soon as we land we're heading to the venue for the gig since our flight was delayed over 10 hours. Since we arrived in Moscow last week we have been moving around Russia like crazy and are about to play our fifth city. The traveling has been grueling, but the terrific venues and people we are experiencing along with the fire the band is generating onstage has been keeping us energized.

Last night, we played at the Great Hall Of Moscow Conservatory to a capacity crowd of 1700. This hall is a historic classical music venue that rarely presents jazz. It was an honor to play there and we were received with great enthusiasm. I played on one of the best 9ft Hamburg Steinways I have ever encountered and the stage sound was very good. I have been expecting to be schlepping my digital piano around to all our events like I did throughout Africa and The Middle East last year on this tour, but so far we have had world class backline and tech support. We split the bill and then performed with George Garanyan's Big Band at the end of last night. George is a well known and respected saxophonist and bandleader and he had some burning soloists in his group that were a pleasure to play with. While we were backstage before our last set, we were commenting on how we wished we could get a picture of the incredible crowd we were playing for. We were hoping maybe one of the photographers would email us something. However, right after we took our bow at the end of the night our host announced onstage that Kobie wanted to get a picture of the crowd, so this audience of 1700 all started cheering and posing for Kobie's shots right then and there. Stay tuned for these images to be posted at a web site near you. It was a great moment.

Saturday, we played in Kursk in a beautiful, sold out 500 seat theatre. Again, great piano, great sound. We played after a wonderful father/son(Leonid and Nikolai) piano/sax duo playing original modern classical and jazz influenced compositions. After our set, we all played a blues together and these guys were really tearing it up with us. The crowd loved it. We will be sharing the bill on two other upcoming festivals with Leonid and Nikolai this week. It is amazing to hear how musicians like Leonid learned to play jazz so well with such limited access to it during the former Soviet era. Jazz was restricted during its time--the freedom of it was threatening not too mention that it was American music. Musicians like Leonid were so dedicated to the music though, that they developed strongly in it with access to maybe 45 minutes of the music on the radio or sneaking records around between musicians. Although the musicians here had the highest level of classical training available, jazz was forbidden at the conservatories. Being heard playing the music or swinging would get you expelled.

The day prior we played in Bryansk--a city whose rich history goes back further than Moscow. Geof and I got to see a glimpse of this city walking around at the scenic monastery and art museum where we saw the work of some great Russian artists. Our concert was closing a triple bill festival in a 600 seat theatre filled to capacity. We heard a group of musicians playing folk music on a variety of flutes, clarinet and an accordion looking instrument along with some vocalists. The second group was led by a guitarist along with his two sons on keyboard and another guitar. These guys played flamenco and other world influenced compositions. Great stuff.

Our first performance in Russia was in a club in Krasnodar to an enthusiastic listening audience hosted by the local jazz promoter. It was a good kick off to the tour, and the band was hitting hard even though jet lag was hitting us hard. Krasnodor was a blur although it seemed like a hip little city. The people received us very warmly and we enjoyed some great food at a local Georgian restaurant.

Flying, night trains and drives with lunatic drivers going from venue to venue have been a main theme so far in Russia. The band has been handling it well, though, with camaraderie that has been translating to the bandstand.