It's been an intense performance itinerary--basically playing every night with long travel in between. We have been in and out of nine cities in Russia so fast that time seemed to blur together sometimes. This has basically been a concert tour of Russia--all performances. All venues have been fantastic with enthusiastic music loving audiences, sold out theaters ranging from 225-1800 seats, 9ft pianos with technicians on hand the whole concert, and solid backine/sound crews. Jazz is happening in Mother Russia. It's hard to believe that this tour is beyond the halfway mark.

This past week we've been in Cheylabinsk, Tula, Kaluga, Varonesh, Obninsk, and I think I'm leaving one out. Last night we played our final concert in Moscow at the Yauza Hall on the River in Moscow to a packed house of about 900. The band is feeling the grind, but playing hard through the burn. It was a strong last hit and a blast connecting with the large crowd.

Staying at Yasnaya Poliana around Leo Tolstoy's Estate in Tula a few days ago was definitely a highlight. Absolutely beautiful, snow covered serene woods. Unfortunately, I briefly came down with a nasty cold which kept me from the tour of the grounds, but the gorgeous, historically rich environment was inspiring. Check out Geof's blog on his web site--I imagine he'll have some details of the tour. I would love to come out there again in the future and just compose, practice, and soak up the grounds for an extended period of time. We met up with Leonid and Nickolai in Tula and played another double-bill concert with them. Wonderful musicians, human beings and a great hang.

Kaluga was after Tula and the venue was an intimate recital hall at a performance/education venue. Kaluga has a huge world class guitar jazz festival each year. Next, we drove out to Obninsk which we were told is a scientific community that rarely sees jazz. The crowd was very enthusiastic, though, and insisted on an encore which we were glad to oblige. We were only in Obninsk for the day--we drove to Moscow that night for our final performance the next day.

I wish we had more of an opportunity to experience the culture, places and people in each of the cities we visited. We were basically in each place long enough to get cleaned up and play a concert before we had to move on. The audiences were all very warm and very appreciative of music. We were treated well by the venues and the people we did meet after the concerts were beautiful and inspiring by how affected they are by art and music. Much of our experience was dragging our suitcases and gear from place to place, hanging out in 2 or 4 bed sleeper trains, sitting on crammed buses, negotiating gear weight with airline agents, and making sure we were keeping track of our passport and myriad of papers we had to have handy in case the Russian police stopped us(which they did). You know, the road. On to Kyiv, Ukraine.........