Grace Kelly & Melissa AldanaI just got back from a great performance at Lincoln Center in NYC.  I was fortunate to be a part of a stellar sextet of Berklee Students led by Greg Osby.  We’d been rehearsing quite a bit for this hit in NY, everyone brought in originals and arrangements of standards.  We were off  Monday morning. Bright and early, 8 am to be exact (woo!).  Took a plane to NY and arrived to find our bass player’s bag didn’t come through baggage claim.  We waited around for another 30-30 min as he talked to the people at “lost baggage.”  Ah, the joys of traveling.  However, he did find his bag.  A little later we were off driving into the city.  The day was pretty packed…checked into the hotel, grabbed some lunch, straight to sound check.  Dizzy’s the jazz club we played at is a beautiful club.   It’s really classy with a view overlooking all of NYC.  You really must go in the future, you wont be disappointed.  Plus, the food is really great…  New Orleans cuisine.  Everyone had a blast playing our two sets…The house was packed and we just played.  There’s nothing like performing for me…There was great energy from everyone in the band and in the audience.  I could really feel the energy feed to everyone on stage. It was also really great because after all those rehearsals it felt wonderful to stretch out and just blow over the tunes.  We took the plane back the next morning to find our guitarist’s bag got lost when we arrived in Boston.  So crazy…two bags in one trip?!  I have (luckily) never had this happen to me, and have done quite a bit of traveling.  I suppose you never know what’s going to happen. Anyway, hopefully they’ve found his bag by now.  Then the best part happened, we all got driven back to Berklee for midterms!!!! Yippee!. We couldn’t stop talking it, we were so excited. Haha. I’m just kidding.  But, anyway, yes a very successful and fun trip.

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