Katie and I just celebrated our 5th anniversary. It's hard to believe it's already been that long! We didn't do anything too fancy since Katie had to be at school all day studying for a huge anatomy test the next day. I was working at Mannes doing some scheduling for the fall. But I did get her 5 red roses and took her to dinner (both surprises) at a place called the Garden Café. It is about a 15 minutes walk from our apartment but is rated as highly on its food as the best restaurants in the city. A couple runs it; the husband cooks and the wife is the hostess (and main server). The dining room is very small (about 9 tables, most of which are for 2 people only) and reservations are a must.
Before getting to the restaurant, however, we noticed a wine store that had a placard out front advertising free tastings of caipirinhas, a Brazilian drink made with lime, sugar and a Brazilian liquor called cachaça (ka SHA sa). We had never had them, they were good, and we purchased a bottle of the liquor thinking we could make some of these drinks later. It came with a wooden lime-crusher (pestle). So we ended up getting a nice pre-dinner cocktail.
At dinner we had the prix fixe (which included a first course, main course and desert). For the first course, Katie got an endive salad with fresh tomatoes and Irish cheese; I got a Maine crab cake with capers and cornichons (little pickles). Of course, we shared tastes of each other’s food, and they were both excellent. For the main course, Katie had wild Coho salmon with sesame and scallion noodles and I had an orange-ginger boneless duck breast with rice. So good! We also had an Austrian dry Riesling with everything. Yum. For dessert I had hazelnut gelato with wafers and chocolate and Katie had coconut pound cake with vanilla ice cream and fresh mango sauce. We switched desserts halfway through. It was a very pleasant evening, and Katie said it was just what she needed to take her mind off studying (however briefly) and her upcoming test.
Last night, after her test (the results of which she won’t know until next week), we went to Prospect Park’s band shell and heard the Brooklyn Philharmonic do a great program including excerpts from Copland’s “Rodeo,” Bizet’s “Carmen” and Stravinsky’s “Firebird.” There were probably 3,000 people out there. We sat in the seats, but some people were in the back spread out on the grass. Others were outside the fence at the barbecue pits where they could grill burgers and still hear the music (though not see the orchestra as well). One positive about New York in the summer is the fact that there are many free concerts and activities. It almost balances out the heat, humidity and various unpleasant odors that assault one’s senses from time to time. Needless to say, we are looking toward a visit to the Northwest later this summer!
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Jazz at the Blue Note
Last night Katie and I had a great New York moment. Our friend Ben (of Exotic Bird-Sitting for Ben and Jara fame) took us and his younger brother, Charles, to the Blue Note, a famous jazz club in New York City down in Greenwich Village. This was partly motivated by our recent week’s worth of bird-sitting (so why didn’t we go to the more appropriately named Birdland, another jazz club, you might ask—the program at Blue Note was more interesting). We got there relatively early, about 45 minutes before the show started, and got a table that literally abutted the stage. I was concerned about volume, but I needn’t have been since they didn’t amplify the music too much. There were two acts, a 19-year-old phenom on piano named Eldar (he immigrated from Kyrgystan when he was 11) and an 80-year-young piano legend named Randy Weston. We had yummy drinks before the show and dinner during. Katie got crab cakes and I ordered steak. Great food, great jazz and (most importantly) great company! Afterwards, the four of us went to an Italian bakery and had little yummy things like gelato and almond tarts.
Although both acts were great, we really liked the standards as rendered by Eldar. We could see the keyboard and his hands were blurry as he was playing so fast! He just released an album called “Eldar, Live from the Blue Note”, so we decided to get it since we heard him live at the Blue Note and it seemed fitting. If you want to read a little about him and hear some of his stuff, click this link: http://www.eldarjazz.com/
We hope everyone had a great 4th of July!
Although both acts were great, we really liked the standards as rendered by Eldar. We could see the keyboard and his hands were blurry as he was playing so fast! He just released an album called “Eldar, Live from the Blue Note”, so we decided to get it since we heard him live at the Blue Note and it seemed fitting. If you want to read a little about him and hear some of his stuff, click this link: http://www.eldarjazz.com/
We hope everyone had a great 4th of July!
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Museums and Birds
Happy July 4th Weekend!
We just got back from a rooftop party down the block from us. The views of the Museum and Manhattan were great (7th story). It was being thrown by a friend of a friend: Katie’s friend Marc, a graduating Physician Assistant student, had a friend named Josh, also a PA student, who hosted the party. We had just gone to the Brooklyn Museum, too, for its free First Saturday. The current temporary installation is one on New York graffiti and I put up some neat pictures if you click here, or over on the right-hand side of the screen in the side bar under “Pictures.” One of the points about the exhibit was the controversy over whether or not graffiti is really art worthy of a museum installation. If you look at our pictures, we’ll let you decide. Definitely thought provoking.
Some other interesting things from this week: we are over half-way done bird-sitting for our friends Ben and Jara. They are in Alaska, where Jara teaches at a music camp (4-5 weeks every summer for about 4-5 years). Ben is finally getting his chance to visit Alaska, so they let us take care of the birds. So far so good, although the birds can get quite noisy. We put some pictures of us and the birds on our Flickr site. (Click here). I had two gigs on Tuesday and Wednesday. The former was a graduation for a Cornell University program. The latter was a neat Catholic Mass honoring Mary under her title of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. There is a huge Filipino population in midtown Manhattan, and people were actually visiting from the Philippines for this particular service. Apparently they really like this particular role of Mary. They paraded an icon of the Blessed Virgin all around midtown and were waving long-stemmed yellow roses in the air, sang all kinds of hymns I’d never heard before, including Latin chants, and were very appreciative of the brass quartet that played during the Mass. Katie has been studying like crazy, spending long hours at the library because the noise of the birds can be quite distracting. We did some socializing last night with our friends Ted and Dena, going out for drinks and dinner. It was great fun. I am working a lot at Mannes for the Prep program, helping out with the scheduling of music theory/history classes for next fall.
We should be doing some fun/interesting things for the holiday this week, although we are not sure what exactly. We’ll let you know in the next blog installment.
We just got back from a rooftop party down the block from us. The views of the Museum and Manhattan were great (7th story). It was being thrown by a friend of a friend: Katie’s friend Marc, a graduating Physician Assistant student, had a friend named Josh, also a PA student, who hosted the party. We had just gone to the Brooklyn Museum, too, for its free First Saturday. The current temporary installation is one on New York graffiti and I put up some neat pictures if you click here, or over on the right-hand side of the screen in the side bar under “Pictures.” One of the points about the exhibit was the controversy over whether or not graffiti is really art worthy of a museum installation. If you look at our pictures, we’ll let you decide. Definitely thought provoking.
Some other interesting things from this week: we are over half-way done bird-sitting for our friends Ben and Jara. They are in Alaska, where Jara teaches at a music camp (4-5 weeks every summer for about 4-5 years). Ben is finally getting his chance to visit Alaska, so they let us take care of the birds. So far so good, although the birds can get quite noisy. We put some pictures of us and the birds on our Flickr site. (Click here). I had two gigs on Tuesday and Wednesday. The former was a graduation for a Cornell University program. The latter was a neat Catholic Mass honoring Mary under her title of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. There is a huge Filipino population in midtown Manhattan, and people were actually visiting from the Philippines for this particular service. Apparently they really like this particular role of Mary. They paraded an icon of the Blessed Virgin all around midtown and were waving long-stemmed yellow roses in the air, sang all kinds of hymns I’d never heard before, including Latin chants, and were very appreciative of the brass quartet that played during the Mass. Katie has been studying like crazy, spending long hours at the library because the noise of the birds can be quite distracting. We did some socializing last night with our friends Ted and Dena, going out for drinks and dinner. It was great fun. I am working a lot at Mannes for the Prep program, helping out with the scheduling of music theory/history classes for next fall.
We should be doing some fun/interesting things for the holiday this week, although we are not sure what exactly. We’ll let you know in the next blog installment.
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