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!