Okay, so my plans for multiple "Cologne liveblogging" installments obviously fell by the wayside -- there simply wasn't time. But I'm back with the full report.
Tuesday, Oct. 24 - subway to Penn Station, NJ Transit commuter rail to Newark Liberty Airport, farking AirTrain to the terminal (for non-New Yorkers, AirTrain is your first introduction to our charming local custom of naked extortion -- welcome to New York, now pay up, motherfucker), short flight from Newark to Montreal (the one nice thing about Newark airport is that it's not busy, so you don't get the insanely long lines typical of JFK or LaGuardia), long flight from Montreal to Frankfurt. I mark up my scores, engage in some small, surreptitious hand-waving as I try to figure out how I'm going to conduct the new piece ("Habeas Corpus"), do my best to ignore the movies (Nacho Libre and [shudder] The Notebook (would anyone want to watch this if they weren't trapped on a plane?), and try to steal a little sleep.
Wednesday, Oct. 25 - touch down in Frankfurt, clear German customs (surprisingly laid-back compared to any other border I've crossed), attempt to locate the Deutsche Bahn station so I can catch the train into Cologne. The high-speed train is a very civilized way to travel -- none of the hassles of air travel, totally smooth and almost totally silent, very comfortable, great view of the German countryside. This is my first trip to continental Europe as an adult, so I'm trying to soak it all up.
I arrive at the Hotel Leonet just in time for breakfast (with, oddly, some of the best croissants I've ever had), followed by an exhausted collapse. I get up again at 4 PM and do some walking around. Within the first few steps, I'm almost run over by some crazy dude riding his bike right in the middle of the sidewalk. What the hell... ? Then I look down. Bike lane. They are all over (the bike lanes and the cyclists). I'm told Cologne isn't as good as Amsterdam when it comes to bike-friendliness, but it sure schools any North American city.
Within less than five minutes, I ran into a small protest march. I have no idea what it was about -- they disappeared around the corner before I could catch up to them.
I went to the concert venue (Stadtgarten) to check it out. It's a great spot, located (as you might expect) in the Cologne City Garden, with a large outdoor beer garden area for the summer months, a very good café/restaurant, a smallish club space downstairs (Studio 672), and a larger main space (Konzertsaal) on the main floor. This is where the visiting jazz artists normally play (Cuong Vu, Marc Ribot, John Scofield, Joey Baron, and uh, me), although their lineup is very eclectic, with hip hop, new music, rock, etc, and musicians from all over the world. It's the kind of venue that doesn't exist in North America -- it gets some funding from the City of Cologne, and this, along with the revenue from the beer garden and restaurant, helps subsidize the music and other cultural activities. It's also the main home of the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra -- they play there about once a month, normally performing music written by some of the players in the band.
After dinner, I met my contact with the CCJO, bari saxophonist Marcus Bartelt. Marcus is an alumnus of Brookmeyer's New Art Orchestra (he played section bari on New Works). He took me to a very cool bar called Metronome, a tiny space that spins from the library of wall-to-wall of classic jazz vinyl, and occasionally even manages to squeeze in a live trio. This is the jazz hangout in Cologne. We drank kölsch and talked about the band, the next couple of days of rehearsals, the local scene, etc. Marcus is very chill and made me feel much more relaxed about the upcoming hit.
To be continued...
It's nice to have you back. I'm still bummed about having to miss it.
Posted by: mwanji | 02 November 2006 at 03:11 PM