Jessica rang me early this evening. We both had stories to tell each other. This was somewhat strange as I just saw her yesterday evening and I really don’t have all that much going on. But what she told me!
Yesterday she mentioned that a co-worker of hers might give her passes to the annual Ottawa Jazz Festival. I thought that was cool. Free entertainment! But it’s so much more than that. She’s going tomorrow and seeing The Bad Plus. I could tell by the way she said it that she didn’t know who they were. My nephew turned me on to them a couple of years ago and I really like their music. When the festival announced their line-up this spring, I certainly do not recall them being on the list. But it didn’t end there.
She said, “And then the main act is a guy named… what was it? Al de Matteo?”
I replied, “Never heard of him.”
She was still thinking, “No, that’s not it… I’m thinking of Drea de Matteo.” She was an actress from The Sopranos.
Then the lightbulb went on in my head. But surely it couldn’t be! I spoke haltingly, “Not. Al. Di Meola. Surely.”
“Yea, that’s it! I’ve never heard of him, but he’s the guy.”
At that point I lost my mind. Al di Meola! A friend in high-school introduced me to his music and I’ve been a fan of his ever since. I’ve never seen him live, either. I’m going to be out of town tomorrow night and Jessica, lucky woman, is not only going to see him, but she stumbled into the tickets for free! Nice. I’m not sure how much she’s into jazz, but what a show that’ll be! I can’t wait to hear what she thinks.
Next year, I’m going to have to be a little more careful about checking out the concert schedule. Goodness, The Bad Plus and Al di Meola…
The show was fan-tas-tic! We missed most of The Big Plus (dinner plans with a friend in town from California), but we did catch their version of Tom Sawyer. Of course I thought of you, Rick! 🙂 Al di Meola was phenomenal. And his band was über-talented. The Italian accordian player wailed on that thing! We were pretty tired after working on the house all day, so we weren’t sure we’d stay for the whole show, but we did – for both encores! Wow. And such a great atmosphere to see a show, too. Not like the nuttiness of Bluesfest. Very civilized.