This one is from the Birthday concert for Slava.  It was a wonderful setting.

The photographer is Oleg Litvak,  a member of the Union of Photo Artists of Russia, and friend of PKSCA board member  Zoya Surits.

Enjoy!

http://bbobbi.livejournal.com/152067.html

Looking forward to celebrating the holidays with family and sleep.

Darrell

There are some things that a quick glance backwards affords.  One is the arc of a journey.  It is impossible to believe that I didn’t know some of these people 12 days ago.  It feels like we have spent a lifetime together.  It’s not just the hours in each other’s company.  It is also the range of experiences shared.

Katie commented today that she is glad that we didn’t have “babysitters” on this trip. And it is true.  The past two days in Vladivostok have been of a very different character.  Our agenda has been taken care of by the consulate.  Our transportation provided, our meals organized.  While we have certainly enjoyed the pampering (and the organization), there was something engaging about having to draw on our own resources, to figure things out and rely our each other and our hosts as we did in Khabarovsk.  This feeling of family that developed between us and with our hosts there was a byproduct of this, and something that we will treasure.

The arc of a journey starts in uncertainty and assumptions that the experience gives lie to.  My fellow travelers have been thanking me for the organizing I did to make this trip happen.  Believe it or not, I can’t remember it.  When I think about this trip now, everything that happened seems inevitable.  It seems like the journey defined itself, rather than being shaped by whatever plans I may have made in advance.  The trip took on a life of it’s own, and the real journey was one that I couldn’t ever have planned.

The middle of a good journey is one of growth, of revelation and insight, exploration and hard work.  The middle is the engaging part.  New things are happening.  Acceptance and understanding come without your even knowing it.  A foreign language starts to sound musical.  The strange streets start to feel familiar.  The place becomes yours, as do the people.  You drop your preconceptions and start to live in the moment.

Along the way there are peak experiences.  Could be learning a new word.  Having a good conversation.  Meeting a kindred spirit.  Sharing a tradition.  Eating kebabs and drinking vodka.  Playing a great concert.  These get the adrenaline going and make you feel energized and alive.  They make you feel like your engaged in things that really matter.

Along there way there is sometimes conflict.  The hard work, long days and trying circumstances sometimes grate on nerves.  The day-to-day challenges of proximity and lack of privacy strain relations.  Fortunately we avoided most of this.  A few sharp words here and there.  But we got along remarkably well.  I can’t imagine a better chemistry or more synchronistic combination of skills and temperaments.  We travelled well together and along the way we coalesced into a tight band, an effective delegation and a group of friends.

The arc of a journey usually also includes what I call “the ragged edge.” The ragged edge is the straw that breaks the camels back.  The day that was just too long.  The challenge that was just too much.  How a group responds to the ragged edge defines the rest of the journey.  Often they splinter.  They lash our in anger at each other.  They suffer irreconcilable differences.

The ragged edge is where you see the parts of people you haven’t seen before, the sides of their character they don’t show under normal circumstances, the places they are vulnerable.  The rugged, self-sufficient individualist is laid out with an illness.  The indefatigable optimist suffers from self-doubt.  The polish and poise cracks and inner struggles are revealed.

Sometimes the ragged edge brings people closer.  A depth of caring is revealed.   Strength is passed from one to another.  And the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.  After the ragged edge you are connected in a way you were not before.  You are not and will never again be strangers.

Then there are the farewells.  That is where we are now.  I’m sitting in my hotel in Vladivostok.  In twenty minutes I will go check out and begin the long journey home.  I don’t want the trip to end, and I do.  I wonder if I am the same.  Will I forget this journey?  Are the friendships developed really ones that will last?  Will the plans made come to fruition.  Is this a piece of destiny, or just a nice ten days?  I keep hoping that something has changed inside me. That is the great thing about journeys.  You don’t have time to ponder the future.  You can put questions to rest and just go step by step.

One moment of clarity that I hope I will retain from this trip is that life itself is a journey, with its own arc.  Much of the time I feel like I did at the beginning this trip, full of uncertainty, questions and incomplete assumptions.  My thought was that if I could live every day, or at least most days, like the last ten – one moment at a time – then maybe every day would feel like the last ten – inevitable, engaging, with a life of its own, and full of possibility.

We’ll see.

Farewell from the Jazz Bridge.

DG

Not so in Khabarovsk.

They told us that we would be celebrities here.  I was doubtful.  They said that we would be on television all the time.  I was skeptical.

I was wrong.

From our first workshop to our final concert, our every public appearance in Khabarovsk has been covered by the media.  I have been interviewed more in this week than in the past several years in Portland.  After every concert,  I can honestly say we were mobbed (albeit gently) with people seeking photos and autographs.  Granted there were crowds of hundreds rather than thousands, but the effect is pretty much the same.  You can’t go anywhere, or do anything else.  Every direction you turn there is an autograph book or camera pointing with a delighted request for just one more “photo please?”

Sometimes, as in our final concert in Khabarovsk, the process is incorporated into the gig.  Before the concert we posed for photos, which they printed out during the first set from a color printer in the back of the room.  At the intermission, we signed dozens of those photos and then posed with pretty much every person in the audience, either singly or in groups. Then we took more official pictures, before heading off to have a between-sets meal.  Then we came back to the stage to start the second set, and signed more pictures.  After the show a woman literally lept onto the stage from the audience and gave Marilyn a hug and kisses on both cheeks.  Then it was TV interviews and more pictures, and autographs.

This was the routine at venue after venue.  Sometimes we actually had to be somewhere after the shows.  But it didn’t seem to matter.  It was “Photo please, autograph please,” until we were pulled or pulled ourselves out of the room.  I’m convinced that by now our pictures are on Facebook all over the Russian Far East.

So this is what it feels like to be a rock star.  Everyone should experience it at least once, I think.  I’ll miss it when I go back home.

 This is a post from our second day in Khabarovsk.  Wish I’d gotten to it sooner. But it is interesting to reflect on my perspective early on and how it fleshed out over the week.

I’m thinking of coining a new phrase.  The phrase is “Legacy Move.”  A legacy move is the single action or course of action that has repercussions down through generations.  Carnegie building his libraries was a legacy move.  Setting up the WPA was one too.  But they can happen on a local scale too.  My colleague Charley Gray told me about a guy named Phil Hardemann, who was an administrator in the Berkeley school districts in the 70’s.  He made it a practice to fill the ranks of general education grade school teachers in his schools with skilled jazz musicians.  So your first grade teacher was a jazz musician.  Your second grade teacher was a jazz musician.  Then he developed a curriculum that allowed them to deliver music into the classroom.  So you learned recorder, as well as math and reading from a jazz musician.  Enough years of this and you get musicians like Grammy winner Joshua Redman, pianist Benny Green and dozens of other musicians who are both leading figures and contributing members to communities far from where they grew up.

I’d love to make one legacy move in my life.

We met the music administrator of this school- Ludmilla.  I’m still not clear on what she does, but I’m told she is not a teacher.  From what I can tell they don’t teach music, but they teach about music.  After several months attempting to understand the Russian music education system I think I’m getting a handle on it.

Valery Khusainov, the director of jazz at the Khabarovsk College of the Arts has a vision of creating a music school like David Douglas.  Ever since his visit here, he has been telling me how inspired he was by seeing David Douglas Middle and High schools, and how they wanted to create a school like that in Khabarovsk.  I couldn’t figure out what had so impressed him about it.  David Douglas is a fine music program, but that unique.  I couldn’t understand what made it exceptional.

Now I get it.  There are no orchestras in Khabarovsk public schools.  There are no bands.  There are few if any choirs. If you want to learn an instrument you have to pay to attend a private music school.  (We will visit one of them tomorrow.) So for all intents and purposes there is no music in the schools in Khabarovsk.  There is also no non-profit, privately funded, community supported youth orchestra in Khabarovsk.  No Portland Youth Philharmonic.  No Metropolitan Youth Symphony.  And needless to say there are no youth jazz programs.

Now I see what was so stunning to him about David Douglas. In that one school he saw an orchestra, a band, a jazz band, and a choir! This was enough to create a vision.  But he wants to do us one better.  He wants the kids to learn how to play instruments in the school.  Which makes sense because if they could afford to take lessons, then they would be going to a private music school

So now I know Valery’s secret motive in finagling our visit to Gymnasium #3.  We were bait.  We were a means to plant the seeds for a long-term effort to change the way things are done, one school at a time, and one grade at a time if necessary.  He says it will take ten years.  Instruments for the first graders is the first step.

But his vision goes beyond this.  His real goal is really far reaching.  In Russia, you go from high school, which ends generally in 11^th grade, to college.  College is four years and prepares you for University, which is two to five years depending on your course of study.  In University you intensely study your subject, or your major, as we would call it.  But Universities have a wide range of extracurricular activities. So if you are, say at the University for Polytechnic and you want to play music, you might join one of its extracurricular organizations.  If you were at Pacific University in Khabarovsk you might take part in jazz big band this way.

These programs are often well funded, as in extremely well funded.  In fact, one of these extracurricular programs at the local University has a budget that exceeds the entire annual budget of the College of Arts where Valery teaches. Valery says that different schools even schedule competitions with each other.  It seems like the Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP) that they have at Portland State, only with the budget of big time college sports.

Valery’s plan, and I think it is brilliant, is to get all these public school kids playing music, involved in ensembles, taking lessons, so that when they get to college, which ever college they go to, they will continue with music.  They will start and maintain extracurricular music programs in their colleges and Universities.   They may even teach or tutor music, for which some Colleges will cover their tuition.  So it’s like a big feedback loop. The students are initiated into lifelong participation in music.  Even as they are learning they are teaching and inspiring the next generation.

It’s a legacy move.

Valery Khusainov talking to the 8th grade class at School #3

Here is a short post I didn’t get to send.  From 12/15, our third full day in Khabarovsk

We met the Minister of Culture today.  We were sitting in the theater waiting for him, talking amongst ourselves, when our interpreter Masha stood up and said, someone important is coming.  So we all stood up.  The Minister strode into the room, walked down the line of and briskly shook our hands in welcome.

We were talking later about how in America we don’t do this.  We don’t stand at attention when someone walks into a room.  Unless were giving the person standing ovation, or they are the President.  Although it does depend on which president.

We speculated that Russia is a militaristic culture.  Rank and deference to power are more important here than in America.  We stand in appreciation, we stand out or respect, but we know we don’t have to stand if we don’t want to.

The first thing that gives this impression is the line of grand old European-looking buildings that line the main boulevard.  They are taller and of older pedigree than the buildings in Khabarovsk.  Seeing them, I feel like I could be in Chicago or Vienna, or Embassy Row on the upper east side of New York.

We drive by a “Royal Burger,” with a big picture of what looks like an actual hamburger, something we haven’t seen since we left the states.  Our guide and interpreter Zhenya, the cultural affairs assistant at the US consulate tells us that the man who started it really, really wanted to open an McDonalds, but it is difficult to keep the food quality standards sufficiently high to maintain a franchise such as this, not least because of the distance the ingredients must travel to get here.   So he started his own chain, and it is pretty good, she says, “a real American style burger.”

She tells us there are only three American chains in Vladivostok: Cinnabons, which I was also surprised to see in Khabarovsk, Subway (not recommended, for the above mentioned food quality reasons), and Baskin Robbins.  I guess keeping ice cream frozen in this part of the world is not so much of a challenge.

Vladivostok is called Russia’s eastern gateway.  But id doesn’t look like the Far East.  She says that the stereotype people have of this city is that it is overrun with Chinese.  But that is not at all true.

The second thing is the huge, half-completed suspension bridge that towers out over the bay.  It too dwarfs anything in Khabarovsk.  It is a big project.  They have only been working on it for about a year.  It is the kind of impressive infrastructure project that big cities seem to use to establish a signature, or an identity.

The third thing is the traffic.  I’m used to dense highway traffic of the kind we experience trying to go west on Hwy 26 after work.  I’ve driven in the 8-lane bumper to bumper parking lots they call freeways in California.  I’ve even sat parked for 45 minutes at a time trying to get out beyond the ring road the surrounds Berlin.  But the gridlock in downtown Vladivostok was something entirely new to me.  First of all it never changed from 8 am, when we saw it out the windows of the train, to 5 pm when we left the hotel to go to our concert.  Every main street was a sea of cars inching along, merging, or trying to, from all directions.  There were not so much lanes of traffic, but throngs of traffic, which individual cars tried to bully their way through like someone pushing to get to the front of a ticket queue. This is made more frustrating by the traffic pattern of one-way streets that requires you to drive in a six-block circle to reach a building you can see from the rear window of your car when you get in it.  Needless to say, the frustration level of this kind of congestion lends itself to a less than courteous driving style, of which we saw numerous examples.  It is also pretty clear that jaywalking in this city would be an act bordering on suicidal.  We saw some folks do it though, almost hit a couple ourselves.

We had an 11:30 appointment at the American consulate.  The consul general is a very warm and friendly black woman named Sylvia Reed Curren.  She is a lifetime diplomat with 25 years in the state department.  This is her fourth Russian speaking station, having been posted in Moscow, Turkmenistan, and another city I can’t remember. Her relaxed, casual demeanor and unaccented English is a welcome respite from the bustling formality of the past week.   She thanks us for coming, tells us a bit about the region her consulate serves, which is the largest by land area in the world.  I asked her if she could tell us from her perspective the most important thing we offer to our Russian friends.  She said to just be ourselves, just show them what Americans are really like.  This sounds like the usual State department answer, but also seems true.  She tells us that this is “The American Season” in Russia, and “Russian Season” in the U.S., with cultural events and exchanges and projects all over each country.  This is the first we’ve heard of it.

Zhenya tells us that they have projects coming up in February and March.  In February an African-American jazz singer named Ty Stephens, who lives in Japan is bringing a group to perform in several cities in the region.  Funny thing is I think I worked with him when I lived in New York.  March is some kind of educational fair promoting American Universities and colleges in the region.  We talk about how it is very challenging for Russians who are interested in studying in the states to figure out how to do it.  The ways that you get into college are so different in each country.  It makes me wonder how many more foreign students we might get if we could clarify the process.

Our liaison Zhenya is responsible for all these things happening.  Like most consulates these days, they have hardly any budget ,so they have to partner,  as they are doing with us.  The Philharmonic of Vladivostok is covering our travel and hotel.  The consulate is buying us lunch and dinner.  (And just like the state of Oregon, they don’t pay for alcohol.  Makes me smile as I recall explaining this very thing to faculty search candidates that we have hosted in Portland.)  So Zhenya works ridiculously hard long days. The overtime, she says, is “voluntary.”  Like Vladimir Sidarov in Khabarovsk and Sergei Melnik in our party, she has to be both Russian and American, negotiating our expectations, and their realities.  It is hard enough to negotiate that divide on a personal level, I can’t imagine having to do it on an official level as well. She is a master at it.  And according to our drummer Alan Jones, she is a miracle worker who can walk on water.

Alan lost his phone on the train.

Our night on the Trans-Siberian went very well all things considered.  It is a fantastic train. New, well appointed.  I could definitely see doing the whole 7-day trip from Moscow to Vlad.  The only challenges would be where to eat and how to shower.   Anyway, Alan woke up with a migraine-something to do with the change in air pressure.   Anyway in the bustle of getting all the bags and ourselves off the train, he left his iphone on the shelf over his berth.  We discovered this when we got to the hotel, about an hour after the train arrived.  The typical Russian discussion that ensued was a bit too much for Alan who, rather unwisely, since the hotel staff still had our passports, started to strike out for the train station on his own.  Sergei chased him down and it was settled that he and Zhenya and the driver would go back.  He was gone for about an hour and a half.

To hear Alan tell it, Zhenya then led them through a veritable jungle of bureaucracy, uniformed police and transit officials, locked doors, empty buildings.   At every road-block she would make a call, or find another official, or knock on another door, sometimes backtracking, but always moving them closer to getting the phone.  He said they must have walked four miles.  Ultimately they wound up in the train depot, a building a dozen blocks away from the train station where they keep the trains when they are out of services.  And low and behold, the phone, which was still on the train, was presented to him.

Amazing.  Not just because Alan got his phone back, but because Zhenya didn’t give up-for an hour and a half.  I can’t figure out which aspect this episode best illustrates.

Russian reality: I mean it’s kind of weird that the phone was still where he left it. It hadn’t been stolen.  It hadn’t been dumped in some far away lost and found.  I hadn’t been removed by cleaning people.  Any of these outcomes I would have expected in the states.

American expectations:  Despite all the important things that might be happening in Vladivostok, the phone needed to be found.  I don’t fault Alan at all.  I would have felt the same way.  It does seem typically American way to think though. I wonder if a Russian person would have insisted or persisted on such a personal quest.  I’ll have to ask Zhenya.

Looking out at the Bay in Vladivostok

Music School #2

We started off our second full day in Khabarovsk by visiting Music School #2, whose name does not reflect the innovative, virtuosic and otherwise fascinating recital we were witnessed.  The recital hall was a small room.  The first thing I noticed, after the workstation synthesizer and the first Apple computer I have seen in Khabarovsk, was the fact that the two beat up old upright pianos were pushed against a wall on one side of the stage.  In the middle of the stage stood two sleek looking Roland digital grand pianos.  This should have been my first clue that this was not your typical music schools-in Russia or America.  Nonetheless I was stunned when they turned down that lights and switched on the disco light ball that set the room sparkling. A demure little blonde girl stepped on stage and bowed gracefully, pushed her keyboard buttons to get to her pre-set sound, and then waited while they revved up the orchestral accompaniment track to which she performed her piece.  Actually it wasn’t a traditional orchestra. It sounded more like the soundtrack to the blockbuster action movie.  The piece she played was full of scales and figures I would have thought were beyond the grasp of a nine-year old student.

The rest of the concert continued in like fashion.  Piano students of varying ages but the same flawless Russian piano technique came out and performed to orchestrated track.  They played everything from Russian pop to Bach.  Some pieces they played using a tradition piano sound.  Others used flutes or strings or even out of tune honky tonk bar piano.

The instructor told us this style is called “Estrada.”  It is based on the a style of Russin pop music from the mid-eighties.  Estrada was and is very popular in Russia.  His is the only school in the Russian  Far East that teaching this way.  He is quite the entrepreneur.  He has created the curriculum, hired all the teachers, creates the orchestrated arrangements for each piece the children play.  He also knows all 200 of them by name.

The financial set up is equally interesting to me.  Lessons are free.  Students go to this school after their regular school day.  They are there for about five hours.  In that time they take classes in theory and solfege, and take private lessons.  They also get 5 minutes per day in that room with the keyboards and the disco ball.  Their love of Estrada keeps them in music much longer than traditional lessons.  Although he says they make the transition easily.

What is not free are the monthly public performances he sets up in a 500 seat hall in Khabarovsk.  To play in these recitals, you have to pay.  They are extracurricular, as it were.  But the kids love to do them, and willingly pay.  Maybe it is getting to dress up and be on stage.  In fact, at every concert we have seen in Khabarovsk, from this recital to the largest public concert, the performance attire has been several notches above ours.  From what I have learned, appearance in general, and dressing for the stage are a point of pride here, as if getting to wear a fantastic dress is a big part of the fun.  This, and there innovative use of technology to provide kids with an engaging and stimulating music experience is something that we can take home with us.

Diplomacy in action

Later this same day we had two official meetings.  The first was a formal meeting in a big conference room at the Ministry of Education in Downtown Khabarovsk.  It was the real deal, where we sat on one side of the table and their delegation sat on the other.  There were little American and Russian flags in little holders.

Their side of the table is all women.  One was the Deputy Minister of Education. The Minister is on vacation until the end of December. (Like in Europe, they get four weeks a year.)  We have a translator, a woman named Masha, who is the sister of one of the students at the college, and getting her masters in English.  The Deputy Minister welcomes us and gives some rather long remarks about how she is delighted that we are here, and hopes to discover how we can help them in the area of music education.  The other women don’t say anything- for the whole meeting

As we go through introductions, I’m wondering about how we get from formalities to substantive discussion.  Fortunately, Valery Khusainov takes care of that.  He begins talking about his desire to implement music programs in the public schools.   I’ve heard him talk about this enough by now that I can pretty much follow it, even in Russian.  I think that one of our roles in coming here was to give him an opportunity to lay his plan out for this audience.

The discussion moved on to the importance of the arts in education.  Maybe it is the challenge of translation or just American presumption, but we feel compelled to harp on the importance and the benefits of arts learning-as if they don’t know.  The Minister of Education hasn’t said much up to this point, but now she weighs in with some rather emphatic rhetoric about how they do in fact know this.  It seems there was a time when all their schools had music and art, just like ours did.  But times have changed, just as they have for us.  They would very much like to put arts back in the schools, just as we would.

What came out of this meeting, in addition to my introduction to the protocol of international diplomacy, was an appreciation of Valery’s vision.  They seem willing to implement it in one school to begin with. They assured us that they heard our passionate call for improvisation to be added to the music curriculum.  They were also emphatic in saying that before they changed the way their schools are set up, they need to approve a curriculum.

The good news is that we can help with that.  We have state standards for music education.  We have a myriad of jazz education curricula for all levels.  We have skilled educators to draw on.  I didn’t come away with a clear top to bottom picture of the challenges to music education in modern Russia, but I think I know what should come next.

The difference between the first meeting and the second was like night and day.  We met in a much smaller room, in the Khabarovsk City Hall.  In fact the table only fits five of our group, so Mark, Katie and Inna decide sit this one out.

The Deputy Mayor enters, accompanied by four other women and a translator.  She is an energetic and dynamic woman, who tells us that in 1988 she was a member of the first delegation from Khabarovsk to visit Portland.  She was  also a part of the group that established the Portland-Khabarovsk Sister City relationship the following year.  Even after 20 plus years, her enthusiasm for her experience of Portland and its people is still evident.

In this meeting we also talked about broad ideas first, albeit at less length.  After the welcome and the introductions, I talked about my vision of a bridge between two cities built on music and cultural exchange.  She talked about Khabarovsk’s love of culture.  I talked about the Amur Suite.  She told us that they built a new performance hall.  I was very curious to ask how that process came about, thinking it would reveal a great deal about how things get done in Khabarovsk.  But I didn’t get to ask about it.

I talked about my interest in bringing Khabarovsk performing groups to Portland, not just jazz, but whatever culture they thought represented their city best, in the way jazz represents Portland.  She talked then about their folk choir and dancers that often travel to other countries.  I also discovered that they send an invitation every year to Portland to attend their annual city celebration which happens in May.

As we did in the first meeting, we ended this one by exchanging gifts.  They presented us with books about Khabarovsk and some music CD’s. I gave them the Jimmy Maks painting by Diane Russell.  She said that next time we came, we might see it in the art museum. We also gave them some of the Portland Timbers scarves that we have handing out like candy every place we go.  Good gifts, scarves.  Make for a good photo op and the make people smile.

I left these two meetings feeling on one hand,  like a seasoned veteran at the diplomatic process, and on the other hand, having a deeper respect for the fragility and importance of this age-old process of communicating across borders.

One thing missing from these blog posts is any mention of sight-seeing or shopping.  This is not an oversight.  There actually hasn’t been any.  One of the byproducts of our busy schedule has been a lack of time to just relax.  We have not actually had a single day with out one or more often than not, multiple performances.  This, in addition to the challenges of language, transportation and customs is wearing a little thin now.

This state of affairs is probably due to me as much as anyone.  Way back in the planning stages of this trip, Sergei told me that it would be jam-packed ten days.  At the time this seemed like an ok thing.  Given our purpose as cultural ambassadors, and the fact that most of us are seasoned professional performers, I probably said something like “bring it on.”  After all, how many opportunities might we have to do this work?  But even ambassadors need some down time.

However, I’m pleased to say that dark mood was transformed by that most American of activities- shopping.

For two hours yesterday morning, my host Yefgeny drove Inna Makhaddinova and I around the city looking for gifts and souvenirs for friends and family back home.  It was an enlightening two hours.

Some observations:

1. There is no such thing as Russian Legos.

Legos are bigger than mere nations or cultures.  I realized this when I walked into the toy store that we drove ten minutes to get to in order to fulfill my seven-year old son’s one and only task for me in Russia- bring back Russian legos.  My heart sank when I turned the corner and saw the same mountain of Lego boxes I see in the Fred Meyer in Portland.  Same pictures, same English names, same Star Wars, same Harry Potter, same Nijago.  Globalization became more than a mere word for me at that moment.

2. Branding and merchandising is not a universal activity

My second request was for a kid’s jersey or t-shirt with a Russian logo of some kind. When I went to Norway I brought Malcolm home a Norwegian soccer outfit.  I bought it from a random street kiosk near the train station.  This would be a fine substitute for the Legos, I thought.  A look around the rest of the toy store, which also had kid’s clothes, revealed nothing.  After some conversation, we drove to a nearby sporting goods store, which in contrast to the U.Ss was about the size of a 7-11.  Still nothing.

Embarrassed by the amount of our limited time I was taking up, I was ready to throw in the towel.  However, Yefgeni had one more suggestion, the sports arena. Thinking that it was highly unlikely that the gift shop in a sports arena would be open at 11:15 on a Monday morning, I nevertheless went along.   I was right, there was no gift shop in the hockey arena.  However, across the street, there was a big sign CCM, which, although I don’t know what it means, I have seen on Russian hockey uniforms.  Turns out we struck gold- ahuge sporting goods store selling all kinds of hockey gear.  Only problem was it didn’t open for another ½ hour.  Nevertheless Yefgeni knocked on the door.  An employee walks by, points at the hours clearly marked there.  And gives us the look that in any country says “can’t read the sign?”

Yefgeni continues knocking.  Another employee walks by, and another.  He keeps knocking.  I fail to see the point.  Finally an employee comes to open the door.   Yefgeni talks briefly with her.  Inna explains to me that he said we are from out of town, and we are leaving today and something about should I call the manager?  (He doesn’t know the manager)

Anyway, somehow it works.  She comes back, and lets us in the store.  Just us, not the 3 or 4 other Russian people also standing outside waiting for the store to open.

Cool.

I go in and get Malcolm a jersey, scarf and the best looking winter hat ever, all with big logos of the Khabarovsky Amur’s, the number one hockey team in Russia.  And I think:

Try pulling that off at Walmart!

3. Souvenirs are satisfying.

I have never been a collector or purchaser of souvenirs.  Maybe it is a byproduct of primarily travelling as a working musician.  The memories I collected were the concerts played, people met, walks taken, camaraderie shared and stories brought home from unique or challenging adventures on the road.

But I feel very happy buying souvenirs from this trip.  It seems appropriate to remember the friendships and share connections made here with my friends and family back home through trinkets, ornaments, and fridge magnets.  I suspect this is because, contrary to most of my touring and travelling, I am not here for myself alone.  That I’m here at all is due to the hopes and hard work of many individuals. So I feel the desire to show my appreciation.  I think it also may have something to do with my perception of how I am seen here.   Yes, I am a musician here, and a performer, but I feel like I’m not stuck with that stereotype.  I don’t have to play a role. I feel like the people I’ve met here would be just as warm and open, and treat me the same way even if I weren’t here performing.  As far as I can tell I am the only black man in the entire Russian Far East.  And I feel like family. That is a memory worth remembering.

Ice Sculpture in Lenin Square