Kiril Bordilovskiy is the thinker I’ve been looking for. He is twenty-two. He is a teaching and research assistant at the Pacific National University, which we will visit on Monday. He seems to be a renaissance man. Our Russian student Inna calls him the genius. He teaches science. He loves music, and wants to write… [Read more…]
December 17, 2011
I guess I’m going to have to learn Russian before I’ll truly understand why Vasislav Zakharov is so famous here. This seventy year old saxophonist, whose 70th birthday we are over here in part to celebrate is not mentioned in the one Russian jazz history book that I’ve read. But he is so well-known ,that… [Read more…]
December 17, 2011
I never realized how weak the handles on plastic bags were before.. It is now clear to me they were not designed to serve as luggage. Next time I’ll bring an LL Bean or a book bag to tote around the city carrying the miscellaneous stuff that is overflowing my backpack. **************************************************************************** The blue and… [Read more…]
December 15, 2011
Our pianist friend Ilya us today that there was a motto in the Soviet Union in the 1940’s about jazz. The motto was “Today you play jazz, tomorrow you betray the country.” Ilya’s sister Katya doesn’t have much good to say about Khabarovsk, or her job with the police, or Russia for that matter. Living… [Read more…]
December 14, 2011
One of the questions that I wanted to answer in coming here is: how are our lives different. Sounds kind of silly in a way. If I wanted to see difference I could drive 2 miles from my house to North Portland, and get just as far outside my stable, middle-class life. But the question… [Read more…]
December 13, 2011
I’ll tell you what -40 centigrade feels like: Bracing. If you were groggy and enervated, you are definitely not anymore.
December 13, 2011
The great thing about arriving into an international air terminal in the middle of the night is– no crowds. No waiting at immigration. Customs is a breeze. The downside of arriving at an international air terminal in the middle of the night is that it is a ghost town. There is no one to ask… [Read more…]
December 13, 2011
How long is 13 hours? Guess it depends. You could fly from Portland to New York to Portland and back to New York in that time You could almost get through the 1st (and only) season of my favorite sci-fi show Firefly. You could complete the Portland Marathon 2 times at a moderate pace, enjoy… [Read more…]
December 11, 2011
First travel day. Arrive at PDX at 8:30 am. 2 and a half hours before departure should be plenty right? Not when you have 6 people, 8 suitcases, 3 boxes of drums & cymbals. 2 saxophones, and an electric bass and you are checking in to Beijing. The good news is that we made the… [Read more…]
December 11, 2011
Here’s a question. Do you or do you not need a visa for China if you are staying in the country for 4 hours in transit to Russia. According to whom you ask the answer is No, or Yes or No or Yes or No. Actually we don’t know. So after several minutes of pleasant… [Read more…]
December 18, 2011
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