Arizona Trip - Day 17

Today was "Music Thursday". We went back to the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) that we visited last week. There is so much to see and listen to there that we could not do it all in one day. Actually, we discovered we could not do it all in two days. We started where we left off previously around 12:00 pm and at 6:00 PM we still had not visited several galleries containing exhibits about music in a number of regions including, South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania. To do an in-depth visit to each exhibit we have not seen will take at least another full day, but not on this trip. We will have to come back some other time.

After having a light dinner in the museum snack bar, we listened to a few songs from a group (Wooden Indian) performing a free concert in the museum courtyard . The group had a peculiar music style we don't regularly listen to (amplified psychedelic new age acoustic folk music with lyrics that were hard to understand - or perhaps mumbled). It was a small crowd and appeared to be mostly friends and family of the band. Anyway, we had a little time to kill before the jazz concert we had tickets for that started at 7:30 pm.

The jazz concert was very good. The group, the SFJAZZ Collective was formed in 2004 and is the repertory group of The SFJAZZ Center, a jazz music organization started in 1984 in San Francisco, The Collective performs a new repertoire each year, one that balances the works of a great modern jazz composer from the post-1960 era and eight new compositions (commissioned by SFJAZZ), one from each band member. This year, their theme artist was the keyboard musician and composer, Chick Corea The eight members of the group get together in San Francisco each year for a three week residency, a month-long tour and production of a CD of their tour highlights. Their music style is mostly a mixture of avant-guard jazz/jazz fusion compositions. The group has members from Philadelphia, New York, Miami, Puerto Rico (2), Israel, New Zealand, and Venezuela. They have a few more stops on their tour before finishing-up in San Francisco at their home base, the new SFJAZZ Center, just recently opened.  Here is some more information about the group:

SFJAZZ Collective

We were back in the RV by 10:30 pm. We are going to an outdoor flea market tomorrow morning, then start getting ready to leave on Saturday.

Day 17 Pictures