free concerts

Met with a new Tandem partner, and she's about perfect. Talks quickly in German but will go back and explain; feels awkward and unsure about her English; we trade off speaking in each others' language. She bluntly chides me when I slip into English. It is excellent.
Following our meeting I went to the 6:15 organ concert at Leonhardskirche, it happens every Friday evening. Tonight was all Buxtehude. There's a famous story about the young Bach walking 200 miles to see Dietrich Buxtehude play the organ. It may not have been D.B. himself tonight, but I only had to walk about 25 minutes. I took some video from inside my bag. It's kind of short. Sorry.

There were probably 80 people there, mostly older, but not exclusively. Can you imagine 80 people coming to an all-Buxtehude program anywhere in the US? And that, my friends, is why I moved here. I was reading an interview with an American bass player who moved over here maybe three decades ago; he was asked to recommend teachers or courses for students interested in focusing on early music, and he recommends coming to Europe: "I now believe that to be essential –for many reasons, language, culture, tradition. Early music here is a basic cultural entity, like jazz in America."
Don't think I don't miss the US, though. Oh California, I intone your name daily...