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Go to the Claude's channel for this and past years concerts and videos
My first time at Django in June, a birthday present to myself, which included a pleasant stay at a nearby Airbnb, which afforded me needed restful sleep out in a quiet countryside.
I was fortunate to be befriended by the Craig a.k.a. Scoredog whom I had never met. He was gracious and encouraging in spite of my shortcomings as a player, and he taught a very interesting class to boot. And, as mentioned by the man himself, Buco and I finally met in person. He wrote to me years ago when he visited New Orleans, but I was so ill with flu at the time, I did not want to get him sick and ruin his vacation. I gave him lots of recommendations which he followed, and he had a great time in my town. It was great to finally meet; it felt as if we’d known each other forever.
Needless to say, the level of musicianship surrounding me was daunting, but there were ways to take advantage of what was available and get the most out of my experience. I attended one of the “slow jam“ classes headed by Lisa Liu, and was gratified to be able to relax and attempt to play some beautiful lines with no pressure. On the other hand, Tcha Limburger came and sat down right next to me for his afternoon seminar, and he was issuing so much interesting and technical information that I simply put my guitar away and filmed him instead. His connection to the essence of the genre is priceless, even though he denigrated his own guitar playing nowadays, saying he’s primarily a violinist. You could have fooled me.
I was happy to see more women than was indicated had attended a previous years. I think it was a good balance, and I wish I’d had a chance to play with more of them. On the other hand, Buco mentioned his class I attended, where he laid out some great ideas I had not considered. When we were almost done, Tomoko Iwamoto, a great violinist, walked over to us and wanted to jam. I managed to botch the intro to “J’attendrais” while wondering whether she knew it or not. Once we were in the song, she just killed it. Not knowing who she was, I complemented her tone and abilities and asked about her background. By the time she explained her semi professional status and musical education, I just shut up and continued to play, and enjoyed jamming, listening and interacting with her. I enjoyed other conversations with her later in the week. Really happy to have met her.
To be honest, there are many great players who are not great teachers, but there’s always something to be gained from just asking them questions, asking for examples, and jamming together. Christine Tassan was a standout as a wonderful educator and great player. She was very generous with her time and comments, and I especially appreciated her organized classes. Sam Farthing was another stand out teacher, not so much because he had a strict organized lesson plan, as much as his ability to illustrate carefully examples from our questions in class. I heard other good things about other instructors, some of whom I didn’t get a chance to sample.
Finally, happy to have enjoyed the corporeal presence of the man behind the phrase “Hi, I’m Micheal from Djangobooks dot com.”
Wow. I went in Year 2 , time flies...
I also sat next to Michael at a lunch, and at the risk of having him feel like a trained bear, I asked him to say "and this is what it sounds like". After all, he owns that phrase.