Audrey

San Franciso-based Train rolled into Madison, Wisconsin—and Audrey and I enjoyed our fourth show from the 1990s pop-rock band. We’re temporarily based in Madison while Audrey works here on Voter Protection. The concert venue was just a 10 minute walk from our apartment—Madison is very walkable town. And we enjoyed a pre-concert gathering at the adjacent glass apartment tower, where Audrey’s new colleagues have a beautiful apartment. Their balcony looked over the concert venue and had a beautiful view across both of the lakes that surround the Madison isthmus....

In May 2024, our family converged in the mile-high city of Denver for a beautiful spring weekend. Mom, Paul, and Karen flew in from New Jersey; Audrey from California; and Jacob lives and teaches in Denver. I was already there for a business trip. First stop was Colorado College, Jacob’s alma mater, pictured above. Did you know Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, composed America the Beautiful here in 1882?...

We went out looking for life in Death Valley. We found long vistas of wide valleys and dry mountains;lakebeds that haven’t seen water in ages; and, ghost towns with tales to tell. We crossed the Tehachapi Pass and found some Golden State dreamscapes. Here’s our trip: Mojave Desert We first struck gold in the Mojave Desert, when we came across huge superblooms of “Desert Gold” flowers covering the sandy basin. The air was clear and the views were vast....

Marcus Miller played a haunting version of Gorée on bass clarinet, after introducing this composition as inspired by his visit to the island in Africa that was a slave trading center. His tune for his mother-in-law, Bunny’s Dream, was also especially beautiful. His tribute to Jaco Pastorius, “Mr Pastorius,” was another highlight, featuring Russell Gunn on trumpet who played with a Miles Davis-inspired muted tone. The show had no shortage of jaw-dropping bass solos, but especially featured Marcus’s talents as a composer....

Julian Lage led a quartet through an inspiring take on Jazz Standards on a rainy Sunday evening at SFJazz. The fourth member of the quartet, Chris Potter, was the guest sax player. I love when a band is having a great time, and the quartet seemed just overjoyed with how this set went. Julian was playing a four-night stand at SFJazz and this was the final night. The show was organized as a tribute to seminal jazz guitarist Jim Hall, who was a mentor to Lage....