The Portugal-Tour Between September 8 and 20, I went on tour with the Susanne Alt Quartet. It was a great experience because it’s the first real tour I was on and also the first tour I organized. I’ve been to Lisbon 3 times before so I knew that I only could take care of things to a certain degree because the Portuguese mentality is a different one from the German or the Dutch. Fine….I am glad I knew because otherwise I easily would have panicked a bit…. Everything takes more time in Portugal and probably in other countries also! But you become treated very well and get loads of love. First we played 3 nights at the Hotclube de Jazz in Lisbon where I played 2 ½ years before with a Portuguese band. Hotclube is great because it’s a cozy place where people love jazz. The day after we played at Cervejaria di Camoes in Leiria where appeared that there was a misunderstanding: I thought they’d have a piano or keyboards but they didn’t have one!!! It was my mistake…Ricardo, the programmer of this place fortunately found somebody in town who borrowed us a keuyboard…. Then we had 3 days off, Klaas and Thijs went to the Algarve, the south coast of Portugal for 2 days and Sven and I went for one afternoon up to the castle in Sintra. When you are at the highest point you have a beautiful overview. There’s a forest you can see and it seems enchanted, magic because it’s so dark and the buildings in there look like a vampire place…Probably that’s the reason why you can’t go up the castle hill at night; it’s closed… Next we played at the Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon which had an incredibly good acoustic. In the evening I went to Bairro Alto to see a concert of the band Tora Tora, led by Johannes Krieger, trumpet, and Lars Arens, trombone. The result is a incredibly funky Afro-Latin dance music with a lot of winds and great solo’s. That evening the great Portuguese saxophone player Jorge Rais joined them and played a heavy solo. We finished the tour at Projecto Jazz in Pombal with Afonso Pais on bass because Sven had to go back to Holland. Afonso took me for lunch- actually it was breakfast to this lovely restaurant 90km north where I had grilled chicken and he had chicken offal with chicken blood and rice… nice breakfast! But seriously, I ate the best chicken in my life! In the evening we Rudolfo, the club manager took us to a very good restaurant where we ate incredibly good octopus. Yes yes, good food is important! The second night in Pombal ended with a long and wild jam session where we traded instruments, Klaas sang, played piano and played on my soprano sax, I played bass, Thijs played harmonica and drums, and Afonso played piano and drums. We were joined by a jazz lover called Laurienne on piano who seems to go to every single concert of Projecto Jazz. You bet it was big fun!!! Before we flew back to Amsterdam we went back to Lisbon for one night where I caught up with friends. It was a great trip! Now I am back in the cold fall of Amsterdam preparing the cd presentation…