Up 8:30-9, slow morning/breakfast w/ about crew. Most stayed around the house. I walked around town to check out the various Sinterklaas festivities, because why not, and poked around in Oblong Books w/o buying anything. (The selected Coolidge and a couple of anthologies from Station Hill, local to Barrytown, were tempting but not at full price.) Saw Andrew and Emily there as well. Met up w/ Bree at the Lutheran church a block from the house to watch 3 ½ hr sets of local music – a gypsy/Balkan group, an a cappella group from Bard (though several looked too young to be undergrads) doing Georgian music, and a group from a local jazz school (I guess some kind of private extracurricular thing) who were way better than they had any right to be. The teachers/ringers were one tenor sax and the guitarist, the other two sax players were maybe 16-17, and could both solo, and the rhythm section were 12. One drummer better than the other, and neither was Max Roach, but both could keep good time on the ride, and the bass player was completely solid. 2 Vince Guaraldi crowd-pleasers, Shorter’s “Footprints,” and a Gigi Gryce tune, “Stupendous Lee” – pretty hip, all told. Guess I’m impressed b/c my high school jazz band, and me in it, was crap by comparison.
Bought and cooked some kale to contribute to the group dinner, also bacon for tomorrow. Walked over to the Sinterklaas parade after – fascinating and weird, though less so than last year when it was a total mystery. Not going to go into detail.
Sang Kristin’s song (Jenny made handouts); it went over. Played songs (some Bacharach, some standards, “Watching the Detectives”), and/or improvised in various combinations w/ Trip, Warn, Amy for the next couple hrs. Jean found and sang the lyrics to “Take Five” in a fakebook I’d brought. After that, most of the group played liar’s dice; I went to bed before midnight, though it seemed much later.