Last Visit of WebTV Pagebuilder Pages Days Before Going Offline Forever Killed Off by Microsoft MSNTV

Summary: Last Visit of WebTV Pagebuilder Pages Days Before Going Offline Forever Killed Off by Microsoft MSNTV by Jon Hammond This LINK (and others of mine): http://community-4.webtv.net/GoldenPenMan/BLUESINTHEMOSCOW/ will be a Dead Link soon, thanks to the folks at MSN Microsoft unfortunately. BLUES IN THE MOSCOW WHITE NIGHTS by organist Jon Hammond (USA) Tenor saxophonist IGOR BUTMAN & organist JON HAMMOND Backstage at Le Club jazz club in Moscow with Igor and Jon beaming after first successful concerts in Russia together! Note: See's Candy *in box, is a major sponsor of jazz events & concerts in San Francisco Bay Area thanks to Charles N. Huggins and company. Jazz Quad article: "Blues In The Moscow White Nights": The story of my first concerts in Russia with Igor Butman (sax), Eduard Zizak (drums) by organist Jon Hammond (USA) for Jazz Quad Coming to Russia to play in concert together with Igor Butman and Eduard Zizak recently, was one of the greatest experiences in my life/career! I was highly anticipating this journey for many reasons. First of all since my family originally came from Russia and Latvia many years ago, I had heard so many stories as a young child about the land and people I was about to visit. My grandparents were never able to return to Russia but when I arrived it felt like I was coming home. From the beginning of my preparations I could see that this was not going to be any ordinary music tour! From obtaining visas it was apparent that the procedure was slightly different. I traveled with my girlfriend Jennifer on British Airways departing JFK to London and then from there we changed planes to Moscow. Upon arriving at Moscow SVO airport we quickly found ourselves among 20 persons who arrived with no baggage. There was nobody there to speak in English with from BA, so we had an interesting conversation and procedure with the official Lost and Found desk there and filled out the Baggage Irregularity Report papers. Leaving the customs area without our baggage we were very happy when we stepped out and saw a nice man holding a big Jon Hammond poster. We knew this was our man! Luckily we came 2 days before the concerts and our bags were finally found and delivered to our hotel the next day. Marat Garipov, the gentleman who came to pick us up, is one of Igor Butman's managers. Very nice guy and we had a great time speaking with him on the drive in to Moscow about his daughters and many shared interests. The traffic was very heavy coming in and it took about 1 1/2 hours to come in to Moscow, but we got a great first look at beautiful Moscow! What an incredible city...to me it looks like the Magic Kingdom that Walt Disney tried to recreate, only many of the buildings were built hundreds of years ago! Fantastic architecture. When we checked in to the hotel, first we had to surrender our passports for some sort of official process. When we came up to our room on the 10th floor we found that we had a spectacular view of Red Square right outside our windows! The view was absolutely magnificent. Because it was the 3rd week of June, the days are the longest of the year and known as the White Nights. 10 at night looked like bright daylight! My first night I spent making many calls to trace our baggage and see about getting our passports back while my girlfriend slept. Finally back in posesssion of my instruments and our passports I was then very relieved and could really start enjoying the fact that I was really in Moscow! The night before my first concert at Le Club, we were guests to attend the concert of bassist Alex Rostotsky and his fine group. We had a very enjoyable time dining and listening to Alex's music and got to meet him and his musicians later in the evening. We also had the pleasure of meeting Faina Antonova who is Igor's manager and also managing Le Club. She is very nice and took great care in arranging every detail of our stay in Moscow. I knew right away that we were in care of special angels. After a wonder