Clearwater Jazz Holiday

Hi, hope everyone had a good weekend! I did. Friday my parents and I attended the Clearwater Jazz Holiday which was held Thursday-Sunday. This is a free event held in the Fred Howard Park and it is a lot of fun. Very positive fun atmosphere. I chose to go on this night in particular because Chris Botti was playing. He used to be in Stings band and has become extremely successful in his own right playing the trumpet. Somehow I never thought the trumpet could sound the way it does when he plays it. Especially live it is at times both hypnotic and hauntingly beautiful.
Before Chris played we had the chance to hear a woman named Nichole Henry sing. I don't really follow Jazz so I had not heard of her before. Apparently she is pretty popular and is back recently from a world tour. She is very classy, has a beautiful voice and sang many classic love songs.


Because it was free 'open' seating I was able to get up pretty close to the front with my camera. I do not yet have a 'fast' zoom lens so was pretty pleased with what I was able to do with my 70-300 5.6 as I was pretty much out to 300 on all of these shots. We were not even sure we would be able to go until the last minute as we had a lot of rain here in Tampa that day. Just when I thought we had really lucked out, another storm arrived about 2/3 into Chris Bottis set ending the show early :(. But I am so happy that we did get to hear several songs from him. I do not think a dvd is capable of reproducing the sound of the musical notes vibrating out into the night it was just magical. My favorite song was called 'Emmanuel' which he performed with an amazing violinist named Lucia Micarelli. She was returning to performing for the first time since cutting her hand badly on a wine glass at a wedding they performed at in Tuscany. This was quite a story and involved Sting himself making a personal surprise performance at the wedding. I was only able to get pictures of Lucias back so here is a You Tube clip of them performing the song in Boston, it is an amazing piece of music!

Hope Chris Botti comes back to the area again for a full show soon, he is definitely worth the price of a regular admission!
Stephanie