Day: August 20, 2005

Trio

Friday night Duke and I went to a concert at the The Mountain Winery in Saratoga. The Mountain Winery is my favorite place for a concert. It has a relatively small seating area and beautiful setting under the stars with the winery in the background. Whenever we go to a concert there we always have a picnic first in the parking lot overlooking the Santa Clara Valley. If you haven’t experienced a concert at the Mountain Winery you should definitely make a point of going there when you are in the San Francisco Bay area.
We saw  Stanley Clarke – Bela Fleck – Jean-Luc Ponty. who are doing a summer concert tour called Trio. All three musicians were exceptional.  Bassist Stanley Clarke makes the bass into a solo instrument.   Jazz
violinist Jean-Luc Ponty made the violin sound like about three or four instruments playing at one time and  banjo player Bela Fleck made the banjo seem like an instrument made for Jazz. When they played together the strength and power of the music took your breath away. This was one of the best concerts I have been to in a long time.

A Wonderful Dinner

Pat, Linda, and I have been friend for almost 30 years. The three of us always get together to celebrate each of our birthdays. In a previous post I have discussed the dinner we had at Manresa  for Pat’s birthday. I guess I didn’t write anything about the wonderful dinner we had at Gary Danko in San Francisco for Linda’s birthday. Last weekend we celebrated my birthday by going to Cetrella in Half Moon Bay. It was also am amazingly wonderful dinner. I had chicken liver pate to start, then I had the
  Pan Roasted Grimaud Farms Duck Breast, Wild Rice, Toasted Hazelnut and Baby Leek Pilaf with Caramelized Mission Fig for my entree and had the Peach Tart Tatin with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream for dessert. It was all wonderfully prepared and delicious. The service was exceptional and the atmosphere was wonderful. I especially liked that the noise level was low. So many good restaurants I’ve been to lately have high hardwood ceilings that make conversation difficult. I noticed that at Cetrella  even though the ceilings were high they had acoustic covering.

As you can imagine dinner with three long time friends is always wonderful. We have been through a lot together and never run out of things to laugh and talk about together. It is so wonderful to know that no matter what happens in our lives we will always be friends.