Goodbye Montreal; Hello Santiago, Chile!

It was a bit sad leaving Montreal after making friends with some very cool people at Cirque headquarters, but it was time to leave the nest. My fight on Monday to Santiago was one of those red-eye-crying-baby-semi-turbulant flights, so I arrived at 10am with no sleep...paid my $100 welcome-to-Chile cover charge (they call it a tax) went to the hotel...unpacked...and shuttled off the the site where the show is set up, appropriately call, "The Site." It was my first time seeing Saltimbanco live (I'd watched DVDs of previous shows to learn the music). It's truly an amazing show. You really get a sense of the roots of Cirque du Soleil's beginnings as a group of street performers. I watched both performances and the applause at the end of both shows was so loud, it hurt my ears. All the shows in Santiago and Buenos Aires are now sold out to 2,500 seat crowds!

I've got a ton of music to memorize and I started rehearsing with the band already. They've got a cool way of integrating me into the show. I'll be backstage with my own practice rig - a keyboard set up and a video monitor. I'll be playing along with the band who is onstage without hearing the current keyboardist in my headphones. Cool training wheels, huh? Actually, it's a horribly uncomfortable and definitely not ergonomically correct "erector set" to play music on, but if I'm going to be uncomfortable, it may as well be in Santiago while I'm on a cool gig.

The hotel in Santiago is gorgeous - much better than the halfway house in Montreal, and the weather has been similar to the California desert. I'll be here for about two weeks.

(Click on pics to enlarge/pop-up)

Chilean Mountains from the plane


Practice rig at hotel


View outside my hotel window (it's nice to be working on music while seeing this outside my hotel window


Screen shot of my computer and all the "stuff" I have up while working on the tunes. Notice that I have a photo of the keyboard setup in the upper right so I could memorize where all the pedals are and their function.


Keyboards - Stage Rigs (see all the pedals I have to deal with?)


Keyboards - Practice Rig backstage