My friend Melissa (Locsin) holds a weekly artist meeting at Caffe Trieste to catch up on everyone’s comings and goings, projects and general busy work. I’ve had a bad record of missing these for various reasons–this week, I made an effort to attend but when I got there, I noticed Mel was all be her lonesome. Slow weekend, maybe. We got to catching up and before long we included a nearby patron in our conversation.
The view from Caffe Trieste's (San Jose) balcony seating area...
I had breakfast before heading over, but if I hadn’t, I might’ve ordered what Mel was having—it looked delicious!
Some kind of minestrone? Who knows, I should've asked...#photoklutzing
Not too long after we started the three way conversation with Brandon, encompassing topics like improv to web design, live music started to makes it way to my ears. I was immediately captivated! There, in the cafe, a pianist and accordion player were creating a playlist of tunes that literally made me jump out of my seat, excuse myself from the table and plant my arse firmly in front of them!
I enjoy living moments in my life as if I were a character in a movie, my own movie, conveniently enough. That said, there are pockets during these moments when I feel all of my senses are romanced–I love it! In this case it was being in a cafe late noon, coffee at the ready, cafe patrons peppered throughout with their own agendas laid out in front of them like newspaper, and the ever present spritzing sound of the espresso machine. To me, that’s magic; Magic that’s easy to miss if you’re not always curiously open to it.
I sat there, eyes closed (and down-right moist), playing images in my head that coincide with the music I was listening to. There was such an immediacy and intimacy about how they played that there, in the middle of a busy cafe, I was pleasantly overwhelmed with an inner fire that burned and proclaimed, “I LOVE LIFE!”
The moment they had a break, I had to find out who they were. The accordion player introduced himself to me as Gianfranco (Paolozzi) and the pianist as Jessica. I admitted to being captivated and affected by their playing and they seemed pleased and were eager to share more.
Before I pried myself from my front row seats to rejoin Mel, I managed to capture a couple of audio tracks and video.
I received a phone call in the middle of recording this so there’s a hiccup in the video clip – please visit and subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates!
I was also able to capture an audio track but my WordPress isn’t currently set up to allow audio uploads, so you’ll just have to wait for an update. Bummer!
They were absolutely terrific!
I hope this happens more in my lifetime. On a side note, I started a station on Pandora solely to enjoy that curious instrument, the accordion. Hah!Follow @tasialabastro