I went to New York and Boston from the 2nd until the 12th of October. I had a great time and I wanted to share of these great moments with you!
So follow me inside my journey...
I arrived late on Monday the second in Boston. And I woke up early the next morning (thank you dear jet lag) so I had some time to work in a nice café, take a walk on a nice park close to my hotel. Then I had lunch with Mike Flanagan. Mike is a great artist from Massachusetts, he has played with lots of great artists like Terri Lyne Carrington or Esperanza Spalding, and he's a great friend of Michael Wilbur! By the way, he's artist page will soon be released on our website :)
On the afternoon I did a workshop at Berklee and then when to the MIT to meet Miguel Zenon!
On the next day I spent some time with Tivon Pennicott, Godwin Louis, Lihi Haruvi and Jorrit Dijkstra and I run to the train station to take my train to New York.
On my first day in New York I was so happy to see again Daniel Ko, that I haven't met since my first trip to South Korea in 2019. At night, I went to see Melissa Aldana play at Smoke and then George Garzone at Smalls.
The following day we tried some mouthpieces with Stephen Chen, who is the sax player of San Fermin and the Ghost Funk Orchestra and then with Wayne Escoffery. In the afternoon I went to Caleb Curtis' studio to discuss new models of mouthpieces and I saw him play at Bar Bayeux the same night, that was great!
On Saturday I had a slower day so I was planning to have a nice walk in the city but it rained like crazy... At night I went to see the great Tim Berne play at Barbès (so it's a music bar in Brooklyn names after the Paris district). It was such a great show! By the way, Tim now plays with the Arcane reeds 2,5 and he really likes them :)
On Sunday, I had a nice sunny breakfast on a terrace with JD Allen. I then met Freddy Deboe, who is the saxophone player of Lee Fields, to make him try a new version of the mouthpieces, after the one he tried a few weeks ago during the festival Jazz à la Villette in Paris. I then went to Dave Liebman's appartment and we tried a lot of soprano mouthpieces! To end that beautiful day I went to Birdland in order to try some tenor mouthpieces with Donny McCaslin. I then stay for his show where he was playing the music of Sonny Rollins and I enjoyed it a lot!
Monday I went to Manhattan at Jon Baltimore's shop so he could choose his new batch of mouthpieces. So if you are in NYC and you want to try Syos saxophone mouthpieces, you can go to his shop! And by the way, you can check the list of all our retailers here. In the afternoon I met Ben Wendel :) It was my only night without concerts and I had a nice dinner with a friend a met in Mexico a long time ago.
On Tuesday I had a breakfast with Josh Plotner, which is working on an awesome video with all the saxophones from soprano to bass saxophone, with only Syos mouthpieces :) Josh is a great musician from NYC who has notably played in Damien Chazelle's Babylon or Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Then I met Trace Zacur and Alex LoRe at the loft. In the afternoon I went to meet Sam Dillon and then I was invited by Louis Fouché to go to the taping of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I then went to see Steve Kortyka plays with Brian Newman at the Jazz Club. We then went to Smalls to see Johnny O'Neal trio.
My last day in New York was quite full also! In the morning I went to meet Anat Cohen at her repairman's shop to try some clarinet mouthpieces. I then had lunch with the talented Veronica Leahy, who recently did a really nice review of Syos alto mouthpieces.
In the afternoon I got a lot of meetings at the Syos loft with Kevin Sun, Julieta Eugenio, Ally and Jenna from the Brass Queens and Rogerst Charles from Lucky Chops! To end this fabulous week I went to see a really beautiful dance show by the Malpaso Dance Company at the Joyce Theater. Ted Nash wrote the music and was playing saxophone on one of the choreographies.
So, as you can see, I spent 10 very busy days in New York and Boston and that was really great! Thank you to everyone I met during this trip, I hope to come back again soon!
