Jazz, Art, Clay, Glass, Taiko

It's quite a lot to cram all into one day, but they were all in the vicinity and all free, so we went for it all :)

First, we arrived Stanford for a Jazz concert for kids. We got to see and hear the soprano, baritone, and bass saxophones which are much less common than their tenor and alto counterparts (although EVERYTHING is new to the kids). I chose this activity to show them different instruments and hoped they could tell me if they've a preference in woodwinds or strings but it seems it'll take more exposure before they'll know. All the musicians gave short intros to their instruments along with cool tricks and fun sounds. The incredibly talented violinist demo'd Pizzicato and col legno - big words that the kids may not remember, but many impressively sat through most of the concert attentively.

Our next stop is the Cantor Arts Center - although admission is always free and we could've gone on another day, we needed to eat anyway and we're already on campus so why not. After noshing on delicious organic/free-range/grass-fed soup, salad and sandwich in the café overlooking a perfectly manicured lawn and the Rodin Sculpture garden, we headed into the museum. While most automatically assume kids won't like art museums, I wanted to give them a chance to prove their sophisticated tastes. Afterall, they love gourmet 'adult' food in restaurants and often get compliments from other diners about their etiquette. But of course they're still kids and there's some running around and noise but they did enjoy it quite a bit.

Next we headed to the Clay and Glass Festival a few minutes away. Although we missed the Ikebana demo, we got to see pottery wheel throwing and tried making ceramic pieces. There were hundreds of artists but Nathan was getting too heavy to carry around so we only made a quick round before heading back to the car.

The last stop is San Jose J-town to check out the Obon festival. Before the Taiko performance, we briefly checked out a Japanese garden and was later very pleasantly surprised to have spotted a back alley that led to an art studio featuring live glass blowing. It was perfect as we were just commenting on the absence of a glass demo at the previous event in Palo Alto.

All in all, it was a great day of music, art, and culture. Enjoy the album:

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