Zakir Hussain's Cross Currents Jazz Tour 2017

This was a wild and wonderful flurry of a tour. We covered 3 countries and 15 concerts in about 20 days. Lots of 3am wake up calls! Another amazing line up:
Zakir Hussain - Tabla
Dave Holland - Bass
Chris Potter - Sax
Shankar Mahadevan - Voice
Louiz Banks - Piano
Gino Banks - Drums
Sanjay Divecha - Guitar

and then myself as tour, stage etc manager
Mujeeb Dadarkar - Front of House Sound
Benny (Vijay Benegal) - Monitor Sound 

Quite the team!
I have been Zakir's tour manager since 1995 and have been doing the tours with Mujeeb since 2002... Lots of adventures and stories to tell... Haaaaaa, one of these years we'll put out the Tour Memoir's, but for now a quick snap shot. 

Scroll on the photos below to see more ~

The tour took us from SF Jazz in San Francisco to Vancouver to San Diego to Atlanta to Florida to Newark and many more... Pretty much every day, get up at 3am, leave for the airport by 4am, do the "10 guys with gear & luggage" check-in thing at the airport. Then fly and collect everything and find the transport to the hotel, check-in at the hotel and while the musicians go get some much needed rest, us tech guys - Ty Mujeeb & Benny - along with drummer Gino (bless his heart) head right to the hall to set up and make sure everything is in place for sound check... then the show and after meet & greet which makes it about 1am by the time we reach the hotel, and then we start it again!!!!! Nuts

Luckily, I was able to rope my friends and students Jon Crane & Jim Meiklejohn into helping out with a crazy transition from the gig at the Vancouver Chan Center across the Boarder at 1am to get to a hotel in Seattle for 2 hours so we could catch the direct flight to San Diego... As well as my dear old buddy and tabla student Jamie Kostura who helped us out all day in Newark - couldn't do it without them! Kudos to Jon, Jim & Jamie :)

It was such a treat to get to know Chris & Dave more on this tour, they are truly the gems of their instrument and tradition. Pretty much every time Chris takes a solo my jaw drops to the floor... And man what a sweet heart of a guy (as Dave is), we found a number of after gig opportunities to meet at the hotel bar and chill out, of course preparing for our much needed 2 hours of sleep.

We did have 2 nights in random cities where we arrived and didn't have a concert, so those nights we were able to find a nice place to eat and enjoy a little down time... 

Always lots of stories inside each tour, but for now, I wanted to share the over view of the journey with you and the second half of this tour is coming at the end of April 2018, so I recommend you find a way to see this All Star band if you can. A truly wonderful fusion! And once again, I can only plainly say what a blessing it is to be around the God of tabla, Zakir Hussain. He just seems to get stronger and deeper in the Universe of sound & rhythm. An endless ocean of music!

Love & music to you and yours and see you again soon,
Ciao,
Ty