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No. I was asked to come in and touch it up, but I was not feeling up to it. My wife had a lot of dental work that day, and I got the word after 5, and I had not made dinner. It was not the house piano, but a rental, and I preferred that the rental agency's tuner take care of it. I suppose that is who it was.

I hope you liked Bimbo's. I think of it almost as a museum piece, a nightclub out of the past, very well preserved. Had I been there, I would have looked for you.

Hey guys,

So glad the concert went so well! Sounds like it was everything you expected and more. Good job on getting the autographs and photos too!

Did he play Divenire without the string section? Or was there a backing track?

Also, love the fact the played Dietro Casa and Nuvole Bianche. Would have loved to have heard them live

I'm glad you guys had a great time! More pics please.

And what type of piano did he play?

It was a Steinway.

Sounds like you all had a Divine time!!!!!!!

Just last night I was trying to play Le Onde again, I couldn't get it to sound anywhere near what it was supposed to sound like! It is alot harder to play than it sounds! It always amazes me as to how well he keeps that constant rubato going and he really does have excellent tone! What a great finale song, it is a real soulful and peaceful song and I just love it!!!

I also like Divenire , that song always gives me energy. I never tire of listening to it. Did he play it any different than he does on his CD? And I am also wondering if there was any backup instruments for that song.

Glad to hear you got autographs, I am sure you will treasure those forever!

Hey... y'all GOT a pic! That's a nice shot, Anthony, of you and Einaudi. And thank you for not putting up the unflattering group photo with me blinking. :p With any luck, Key Notes will have some other photos to put up.

The tone of the piano was very nice, though the pedal creaked audibly maybe 3 or 4 times... the rental company really ought to fix it.

Babs, Einaudi played Divenire differently than on the album. (He played ALL the pieces differently, and he said something to the effect that he does that deliberately to keep from being bored by playing the same thing over and over again.) The main difference is that he played the intro part much slower than the main theme, which I was intrigued to hear, because it's that intro part where I keep making mistakes trying to play it at tempo. So now I can play it slowly and justify it by saying that I'm doing it the "live Einaudi" way.

He didn't use the looping iPod thingy for Divenire, but he did use it for (just) one of the other pieces.

BDB, I was pleasantly surprised by Bimbo's. It does have an older charm to it. I was impressed by the staff. I had been worried about it being a nightclub setting and that there might be a lot of noise and disruption, but the waitresses were skilled at moving unobtrusively among the tables and taking and delivering orders in an almost unnoticeable manner. Our table was at the front, to the left of the piano so we had a good view of Einaudi's hands, but not so far left that we couldn't see his face. Perfect positioning, actually.

Sounded like you guys had a blast at the concert

Hmmm, never did try to play the intro part slower than the main theme for Divernire. Must go try it

Can't wait to see some more pics of you guys with Einaudi.

Boy, talk about pressure. But Swreek!!! I'm kind of shy... AnthonyB was nice enough to captured a photo of each of us posing with Einaudi, perhaps he'll be kind enough to post one of Monica, who looked gorgeous in her dress.

I wish that I could've taken more pics of the huge club itself. It's definitely an elegant venue for holding concert performances. They even have a full time attendant inside the ladies' restroom to hand out paper towels after you washed your hands and to make sure that everything is immaculately cleaned.

Thanks everyone for your nice thoughts and comments, I wish that many of you could've joined us. Let me see if I can find a good group picture out of the three that someone was nice enough to take of us, then collect my nerve before I post it.

I was lucky enough to see and meet Ludovico twice during my trip to San Francisco thanks to him having an in-store concert at the Virgin Mega store on 2 Stockton Street in San Francisco on the 19th. At first there weren't too many people showing up and sitting down so it was just a few of us in the front row of chairs for a while. The seats did manage to fill up pretty well before he started playing and we had some folks standing by the end. It was a somewhat strange experience to walk into a music store and hear tracks from Ludovico Einaudi playing over the speakers though.

He started off (both concerts, actually) with Uno and Dietro L'Incanto. He played quite a few tracks from Divenire during both concerts, with only just handful of others. The in store concert mainly featured pieces from Divenire and I Giorni because those are the two albums the store had for sale, no doubt. The Divenire tracks came first followed by a trip to some I Giorni pieces. Ludovico played for just about an hour or so at the in-store event. He brought some bottles of the family wine with and proceeded to be nice and sign autographs after the show.

Monica and I spent the time before the concert on Thursday sightseeing. We visited an aquarium, walked around quite a bit, visited some sea lions and took a tour of Alcatraz Island. Once we got back from our hotels we headed back to our hotels to prepare for the concert.

My hotel was further away so it took me a bit longer to get ready and back to the club, but Monica had already gotten us a nice spot in line. When we arrived inside a tech was just finishing making final adjustments to the piano and we were seated and begun some eating and drinking while waiting for the concert as doors are one and a half hours before the actual show begins. It took quite some work keeping the ushers from handing off the prime seats at the table we had as they were already taken by our late arriving guests.

Again, the pieces were mainly from Divenire and I Giorni. I'll have to say I didn't write anything down and don't have a good enough memory to recall the tracks played. I will say the audience was great and gave him plenty of well deserved rounds of applause. The tracks he seemed to really get in to while playing seemed to be “Oltremare” and “Andare”. He was making audible noises the most during those songs. He actually shocked me the first night at the in store concert when he was making occasional humming and other such noises likely to help him play and keep time during some of the faster sections. It might be a side effect of playing Divenire pieces with accompaniment. He was much more audible during his actual concert. This could have been due to the piano being mic'd for audio. We were fairly close to the loudspeaker. I think he played Ascolta with his electronic backing track from his iPod. I really enjoyed all the modifications he makes to his music and the bridges between different songs that he comes up with. That makes the performance much more interesting. The encore he performed for us was “Le Onde” which was excellent to hear. I think everyone there wanted him to keep playing, but it wasn't to be.

When he was signing things after the show I once again failed to ask if he ever had plans to do future shows in the USA after these. Darn it. From what I could tell the other shows on the east coast had not been selling all too well which was rather depressing. The fact that only a handful of people went to the Saturday Boston show and they flat out canceled the Sunday show isn't good. I should have also asked, if I got the chance, what he was planning on doing before his show in Mexico. There is a week between his concert in New York and the show in Mexico so I wonder if Ludovico will visit some cities and look for some more musical inspiration. Either that or maybe he'll take the time to get some work done on the new album.

There wasn't much that I did the day following the concert as I pretty much packed up my stuff in the morning and did just a bit of walking around before taking the subway back to the airport.

Overall the trip was well worth the money spent. I had a great time meeting some of the people who I only get to talk to on-line. I really hope that Ludovico will some day take another trip to the USA so that I can see him play again. It would be great if he could manage to stop by Chicago next time as this way one of our other posters here (aw2pp) could have an easier chance to see him play. I'm sure Monica and I could find a way to head there for a concert as well.

I don't have a lot of pictures of Ludovico as they stated no cameras during the concert and the pictures I took the night before were also mainly without flash and thus a bit grainy on the digital camera. I'll get around to posting some of those soon.

As promised... a group pic

Thanks, Key Notes! That one turned out pretty nice, I think. You can see the piano in the background. I will confess that I reached up and depressed one key so that I can say that I "played" the same piano that Einaudi did.

And thanks for the detailed review, Anthony. You did a better job of remembering the pieces played than I did!

Great photo! We're so jealous!

Anthony that was a great review. It's great you guys pulled this whole thing off without a hitch.

I'm super jealous as well.

Next time, I say we all get together for a Nobue Umatsu concert. ..[Final Fantasy series composer].

Well, even though I forgot my camera, I can contribute a photo after the fact. Here's my two Einaudi CDs with autographs. Um, let's just say that I was near the end of the autograph line and Einaudi was clearly getting tired of writing by then.

I'll say! If you showed me that and gave me a million guesses of whose "signature" it was I'd probably still not get "Ludovico Einaudi" from that.

Oh well, at least you know who it is!

So glad you all enjoyed, and shared with us! Einaudi isn't really my "cup of tea", but neither is solo cello, and just that by Rostropovich was absolutely the finest show I've ever been to (likely the finest I'll ever be to...), and I've been to a blue billion. My point is that to be in the presence of a master--whatever the particular 'flavor'--is both an humbling and an elating experience, to be savored and cherished. Methinks I would have enjoyed it in spite of my 'New-Age aversion'...

Yeah, I must say that I got a little more ink when he signed my book:
http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/32/3215/11.html

It seems like he wrote something extra above his name for me then. Probably 'regards' or 'best wishes' or 'good luck trying to play the intro to Divenire, hahaha'.

I'm betting the extra was his first name, Euan... that looks like an "L". Sort of.

Maybe Anthony can upload a photo of his autographed iPod, as that was a signature with distinguishable letters.

I'm not complaining... I'm delighted to have the autographs, and I have to say it's very gracious for a musician to take the time after a concert to mingle with the fans. Must get very tiring and boring for him, but for us... what a thrill.