May 18, 2001

Today is May 18, and for some reason I've been up since 2:30.a.m. Around 3:30 a.m. a lone bird began to sing and now, coming up on 4:30 a.m.. I've the whole raucous gang chiming in. Yesterday morning was our photo shoot time. We went to Patun, formerly a separate kingdom but now just a Kathmandu suburb classified as a "World Herigage Site." It has many Hindu temples - evidently the king was a great supporter of the arts. One of the most lavish temples is devoted to the Hindu god of the arts. Much of it has been restored and, judging from the number of local people, it is truly close to the heart of the Nepalese. This photo shoot is for the cover of our soon-to-be-release album with a preliminary title of "Planet Flute". Pamela's drive and determination to pull all of this off is amazing!From there we made a return to the Hyatt to go over some technical details with the alumni organization that has volunteered to handle this "one man show" - the "one man" is me. Emile did his one man show before I arrived. Then back to the studio for some more mixing. I had never appreciated the amount of behind-the-scenes work/mixing goes into the final product, especially when a group is involved! The evening concert went very well, the attendance was good...about 300 I think. We debuted our collaborative "Thunder Song." Parangat, the tabla player, is our human metronome.Tomorrow I fly to London, then on Sunday the 20th I'll arrive in Israel! More to come!