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I went to see Manisha Shahane and Amit Apte perform at the West LA Farmer’s Market. I was glad to run into Mitra Martin and Stefan Fabry (two amazing tango teachers, whom I was lucky enough to enjoy taking classes with back when I had some time) as they performed on stage just before the musicians. I switched from watercolors to pencil and markers for these. These are also the first sketches in a lovely spiralbound sketchbook that my pal Eriko sent me from Japan. The first one is of Amit and the rest are of the amazing musicians who accompanied Manisha. Geoff Rakness on upright Bass (which I kinda shrunk), Delton Davis on some bongos perhaps and Dave Lewis on drums. I had to run off to another show downtoan so I didn’t get a chance to draw Manisha this time around, but it was a lot of fun.

I caught a performance of Parijat Desai Dance Company at the Skirball Center after work on Thursday. It was a lot of fun and I managed a few simple sketches too. The first one is of the interior of the building that the theatre was in and the rest are quick sketches of the dancers. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I did want to try and put something down.

Ammar and my brother Waqas called up to ask if I had anything to do today..so I found this show called Jazz on a Sunday Afternoon. It was a really good fundraiser for the California Jazz Foundation which helps jazz musicians in need. Here are some sketches. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

The work week really wore me out, but I still checked out Hossein Alizadeh and the Hamavayan Ensemble in a performance called Persian Innovations at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Here are some sketches. I felt like doing these actually helped clear my head and get closer to the music.

Thanks to my brother Waqas, I went to Faith Jam 2007 with a bunch of friends including cameraless Ammar, to see Junoon. It turned out to be Salman Ahmad and a really good tabla player Samir Chatterjee, instead of the full band. The whole night was a lot of fun, with some throat singing and tyco drumming from Om Ensemble, an energetic and fun Israeli band called missFlag, Junoon and then a church choir and band called Christ Our Redeemer, before the audience and all the musicians came together at the end. There were also two really funny comedians; Maz Jobrani and Eric Schwartz. I managed a sketch of Salman Ahmad and the tabla player Samir Chatterjee.

It’s always fun checking out music and bumping into friendly faces, familiar and new.

3′s, 5′s and the last 4 figures are 1′s. Time to buy more ink.