Mike Bjella and friends

Saturday 28th December, 2019
Emy J's, Stevens Point, WI

My mum and I went to see her friends Michelle and Steve's son Mike Bjella playing at a local coffeehouse during my last night in Stevens Point. Nice to share some left-field musical culture. They played some fairly free stuff, some more overtly jazzy stuff, a song or two and a Finnish folktune. Mike (primarily a saxophonist) gets together with his old musical friends and plays a little show whenever he's in town. This time it was Aaron Kruziki (winds, guitar) and Devin Drobka (drums). Here's something similar in the same space almost ten years ago (more of an straight-up jazz thing):

I met Mike's dad Steve last time I was in town back in the spring, after seeing him perform a farewell concert (retiring as violin teacher from the local university music department), we talked about Max Richter. I was introduced to Mike after this gig, talked about his recent move to Vermont (he's a music teacher there), about the Brattleboro Free Folk scene, mv&ee (aspects of Vermont he has yet to discover), also his involvement in the Montreal and Toronto music scenes. I remembered some names from episodes of Canterbury Sans Frontieres (Parc X Trio from Montreal, the Toronto-centric Mechanical Sound Forest blog) which were part of his orbit. Nice connection.