I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil last week while Hurricane Sandy was tearing up the US east coast, and had the opportunity to hang out for an evening with jazz harmonica monster Wim Dijkgraaf and former head of Hohner PR (now Brazilian venture capitalist) Fernando Bresslau. I met Wim for the first time about 15 years ago in Amsterdam. He now lives in Brazil, where the best music in the world is made (disagree if you like, but resistance is pointless), and he runs a terrific website and blog for jazz harmonica players.

Wim Dijkgraaf

We had a great night eating, drinking, and talking about the music business. I happened to have my RP355 with me (what a coincidence!), and when we gathered at Wim’s place I had the opportunity to show him some of the things the RP can do and hear Wim play through the rig. What a pleasure that was–to hear one of the greatest jazz harmonica players in the world playing through my rig! Among his favorites were a patch based on a Matchless amp model that includes a doubled tone a perfect 4th down, several of my octave-down patches (that RP pitch shifter gets ’em every time), and a double-octave down bass wah patch. Within a few minutes he was working the expression pedal to squeeze accents and mood changes out of patches like he’d been doing it for years.

Before I went to Wim’s, I played a short set of solo pieces at Gartner’s Brazilian Symposium conference, which went over well with the audience of IT professionals in attendance. That set included my pieces Widow’s Walk and Billy the Kid, both of which can be heard at this site, of course. All in all, a great night in a pretty lively town.