George Winston Sighting!

Good Morning from the "Land of the Morning Calm"

About two weeks ago Chris and I were strolling through an area of Seoul known as Insadong. This is great area filled with Art Galleries, traditional Korean items for purchase, various street artists, musicians, antiques, and some great restaurants. Chris has such busy weeks at work, we often enjoy checking out the different galleries (we find new ones each and every time) and just relaxing. We have a few favorite tea places with not only great teas but green tea chocolate...awesome! It is bitter/dark chocolate dusted with green tea...very good. If you return to the same place more than once...they will often reward you with a little 'extra' piece of cookie/chocolate..something like that.

So, you are probably wondering about the picture.... as we were walking around on a warm day(very warm)...we looked to our right and I said "Chris, that looks like George Winston"....we looked closer and we thought it had to be him...so we walked over and Chris asked him if he was George Winston. He smiled a big smile ...said yes...and immediately started asking where we were from...things like that. He was so warm, genuine, kind, and humble. To be such a great talent you would think he might be too busy to chat...but he seemed to really enjoy visiting with us. Honestly, I think he was glad to see some English speakers who recognized him. :-) His tour manager Larry (he called him his 'tour photographer'..haha) snapped this photo of us standing in front of a local music store. It turns out George was filming a promotion for Seoul Tourism and had just flown in from Japan. We told him how much we enjoyed his last concert in Detroit at the DSO. He said he really enjoyed the facilities and acoustics at the DSO and smaller venues....he also mentioned a favorite place to play in Royal Oak...but we aren't sure the location. We told him we would look into getting tickets for his upcoming concert in Seoul (July1)....then I blurted out that I had 6 of his CD's...haha...what do you say to someone like that? Chris told him I was a huge fan and George seemed genuinely touched. Finally, we told him we would let him continue his visit to Insadong...but he said he was happy to chat as long as we would like. One interesting note. Larry the tour manager was the previous tour manager of "Slayer"....he said managing the tours for George was quite a bit calmer...I have no doubt! Larry is from Texas and George currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We did go to the concert July1, 2008 and I will post a separate story/photos from that day also...it was great and we met with George and Larry again after the concert (I'm just calling him George now...since we have become buddies...:-)