Jazz & Me


When I talk to people who find jazz musically intimidating, or unintelligible in its refusal to be as repetitive as popular music, I sometimes tell them to try to hear in the solos little musical structures, any one of which could be a song in itself, but each of which is built, explored, and discarded with breakneck speed. Popular music relies on the ecstasy of trance: repetition of what resonates. Jazz relies more on restless exploration.
It’s not exactly like Levitt Homes and sand castles, but that’s one way to think of it. The point is that one needn’t know anything about music at all to hear in the short bursts of notes -up and down, side to side, angry or soft, symmetrical or jagged - little sound sculptures, built, perfected, then discarded.
Live Jazz Music at Alto Cafè Amsterdam




When I really want to love music, I tend to close my eyes and listen to Keith Jarrett; the technical passages form landscapes, the affective passages move my heart, and their sum is enough to convince me of music’s total artistic superiority whether or not I consider anything like the song’s context, theoretical details, historical significance. For a listener, this is like an apotheosis: the fulfillment of one of art’s promises.


Loving art makes me happier ^_^