Occasional Jazz Conjectures

“[Jazz] worked for me as a way of reestablishing a kind of trust. A trust in what I had known earlier. For some reason, I think it directed me back to my need to say something.” –Yusef Komunyakaa
“Maybe I didn’t write you, but I found you.” — Hoagy Carmichael
Confidential to the jazz musicians: PSSSSST. . […]

Play can be manifested as humor — think of the curveball cubism and whiplash sight-gags of a Dizzy Gillespie, Han Bennink, or Toshi Makihara; oneliner-isms of the dry martini sort made famous by Zoot Sims; or as a niggling play-with-your-head, expectational brand of slyness — think Joe Venuti, Cooper Moore, Pee Wee Russell (playing Ornette […]

…I speed again and she speeds tired again, a river of sweat to her waist her head and hair back bending back to me, …my heart is at my throat hitting slow pure notes into the shimmy dance of victory, hair toss victory, a local strut, eyes meeting sweat down her chin arms out in […]

[or Why You Won’t Go Blind Playing By Yourself]
Very few things are as demanding for an improvising musician as solo performance. There are no hesitant prometheans — stealing fire takes bold steps. It’s an intimidating double-dare-you to one’s artistic identity. It’s High Noon (oh do not forsake me. . .) — the musical equivalent of […]

Jazz walks a curious line. It’s simultaneously entertainment and a highly evolved form of art music — encompassing a curious history that extends, as Mr. Crouch has noted, from “the outhouse to the penthouse.” This mildly intrusive mingling of art and commerce can frequently make it a little tricky in the “getting paid” department. Even […]

Maybe it’s like Herbert Marcuse said, “The truth of art lies in this: the world is as it appears in the work of art.” Jazz thrives and pulses forward in times of war, revolution, and social upheaval. . . it’s simply a part of the resistant energy of the creative. Do you think it’s any […]

“Jazz,” Ralph Ellison once said, “is not yet in the age of history, but lingers in that of folklore.” One of the reasons that may ring true is because the music is, to this day, populated with figures of obscurity and oft-whispered notoriety. You know the stories. . .”Man, there’s this one cat in St. […]