All this jazz

Sunday dawn. I don't know why I'm up so early on a Sunday. But I find this early hour, once I get some coffee in me, to be really pleasant. Up early because I want to be, not because I have to be. And it's even better because I have McCoy Tyner live on the headphones. Nothing like some uberjazz to speed up the rising of the Sunday sun. Although from the looks of the sky as it lightens, it's just going to vary in it's grayness, and begrudge us any sight of the sun. Yesterday was the opposite, with sunny blue sky in abundance. Of course I was in the office most of the day, wrestling with the project from hell. I really oughta be in there today as well. We shall see. There's been too much of that lately.
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It's now 10:45, and I've been to church and back. The sky is now spritzing small cold drops. But McCoy is back on, helping me fight off the pall this kind of weather brings on. Fine, fine jazz. It took me a long time to learn how to listen to jazz. My father listened to jazz a lot when I was a kid. Stuff like Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. Jazz vocalists like the Four Freshman, who gave Brian Wilson his basis for harmonies. So it was there, I was exposed to it, but I wasn't really listening. Like any kid in the 60s, it was the Beatles and the Stones and all of the pop radio hits that put music up front in life. Pop music is easy to listen to, usually conventionally structured and predictable (verse/chorus, verse/chorus, bridge, verse/chorus). It satisfies quickly. On to the next tune.

But jazz is obviously different, and you have to work at it. It came very slowly for me. The fusion bands in the 70s like Weather Report, Mahvishnu Orchestra, and Chick Corea were stretching things out without being too avant garde so as to turn off my young ears, and I dug them heavily. They had enough rock and pop elements to work for me. Miles Davis was a little too far out for me, usually. I knew a lot of people who were listening to other stuff but I wasn't tuning in much.

Eventually I turned around on it and came to appreciate the satisfaction that exists in letting yourself hear what jazz artists are laying down. For me that ability was probably fostered by listening to the Grateful Dead for all those years. Their long jams were jazz in a rock setting and format. It was all improvisation, noisy and intense at times, poetic at others. A lot of people didn't like that part of their shows, but I did, and I guess I was really becoming a jazz fan during those years without realizing it. Now I've grown into a different mind set.

And I'll say without hesitation that I still struggle with the really far out stuff. But at least now I can listen to it, and give it a shot. I've learned to relax into it and let it show you where it's going. There was no better example of that than this year's Rochester International Jazz Festival, where the newest venue, the Reformation Lutheran Church hosted the "Nordic Jazz Now" series. An entire week of bands that offered very unconventional, experimental, challenging music. Difficult stuff. And I found myself loving every one of them. I tried to sit up close, where the sound was as much directly from the instruments as from the P.A. I became very engaged in those shows. I hope there is more of that this year.

But I'm still a jazz neophyte. Fortunately there is a planet full of jazz music out there with enough gravity to keep pulling me in. McCoy Tyner is currently doing a great job of that. His music is actually pretty accessible. He rocks.













[Andrea Pettersen Quartet at the Church-photo by RIJF]