Why I no longer write about jazz

August 29th, 2006 → 4:28 pm @

I love jazz. I love listening to jazz and I love seeing jazz live. For a while, I wrote about jazz. And then I stopped. Why? Because there was no way I was ever going to be knowledgable enough to write paragraphs like this one, from Nate Chinen’s New York Times article on a Sonny Rollins concert:

“What came next was even better: an unaccompanied cadenza that took Mr. Rollins through the emotional spectrum of his playing, and through seemingly dozens of musical quotations. In one stretch, modulating keys and elasticizing time, he flirted with the “Tennessee Waltz,” and then quoted, back-to-back, “I Thought About You” and “Look at Me Now.” In the hands of another player, this might have seemed cloying or overtly conceptual. Mr. Rollins made it a personal outpouring.”

My version would have been more along the lines of, “Man, is Sonny Rollins awesome.”

Post Categories: Jazz & Sonny Rollins