I never paid much attention to jazz until one day last fall when we stumbled upon an outdoor performance at the Storm King Art Center. My mind was blown wide open by this quintet, seamlessly alternating between playing as a group and solo-ing, but most impressive were the solos-in-successions and the back-and-forth riffing which sparked my synapses like pop rocks on the tongue. I nodded and clapped to the beat, the more intense moments marked by tiny shrieks I couldn't help emitting because hell I didn't know music could sound like this. (Which reminds me of a middle school concert I performed in where a soloist made the piano sound like water. Yeah, exactly.)
I can't fully explain what went on in that quintet's performance, but I came away understanding that jazz was a conversation. The players spoke to each other, in witty, playful, oftentimes ecstatically escalating banter. And the crazy part was it was all improv.
I haven't had a chance to hear jazz like that since, but I was hoping that a trip to the classic New York venue, the Village Vanguard, would change that. The night I went the Vanguard's own jazz orchestra played. And for most of the 75-minute set I was rather disappointed. Not because they weren't world-class musicians, but because the music was less a conversation and more a moderated discussion for which people had prepared their so-called talking points. I felt as if I should have come on a night where maybe a trio or quintet was playing. But in the last song of the set, the bass saxophones took turns solo-ing. The first one or two didn't sync to the bass or piano at all and even I could hear it. But then one of the younger members stood up and started wailing at warp speed, and other members of the orchestra started nodding emphatically and then the music heated up and it started getting frenetic like somebody decided to ditch the talking points and let out how they really felt except as eloquent as can be and yet grounded, raw, like a slam poet spitting fire except unmediated by words and so directly striking all of your senses.
And for me this was pure joy, fingers fanning, wrists waving, the only girl in her twenties, alone and loving it. And I feel blessed to be able to understand all that, like jazz is some foreign language whose gestures and inflections I've figured out enough of to intuit conversations by. Because the people who do speak it say some really beautiful things.