Five years ago, I discovered Jazz. Or rather, I discovered the possibility of jazz – to me, it sounded like the most difficult music on earth. I was convinced that the ability to play jazz would only slowly develop in years and years of training, and I was interested in such a long-term goal.
At the time, I didn’t like jazz at all. I thought most of it sounded random, and to me the musicians looked like they were just doing anything, having epiphanies over things that had no connection at all– to be really honest, to me it looked like an outing of any institution for the mentally ill.
Some time has passed since then. I’m still at the beginning, but I would dare to say that I’ve grown accustomed… to jazz.
In a way, playing jazz is like packing bags before leaving for a big trip. You’ll think really hard about what to pack, put clothes on a pile, travel books on another, and you don’t forget to think of important things like the passport, sunglasses, the cell phone. Jazz musicians have to do preparing work too - topics like ear training, technique on the instrument, keeping time, solo playing, comping and interaction with other musicians, harmonic concepts, have to be practiced a lot, and in fact, to be incorporated in your musical self. To go back to the packing: when every item is where it belongs and everything ticked off the list, and you arrive in the land that is far far away, you’ll be sure that in your carefully packed bags there is everything you’ll need, and you can start enjoying and relaxing. And in jazz words: you’ll be able to play freely, instinctively – with lots of knowledge at your disposition. The beauty of jazz is that it’s created in the moment, never sounds exactly the same from evening to evening. It sounds personal, meaningful and musical, the more a person knows what she’s doing – but if she thinks in advance of the stuff she could show and play, it will sound technical, empty and unconvincing.
This discrepancy between hard work, maybe at home alone, on the instrument or with the ears, to the fragile moment while improvising, when all the stuff one has worked on should blend with the musical idea, effortlessly, without destroying the moment, creating music with cause, with weight, is to me extremely challenging but also rewarding.
Jazz exists since about a hundred years, and already there is an incredible mass of important people and idioms. The work will never stop – which I guess has become a part in the complex construction of the meaning of my life.
And what one shouldn’t forget, when forging his or her way through the depths of the jazz world and sometimes forgetting about the real one – statistically speaking, no one is really interested in jazz. It’s like an exclusive club. There is no money in it, and no concert halls. One of my favorite pastimes is to laugh about the absurdity of it. That’s why jokes about jazz musicians are the funniest of all: What does the rock musician say to the jazz musician? To the airport, please.
