My friend David Evans wrote a beautiful description of the process of becoming a jazz musician, and the flexibility inherent in it, in response to an earlier post of mine. Though hed be too humble to admit it, hes actually a perfect example of what he describes here: If you think of being a jazz musician as devoting yourself to developing your facility on your instrument so you remove impediments to your expression (so you dont feel your imagination being curtailed by your technical limitations); building what compares to a vocabulary and a knowledge of grammar so you might have something to say and a coherent way to say it; developing your ear and alertness (exercising and extending your ability to understand the other sides of the conversation); finding a way to immerse yourself in the language so you absorb and develop vernacular and the accent of a native speaker (this is where the culture divides between older and younger players because the opportunities to learn on the bandstand are ever dwindling); and finally, managing your state of mind so you are able to operate unconsciously, extemporaneously, transparently, the way you do in an absorbing conversation--then, more often than not, you will be able to find a satisfying way to live in the world of music. And, you will find there are interesting conversations to be had in many kinds of music. And you wont get angry just thinking about it.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 22:38:12 +0000
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