The restaurant and nightclub Jazz St. Louis is just over a block from the symphony hall. It's hung in there for a long time. I'm not a big jazz fan. I loved Dave Brubeck when I was in my teens but he and his quartet were experimenting with unusual time signatures and making it work, notably the famous Take Five. (Even the Grateful Dead had an extended number in 11/4). I admire the beauty and occasional fierceness of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. However, the near-constant rigidity of 4/4 time and the variations on a theme format fail to pull me in. I end up back with the symphony.
There's an event to mark tomorrow.
1 comment:
I love jazz, though I'm less fond of where things went after the forties with musicians like Parker, Coltrane, and Davis. That said, however, I loved Brubeck. I had the chance to see him here at a jazz festival late in his life, and he sat down at the piano, started playing, and it was like decades of his age just melted off. It was an amazing thing to see.
Post a Comment