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NAME THAT CLOUD
The weather, he announced to no one in particular, ought to be musical or at least incorporate some jazz. Spring is bebop, Trane and Parker, the sudden clash of Blakey the downpours of Dizzy and the hint of what’s to come on the fingers of Monk, and Kenny and Milt. Summer brings the slow easing…
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EARLY NIGHT AT THE CLUB
It begins lowly quietly, then grows builds until, all players together, it hits a point where you hope it is a crescendo, but it still grows ever louder and you retreat from the club, half-finished glass of wine on the table, knowing that when you reach the back door your evening is over.
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DHARMA GATE
He sits, suited in black, with 88 keys at his command, and we fall silent. He opens the lock of joy, the lock of sadness, the lock of elation, the lock of tears, the lock of laughter, the lock of darkness, the lock of light, the lock of surprise, the lock of compassion, the lock…
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SWING
The sax swings freely rising and falling on the notes he coaxes out, dancing around the bass’s rhythm, the brushes caressing the drum heads. You close your eyes and allow the music to carry you off. It is at the set’s end when he unfolds the white cane that you see you share a common blindness.
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THE TRIO
The big man caresses the bass and the strings pour out caramel and cocoa. Ulysses strokes the skins which sing the melody and mind the rhythm. The keys of the Steinway whisper to him play me, play me and even the 89th key finally joins in the song.
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AMOUR
A voice clear, jazz straight up in six strings with no surprises, but sitting next to my wife and lover it is what an evening wants in much the same way as a night in the heart of winter demands spooning beneath the blanket pulled up to our chins the outside world, having ceased to…
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SPACED OUT
I laughed at my parents when they talked about a typewriter as something of a marvel when they were so commonplace. Of course as a boy, half the fun of helping my father at work was knowing the mimeo ink would stain my fingers purple for a week and even borax would only render them…
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GALLERY (IN) CONCERT
Kandinsky, Braque, Matisse and Degas all stand patiently in the hall wondering if anyone, this night, will notice them as they always seem to do, while Motherwell and Pollack lurk around the corner, feigning indifference, dreading being ignored. The sound check is long ago complete and the three men sit in the cafe lost in…
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EUTERPEAN EVENING
An evening: spring retreating in the face of summer, two garnacha, a piano, standup bass, drums, her voice lifts the weight of the sky and we float up on a melody, unchained. In heaven George and Ira smile and we, here, smile with them.
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an old writer and his words 