Small whimsical moments in jazz

By Gato

Ah - the jazz site, reporting of course on the great music performed in Canberra at the school of music and around the traps. But perhaps there is place to extend this blogosphere and report on the smaller worlds that exist in the spirit of jazz, that sparkle anywhere anytime, within the often suburban walls of Canberra…

For example, a Sunday afternoon of sheer and beautiful chaos; indeed a gentle, organic, nurturing sort of chaos - one enticing and encouraging flights of fancy. So - the charts and instruments strewn around, the lively colourful impressionistic paintings of the house’s usual musicians (from the brush of the house’s usual artist), and the books tumbling out of the shelves (on music, composers, creativity, and the visual expression of jazz) all mirroring the playfulness, and lack of strict form of the afternoon and its music. But the lack of rigour feels so delightfully balanced with great lengths of freedom and exploration on piano, trumpet and flute!

Amid a cigarette moment in the back garden the cricket bat is included in musical intentions. In face of ‘I don’t do sport’ - it is realised that the direction of the ball will dictate the key for the next piece (landing in the compost heap calls for G flat/or is that F sharp; while hitting the shed resolves us to no home key at all).

So the evening moves forward, and the piano lets loose, moving from ballad to the open sea. Rhythm, melodic line, sensitivity, passion, changes, repetition… and the flute and trumpet dance and delve into the waves. Music is our marvellous channel to shared spontaneity of spirit, to expression, and…

Well at this point I wonder what other stories and moments might emerge here to be shared – to fill in the geography of the land and community of this Canberra jazz-blog-space?