Natalie Dietrich at the Lily Pad

Something occurred to me tonight while listening to Natalie Dietrich's band perform at the Lily Pad. It's not a huge revelation, or a true epiphany - just little ah-ha moment.

I have been listening to jazz for years (decades). But without any significant musical training, listening to complex improvisational music sometimes feels similar to sitting in a pleasant cafe in a foreign land, enjoying the sound of people talking in a language I cannot understand. I can follow the melody, I can hear the dialog, the rhythm and flow - but the deeper understanding and much of the subtlety I can only guess at.

Oh, the way she touches his arm while whispering tells me that she speaks of love. From the way his face contorts and his arms flail while shouting, I know he is describing some horrific event. While listening to a jazz band, I can understand the interplay, the give and take, as a dialog between the musicians, a dialog I cannot completely understand, but which I recognize as depth of emotion - love, sadness, anger.

And it is this dialog during improvisational jazz which has always astounded me. Without sheet music or score, how can musicians complete each others' sentences so effortlessly, so seamlessly. Yes, I know that musicians who play the same tunes frequently enough can easily memorize the notes, but that is not what I am talking about. I have seen band leaders explain the next tune to a new musician sitting in for the evening just before a song they have never played before - "It's just like Blue Rondo a la Turk, but electric..." - "It has a bridge you'll recognize, and then just follow me from there..." - "who needs all that ink anyway, it just gets in the way..."

Tonight it occurred to me. It is not a dialog between individual people standing separately. It's not even a conversation among close friends sitting around the kitchen table. It is a soliloquy of one voice - the song of a single spirit - formed by the union of the musicians sharing that moment.