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.

1st Night 2009

I really love Boston's First Night and I've gone to most of them - seriously, since way back in the way back. The first time I went it was with a drunk and unwieldy 'shemob when I was in the dorm at NU - yeah, one of those... sorry. A year or two later, I remember the dance performance on the musical staircase - similar to the installation at the Boston Museum of Science, but with beautiful dancers using long scarfs, instead of little kids and families full of giggles. Over the years, I've gone with my friends, family, extended family, drunk, sober, stoned, cold and wet, cold and dry, cold, and even sometimes warm. I will never go again with a group larger than 3 or 4 - too many people never works, not for me anyway. I also need a plan so I can see stuff I like and avoid the Hynes at all costs!

This year was a big unknown - recently separated, unattached and with grown kids. Could I go by myself and enjoy the music and dance that I wanted to see, without feeling alone and isolated? At almost the last minute, my last minute buddy DT came through. We are both members of our company's lonely hearts club - folks recently alone and struggling with our new lives, and we frequently email each other late on a Friday afternoon or lazy Sunday for company to go to movies or a concert. The key to making this work (I think) is:

• Don't plan too far in advance - that would make it a date
• Talk about our love life and plans for future love (or at least lust) - again, not a date
• no sex - bummer, but that would really be a bad idea

Oh yeah, back to First Night. First on the agenda was Secret Music Project playing at the Boston Public Library. Real nice acoustic jazz quartet from Israel with sax, hollow body elec guitar, upright bass and percussion. For their first number (titled "untitled") they walked into the auditorium and sat at the foot of the stage - a single hand drum, acoustic guitar, sax & bass. A nice mellow introduction. Then up onto the stage for a very cool set - great melodies backed by a very middle eastern influenced rhythm section: untitled, One, Tut, Family, The X Song (written for an ex-girlfriend - he laughed but wouldn't explain the 'X'). I especially liked the percussionist and the interplay, almost duet tone of the guitar and sax - and the bassist was wonderful, strong and enthusiastic.






DT had to work late and missed Secret Music, but we bumped into each other on the way to the next event - a modern dance performance by Monkeyhouse. We got there with plenty of time to get a good seat and warm up (damn it was so freaking cold and windy that night!!! but at least it kept the crowds down, which is real nice). I really enjoy modern dance - the more abstract, the more sensual, the better (no, I don't mean Bob Fossi). Monkeyhouse does a wonderful job of making modern dance accessible and enjoyable to families and young children. Tonight's program was a set of short dances of dreaming, waking, getting dressed, and going out into the world. Wonderful stuff! The dream sequence was beautiful, with mother and daughter asleep under covers on the stage and their dream dancing around them. The waking up dance was hilarious, with the reluctant and very sleepy daughter being pushed and prodded into awakeness by the mom. I think my favorite was the getting dressed dance which appropriated a classic vaudeville routine with people stealing each others hats. I have seen variations of this routine in silent movies, Marx Brothers and Abbot & Costello comedies and innumerable juggling acts. I love it every time and Monkeyhouse did it with grace, awkwardness, humor and beauty. And the soundtrack for that piece was the Boston Typewriter Orchestra!






The last scheduled performance was Hiromi's Sonicbloom at Berklee Performance Center. Hiromi graduated from Berklee a few years ago and is a very talented pianist. She and her quartet (piano, elec bass, double neck elec guitar, drums) played a very energetic jazz fusion, evocative of Weather Report and Return To Forever. Her set included a piece she has on youtube; "Double personality" (which included a guitar solo direct from Weather Report and a piano solo which started with T.Monk and diverged elsewhere); "My Favorite Things"; and a piano solo entitled "The Tom and Jerry Show" - and it was during that piece that I recognized why I knew her style so well - she is Chico Marx reincarnated and an electronic fusion player - seriously and with all respect to Chico, who is one of the reasons I first fell in love with jazz!






We ended the night by walking endlessly, looking for a place to get something to eat that DT's diet can tolerate. We landed (finally! did I mention it was freaking COLD!!!) at Church in the Fens. I'd never been there before - we were in the front, fancy room - the back room had a NYE dance party going on in full swing. The room was warm, comfortable, soft lighting but not dim and James Brown was playing on the stereo. DT got some wacky fru-fru drink that was so sickly sweet that she couldn't finish it. I got Jameson and a Newcastle - finished that no problem and had another just in time for New Year's Eve toast at midnight - I remember saying something, I am sure it was grand and full of pith. Then a kiss on the cheek and off to home.

A wonderful night indeed. Thanks DT!
and thank you, Boston.