Due to a stroke of luck, i got a massive dose of jazz last night: the Yellowjackets came to town and were playing at the Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS. I was fortunate enough to get a complimentary ticket, and i'm happy to report that, indeed, the best things in life are free.
An evening with the Yellowjackets
The performance lasted a very long 2.5hours, but you wouldn't be able to tell that much time had passed. The talent of the musicians (Ferrante, Haslip, Mintzer and, the oh-so-cute, Baylor) coupled with the amazing acoustics of the philharmonic hall made for compelling listening.
Wave after wave of music, some fast, upbeat and lively, some quiet, moody and slow washed over the enthralled audience. The person next to me couldn't stop tapping his feet; the woman in front was literally swaying from side to side. Amazing stuff, and certainly an example of how music has such an incredible, unexplainable affect on humans.
Jazz, the music, i would describe as taking sound to the edge of coherence and staying there without crossing the line. Right on the edge, the mish-mash of sounds from the sax, the piano, percussions and drums, and the bass guitar seemed to collide at times, but never in a chaotic manner. The artists were always in control, though they didn't seem to WANT or HAVE control over the music. In so many ways, jazz is such a contradiction, and i received an ample lesson towards that fact last night.
If you have the choice, don't bother with CDs and records - my only past experience with the genre were limited to such limited representations of this art. You don't know what it means to jazz until you've heard it live, I promise you that.
Leave a comment