Saturday, September 21, 2019


I like the idea of things like this. Different approaches interacting in a common space. Years ago, I was in the schedule rotation in a restaurant chain that featured jazz every night. On the evening I worked we had 2 shifts; I played solo piano from 5-8pm, followed by a trio (with a different piano player, plus bass and sax) from 8-midnight. One day, the manager got the idea to have Ed Yellen (the sax player) move his shift up an hour, and play 7-11. So for one hour a week, for several months, one of our sets would overlap. It's probably safe to say that I was the most traditionally minded of the musicians who played there (on any night), and Ed was the most "modern". Kind of like Oscar and  Coltrane here, but perhaps even further apart. The one thing we had in common is that we knew some of the same tunes. And we played them, even as I was hearing things come out of his sax that I didn't know what to do with, and he was, in all likelihood, playing with a stride (more or less) piano player for the first time. And we enjoyed the heck out of it, both of us looking forward each week to that one hour of unique experience. Whenever two musicians play together, an unique space is created. It would be fun if there were any recordings of those sets to listen to now, on one hand. But on the other, the memory of how if felt is a nice place to visit, when something like this video reminds me.

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