The Jazz Hook

A musical phrase starts,seducing you into journeying with it. Just as you start going along driven by a need to find a destination,your lilting body in the way that it knows time anticipates the end, the phrase dives and opens up new possibilities. You don't resent that dive. You are seduced yet again, into journeying with the next phrase.

This the beauty that is jazz...

Somewhere in the warren of lanes between Russell St and Exhibition St, there lies a quaint jazz club. Locally referred to as the Bennetts Lane Jazz Club- for the past three days it has been a venue for the Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival - a mini festival to whet the appetite for the big one - the 'Melbourne Jazz Festival' which begins today.

Yesterday the club was host to Senator Eugene Wright-a brilliant bassist who was a member of Dave Brubeck's quartet between the late fifties and sixties. You would remember him as that person who along with the mind-blowing drummer Joe Morello brought alive every note in the quartet's album- 'Time Out'.However last nights session didn't feature the icing-on-the-cake piece that is 'Take Five' (Paul Desmond's famous tune). But going by how happy and blessed I was feeling to actually see the man and hear the magic that his fingers create, I was prepared to even listen to a rendering of 'Ba-Ba Blacksheep'!

Collaborating with Joe Chindamo ( who recorded with the amazing Ray Brown) on the piano and Mike Jordan on the drums, Mr.Wright gently nudged us into a world where 'patterns' didn't matter. Every note created was used to steer us away from our need to predict. All you do is yield - not helpless,but intoxicated.

***
For Muthu anna,
who introduced me to the world of jazz...who told me I should never look for anchors as long as I had my eyes,ears,mind and spirit open...who always asked after the welfare of these four...
......I shall keep them well anna.