On Sunday, we went to the Jazz Festival at Trinity High School. It was clear and sunny and the music was surprisingly good. By surprisingly good, I mean that it wasn’t really polished or overly professional and that made it more enjoyable to me. I think it’s easy to forget that music doesn’t come out of machines sounding perfect. It comes out of people struggling to hit notes and breathing hard after a trumpet solo and squeaking the guitar strings and they whisk their fingers to the next chord position. I think I’d rather sit ten feet away from a pretty good high school jazz musician than listen to Miles Davis on my iPod.
There is a lot more going on in live performance than most people realize. For example, studies show that audience rhythm dictates the tempo in live performances of even classical music. When you are there, you really do participate in creation of the music just by listening.
ReplyDeleteThis should give recording artists hope they still have something valuable to sell -- live performance -- just not dead copies any more.