Home from the gig...

Just returned home from a great gig with my friend the guitarist, Steve LaMattina. I once told another good friend of mine, Jimmy Hill, that what I'm going to dislike the most about dying is not being able to play my horn.  Tonight's gig was a gem; not from a financial point of view or from the point of view of fame and recognition.  It was a gem musically.  Steve and I played some great music tonight and I believe the listeners were conscious of something special going on.  We were not trying to blaze new trails or set the world on fire.  We played standard tunes and standard chord changes, but it was the navigation of these tunes and changes that was pleasurable, and just about everything we did we did in a way that we never quite did before.  We improvised.  We played jazz.  We swung.  We conversed.  We expressed warmth, love, sadness, joy and humor with our music, and we tried to convey our deep love and respect for the material that we were improvising on.  My horn was my friend tonight.  It did pretty much what I wanted it to do, which is not always the case.  Actually it is seldom the case.  So, even though we weren't in Carnegie Hall or the Village Vanguard,  our music was alive, vibrant, and a lot of fun to play and hopefully to listen to.  What more could a musician want?   

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