I have been a jazz fan long enough to see my favorite music transform itself through the innovations of the 1960s, struggle through the late 1970s and early 80s, and emerge with a new freshness in the twenty-first century. Like many jazz fans, I have a tendency to worry excessively about where the music is going (jazz musicians, I am happy to say, seem to be too busy creating the future to worry about such things). I have read numerous speculations on jazz’s future, including what I believe to be premature reports of its death. In this posting, I would like to share my own thoughts on the evolution of jazz, thoughts that grew out of a remarkable jazz performance by the Ron Miles Trio at the Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque, along with a BBC interview with the great modern novelist, Virginia Woolf that I recently discovered.
The Ron Miles Trio consists of Mr. Miles on trumpet, Brian Blade on drums, and one of my favorite guitarists, Bill Frisell. In addition to an evening of joyful, innovative jazz (something the Outpost serves up with gratifying regularity), the performance led me to question some of the accepted wisdom on the current state of jazz music, as well as the way it or any art form progresses. In particular, it led me to sharpen my understanding of the tension between the steady evolution of an art form, and the revolutionary changes that sometimes punctuate that evolution. Continue reading
