After buying tickets for the concert a while ago, I listened to several recordings of Jack DeJohnette playing the drums in various jazz ensembles. A couple of the songs I listened to sounded familiar in the sense that a plebeian listener like me might distinguish jazz, but I noticed that more of the recordings sounded like abstract jumbles of noise to me. I wasn’t familiar with this type of jazz, so was looking forward to the concert.
The musicians included a drummer (the featured Jack DeJohnette), a cellist/bassist, a pianist, and two saxophonists (one of them also played the flute). Although their set consisted almost entirely of the abstract jazz I mentioned earlier, there were times during some of the pieces where I felt the music was the jazz most people would be familiar with. However, this realization happened for me scarcely as I was almost constantly in a state of musical confusion.
Speaking for myself, I found it difficult to enjoy the music, but that is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the concert. I couldn’t enjoy the music in the sense that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a poem written in another language; I just didn’t understand it.
couldn’t an abstract jazz musician argue that the way the sounds and rhythms of a poems words fit together is as important as what the words actually mean. perhaps even though we don’t know the words themselves we can still appreciate how they fit together. i’d be interested to hear this type of music.