All we ever really have is the now. It’s an indisputable fact, but one that has never been as pressing as it is in our current circumstance. We’re all improvising now because, as Meredith Beal (in his 2020 JazzDay message) says, we don’t know what is going to happen. In that sense, this is a jazz age we’re in. What’s more about the "now" than jazz? The thrill and immediacy of live performance. A confection being spun up right now, this very minute, as I’m hearing it. That’s what’s intoxicating to me. They’re rolling it out for us right now - and then it’s gone, poof, like magic, and what we’re left with is an afterglow for a minute or an hour and then only the amazement, the lingering sense that we were, as a witness, somehow blessed to be in that place at that time. The place being not so much a gritty underground club or a fancy concert hall, but the “place” the musicians were in, which might not be the same they’d be in tomorrow, or ever again — all the more precious for being fleeting.

 

     I’m not a jazz musician. In fact I’ve doubted at times whether I was a real musician of any kind. But at 70, when I look back at my body of work, I wonder how I could ever have thought that. I’ve been surrounded all my adult life by “real musicians,” those who lived and breathed music and just wanted to be playing it all day long and through the night. I was never one of those. Music was something I could do, not something I had to. I didn’t get that gene. And the one I most didn’t get was the jazz gene. My music is good, but it’s painstakingly worked out, honed and polished. I don’t have the raw daredevil thing that jazz musicians have. I steered clear of the whole genre for many years because, not only did I not understand it, somehow facing it head-on meant confronting my own limitations as a musician. 

 

     Then I started to actually meet some jazz musicians. Not just run-of-the-mill jazz musicians, if there’s any such thing, but some truly great ones. It’s mysterious, almost unthinkable, how our paths have crossed, but that’s another story. I’d like to thank some of them now:  Wayne Shorter for his genius and his kindness and his uncanny ability to remember entire movies and repeat their dialogue verbatim, mimicking all the voices to perfection; Herbie Hancock for his vision and integrity and the nerve to constantly reinvent himself. He’s still Herbie, but he’s not the same Herbie he was yesterday or will be tomorrow. The world is richer for this chameleon aspect of his;  Larry Coryell, who alone onstage with a single instrument could "transmogrify" into a full orchestra; Onaje Allan Gumbs, whom we have sadly just said goodbye to; Kenwood Dennard, who wins over the obstacle of his hearing every day, light-hearted and without complaint, never letting it hinder him for a second; Shunzo, Nestor, Buster, every one a bona fide original. I love and admire each of them and have been infinitely expanded by brushing up against their lives.  I’m glad for the chance to say so.

          - Wayne GREEN in Rome, Italy

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