Quote:
Originally Posted by JonPR
Good point. Jazz on record - even great jazz - is often "meh". Jazz live is really what it's all about.
That's because the whole point of jazz is improvisation. A jazz recording is just how they happened to play that tune on that day, on that take.
You don't go to a jazz gig to hear a band play their latest album. You go to experience a unique event - whatever tunes they play tonight, they'll play them different from last night, and will play them differently tomorrow night. The difference, the invention in real time, is the point.
You still don't have to like that concept. It's quite valid to like a musical performance to be much the same every time, as in a classical symphony, or a rock band playing their latest album (attempting to get as close to the recording as they can).
But if you like the idea of new music being created in front of you while you watch, then jazz is your kind of music.
You still get some of that in blues and folk, which each have their traditions of improvisation (within understood stylistic parameters) and instrumental virtuosity. And of course rock does too, to some extent. But it's jazz that treats improvisation as its whole raison d'etre, and has therefore developed it into a high art, over the last 100 years (and counting).
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I’ve attended enough live jazz events (instrumental smaller ensemble, bass, drums, horns, less guitar) to know that it’s a jam - musicians improvising on themes, classic tunes - hours of it - while attending, you can get the feeling there’s a lot of filler, or musicians warming up, trying to find their way through to brilliance - and when the latter happens, it can go so fast by the time you go home your head is spinning and you don’t know what hit you - but if that jam was captured on recording, you can go back and listen to it a hundred times and always find something new - that’s the special thing about it - it’s vital, dynamic, and not easy to capture.