JAZZ NOTE # 3 – PAINT A PICTURE

Dave Holland Big Band - First Snow

Dave Holland Big Band

One of the advantages working with 12-16 musicians is the conductor’s ability to expand his palette.  Without uttering one word a big band can create a vivid scene rich in color and bustling with motion.  For example take Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia.”  Or since we are moving into the season, listen to Dave Holland’s “First Snow” from his 2002 EMC release “What Goes Around.”

If you live in the Northern part of the world like Vu and I do here in Minnesota, then you know how perfectly the song captures how quiet it can get, how beautiful it is and how sad it seems as the soloist evoke their own nuanced emotions:

-          Alex Sipiagin on flugelhorn with a wisp of regret seeing the falling leaves now replaced.

-          Andrew Hayward on trombone with a resigned shrug, already layering.

-          Mark Gross on alto sax with no intention of going quietly, even crying

mid-solo like a man with no gloves trying to get into a frozen car.

By chance I heard this song in my car, coming home after a long hard day.  And as I entered the final bend driving around Lake of the Isles, there they were: flakes, sparse and anemic, like listless albino fireflies floating in the thin air.

If you are a lover of music, there are times in your life when a song slips past the words and melody and becomes something more.  Suddenly, there is no longer outside clamor or inside thought.  The past no longer matters and the future can wait because at the moment there’s this song and it’s taking over as the first snow of the season dances past your dusty windshield.