Concerted Scribblings in a Darkened Room

Journal Entry 9/18/2013

Four men in pressed suits walk onto a concentric stage of elegant symmetry. Each line, curve and shape is sharply defined through the concentrated illumination of a darkened auditorium. The severe downwards curve of the saxophone leading into its steep rise outwards, the bassist’s instrument towering tall above him, nearly dwarfing his figure–the starched, hard lines running down the saxophonist’s trousers to his leather shoes of a beautiful light brown.

These resolute qualities of shape and line, of visual stimuli within the ability of prediction, juxtapose quite fantastically with the improvised, directionless nature of the Juilliard Jazz Quartet’s numbers. Jazz is the seemingly seamless coalescence of cacophony and euphony, sounds that make you swoon and move in tandem with the rhythm and melodies, the crescendoes, the pauses, the sounds produced with but the finest finesse, captured with an even greater sense of delicacy. Music–it’s something incredible; even more, fundamentally human.