Friday part 3

This is the penultimate evening here and it's been heavy.

The talk at dinner time was how Chucho played today. Later in the evening, Hugh mentioned that although he had seen Chucho do it years ago, it was nothing like today. It was pretty well unanimous that we had witnessed one of those indelible moments of sheer musical brilliance. There were a number of people near tears by the end of it. We were indeed blessed.

We had another evening's worth of music to perform at The Club tonight and it was another full house. The music ranged from straight ahead jazz to wind octet to blues and full-out funk. I was part of the octet on bass clarinet. Gunhild Seim from Norway is just a beautiful composer and it was a lovely piece, like a sorbet between courses of a fancy meal. Ken Hoffman's funk unit tore it up at the end of the night.

Last night it was Jon "Bunny" Stewart's time to shine. Jon's been playing great from the get-go here, but when he presented a set of his own music at The Club last night, it was at another level, deeply personal and intense from the heart. Marianne was as brilliant as ever on piano, and Jon McCaslin and Joe Libinsky were superb on drums and bass. Afterwards, Chucho asked Bunny for a copy of his charts. What an honour.

Emotions have been running high here. We are nearing the end of this program and lots of stuff comes to the surface. On reflection much of the angst about repertoire could be attributed to this emotional intensity. People are also beginning to make preparations to leave on Sunday and that feeling of impending separation is also palpable.

I had inadvertantly offended the lead sax player in our section when I made one of my usual flippant remarks at the dinner table a few days ago. It was totally unintended, but he took it personally, a good reminder for me to think before I open my mouth. We ended up getting into it at the club last night and I was very quick to apologize again. I really respect this guy as a player and a person and truly felt bad about the whole thing.

The thing is as I mentioned quite some time ago, is that up here, after a few days in this intense environment, a lot of people, myself included, drop many of the emotional barriers that we use to shield ourselves in daily life in the real world. We do this because we feel safe in the environment that Hugh has fostered here over the decades. It helps us to perform from a very emotional place, and that can only make the music better.

So things naturally just become more intense. And that's a thing that I very much enjoy when I come here. Interestingly, I have always attributed a lot of that to the ball-busting music that makes up the final concert.

This year is different. We were looking for heavy salsa charts, but what Chucho brought instead was music that on the surface appears simple but is very, very deep. Hugh knows what it's about and I'm starting to get a sense of it, but it will probably take a long while to sink in. He told me that what Cubans really appreciate when they come here is not how well we may be able to play montuno, or what sort of chops we have; no, what really gets them is when music is played from the heart. According to Hugh, Chucho has heard that in this orchestra and he is very impressed and honoured to be a part of it. It may explain somewhat why he played Giant Steps the way he did.

He is leading the way for us.

Damn those epiphanies.