Jazz Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Jazz - Article Example The fundamental nature of jazz lies in improvisation, defined as the art of making music through the spur-of-the-moment invention of ideas. Jazz relies upon the artist/performer to create music that is neither written nor practiced, but shaped from the heart and soul for that at that particular moment in time. Through this method, Jazz has proven to be the type of music that evokes thought and emotions through a shared experience between the artist/performer and listener/audience. As a function of this, the following analysis will seek to discuss, analyze, and draw inference from a particular jazz concert that was visited by this particular student. I was privileged to have an old friend of mine invite me to a Jazz concert on March 26th at ‘Lucy’s 51’ in Toluca Lake. Toluca Lake is a district that lies 12 miles to the northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The first thing I noticed as I walked in was the electronic and acoustic instruments, as well as the formal attir e that the performers adorned. The group consisted of a total of three players and the instruments ranged from an electric guitar, drum and the bass. This was of course somewhat different than I was used to do to the fact that many of the concerts that I’ve been to previously were performed by either a string quartet or a full symphony orchestra. This of course helps to integrate the understanding that the form of music that I was about to experience was necessarily modern and did not rely upon the acoustic power that the instrument in an of itself could generate. These aspects were creatively woven to produce a magnificent concert that incorporated a series of four different songs that were performed beautifully.   John Pisano was on the guitar, Jamie Findlay was acting as the guest guitarist, while John Belzaguy was on the bass, and lastly but not least was Tim Pleasant on the drums. Each of the selection of songs that were played could be classified as jazz even though e ach piece employed its own specific and unique sound. This further helps to demonstrate the broad range of musical style as well as musicianship that is exhibited within the jazz genre of music. This was somewhat surprising to me due to the fact that jazz has only been able to develop and evolve over a relatively short period of time. As compared to classical music, that is had many centuries to develop different styles and forms a musicianship, Jazz ultimately reached its peak levels of popularity and development within what can be considered a short period of time. The crowd was generally dressed casually and had a wide variety of listeners, ranging from young people to much older ones. What I quickly noticed was that the environment was not as quiet as I had expected it would be. I had done a bit of research into Jazz music prior to the concert and I expected the audience to be dead quiet and listening attentively to the music. This was not the case as part of the crowd was unbea rably noisy as compared to other concerts I have been to. This select part of the crowd did not seem to appreciate the truly beautiful music that was being performed. In past concerts I have been in, loud conversations and disruptive noises were not allowed as this was seen to be distracting the performers as well as the audience who were listening attenti