As the new term begins, I will teach an improvisation class to two types of people: some who want to learn, and some who want to learn without being observed publicly. The latter doesn’t want the humiliation of failing in public. It’s natural that nobody wants to sign up for public humiliation, but putting fear and learning into such close proximity makes me uncomfortable. In truth, there are no great success stories without lots of previous failures to talk about.

Fear of humiliation is the number one gate-keeper to success. Who hasn’t heard a loud, overly-critical voice in their head at one time or another? This voice embarrasses the joy of adventure right out of us in order to preempt someone else’s judgment.

I suggest that we take a lesson from children. When we see toddlers wobbling around, banging into furniture and falling, they’re not failing at walking. They’re beginning to learn. Every Riverdancer on Broadway started out that way!

On one extreme are those who rationalize that it’s better not to try anything with the risk of failure attached. These individuals often do nothing at all. They may even attempt to discourage others from taking risks for fear of being left behind. What if toddlers thought that way? Imagine a nation of people scooting around on their backsides because they fear the risk of an embarrassing stumble!

The bravest of the brave feel the same amount of fear as any one else. Show me someone fearless and I will show you someone who doesn’t quite have a grasp of the situation at hand. Even the best prize fighters are afraid of the first round, and most are afraid the whole time. I was always afraid. The difference between the brave and the timid is that the brave can and will do something when they are gripped with fear. The timid will just sit there frozen in despair.

It’s ironic that giving in to fear brings the very thing that we fear the most: failure. It’s doubly ironic that giving in to fear actually requires the courage to accept certain failure—it takes nerve to sit on the track when the train is coming right at you! When you weigh the options, it’s more rational to act in spite of fear rather than to give in to it. (I don’t advocate acting out of fear—panic invites chaos.)

In the end we are all participating in one big high-wire act. Few of our friends ever advise us to take risks that they don’t understand or haven’t experienced themselves—they love us too much. However, doing only things that our loved ones understand limits our growth. Conversely, I have burned myself numerous times underestimating the practicality of “conventional wisdom.” When that happens, I counter calamity with a stiff resolve not to let a set-back define me.

The new school year is here. The circus is about to begin. My advice: stiffen your resolve to experience life to the fullest, then choose your most colorful parasol, put on the snappiest tutu in your closet, and get out there and strut your stuff! Good luck!

Trombonist Curtis Fuller’s warm tone and “buckets and buckets of soul” (Gigi Gryce) makes him immediately identifiable and consistently in demand, even after almost six decades of performing. His resumé reads like a history of jazz—he’s recorded and played with a who’s who of jazz elite, and he continues to be highly sought-after, even into his 70s.

Fuller was born in 1934 in Detroit, an unusually fertile breeding ground for jazz musicians at the time. When he first picked up the trombone at the age of 16, he had some first-rate company—Elvin and Thad Jones, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Kenny Burrell, Barry Harris, Pepper Adams, and Yusef Lateef were all cutting their teeth in Detroit in the early 50s. “A very good school of music,” he once said.

Although influenced by JJ Johnson, his teacher and mentor, Curtis Fuller arrived in New York at the age of 22 with a sound and style that were uniquely his own. With encouragement from older, established musicians—particularly Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie—he cultivated a warm, full tone that exploited his middle register while maintaining the melodic clarity of line he’d adopted from Johnson. Like Johnson, he makes the trombone sound fluid and elegant. And, of course, he swings like mad! “Ellington said it very graciously,” Fuller quips. “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing…”

Shortly after Fuller’s arrival in the Big Apple, an incredible chain of events set off his meteoric rise to stardom. He went to Café Bohemia, a jazz club in Greenwich Village, to sit in with Miles Davis’ quintet which, at the time, consisted of Red Garland, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, and saxophonist John Coltrane. “Meeting John Coltrane was the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” Fuller has admitted. “Trane took me aside, and, of course, we did Blue Train…and that started everything. He had confidence that I didn’t have; he saw something that I didn’t see.”

Blue Train would go on to become one of the most important, influential, and best-selling jazz records in history. “John was taking music another direction,” Fuller has observed. “You know, it wasn’t just rhythm changes anymore, it was completely different.” On the record date, Fuller said, “John, you put this music on us on a moment’s notice? We got three hours to rehearse this music and we’re gonna record?” That comment generated a new Coltrane song, “Moment’s Notice”!

Fuller quickly became part of the Blue Note family of artists and began appearing on records with Clifford Jordon, Bud Powell, Jimmy Smith, Hank Mobley and others. In fact, after just eight months in New York, Curtis had made six albums as a leader and appeared on fifteen others.

In 1961, Curtis Fuller began a five year association with Art Blakey. With Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, and Cedar Walton on piano, they became the most famous rendition of the Jazz Messengers and helped define the sound of the hardbop era. “I owe a lot to Art Blakey in so many ways,” Fuller has said. “He was very important in my life. We were all driven by the fact that he encouraged us all to write. There wasn’t such a thing as a leader.” While Wayne Shorter’s compositions tend to receive the most attention, Curtis Fuller contributed some important pieces to the group’s catalogue. In fact, “Buhaina’s Delight” became one of the Messengers’ signature tunes and the title track on a December 1961 record.

Fuller also has a long-standing musical partnership with Benny Golson, with whom he’s recorded many times—including his famous 1959 record Blues-Ette. He’s also played as a sideman with Lester Young and Billie Holiday. In the late 1960s, he made important records with Wayne Shorter (Schizophrenia), Joe Henderson (Mode for Joe), Lee Morgan (Tomcat), Hank Mobley (A Caddy for Daddy) and many other jazz greats. His big band experience is equally impressive. He’s played in jazz orchestras led by Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Maynard Ferguson, and Lionel Hampton. He played briefly with Duke Ellington, and also with the Count Basie Big Band in the mid-1970s. “We all know that this is the end of an era,” Fuller commented once. And he’s right. There was a time when all musicians played in big bands—now it’s a rarer opportunity.

In the 80s and 90s, Fuller toured with various ensembles, most notably the Timeless All-Stars and his own groups. In 1993, he recorded Blues-Ette, Part 2 with the same band that recorded the famous Blues-Ette nearly forty years earlier. In recent years, he’s spent more and more time teaching and mentoring jazz students, passing along five decades of knowledge and wisdom. Still, his most recent album, Keep It Simple, recorded in 2005, is Curtis Fuller doing what he does best: playing catchy, blues-inflected melodies with his big, warm sound—and swinging as hard as ever!

The Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra is thrilled to feature Curtis Fuller this fall, both with the orchestra and in a masterclass setting. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear a jazz legend in person!

Neil Watson is a busy jazz saxophonist and the General Manager of the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra.

This September, Izzy Asper Jazz Performances subscribers are in for an explosive start to the 2008-09 season. Kansas City alto saxophonist Bobby Watson will be in town with Horizon, a band which has been swingin’ people into good health with feel-good jazz for almost twenty years. This has not gone unnoticed: the group was featured on the cover of DownBeat magazine as early as July 1991.

Watson is considered one of the finest jazz educators on the continent. He holds the position of Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Missouri/Kansas City, a position he has held since moving back to his hometown from New York City eight years ago.

As a young man Watson was fortunate enough to learn from one of the best mentors ever: Art Blakey. He was a member of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers from 1977-81, also serving as musical director, a position previously held by living legends Benny Golson and Wayne Shorter. While with Blakey, Watson shared the frontline with players like Wallace Roney, Bill Pierce, and a young trumpet player from New Orleans recommended by Watson: Wynton Marsalis. When Blakey and Watson decided it was time for him to move on to his own solo career, Wynton’s older brother Branford got the alto chair.

Horizon’s blueprint is a lot like the Jazz Messengers. After several personnel changes early on, drummer Victor Lewis approached Watson with the idea of being a part of the group. Watson and Lewis, both in their late 30s at the time, assembled three great musicians in their early 20s: trumpeter Terrell Stafford (who wowed Winnipeg audiences at last year’s Clayton Brothers concert), pianist Edward Simon (from Venezuela by way of Philadelphia), and African-born bassist Essiet Okun Essiet. This line-up performed together for five years, releasing such critically-acclaimed records as Post-Motown Bop (Blue Note, 1991) and Midwest Shuffle (Sony, 1994). After an eight-year hiatus in which the members of the group explored their own projects, they reunited for the appropriately-titled Horizon Reassembled (Palmetto, 2004).

Horizon Reassembled continues in “the post-Motown bop” vein Horizon is known for, but as Watson points out, they are playing with an added maturity. With compositional contributions from most of the band, everyone brings their own personality to the record. The opening track, Watson’s “Lemoncello,” introduces the band with a funky swagger and intricate counterpoint from the frontline before kicking into a driving swing for the solos. “Pere” is Simon’s composition, an odd-metre Afro-Cuban number that climaxes with an explosive solo from Lewis. Lewis’ perfectly-titled “Eeeyyess” stays exuberant the whole way through with its funky, quasi-Birdland vibe. The record closes with Essiet’s “Xangongo,” an energetic offering that recalls the sound of 70s Samba records, but with a modern, rhythmically-complex (the tune is in 9/4), yet relaxed feeling—it’s a great send-off.

Horizon also puts their signature on an old favourite, Jimmy Heath’s “Gingerbread Boy,” first recorded in 1964 on Heath’s On the Trail and immortalized on Miles Davis’ Miles Smiles in 1966. The energetic record does pause a couple of times to catch its breath, allowing the band to showcase their ballad artistry on “The Love We Had Yesterday” (written by Watson’s wife Pamela) and “The Look of Love” (from the oeuvre of Burt Bacharach).

Watson’s latest project, From the Heart (Palmetto, 2008), features a new crop of young players, while expanding the instrumentation to include vibraphonist Warren Wolf. Other than bass player Curtis Lundy, who was one of the founding members of Horizon, the rest of the Live & Learn band are in their twenties or early thirties, and Watson clearly encourages all of them to contribute compositions to the group. The album uses Watson’s infectious combination of funk and swing to great effect while maintaining the cutting-edge sounds one has come to expect of him. The record is well worth checking out.

If you break Bobby Watson down into the core ingredients of a well-rounded jazz musician, you find that he is way more than adequate in every category. He has recorded over 100 of his own original compositions—and published several small group and big band charts. He is well-respected as an educator. He can swing like nothing else, using his own brand of contemporary bop-based improvisation. When Bobby Watson hits the Berney Theatre this fall, we’re in for a good time!

Curtis Nowosad is one of Winnipeg’s most in-demand drummers, and a student in the Jazz Studies program at U of M.

Every year, the Israeli Concert Series presents an exciting combination of jazz, folk and world influences within the context of Israeli music. This year, the series is off to a vibrant start with singer and composer Michal Cohen who is taking the stage with Steve Kirby, Will Bonness, Winnipeg clarinetist Myron Schultz, and New York drummer Ted Poor.

An Israeli musician of Yemenite descent, Michal brings a dynamic sound to the stage. Her music ranges from early Yemenite folk songs to modern jazz, and includes a range of different languages. Her 2004 album Henna combines ancient desert melodies with modern beats. She moves seamlessly between time signatures and through an exotic variety of harmony and rhythms. Whether she is soaring over a net of electronic sounds or singing a capella with percussion, her voice and her music are always moving.

I reached Michal by phone in Israel and asked her about her musical life.

When did you decide that music was going to become your profession?

As a little girl I sang along with any music I heard, but I actually wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor. In high school I joined a singing group. Avi Elbaz, a composer, started instructing the group and he pushed me to study music. We have been working together since then and will be releasing a CD in a few months. When I finished high school, I went to Rimon College of Music in Israel. But I completely dived into music when I went to Berklee College in Boston a year later. This was thanks to the amazing support of Carole and Joe Zimbrolt—they both passed away in recent years. Carole was born and raised in Winnipeg, which makes this show very special to me.

How do you seek your projects and musical experiences?

Berklee is known for its variety of people, cultures and styles. I got to know so many great musicians there. You develop contacts, collaborate, brainstorm. You build yourself through time and work. As for the Henna project, my father passed away in 2000. It made me look back into my heritage, and I started listening to Yemenite music and composing in Hebrew.

What is your procedure when embarking on a new project?

I try to figure out the concept, collect materials, and do research. Then I find the right musicians, rehearse, and start performing or recording. Some projects take more time to figure out, and some don’t work out exactly as you want them to—you have to make decisions and changes if necessary. I like working on a few things at the same time, especially if they are different from one another.

You have worked with a variety of internationally-acclaimed musicians. What do you search for in others while making music?

I love original music. When someone approaches me with a project, I want to feel connected to it, and I want to be sure I can deliver the sound they are looking for. I also look to be challenged, musically and technically. I love different styles, and I need versatility. I love to be part of the creative process.

What is your vision for the future? Is it specific or are you going where the wind leads you?

The best thing for me would be to keep making music with such beautiful musicians, and to keep  making a living from music as well. I moved back to Israel a year and a half ago. I am putting out a new CD soon, and I hope that will be a success. I must admit that I have usually flowed with life and with music, and it has generally brought me to wonderful places I never imagined. I never had the child’s dream of becoming a singer, so my career has been a great development in my life.

The music of Henna is so compelling. What images and emotions does it project in your mind?

Both my parents came to Israel from Yemen as children, and I was born and raised for a few years in a Yemenite town. So I think of the Henna celebrations there. All of us kids got to have henna on our hands, and the music is loud and wonderful—women singing, dancing, and playing the “pach” as a drum. (“Pach” is kind of a big olive can with a great sound.) I see my mom singing and cooking in the kitchen—she makes great food! I think of my sweet and funny grandmother sitting on the step outside using special stones to make “schoog,” a hot Yemenite sauce. I think of my grandfather, a Yemenite rabbi, sitting on mattresses on the living room floor around a hookah, teaching, smoking, and chewing gat. I think about my grandparents’ stories from Yemen. For me, Henna captures those amazing times in my life. Thank you for asking me this question—it made me smile, and made me remember even more!

Rayannah Kroeker is a dynamic young vocalist in the U of M Jazz Studies program.

The University of Manitoba has announced its first new hiring in the Jazz Studies program: drummer Terreon Gully. Gully has performed often in Winnipeg over the past several years—he’s an annual faculty favourite at the summer Jazz Camp, he’s been featured more than once at the Izzy Asper Jazz Performances, and he laid down the groundwork for Steve Kirby and Larry Roy’s CD Wicked Grin. Now he is making Winnipeg his new home.

Director Steve Kirby is pinching himself. “It’s incredible that he’s here,” he says. “He’s one of the most important and innovative drummers out there right now. His rhythmic signature is so original and sophisticated that it is certain to influence the rhythmic conception of everyone here. When Terreon’s disciples start rolling out onto the scene, the Winnipeg scene will be impacted in a big way.”

Terreon Gully—or “Tank” as he’s known to his friends—was born in East St Louis, and carries with him a strong grounding in jazz education. Ron Carter, one of the pre-eminent jazz educators in the world, developed his craft there, and Terreon was one of his protégés. After studying with Marvin Sparks at the University of Houston, Terreon moved to New York, where he’s been wildly busy, playing and recording with The Christian McBride Band, Stefon Harris and Blackout, and a host of others, from jazz legends to modern masters to hip hop icons.

Versatility is one of the bywords of Gully’s career. He came up through gospel music and marching bands, and has been led by an insatiable musical curiosity into everything from R&B to the avant-garde to traditional world musics. That wide range bodes well for students and players in this city—Terreon has all the groundwork, both technical and historical, of the jazz tradition, and at the same time, he can play with a lot of authority at the outer edges of it. Kirby is excited by that: “The mainstream is essential for jazz education. Some people avoid trafficking in the mainstream because they just can’t do it. Terreon has moved his musical focus out of the mainstream because he’s done all that and now he’s exploring further. He has so much integrity.”

Terreon Gully is already establishing himself as a gifted teacher. He’s been one of the mainstays at Jazz Camp for the past three years, and has run several clinics with university ensembles during other visits to the city. “I watched him sit 20 feet from a band and transform them into a cohesive group with just a few well-placed suggestions,” Kirby says. “It was amazing!”

Kirby calls Gully one of “the most clear, the most honest—brutally honest—and at the same time most nurturing teachers” he’s seen. “He invests himself in giving you the information. He’ll take himself up onto the bandstand to demonstrate. He has a lot of natural authority, yet he also shows respect to his students, regardless of what level they’re on. He comes off as somebody who’s hip to something you’re not hip to—he wants you to share his knowledge with you.”

“There’s a lot of things in his arsenal,” says Kirby, “and he’s extremely intelligent. He’s an absolute original and he has a wealth of experience. We’re all gonna benefit from knowing that this kind of power and musicality lives right here with us—we’ll be reaching for a higher goal because we’ll have a chance to hear him and work with him.”

Charlene Diehl is the Director of THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual writers festival.

Sam Chrol is a nineteen-year-old reed player just entering her second year in the Jazz Studies program at the U of M. Already she’s made an impact on the musical world—she was the first Canadian to win an Outstanding Wind Soloist at the Essentially Ellington competition in New York City, and this summer she received the prestigious Oscar Peterson Grant for Jazz Performance. Jeff Kula, her band teacher at River East, singles out “honesty, integrity and selflessness” as Sam’s important qualities—I think everybody who knows her would second that. Keep an eye on this one!

When did you first play music?

My first instrument was piano at around two-ish. I was a curious little sister who believed my older brother’s music lessons were not spectator events.

What are your most important musical experiences to date?

Three years of high school music with Jeff Kula at River East Collegiate! Specific highlights would be…

• three years of patience, determination, and team-work to get to the finals of the Essentially Ellington competition in New York City. Making it to the finals in Grade 12 meant so much more because of all the work, lessons, and memories.
• playing lead clarinet on Rhapsody in Blue with the wind ensemble in Grade 11. It’s such a powerful piece, and we worked hard to prepare it for the annual spring concert.
• playing xylophone on Sabre Dance with the Grade 12 percussion ensemble at the annual winter concert. I’d played mallets but never xylophone, and I had to work really hard to get up to performance level.

Who are your most important teachers/mentors?

Musically they would be Jeff Kula (high school band teacher), Steve Kirby (university jazz director), Ken Gold (long-time sax teacher) and Ron Carter (Essentially Ellington mentor). Others? Many of my teachers. My mom, dad, brother, and extended family. Terry Fox, Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan, Kim Fuc, Martin Luther King Jr.

What music or musician most inspires you?

I love and am moved by jazz music, but to be honest I am motivated by many types—gospel music, world music from different cultures… I love music made by musicians who are young at heart, people who are eager and happy to share their music—they are serious about having fun with their art. The music I am often drawn to is usually very pure, genuine, heartfelt and accepting, which I believe is at the heart of all music, for me especially jazz music.

What dream band would you record with?

Just one? Well, I would love to record with a world class symphony. Yo Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Simon would all be welcome to a chair in this symphony. In order to pull it off, we would all have to work together, accepting and appreciating each other’s art—that is how really amazing progress is achieved.

What was it like to win the Oscar Peterson Award?

Winning was surprising as heck and welcome as pie. I figured my chances were slim because the applications would be very competitive, but Steve and Anna-Lisa Kirby seemed to think I had something worth submitting. I was stunned, thrilled and honoured to be chosen by the Hnatyshyn Foundation.

When you’re not being a musician, what do you love to do?

I love to cook and play basketball. I also love learning about history, absorbing knowledge in all kinds of fields and keeping up to date with what is happening in the world. Spending time with family and swapping emails with friends is nice.

What’s on your CD player today?

In my CD player today is some Chopin, and after that Ella Fitzgerald’s Daydream: The Best of the Duke Ellington Songbook.

Jazz vocalist Anna-Lisa Kirby profiles local jazz musicians in every issue.

We’re about to have a visitation from as close to a celestial being as the jazz community has yet been able to produce. I’m talking about Jimmy Greene. He is a tall, broad, gentle, corn-fed giant. Peace and love just pours out of his eyes—he’s a really warm spirit. And he plays a mean tenor saxophone!

He’s definitely one of the new young lions—when he was still in his mid-20s, DownBeat named him one of the “25 Young Rising Stars in Jazz.” He has a warm, cutting tenor saxophone tone, the kind of sound that was made for a ballad—with the kind of chops you need for the most difficult bebop passages.

Jimmy Greene has a pedigree: he is one of the disciples of Jackie McLean—which means he is well-versed in bebop, hard bop, and avant-garde. Greene began to study with McLean when he was still in high school, and continued through an undergraduate degree at Hartford. That training gave him a solid grounding in the tradition and great chops as a soloist, so he was ready to take New York by storm when he got there in the mid 1990s.

He did that, too. He’s played in all the big places with all the best people, and he’s got seven recordings (and a bunch of excellent reviews) to his credit now. A whole lot of heavy hitters—players like Freddie Hubbard, Steve Turre, Lewis Nash, Avishai Cohen, Claudia Acuña, Kenny Barron—swear by him because of his big, warm sound and his infectious sense of swing.

We’re more than a little thrilled that Jimmy Greene is coming to the University of Manitoba as our first Artist-in Residence. He’ll be here two weeks per semester, with the first visit in October. We have him lined up to teach saxophone, big band, composition, theory, history—and he’ll do a couple of burning performances too. The students are in for an incredible treat. Some of the things he’ll do will be open to the public as well, so be on the look-out!

Steve Kirby is the Director of the newly-minted Bachelor of Jazz Studies program at the U of M.

Jazz on Wheels has had a busy summer, with appearances at a bunch of community events and several inner-city summer programs for kids. We’ve had a great time too. Amber Epp and Heitha Forsyth are an infectious duo—I swear they could get a crowd of corpses up dancing! They find a way to bring the most timid little mouse right out into the big playground and get them up shining and shaking. Curtis Nowosad and Will Bonness play like mad, and this year we added saxophonist Shannon Kristjanson, a very talented new kid on the block. Rodrigo Muñoz spices things up with Latin percussion, and I can often call up another player or two to sit in.

We’ve found the right repertoire too—something with a good beat that also tells a story about the origins of this music. Honestly, Jazz on Wheels is one of my favourite performance opportunities because I get to be serious and silly at the same time—this is definitely what I call Serious Fun!

The original plan of Jazz on Wheels was to expose kids to the instruments and the music—and the joy and pride of being indigenous to the North American continent. We do what we do to inspire not only those who have been less fortunate but everyone to the possibilities of dreaming a big dream.

We’re a few steps closer to our dream of an After Program which would make instruments and teachers available to kids who are interested in learning to play. I believe that sometime in the next year we’ll have the first instruments and we’ll be setting up the programming. Then, with a little help from our friends and supporters and the public at large, we’ll be able to make this dream a reality!

Jazz on Wheels is Steve Kirby’s mobile jazz appreciation orchestra. Watch for them on street corners and in community centres in ever season.

At least a couple of hundred new books crowd onto my desk each year, each of them in contention for a spot on the roster for THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual festival of writers at the end of September. There’s some of everything in those stacks: novels, short fiction, memoirs, mysteries, biographies, plays, poetry. Some are funny, some are heart-breaking. Some are so dense they make your brain hurt. Some are so smooth you skate away on them and figure you might not bother coming back.

The variety is one of the great delights of this crazy job. The variety, but also the extraordinary energy that flies off the page of a really well-written book.

I was thinking about this when I walked in on the tail-end of a rehearsal of the jazz camp faculty. Six players amidst a clutter of music stands and microphones, and the focus is so intense you can almost feel it as another presence—these are artists who put aside fatigue and hunger and the myriad details of their day to rehearse brilliantly difficult original material. Most of this music is new to them, and they don’t normally play together, but each musician is so accomplished—and committed—that it takes only a couple of sweeps to make complex rhythms and harmonies click into place.

It’s their joy to do this—you can feel that in the room too. And as they work up these charts, the personalities of the players become sharper and clearer. You can hear their wit, their depth, their originality—they each have a musical fingerprint. You can hear their respect for these new works, and for one another. And when they all throw their various selves into the mix, you begin to glimpse a more precise image of the player-composer too. Even sitting eight rows back, I feel introduced, welcomed in.

I love being part of an audience. I love to listen hard, to hear what’s familiar, to hear what’s unfamiliar. I love the feel of being present to art unfolding in time and space. As I get more experienced in my director’s role at the festival, I find I’m reading differently—I’m more aware of myself as a listener there too. I’m more attuned to the writer’s unique fingerprint. As a reader, I’m part audience and part player: my focus is essential if the linguistic rhythms and harmonies are going to click into place to release that charge of energy.

Writers aren’t so accustomed to the performance moment. We work in our quiet spaces and are sometimes shy of the stage. But a book is only an idea until it is released from its pages—a writer needs an audience too. That’s one of the great pleasures of THIN AIR: I have a chance to make a week-long concert of sorts, with ideas and images flying through the air. It’s another kind of listening from a jazz concert, for sure, but the effects are not so different—there’s challenge, delight, confirmation, provocation, bewilderment, pleasure, exhilaration. I figure that’s a pretty big payback on your investment…

Charlene Diehl’s musings on jazz and its sister arts appear in every issue. THIN AIR details at
www.thinairwinnipeg.ca.