REFLECTIONS OF THE MORE RECENT PAST           

 

In juggling many different things from small concerts in towns never visited before, while continuing to perform for and work with groups of young people, to the give and take of private sessions, I am enjoying music more than ever.

 

In making a trip to Richmond, Indiana, in attendance of my concert is a historical society member who afterward gave me the tour of " The Walk of Fame". Close to sixty prominant early American recording artists, among them from Jellie Roll Morton, Lawrence Welk, a young Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmiachael to name just a few who all recorded at Gennet Studios right here in Indiana. The Star Piano Company building remnants still stand as well as the bank adjacent to where the actual studio stood. In a lone minute, I whistled Stardust in the echoey building and acquired a red brick which now sits under my Jelly Roll Morton biography( Alan Lomax)  

 

In another concert was a welcoming audience just south of Richmond in Liberty , IN.  They purposefully had the more mature audience to my left and a group of 6th graders on my right. We had a ball. The older folks helped me describe what the word "Swing " can mean and a good time was had by all.

 

Even more recently, touring northeast Indiana, I had the pleasure of playing Noble County High School Auditorium. A nice mix of the community really enjoyed hearing some music  influenced by Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington with James P Johnson's "Charleston" and "Fats Waller" bookended between those musical giants.

 

You just never know what folks want to hear as shown by what transpired in Warsaw, Indiana. During my warmup set, a photographer was really touched by my version of "Crystol Silence" by Chick Corea. I decided to make it part a part of the show and everyone then enjoyed it's spontaneity.

 

There is something more meaningful in letting something that happens like that shape the contents of a show. I live for those kind of moments and the times when you are fully creating while the audience is along for the unfolding of, unexpected new ideas that everyone becomes a part of.