Jazz for aficionados

Learsfool, I'm listening to "The Film Music of Bronislaw Kaper", played by the composer, in celebration of what I learned from you.

Two of my favorite tunes by him are; "Invitation" and "Green Dolphin Street". While Miles with Bill Evans is my favorite version of "On Green Dolphin Street", there are so many versions of "Invitation" I like, that I would prefer you choose your favorite version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nic4lb02ANw

Enjoy the music.

****Why this untruth is so widespread here despite being contradicted by every actual musician on this board is a continuing mystery to me, and a fascinating one. ****

A couple of related untruths are the idea that musicians (any genre) don't listen to recorded music and that most audiophiles don't really care about music; nothing could be further from the truth. Musicians listen to a lot of recorded music; and, while some audiophiles (equipment geeks) are, in fact, clueless about music, most that I have known are music lovers.

One of the reasons that these ideas get promulgated is, ironically, the emotional power of the very music they love which sometimes keeps many avid listeners from being able to see the middle ground (the gray) of so many of these issues. It can cause a tendency to want things to be entirely one way or the other; to make things the "best" or the "worst"; to become very polarized and overreact when a criticism is expressed by someone about a particular favorite recording. The KOB/SE debate was a perfect example of this. Two of the acknowledged greatest jazz recordings; yet, so much arguing about which was "better" when the dissenting voice (me) made it very clear from the start that both were great, but only in one or two specific areas was one considered somewhat better than the other while never declaring one as superior overall. Unfortunately, when hearing one listener say that X drummer sounds a little sloppy compared to Y drummer, instead of listening to the two examples and trying to hear what is being said, the focus becomes: "oh, he thinks X drummer is no good" and the fact that there are musically important stylistic differences between the two is missed.

The strong emotional response that music can have in a listener causes a tendency to "see" artists as dealing only with the emotional realm and to resist the idea that essential elements for artists to be able to reach that emotional realm and express their artistic vision are things that listeners sometimes perceive as very mundane and unemotional: study, practice or listening to recordings; things that can be misconstrued as not being in keeping with the mistaken idea that creativity is only the result of the calling of the artist's "muse". Most listeners would be amazed and their heads would spin at how much "technical" speak goes on in musicians' conversations (yes, even jazz musicians), wether it be about equipment, practice techniques, recordings that they are studying and analyzing, as well as musical issues at a level of subtlety that may seem incomprehensible. Music lovers tend to want their favorite artists to be "above the fray" of the mundane; truth is, they are people too.

WEll said Frogman, when all is said and done, the only way you can make somebody "big" is to make yourself small.
As Mozart said, the music comes from God, I just write it dowm .

Frog," upon reflection" ,my answer is most of us do not become anywhere near as good as we can be so we make others better than they are as a projective compensation.
If you don't look death square in the face without blinking on a daily basis you will conserve your energy as if you will need it for your 150th birthday bash.
There is no day but this day, no minute but this minute.