Jazz for aficionados

Rok, 'Twixt optimist and pessimist
The difference is droll...
The optimist sees the doughnut;
The pessimist sees the hole.

Jazz will survive as long as humanity does . Looking out for next 100 years about a 50/50 proposition .

pryso, I do indeed know most of those guys; some of the top young (ish) jazz players in NYC. Terrific players. For some perspective, and certainly not to take anything away from any of them, but simply to highlight the following point: an ongoing project like “Mingus Dynasty” has a pool of players that is drawn from for each “chair” based on individual availability. A lot of the players in that pool are very busy with other projects and touring. So, some players like Ronnie Cuber who is a particularly great player may not have been available to travel for those concerts. My point is simply that jazz is not dying and will not die. There are so many great players out there, and many more coming, that are committed to the art form. I firmly believe that the decline in jazz has bottomed out. It will certainly not return to the level of popularity that it once had, but it will be with us for a long time. I think that part of the reason for the negativity about the future of jazz is that many listeners get locked into a very narrow range of style “likes”. It’s also one of the reasons that sometimes they feel they can’t find new music. The amount of good jazz to discover is practically endless. Imo, listeners who are completely closed to the styles of the past (ragtime, hot-jazz, swing) can not possibly be a good judge of where it’s headed.

A couple of the guys you heard that night:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dF2zLBHtdzs

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkx_UxgUFEs

Thanks frog, I hoped you would follow up.

Yes, I knew that Mingus Dynasty was not a specific group of players, but drawn from those available in a larger collection. I suspect every member of that collection is a top flight musician, and so there is no let down regardless of who participates at a given time.

I came away with two major impressions regarding the musicians.

First, the two who I would say were most "underrated" (to keep with our theme here) were Hill and Cruz. Hill was extremely dynamic in the sense of loud to soft. On some numbers his emotion coiled up and sprang from his body as he bounced about in front of and over the keys. Yet other times he barely whispered the notes. All with feeling and in tune (thematically) with the other musicians. Cruz was simply cool and nonchalant, overall effortless while keeping perfect time with creative steady and dynamic moves.

And not to be politically incorrect, but I was impressed that two Russian born musicians (Alex and Boris) who immigrated to the US displayed such depth and feeling for music written by Mingus. This was seemingly in defiance of some comments on this site about influence of background as it relates to or might limit jazz expression.

But that’s just my view.