12-Bar Rest

(<--Red Holloway & Tenor Sax)
Idle instruments are awkward and beautiful at the same time. Devoid of life, but full of possibility. Yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to hear both in the afternoon and in the evening, Satoko Fuji and Natsuki Tamura (pianist and trumpeter, respectively). In the afternoon, we gathered for a q & a and Tamura's trumpet lay casually and provocatively on the padded piano bench. It waited. There, it is a vessel, an ornament, particularly mysterious and romantic to those of us who do not play an instrument. Prior to the Red Holloway set last week here in St. Louis, his alto sax and the bass waited, too. Atilt and horizontal. Not the positions they were meant for, but forced momentarily into sleep. I've noticed that when the musicians pick up their instruments, the sax, the trumpet, the bass, simultaneously become dynamic in their own right (perhaps this is my own anticipation that perceives this) and become a true extension of the musician's body--as if the musician would fall dead if that instrument were taken away, lopped off, or extricated from the grasp. In the hands of Tamura, the trumpet was him, his voice and vocal cords, organically linked. Intrinsic. Last Sunday, at Graceland, an acoustic guitar was propped up in a chair in the 'jungle room," looking far more awkward and lifeless than the glossy grand piano in the front room framed by stained-glass peacocks.