We kicked off our What is beauty? series with a special Drink and Think house show addressing the question, “How should we approach jazz?” The NYC-based Ari Hoenig Trio was on tour and I convinced them to make Denton one of their stops to help us explore this question. After all, the very subject matter of beauty requires that any reflection on it involves experiencing it.
As with all great expressions of beauty – art, literature, philosophy, classical music – jazz music is one of those things where I find there are far more people who want to appreciate it than actually do. Beautiful things quite often present themselves as something only the experts or the practitioners of those arts can meaningfully engage. There’s an apparent esotericism to such things. And this tends to offend our democratic sensibilities. So much so that someone actually exclaimed during the discussion, “It doesn’t have to be that way!” As if justice demands that all great and beautiful things should be immediately accessible to all, seemingly without much effort. We will likely explore this point more as we continue our What is beauty? series this summer.
So while we had a house full of professional jazz musicians, we started the night with a lively discussion on how we should approach what we were about to hear. We even got the experts among us to recommend the one album they would suggest any jazz beginner start with. Ari was gracious enough to share with us this list of 40 influential jazz tracks for him, along with a video series where he provides additional commentary.
Here’s a clip of what you missed….