Wheel of Fortune

Stalking the Wild Metronome

My husband and I went to a concert last night featuring jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his quartet.

Simply put, we were both blown away! The artistry and the musicianship were so stunning it was astounding!

Marsalis and his quartet have evolved out beyond straight-up jazz to something encompassing both jazz and classical into a sophisticated fusion of pure perfection.

The quartet moved out and away from a central beat, a defining tempo, a unified theme, but never got lost as they spiralled upward, outwards, inward, but somehow always managing to return back to the original core.

They were truly stalking the wild metronome.....


This was nothing like the music that commercial radio feeds its listeners and labels the smooth jazz genre. I like many musicians that have been labeled in this genre...Chris Botti, David Sanborn, but Marsalis is light years beyond this. It isn't even pure straight-up jazz, either....I was most reminded of the music that Miles Davis and John Coltrane were producing before their deaths. I imagine that Ornette Coleman, and a few others are re-defining and transcending the jazz idiom, also. Maybe post-modern jazz is a better term.

XM Radio features a station that plays MOJA...modern jazz...jazz and rock and pop fused....but even they don't venture often in this territory....a brave, new world....POMOJA...post modern jazz....jazz for the apocalypse.