My friend M.E. (not me) decided to throw a dinner party tonight. There were seven of us: 4 music education masters' students, a PhD music ed. student, ME's next door neighbor who is a chemical engineer, and me. ME made salad and a refried bean and cheese dip appetizer and then ordered Pizza Hut pizza and breadsticks as our "entree". Most people brought beer or wine. I decided to bring dessert.
The cake you see above is a chocolate gingerbread swirled cake from a Scharffen Berger dessert cookbook (thanks, Stacie :) ). After finishing it and contemplating its likely taste, I realized that something was missing. More Chocolate. There just wasn't enough swirled through for my liking. So I decided to make a chocolate sauce to go along with the cake. That way, people could choose how rich they wanted their dessert. Mine had lots of sauce.
Over dinner, conversation batted among pedagogy class comparisons, descriptions of learning to play various instruments (music ed students have to learn a wide array), why jazz musicians now only play a couple sets and go home instead of staying through the night to jam, how jazz education occurred in the early years, and a smattering of chemical engineering talk to help ME's neighbor, N, feel more comfortable.
We soon migrated to the living room where ME played some popular tunes and the piano and created a mini singalong. Then, the two jazz musicians stood up to play. One trumpeter sat down at the piano and began some incredible jazz piano, while the other one pulled out ME's practice trumpet, muted it, and played. "I Got Rhythm" was first up. Then came "All the Things You Are". And finally "Summertime." I sang some, as did the rest of the room. My jazz sense is so rusty, and I never sang with an instrumental combo, so I'm not that comfortable with it. But it was so amazing to be a part of that music, even as a complete amateur. And hearing those two players...wow. The trombone player in the room joined in midway through - playing the walking bass line on the piano. It was a private and personal and spontaneous jazz performance, and it was wonderful. Take the typical "we're all at a party and there's a piano so we gather round" and kick it up about twelve notches. I would have paid to hear these guys perform. The improvisation and the cool swing of it...There's a reason I love jazz so deeply.
As that set ended, we sat and visited for a while. Then ME pulled out her flute and did a few lovely pieces on it. She has a gorgeous sound. This led to someone asking whether we'd ever heard the beatboxing flute guy on YouTube. (Look it up. Seriously and insanely amazing. A conservatory-trained classical flute player who riffs popular tunes while beatboxing.) The next hour or so was spent gathered around ME's laptop watching various YouTube specialities. Numa Numa. French techno dance. Oscar Peterson and his trio. Santana Shreds. Jaco Pastorius Shreds and then the real deal. The Rachmaninoff Prelude in C# Minor as a hilarious skit by an Asian guy with small hands. (Rachmaninoff had incredibly large hands and a very wide span. His music is extremely difficult to play without that dexterity.) I contributed the Muppets' Carmen. (Swedish Chef and Beaker :) )
The final set of videos we watched was of two varieties of Indian classical music. ME's neighbor, N, is from India, and she had been asking about the differences between Western jazz and classical music. This is an interesting question and not as straightforward as you might think. Certain pieces can be either: Summertime was originally written for the opera Porgy and Bess. You can hear this piece sung by Renee Fleming in a fully classical style. It is also one of the greatest and most played jazz tunes of the 20th century. Rhapsody in Blue is another that can defy characterization. And it seems there are exceptions to every rule. Think string bass is always plucked in jazz? Think again. There's a jazz guy downtown who evidently bows his bass when he plays. And there's some group that takes classical tunes and syncopates them and changes other aspects to "make them jazz". Very exciting.
Anyway, the discussion of jazz vs. classical led to a question about Indian classical music. N showed us hindustani and the other variety and talked about the differences. We all sat riveted for a while and then the commentary flowed.
"It's interesting. The variety all comes from the rhythms and the melodic line. There isn't really an underlying harmonic structure."
"And there are so many more notes. The tuning is different." (Many of the pitches arise between what we think of as the notes in the scale.)
"The drone underneath - what's making that sound?"
"I think my roommate has a machine that does that. It sounds like that."
"It's very rhythmic, almost trancelike."
N cut off the final video at the 7 minute mark or so, fearing that we were finding the sounds and repetitive nature grating. Instead, as soon as she clicked stop, groans erupted from most of the people in the room. "It was almost to the climax!" moaned one person. "Yeah," echoed another. It was the same outburst as when you're in an exciting movie and the projector cuts out right before the bad guy gets thwomped.
Everyone was so fascinated, deeply intrigued, by different kinds of music and their applications. We played everything on both YouTube and on real instruments from classical to pop to jazz. And our conversation hopped from the music of America to Africa to China to India to "Western Europe." Very, very diverse.
The close of the evening was a lot of wonderful conversation back and forth on a variety of non-musical topics. It was one of the most interesting and engaging evenings I've had in a long time.
Very happy. And not just because of the chocolate :)
~Hope
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