It is rare to be so present that the earth seems to stop spinning. But if anything can do it, it’s live music — the kind that’s so meaningful it doesn’t feel real even while you’re experiencing it. That was the gift we were given when Amina Claudine Myers and Wadada Leo Smith played at Roulette on December 4. The duo’s recent album, Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens (Red Hook Records), basks in stillness born from gradual shifts in tone, texture, and modality. At Roulette, they played five pieces from the record with sincere patience, as if we were on a walk together among the trees.
From Myers’ first piano notes, it was evident that this was the kind of concert that would transfix and then transport. She moved across the keys with lightness and flexibility, playing slow-changing chords with the delicateness of watercolor paints. Most important was her patience with each chord change, from minor to major, mode to mode. With each push away from center and into a new tonality, the anticipation to return grew stronger, until she reached the final twinkle of a note not with resolution but grace. Her performance was an exercise in observation and a reminder of the cathartic payoff of rest.
Smith’s trumpet offered a range of textural phrases, often in contrast with Myers’ gentle shifts. At times, he blew hard into his instrument, filling the room with explosive pitches; he left the frayed edges in his notes, letting them turn rough and bristle above Myers’ rounded tones. Elsewhere, he played smooth scales that rippled like waterfalls. His dynamics were unpredictable and surprising: His playing felt like a living object, always in motion, always moving forward while contemplating the minutes ticking away.
I spent much of the concert at the edge of my seat, watching the two musicians play off of each other. Though this music is composed, they responded to each other with the empathetic listening required of seasoned improvisers. They felt each other’s motions on a level deep and a little inexplicable; there was a transfixing intimacy to every breath. By the quietness of the room, I gathered we felt the motions too — even the tiniest seconds seemed to have us all under a spell. I heard no words or even seats shifting. Just bodies together, breathing, listening, and being.
After the duo finished performing pieces from Central Park’s Mosaics, Smith took the mic and talked a bit about his “music as poetry” practice. I heard visual art while I listened, the impressionism and vibrant colors of tone painting. But, of course, that’s also poetry — poetry is every moment that passes, burst into language that gives it the meaning we often choose to ignore. This concert was a celebration of every second.
I could have lived in that hour forever, but everything comes to an end. Maybe we all knew that it would, so that’s why we were keen to savor even more of the time we had in that room, lingering in applause for longer than we may have any other night. Somehow, though, the magic wasn’t over when the music stopped. When we walked outside, a light snow (or was it sleet?) was falling. It was faint. I could only see it if I looked into the headlights and peered at the glimmer of the ice that condensed on car hoods. Water dripping after a near-drought lifted. Magic is all around us all of the time, I begin to think, and music is its luckiest conduit.
still love your work!!
udo