Starting today i will be spending this week in a jury listening to vocalists and brass/woodwind players eager to be accepted at the jazz school in Skurup (link in swedish). What they end up in is a strange situation for the spontaneous and often intimately personal expressions of improvised music. Imagine coming in to a room of complete strangers, with teachers hunched behind a table scrutinizing every note you sing or play and scrabbling notes on a paper while you give your all! I do admire them for doing it and hope that we can create an at least somewhat safe and welcoming environment for them!
In the evening i rehearsed with Niklas for a gig wednesday evening. I did some backwards counting yesterday and came to the conclusion that my last professional gig as a drummer was in 1993! 14 years ago!
It was nice though to switch roles in a band. I´m used to standing in front of or beside the drummer, picking up his sounds and movements and translating them into melodic shapes and gestures. It´s sort of "the other side of the coin" here! Now I find myself providing the rythmic foundation for Niklas melancholic The Band:ish music, while translating his melodies into rythmic shapes on my drums and cymbals. And it´s fun too...
In my morning prayers and readings of late, a psalm has been helpful in putting me in a proper perspective. Being an introvert and somewhat bent towards selfcenteredness I do need to lift my gaze from my shoes, recognising and submitting to someone who was before me, still is, and will be when I am long gone.
"Lord, from the very beginning you have been like a home to us. Before you created the world and the mountains were made, from the beginning to the end you are God." (Psalm 90:1-3)
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